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Ep 9: Turtle Power

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 47m·analyzed·Jun 26, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Dwight Sullivan discusses TMNT pinball design, rules depth, character mechanics, and co-op innovation.

Summary

Final Round Pinball Podcast Episode 9 features an interview with Dwight Sullivan, Stern Pinball lead designer, discussing the newly released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pinball machine. Sullivan explains the design methodology, rule complexity, character selection mechanics with turtle-specific perks, RPG-style leveling, and innovative co-op/competitive gameplay modes. The episode opens with hosts Jeff Teolis and Martin Robbins acknowledging the social and political climate (June 2020, George Floyd protests) before pivoting to pinball discussion.

Key Claims

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles contains approximately 110,000 lines of code, more than Star Wars (118,000) but structured for breadth rather than depth

    high confidence · Dwight Sullivan stated this directly in the interview, comparing code metrics across Stern titles

  • The game features four turtles, each with four unique perks, for 16 total unique perks, but players can only acquire four perks per game

    high confidence · Dwight Sullivan explained the perk system in detail during the rules discussion

  • Co-op mode allows shared progress on episodes and wizard modes, preventing one player from being 'robbed' of wizard mode opportunities

    high confidence · Dwight Sullivan described the co-op implementation philosophy and specific mechanics

  • The game has multiple gameplay modes (normal, co-op, competitive, competitive+co-op, and team play with variants like 2v2, 3v1, 2v1)

    high confidence · Dwight Sullivan detailed the selectable game modes accessible via holding both flipper buttons between games

  • Dwight Sullivan has been designing pinball for 30 years

    high confidence · Sullivan stated this explicitly: 'I've been doing pinball for 30 years, guys'

Notable Quotes

  • “I make fun of you not seeing movies... I've never, ever seen the movie Jurassic Park.”

    Martin Robbins @ Early in episode — Banter between hosts about popular culture knowledge; sets tone for theme licensing discussion and how designer quality transcends IP familiarity

  • “If the pinball game is great... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The game looks awesome.”

    Martin Robbins @ Early rules discussion — Articulates the core design philosophy that Stern executes: theme matters less than game quality

  • “You can stumble into a multiball. You can stumble into fun. You can stumble your way into things and have fun.”

    Dwight Sullivan @ Mid-interview, discussing player accessibility — Key design principle for balancing casual accessibility with depth; core to Stern's recent design strategy

  • “Co-op is a lot of fun to design. It's a lot... mostly because it's new to me. Like I've been doing pinball for 30 years, guys.”

    Dwight Sullivan @ Co-op discussion section — Demonstrates Dwight's continued design innovation after three decades; positions TMNT as evolutionary for Stern

  • “I don't want that... if you got Team Up and I didn't because you crossed that threshold... then I would be robbed. And I'm like, well, I don't want that.”

    Dwight Sullivan @ Co-op wizard mode design explanation — Reveals player-centric design philosophy: prevents frustration in shared play, ensures equity

  • “You'd get 500 plus. It would start off at 950, correct... So one, two, three is much easier to start than weapon.”

    Dwight Sullivan @ Scoring mechanics discussion — Details balance between high-value hurry-ups and more accessible combo stacking mechanics

Entities

Dwight SullivanpersonJeff TeolispersonMartin RobbinspersonStern PinballcompanyTeenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesgameStar WarsgameGame of Thronesgame

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles officially released by Stern Pinball; major theme licensing announcement with full rule set and design team details shared

    high · Dwight Sullivan discussing game in detail on stream and podcast; hosts referencing deadflip stream of rules explanation; game described as 'pretty spectacular'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dwight Sullivan intentionally balances casual player accessibility (stumble into fun, clear progression) with competitive depth (110k LOC, stackable mechanics, multiple wizard modes); positions this as evolved approach from Star Wars

    high · Sullivan: 'We try to pull people down that road... stumble into a multiball... then at some point you go, oh, wait, there's more'; explicit comparison to Monsters (simpler) and Star Wars (more complex)

  • ?

    design_innovation: TMNT introduces novel co-op gameplay with shared episode progress, guaranteed wizard mode access for both players, and cross-player impact mechanics; Sullivan frames this as new design challenge after 30 years

    high · Sullivan: 'Co-op has added a whole new... layer to it... It's mostly because it's new to me... I've been doing pinball for 30 years'; detailed explanation of preventing player exclusion from wizard modes

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: TMNT features turtle character selection with unique perks per character; four turtles × four perks each = 16 total options, but only four acquirable per game; creates replayability and player preference without mandatory balance

    high · Sullivan explaining Donatello (multiball), Raphael (episodes), Leonardo (training), Michelangelo (outlane save); 'Something for everybody' philosophy

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.322

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round Hello once again, my name is Jeff Teolis My name's Martin Robbins Good to have you back again And you know, next time we do a show It's big leagues, no more of this Single digit bullshit, alright We're going to be into episode 10 Right now, this is our last kind of free pass At doing one of these things We're expected to be perfect after this marty so you know let's maybe let's do it maybe a week early perfection now get it out on time is that what you're saying okay now you're pushing it but uh yeah there is that isn't there you know what i'm very proud to say even though we're recording this on monday june 1st this will be out on time maybe even earlier it's tuesday june 2nd for me but you know i'm always in the future we'll see well marty it's a good news bad news week the good news is covid 19 is now not the number one concern the bad news is holy shit yeah the the world's a bit crazy at the moment especially especially where you are well north america has seen it but i've seen protests in london and germany and obviously it's big news around the world. The horrible, tragic murder of George Floyd is just obviously on the top of everyone's mind, as it should be, a senseless act. And people are pissed. People were pissed before with COVID-19. Now they're pissed again. And I do not have any answers. I only have empathy. And I wish I could hug everybody I know right now and people I don't know. We're going to get through this. Yeah, I think people were on the brink as it was. And this has just pushed a lot of people over and it's crazy times and as we say we've been saying each week because of covid stay safe like really right now stay safe please absolutely and uh anyway marty i know you feel the same way i do pretty much everybody listening to this program is feeling the same thing we want to get through this we want to see better solutions we want to have a better world to live in fingers crossed cooler heads will prevail and we'll get through this yeah we will get through this for sure so that was kind of my week what about yours that was that was pretty much my week just staring at the world and an outsider looking in and just i don't know frustration despair but again we've just got a peaceful solution just get through this and just be better people for it i guess i don't know it's crazy times it is you are listening to this program because you want to hear about pinball we're going to give that to you this isn't a political rant by any means so the good news is also look at this a new game was released teenage mutant ninja turtles pretty spectacular i have to say from what i've seen so far it's really interesting because i still am a bit cool on the theme someone on my stream said oh maybe it was a bit after your time so that's a bit unfair i'm not that old teenage mutant ninja turtles was a thing when i was growing up as well but i just wasn't into it we were teenagers yeah my younger brother was really into it but yeah yeah i mean i watched it i was just never a huge fan never really got into the movies either so i was thinking i knew that i knew it was going to be this theme and i was thinking oh i don't get it but what i've known about Stern is they can take themes that I'm not into and still make a great pinball machine out of it. And the biggest case in point for me is Aerosmith. I am so not into Aerosmith, the band. And then you look at the product and you go, you have turned this around and made something special out of something that I'm not interested in. So I was hoping that's what they would do with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And it's exactly what they've done. That's a great point. Aerosmith, a very North American band, so probably doesn't have that appeal across the world like it would in North America, but also go one step further. Iron Maiden. How many people never knew an Iron Maiden song? Yep. Does it matter? I think I've told you this before. I make fun of you not seeing movies. I've never, ever seen the movie Jurassic Park. Oh my god, it's one of my favorite films. You've just made it so I will never see Jurassic Park. No, that's not true because I told you to watch Matrix because I love it and you watched Matrix and you enjoyed it. I wouldn't say you loved it. You enjoyed it. Hold on a second. Hold on. I had already seen Matrix before, so it was a refresher. Okay. Fair enough. Anyway, I get it. I've seen some of the Jurassic Park movies. I've just never seen the original one. Doesn't matter. No. Iron Maiden doesn't matter. Aerosmith doesn't matter. If the pinball game is great. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I know the four characters names. I know, I guess, April and Shredder and a few of the other things. Don't really know the history of it. I know they like pizza. I don't give a crap. The game looks awesome. Yeah, it really does. And we're going to talk to somebody about the rules where I think this really shines as well. I think it's a recipe for success. This guy had a pretty big week last week and so did everyone at Stern Pinball with the announcement of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles joining us right now. Let's say hello to our good friend Dwight Sullivan. Hey Dwight, how are you? I'm doing good. Thanks Jeff and Martin. Thanks for having me on. It's always our pleasure. Always Good to see you come out with a new game, and I've watched the deadflip stream of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in which you went through the rules. But I just want to take a step back, if I can, and sort of just ask, what's the process that you go through? What's the methodology that you use when someone says, okay, here's a game, here's a thing that we're going to do, go. What do you do? What goes through your thought process? This game was a little bit different than some of the others. I mean, every game, one thing that's great about my job is every game is a little bit different. In this game, we started, you know, watching the show, and we started throwing ideas on a whiteboard. And then when I say we, that's John Borg, Elliot Eisman, and myself. We were the core team, and we were meeting right from the beginning and talking about the show and who are the villains and who's, you know, what are the different tropes in the show, what do the turtles do, what are they like in the game, what has to be in the game in order for it to be a Turd Age Mutant Ninja Turtle game. And then I started thinking about all the different things that I saw in the episodes and, well, which things would make a fun game. And I like choices. I like things that, you know, giving players an opportunity to take different paths. I try to put that in as many games as possible. So training just kind of jumped out at me as, well, these guys could train and they could start off at one level and work their way through and become, you know, higher and higher level. And that could mean different things as we go. So that's where we started with this game. And at what stage did you know that you were going to sort of really have those RPG elements where you can level up characters? Because I know that we've seen some sort of RPG elements previously in your games, but this one's taking that to the next level where you do start as a character and you can level them up. You can then level up other characters. You can bring in other characters as team-ups. When did you know that that's what you wanted to do? Well, it just kind of all fell into place. And I do love the whole RGB things. I've done it in the past. So in Star Wars, you can pick which character you want, and that meant different things as you went through the game. In Game of Thrones, you can pick different houses, which is similar. And then in Game of Thrones, there's other RGB moments, like you can get gold, and then you can spend the gold on, you can choose what you want to spend your gold on, and I think that's pretty fun. So I always like to do that sort of thing in games. So then as soon as I started thinking about sort of watching the show, and they have to train before breakfast. That was something that was in the show often. It's like before they can have their cereal and pizza breakfast, they have to train. And I'm like, well, we can make training part of the show. And then what does that mean? Well, if you're training, that means that you start off at one level and you work your way up through multiple levels and then each level can be something different. And that just kind of all fell into place. So when you choose a turtle, similar to choosing a character in Star Wars or a house in Game of Thrones, there have to be huge challenges for you doing the code because when you have that much variety and we'll get to the eight modes and whatnot later but with each character and each strength there's that variety and you pretty much have to make sure that for the players are making each path somewhat equal in the sense that you don't want people always choosing the same character correct so it's a challenge on multiple levels i do want them all to be fun and fair but like on Game of Thrones, it's okay if, like, I always pick Raphael because Raphael is easier for the things I want to do. So I'm probably not ever going to pick the other turtles, you know, unless it's a special circumstance. But you guys might pick something, you might pick a different turtle because the way you play. So I'm trying to make it so that, sure, they're all fair and equal, but at the same time, there's something for everybody. Something for everybody, I think, is just as important as fair and balanced. So what I would say about the rules from what I've seen so far is that if you think about the last couple of games that you've done, obviously Star Wars was, for me, it was quite complicated and quite deep and very, very detailed and so much to go for. And then you also had Monsters, which was a simpler rule set. This is kind of somewhere in the middle. Was that something that you intentionally wanted to do? It absolutely was. monsters was a game that we we aimed at a simpler market a simpler a simpler theme a simpler game and um of course star wars i wanted it to be epic i wanted it to have the kitchen sink so i did that but i wanted you know but turtles didn't you know when i started going through all of the material you know turtles doesn't need 19 modes and four wizard modes and all that like from star wars but at the same time i wanted it to be much more complicated than than monsters i wanted you know Because I wanted this leveling up. I wanted to choose your different turtles. And that automatically starts adding complexity. And I love complexity. Yes, you do. I've always asked you to maybe explain a game within 30 seconds. And it's not easy to do. But you know what? That's a good thing. Because, again, it makes the game deeper. It gives more opportunities to explore different things that might not be out there. And even on the stream, you didn't say everything. You didn't talk about the wizard modes in any great length. Because you want people to explore those things. So looking at it, when I first saw it, I thought, this is a pretty deep game. It's funny you say, yeah, it's not as deep. Yeah, there aren't as many modes as Star Wars, but it still looks pretty deep. There's the stackability and all that kind of good stuff. I don't know what it's like for you coding this when it comes to how many lines of code it took compared to other games. Right. So I told you about that. So... I know I'm lying. I'm pretending I don't know because people don't know our inside conversations, Dwight, you son of a... Anyway, Dwight... Edit it out if you want to. No, no, I'll keep it in. Way to go. Way to pull back the curtain. Okay. Secrets are out. Go ahead, Dwight. Well, I'm sorry.
John Borg
person
Elliot Eisminperson
Joshua Clayperson
Jerryperson
Ghostbustersgame
The Munsters (Pro)game
Ken Croneperson
[name withheld pending review]person

gameplay_signal: TMNT restores spinner importance through cumulative value building (spinner advances foot combo value throughout game); addresses recent trend of spinners as mere switch hits without exponential payoff

high · Sullivan: 'The spinner always builds the super jackpot value... I like to be able to rip a spinner and just see mega points on the screen... foot one, two, three... that number is constantly going up with every time the spinner spins'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Sullivan designs for six distinct player archetypes: tournament players, home buyers, experienced bar players, casual novices, and others; each game must offer value to all segments

    high · Sullivan: 'We're making it for everybody, right? So there's five or six different types of players in my mind, and you try to please them all'

  • ?

    content_signal: Final Round Podcast Episode 9 features extended interview with Stern's lead designer immediately following TMNT launch; positions podcast as industry insider media outlet

    high · Dwight Sullivan guest appearance discussing unreleased details; hosts acknowledging insider knowledge ('I'm pretending I don't know because people don't know our inside conversations')

  • ?

    community_signal: Dwight Sullivan directly accessible to podcast hosts and community for detailed design explanation; positions Stern leadership as engaged with enthusiast media

    high · Sullivan willing to discuss co-op implementation, code metrics, design philosophy, and specific mechanics in detail on public podcast immediately post-launch

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: TMNT developed by significant team: 4-5 programmers, 5-6 artists, dedicated sound engineer (Jerry); emphasizes scale of modern Stern productions

    high · Sullivan: 'There's a whole team of people making this game. I have like four or five programmers. There's five or six artists. There's a sound guy. Poor Jerry. He's like the only sound guy'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: TMNT uses episode-based narrative arc with villain progression across modes, culminating in final battle wizard mode; integrates IP lore into rule progression

    high · Sullivan: 'Shredder is succeeding at getting the little things that he needs... Even if the turtles win or lose... the overall story arc comes to a head in the final battle at the second wizard mode'

  • ?

    product_strategy: TMNT represents significant IP licensing achievement for Stern during 2020; selected by hosts/designers as theme that transcends personal fan affinity (similar to Aerosmith, Iron Maiden precedent)

    high · Martin noting skepticism about TMNT theme but praising Stern's execution; Dwight discussing how designers make 'something special' out of themes regardless of personal interest

    • 11:49
    Our first guest could be crying. This could be great. No, Dwight, explain the lines of code. In my roundabout way, what I'm trying to say is it looks deep. How deep is this compared to the other games? Well, okay, so lines of code doesn't imply deep. It just implies how much work went into the game and how many hours of time went into the game. And it's not just me. I really want to emphasize that there's a whole team of people making this game. I have like four or five programmers. There's five or six artists. There's a sound guy. Poor Jerry. He's like the only sound guy. Jerry's great. Jerry's awesome. So there's a whole team of people making all these lines of code, but it just represents the hours of work that are involved. So for example, Star Wars was about 118,000 lines of code. That's where it stands today. And that's just, again, that just reflects on how many hours it took to make Star Wars. Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, and Munsters all fall around 80,000, 86,000 lines of code. They all have about the same amount of content. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is currently around 110,000 lines of code. That's because it has so much breadth. It has less of depth, and it's going to actually take more hours, more minutes to get through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than it will Star Wars. Like, if you take the fastest path to Jedi Master, you know, to the last mode, you can get there faster, I think, than you can in Turtles. But Turtles has more breadth. Because when we started laying out the game and John started making all these combos, I'm like, well, I want a set of rules for every little set of combos that we can make. So we made crane combo and one, two, three foot combo and weapon combos and hurry ups. And this game has a lot of stuff going on that more than just trying to get through all the modes and get to the deep wizard mode. But I think what you've done differently this time, and this is for me. Remember, I'm somebody that gets very, I get frustrated with complex rule sets because I just don't have the attention span. The fact that I understood this rule set says to me that you've done something very differently. And yes, it has got, obviously, lines of code and it's quite broad, but I think you've presented this in a much more digestible way. It just seems more logical how you're going to progress through the game and the information it gives you to know how to progress through the game. Thanks. That's a lot of work to do that and I've gotten better at it over the years. So a lot of things are more, they seem simpler, they seem easier to do. Like you walk up and you're just going to try to work your way through these modes, and oh wait, there's training over here on the side, or I stumble into a multiball. You don't have to, it's not as complex or in your face with a wall of stuff as, say, Star Wars. So I know what you mean, and thank you, but that also takes a lot of work, and just me growing a little bit as a pinball designer. Marty and I are the same that way. It's harder for us to really digest the rules. It's different when you own the game. And I think anybody who owns Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is going to be able to digest it certainly quicker than those that are playing the casual game at an arcade or on location or at a tournament or whatever the case may be once we get to that. But one thing that made it easier for me to understand this new game was something I loved seeing was kind of the progress on the LCD screen on the right-hand side. That information, that helps players like me. Give me more information and a quick access to it. It looks like I've got it there. Yeah, we've come a long way, too, on what should we show on the LCD, what should always be there, what should show up. And then when things just sort of show up and go away, you know, like what are they? How big of information should it be before it takes over the screen? So we're getting a lot better on that, too. And thanks. That was work between me and Josh Clay. Josh Clay is our lead animator. Again, he's the lead of a team of people animating. but Josh and I sort of designed the whole UI. So the scores go across the bottom and the episodes are on the right and the pizza's in the top right corner. That went through several iterations and we finally nailed all that out eventually. That was months and months ago but yeah, it was a lot of work. So for those that haven't seen the stream, how would you summarize, I guess, the rule set in what you need to do, what each of the characters do and what you're aiming to do in the machine? Okay, that's a long summary.
    15:59
    Yeah, you can do it in 30 seconds. Go ahead, Dwight. All right, so you walk up to the game, and if you're a Turtles fan, then you're going to already have a Turtle that is your favorite. So you're quickly going to learn, though, that Leo is, you know, he likes, the very first perk you get is just for pushing start. So when you push start, one of the Turtles, is my 30 seconds up yet? I haven't even started. so we got to start the button at the 30 second mark yep so you know you push start and and right off the bat you can choose what turtle you are but if you don't know anything about that if you just plunge you're going to get a random turtle and and and who cares because you're going to learn about well what that what does that mean and who you know you're going to eventually down the road learn it but if you do care you can change with the flipper buttons you You can change what turtle it is, and then you can pick the turtle you want to be and then plunge the ball, and you'll take that turtle. At level one, each turtle lights something different. Gary has a pro at his house, and he plays it all the time. He loves turtles, and he loves being Donatello because Donatello lights turtle multiball on the right ramp. So all you have to do is shoot the right ramp one time, and you'll start a multiball if you pick Donatello. I pick Raphael because Raphael lights episodes when you're at level one. So I want episodes to be lit right off the bat, and I just shoot in there, and I start an episode, and I'm well on my way toward collecting episodes. Elliot, he likes Leo because he wants to start training right off the bat and start working his way through the training levels. So there's something different for everybody. Michelangelo likes the outlanes and might save your ball, so he lets you have a safer ball. There's something for everybody. Everybody can pick something different. So then as you work your way through the game, as you're leveling up and or working your way through episodes, you start learning that there's a story. The episodes have a story arc where, sure, these villains keep coming back and doing nasty things, you know, trying to destroy the turtles or win the day or take over the world or whatever they're trying to do. And the turtles are stopping them at each turn, you know, like around every corner. But along the way, Shredder still is succeeding at getting the little things that he needs. Even if the turtles win or lose, Shredder is succeeding, and then the overall story arc comes to a head in the final battle at the second wizard mode. So that's kind of an overview of the game. You're working your way through the story, and you're leveling up your turtle, and each turtle has different perks. And you can get other perks, though. Can you get other characters' perks as well? No, you can only get your own. Okay. There are 16, so each turtle, there's four turtles, and each turtle has four levels, so there's 16 different unique perks that you can get, but you can only get four of them on any given game. Again, that sounds deep. I saw the weapon hurry up. It started at, I think, 500,000. You kind of double your hurry up on the next made shot, so if you hit that hurry up at, say, 450, and then made the second shot, you'd get 900, correct? Correct. Well, you'd get 500 plus. It would start off at 950, correct. Okay. So I thought that was pretty neat. And then you showed the foot one, two, three, which you said you could stack. But I was wondering if I missed the value of that because I saw three shots being made for a total value under half a million, whereas the one shot on the weapon hurry up was half a million. So I was wondering, and obviously I'm missing something, why would I shoot three shots to get 500,000 when I can shoot one hurry up? Because obviously the thing I'm missing is you can stack foot one, two, three, and it does something else. What did I miss? So you missed a couple of things. One, weapon hurry up has to be, you have to make your skill shot in order to light weapon hurry up. One, two, three is always lit for you at the beginning of every ball. So one, two, three is much easier to start than weapon. Weapon requires you to make one of your skill shots.
    19:51
    And each of the four turtles have a different skill shot. Then the other thing that you missed is the weapon hurry up is a hurry up, so the score is counting down. It starts off at half a million, but it counts down, and you could easily get 50,000 for it. Not me. Have you seen me shoot? Come on. Right. So you're going to get, you're right, you're going to get, like, if you make the two shots, you're going to get, like, $700,000, $800,000 for it, maybe even more. But the other thing is the foot one, two, three combo. So the spinner advances that value, and that's on the UI. You see that there's a foot symbol, and there's a number in the middle of the foot symbol, and that number is constantly going up with every time the spinner spins. I like that. And so you carry that over across the game. So the very first time you shoot So foot's 1, 2, 3 You destroy 1 foot and then 2 foot And then 3 foot And that's a total of 6 foot times Whatever your spinner value is That you've been building up the whole game Marty, you know I love that I know you do So, you know It's points But building the value of a spinner Hello Or having the spinner build the value of foot Either or, I love it No, I know why you're saying that Because we, Jeff and I had an offline conversation, probably only a couple of days ago, about spinners and how they've kind of become less important. Meaning, they give a nice light show, they make a nice sound, but where's the mega value in ripping a spinner? Right. So, I'm trying to bring that back a little bit by... Yay. Yeah. Yeah, really, the recent games have been just, they're switch hits. They're not exponential in any real way. I mean, you have to, in Deadpool, hit the spinner a bunch of times to get the disco multiball. Okay, great, but I want to make that worth more and more and more, or have it do something else to the playfield, and it sounds like you've done that here. I like that. Yeah, so I learned that lesson in Ghostbusters. The last pass of Ghostbusters, the spinner always builds the super jackpot value. Okay. I don't mind that, but the payoff is getting the super jackpot. I like to be able to rip a spinner and just see mega points up on the screen. And it seems like you're balancing that. Yeah, I guess I'm not making you as happy as I probably should. Maybe I'll reconsider how many points you make.
    22:10
    Well, you're not designing the game for me, but it's a question I just had in my mind. Who are you making this game for? That's a hard question. So we're making it for everybody, right? So there's five or six different types of players in my mind, and you try to please them all. I want to please the tournament player. I want to please, which is very, very different from the home buyer, which is different from the experienced player at a bar, because the experienced player at a bar, he still knows quite a bit about pinball and knows about rules, and he'll come back and learn a game over and over again as he comes back to that bar every three days a week or whatever. right and then there's the casual player the novice you know the novice casual player the guy that's just playing because his friend told him it's cool and so you gotta you know you gotta please everybody to me with this theme it invites that player whether he or she is enjoying the theme and going okay wow i love turtles this looks like it could be fun i put a quarter or a dollar in the teenage mutant ninja turtles video game i like this one too let's let's see what it is and the animations nowadays make it almost video game like and i think when that player puts in their quarter or dollar stern has done a very good job in the last few games and for many games but really just inviting that novice player to have something exceptional happen no matter what your skill set is right right so we always try to make it so that you can stumble into a multi-ball you You can stumble into fun. You can stumble your way into things and have fun. And, like, the music changes, and you're hearing speech calls, and shoot the left ramp, and, yay, you did it from April. And there's a lot of that in this game. And then there's lots of depth and depth that you can try to, you know, then at some point you go, oh, wait, there's more. There's training. What's that about? And there's episodes. What's that about? And, you know, what happens when I get, you know, two or three or four episodes and so on? So we try to pull people down that road. And then you've added an additional layer on top of that, which I'd love for you to go through why you decided to do this, how you did it, and why, obviously, you're really excited about it. That certainly came through on the stream. And that is how people can play this game together. I'm very excited about that. I know you are. Yeah. So, co-op is a lot of fun to design. It's a lot. It's mostly because it's new to me. Right. Like I've been doing pinball for 30 years, guys. Thirty fricking years. Like and I I love it. I love pinball and I love designing games. I love designing rule sets. But co-op has added a whole new, like you said, layer to it. And at first. So then I'm at a friend's house, Ken Cromwell, and we're playing TNA. He had a he at the time he had a TNA in his basement. And of course, of course, co-op isn't new. right co-op you know like scott didn't invent co-op right but he added it to his game and we were you know four of us were all playing tna and we're trying to figure out what it does and it was a lot of fun and i'm like you know that's we should you know and everyone keeps saying you should you know that should be in more games and i'm like okay i'm going to try to make that in more games and at first glance it's just you know giving everybody the same score and that's pretty easy to do but then i'm like well then it we're also going to share progress and then you think well, what does that mean, sharing progress? What does that look like? And I think it's going to look different in every game that it's implemented in, or at least a little bit different in every game it's implemented in. The way I translated that was, well, sure, every time you play an episode, I get credit for that episode if you and I are playing together. And when I play an episode, you get credit for that episode. That means that we're going to work our way through the episodes together. But then I'm like, well, what happens when you play a wizard mode along that path? So in Turtles, when you get four episodes, you're going to play Team Up, and then Team Up is a little, well, it's not little. It's a wizard mode. It's a full-blown wizard mode that you get for playing four episodes. And what would suck is if I was robbed out of that. Like if you got Team Up and I didn't because you crossed that threshold and got to episode five and six before me, then I would be robbed. And I'm like, well, I don't want that. so now what happens in Turtles is, if you, let's say you play six episodes, and along that way, you know, after four, you played Team Up, then when it became My Ball, I'm going to get Team Up, Team Up will be waiting for me right then at the beginning of My Ball, and I'm never ever going to be robbed of a wizard mode So that was that was interesting and then I thought well let take this one step further like what if you know while I playing I lit something or I affected your game when you playing And I started thinking well how could I do that And I came up with a pretty cool way, if you want me to go into that now. It just gives you so many different varieties to play the same game, and it seems simple in concept. So was it easy to execute? Because the benefits are huge. It was not as easy as it sounds. It was fun to execute, so that made it easy on that regard, even though it was a lot of work. But it was just figuring out how to, on a design level and an implementation level, how to make it all work. Well, it wasn't hard, but it wasn't as simple as just giving everybody the same score, which I thought, you know, which is what you might think co-op is at first. So with the battles that you've got, you know, you've got your two versus one, two versus two, three versus one, right, even? Right. Well, you're talking about gameplay mode, so that's another thing I'm kind of excited about. So that's sort of tangential. So when you walk up to Turtles, you can push in the both flipper buttons, and a menu will show up on the screen, like after three seconds of holding in both flipper buttons between games, a menu will show up on the screen, and you'll be able to pick what game mode you want to play in your next game. And it can be normal or co-op or competitive, or competitive plus co-op, or team play. Team play is not co-op. Team play is like 2v2 or 3v1 or 2v1, right? So, like, imagine, you know, the three of us versus Keith, L1, right? We could play 3v1 and try to take on Keith, L1, you know, in the game. But is it just your combining scores, or are you doing things in the game that can potentially negatively affect your opponent? No, so in team play, it's just combining scores. But think about it. You and I are, well, we both know people like dad can take on the two kids and the mom, right? So that's 3v1. That's a nice little way to play 3v1. Again, it doesn't matter what your skill set is. You're going to have fun whether you're participating with others, whether it's competition, whether it's team mode. That's the neat thing about what you've done here. So I'm glad you've put that in, and I think it's going to be a big, big hit. Explain April. I've seen that a lot on recent games. Think of John Board games. Let me think. Metallica has a long, wide fuel shot. In Guardians, he has the Guardians multiplier shot. That's a long target. And you have that here with April. I think Munsters had it too with Lily, if I think about it. Yeah, Lily and April and Lair. Lair's a long, wide target. So if the topic is long, wide targets. I love it. I do. I do too. So John and I both like, there's lots of discussion out there on the forums about these wide targets. They think that we're just trying to be cheap, and that's not true at all. In the beginning when we're laying out the game, John and I both like the really wide targets. We like a lot of the things you can do with them and how easy it is to shoot when you need to.
    29:54
    So at the very beginning of this game, John said, well, how about a really wide target here and a wide target over here? And I'm like, yes, I love it. Let's do that. And that's what we did because we did it because we wanted to. It was a design choice. We thought it's to make the game fun. It has nothing to do with anything else. I don't think it's cheap. I think there are enough shots on the game that you need a little bit of relief once in a while. And, again, it's that player satisfaction from being able to do that. Very cute what April does, gives you progress on. And what is it, rescuing a cat if there's nothing going on, something like that? April does two things. Well, both targets, Banks, do two things. April does two things. She lights Battle Again for you. But if you already have Battle Again lit, she starts to hurry up. In order to get to the deep wizard mode, the cowabunga wizard mode, you need five April hurry-ups to finish. But the cool thing that she does is it's not just a regular hurry-up. She always stacks with anything else going on. So if you start an episode and start a multiball stack with that and then start April hurry-up, she'll report on that. And she'll say, you know, the turtle van has been spotted all over town. And how much she's worth will be worth much, much more if you stack her with other things. because she's a news reporter, right? She wants to report on really cool stuff. So if you stack her, she'll report on the really cool things instead of, but if you start it with nothing else going on, then it's a cat stuck in a tree. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, okay. So then I do want to just talk about the big targets as well because I think of all the feedback that I've seen, it's really the only, I guess it's probably the only, I'll call it a negative that people are really calling out. Yeah, it is. And let's just face it, if that's what people are calling out, I think that's success for a machine, right? I agree. But I just want it to be on the record that it's not... It wasn't to make the game cheaper. It was... John and I like the big targets. So we did it on monsters and we did it again on turtles. Okay. So you like that as opposed to having a bank of targets. So what's the benefit then to the overall experience having the wide target as opposed to a bank of targets be they drop targets or stand-ups well so i really don't like drop targets on the side of the game because i really like drop targets like they were done for little deadpool or you know or scott's one two you know scott's inline three bank or you know like like anytime a drop target protects something protects a ramp or a shot or or a target behind it like in beatles you know that's that's i think where drop targets belong. So otherwise, if these long targets were stand-ups, then you're sort of, you can't spell out April in that space, right? Like you can't have, it would be hard to fit five stand-ups in that space. I mean, sure, you could fit five little tiny, you know, stand-ups in that space, but why do that, right? I would treat them all as one target anyway, most of the time. So if I'm going to treat it all as one target, it's a psychological thing, right? You see that and you go, oh, I can hit that big wide target. That's easy. And it's not as easy as you think for the average to lower player, right? Like, when you need to hit April to do something, because she might be timing out, and you have to complete the spelling of April, you're like, shit, I keep shooting that orbit when I want to shoot April. And, wait, there's one more thing. There's the artwork that we can put across the wide target is better than artwork you can put on five little tiny stand-ups. I get it. I wanted you to explain it, because it actually, when I was streaming somebody, that was the topic of conversation, because I streamed straight after the reveal. And I gave two specific examples. One's a stir machine, one's not. And it's the Tyrell or the light lock shot on Game of Thrones. You've got those two shots to get. One of them is harder and more dangerous than the other. So if that was a joint target, you're still, in a way, doing the same thing, but it's a safer shot for a game that can be pretty brutal. And the other example I gave was on Wizard of Oz, where you've got the crystal ball shot, and there's the B-A-double-L targets on the left-hand side, which are really far to the left. And to get the B is very difficult, and you're relying on side-to-side motion. So in those instances where it's just immediate danger going for those things, you benefit from having an easier shot that does the same thing. Right, and I don't think there's anything wrong with stand-ups and a spell-out, and you have to try to hit every individual target. That's something fun about pinball, is you can have that, and that's great, but what we're doing I think is fun as well. When this game comes out, how close to full code will it be? I mean, there's always tinkering and whatnot, but this looks like it's pretty much there. We're hoping that it'll be close to 1.0, which for us, So that's, you know, like you're just sort of scratching the surface on a major topic. So we're really trying to make it so that games, when they first go in a box, are at 1.0. And we've been trying that for a long time, and we've been struggling with it, and we've been hiring more and more people. We just recently hired Raymond Davidson to help us with this problem. We've been hiring, we've hired lots of other people. We want games to be complete. So we want to define that 1.0 equals complete and fun and relatively bug-free, right? And then, sure, there might be updates after that. There might be bug fixes after that. But at least when the game first goes in a box, it's 1.0 and it's fun and complete. So you must know right now there's a few things you need to do before you get to that 1.0 code. There's the road to 1.0, yes. Well, then you've got the dilemma of bringing out a really complicated rule set, which requires time to code. So there's a balance there. Right. So that's a tough balance. So a few weeks ago, like a month or two ago, I started on my next game. So not coding, not doing anything, but just thinking about and planning the next game. And like Turtles, I want to hit that middle ground. I want a full game, a full for what, or at least what we would call in the modern world, a full game that has two multiballs, it has two hurry-ups, it has a set of modes, it has some other little twists and turns and innovative stuff going on. But at the same time, we've got to get it done. And we need to be 1.0 by a certain date. And so that's a big part of why I get paid the big bucks.
    36:17
    And for 30 years too, Dwight. So when you think of the games that have come out in your recent history, when Ghostbusters came out, when Game of Thrones came out, Star Wars, The Monsters, this, where does this one rank as, wow, I'm feeling 10 out of 10 here. I'm really happy about this. Where do you feel, Dwight, when it comes to this game being released? so I really really like the rule set and the bones of the rule set that this game is sure it might not be perfect the day when I'm all done with it and beta testers and people might go well why don't you do this or do that and I think that because of the structure that's set up I can easily go in and change something that most people wouldn't notice most people wouldn't, it wouldn't be bad it would only be good so I'm loving the structure and what I've done with Turtles. I think it's one of my best games ever. There seems to be a great chemistry between you and John Bork. Safe to say? Yeah, John and I work really well together. So we complement each other in a lot of great ways. He wants the game to flip well and wants good kinetics and flow and shots. And then I like rules and I like figuring out everything that the game does that isn't tangible. And so we work great together because we don't overlap that very much. Can I just talk about the differences between the Pro and the Premium in LA? So again, question that's come up. I know you've got the player-controlled diverter, but talk through the differences. Sure, sure. The differences, so there's a few, right? One of the things that was really important to John was that the van always be able to start a four-ball multi-ball even after making one shot. He didn't want any locking. He wanted balls already staged. in the van, and then when you make one shot, that fourth ball goes into the van, and then four balls come out. And so that's one thing that you get that's on the premium in LE that you don't get on the pro, and that was important to John. The thing that was important to me was the glider, the glider that you could control with a button. I love the button, and Jeff and I will argue about the button later today, but I love giving the player reasons to, when they want to, take their hand off the flipper and hit the button and then put their hand back on the flipper and to be thinking about, well, why was that important? Oh, I need the ball to come here. I need the ball to go there. Let me change it. And so the glider moving back and forth, that's another, I think, a very important difference. And then the crane. The crane is really a lot of fun. All it is, it's mostly just eye candy. It bounces up and down and he glows and he's constantly pulsing, but he bounces up and down and gets really bright with each syllable. And I spent a whole weekend, like a month ago, timing out 80 different speech calls for Krang so that he would bounce up and down and glow brightly with each syllable of 80 different phrases. So those are the three major differences between the premium LE versus the pro. So when it came down to us figuring out what we had to do, it came down to should we remove the glider or should we remove the spinning disc? because we could have made either one work on the pro, but then the ball is coming out and collecting on the magnet, and then the spinning discs making them explode all over the game and then coming back and getting on the magnet again and then exploding again. That was too much fun for the casual player at the bar, and so, of course, then the spinning disc has to be on the pro. The glider is more highbrow. It's more complicated to explain why would you want to use the glider. So, of course, that's more for the home player, you know, for the basement games. I didn't say a single word about the action button.
    40:05
    I kept my mouth shut. Well, we haven't got to the pizza contest yet. Let's get to pizza contest. Go ahead. So taking the glider off of the Pro, which was hard to do, but once we made that decision, we're like, well, what is the button going to do on the Pro? And so we had meetings about it, John, Elliot, and I. and we're sitting around the game, and we're talking, and we're throwing out ideas. And I didn't mention it, but somebody said something about, well, what if we had, what if you could just eat a bunch of pizza, you know, like in 10 seconds? And then John said, yes, let's make it a pizza-eating contest, but not as much as you can in 10 seconds. Let's make it a finite amount and have it sort of be timed, and, you know, when you get to the end, you're done. You win. And so that's where that came from. So we made pizza eating contests because John won it. It was John's idea, and I'm blaming him. Oh, sure, sure. Does that happen in the middle of everything, or is it stop, do your pizza eating competition, and then back to the normal game? So in my mind, it's only fun if it's a single ball play, and I know the ball is live on the play field. Like if you're trapped up, or if it's multi-ball, or if the ball saver's going, then where's the challenge in that? So the only way I can do that is if it starts off of a target. And so pizza eating contest starts when you've eaten X number of pieces of pizza. Today that X equals seven. When you get to seven, the next time you hit the target, the contest will begin. And you then want to start mashing the button. And you'll get speech calls, and the lights change, and the music changes. And you know you've got to be hitting the button. And you have like six seconds to hit the button as many times as you can. Before the balls drain. No. Oh, no? before the ball gets back to the flipper and you trap it up.
    41:55
    That's the one thing that I have learned since the action button has become a big thing. It's going to be on your tombstone, Dwight, by the way. It's really the thing you have to learn as a pinball player. Listen, just because you have to hit the action button, you have to do it at the correct time. I get it. So fire the balls off, trap them up, whatever the case may be. Don't take your hands off the flipper when it's a dangerous time to take it off. I've learned that. I've come a long way, Dwight. All right, all right. I'll believe it when I see it. Look, I've got to tell you, Star Wars in particular, how many times I've kicked myself because I've been pushing the button instead of focusing on the balls that are coming towards my flipper. Well, yeah, that's... It's my fault, but you're deliberately creating that dilemma for me. It's hilarious. It's because Dwight's an alien and he has three arms, so he's like, screw everyone else with you, you two-armed humans. Yes.
    42:49
    But it's fun. You're just adding a layer of fun just for fun's sake, right? Right. So because there are people like Jeff.
    42:59
    Thank God. Or help us. The magic number seven is because that's about how many pieces of pizza you can eat in a game.
    43:09
    So it doesn't happen very often. So usually you're only going to get zero to one pizza eating contest per game. You know what I mean? So you're not going to get it on ball one. Usually you're not going to get it on ball two. It'll usually happen on ball three or not at all on a typical average player game. Marty, I'm confused. Is he making fun of the action button and my love for it or my chubbiness? Because I'll have you know I've lost 25 pounds since COVID-19 started. And I'll have you know seven pieces is nothing for Jeff. So is that not the point you were making? Sorry. I know. That's not quite the point. Seven is about how many times? Because it takes side-to-side action and it takes you missing shots for you to hit the pizza target. because you never aim for them. It's just when you're aiming for other things, you'll accidentally hit the pizza targets. Got it, got it. Every time you hit a pizza target, you're going to eat a slice of pizza, and you're going to do that about five or six times a game. Every once in a while, it'll go up to seven. And then there's other ways you're going to get to seven pretty easily too, so I don't know. Like if you play Ninja Pizza Parlor, you know, multiball, if you play Ninja Pizza multiball, you're going to be eating a lot of pizza during that, and that'll get you past the seven, and then when you come out of that, you'll probably be in contests, in pizza eating contests. It looks like a great game, Dwight. I'm really excited to play it. And congratulations to you, to John, to Jerry, to Zombie Yeti, to all the talent involved. It's such a great game. I'm dying to get my hands on this thing because let's put it this way. I think you and I texted the day it came out. I said, I've got buddies who've sent me notes saying I've already put an order in to the local distributor. And that was even before the stream came out. So far, it's selling pretty well. Yeah. I want to talk about the coolest rule in pinball, though, before we go. Wait a minute. Should we let him? He's made fun of me. Do we let that dangle? You can edit it out, you know. What is the coolest rule in pinball? All right, so we were talking about co-op, and it's a co-op thing, and I sort of started to go there, but I didn't know where I wanted to do the coolest rule in pinball last. So here's the coolest rule in pinball, and it's difficult to explain, but it's easier to show you. We're used to that, Dwight. With you, go ahead. All right. So in co-op, when you make a skill shot, you light weapon for yourself. That's just normal, right? So the only way to light weapon is to make your skill shot. So you pick Leonardo, and then at the beginning of the ball, the Leonardo arrow is flashing. And if you make the Leonardo arrow, it'll say skill shot, 125,000, and now weapon is lit. And weapon is a return lane light. And there's one on each side, and you can lane change it if you want to. Okay, so then if the ball goes down the return lane, it starts that hurry up that we were talking about earlier. It's actually a double, like a pair of hurry ups, that cascade. Like whatever value you get from the first one carries over into the second one and is added to the starting value of the second one, and then it starts counting down from there. So if you nail both of them really quick, you're going to get 1.5 million points because you'll get half a million for the first one and then a million for the second one, right? Because the half a million was added to the, you know, they were added together, right? Does that make sense? Yep. I actually got that one. I'm following so far. Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right. So that has nothing to do with co-op. That's just regular turtles. So where co-op comes into play is, let's say you're playing a four-player game. Player one, not only will he light weapon for himself, he'll light weapon for all the other people playing on that ball. So if player one makes his skill shot and then player two makes his skill shot, he'll have four hurry-ups sitting there waiting for him on a return lane. He'll have his two plus player one's two. coolest rule in pinball. Wait, so it gets better? It does. So then player three could have six and player four could have eight. And they're all cascading, right? So all of the values keep adding. It could blow up really big. So what's really great about that is not only... So in co-op, every player has to be a different turtle. So not only are at the beginning of the game, before you start pushing start, at the beginning of the game, the four of you are standing around going, all right, I'm going to be Donatello. You're going to be Leo and so on. No, no, I want to be Leo, right? You're going to have those kind of type of arguments. Then you're going to have discussions about who's going to go first, second, third, and fourth. And then you're going to have arguments about, well, you blew your skill shot, so now I'm only going to get three or whatever, right? I just think it's going to be really fun. Yeah, I did say that.
    47:26
    Effectively, you're building the playground, and now you're letting people. You don't really know at this stage how people are going to react and utilize it. Right. But the playground's there. Let people in and see what they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. One of the things I'm really hoping that people do someday is have four-player, 4v4 tournaments. Like I want the three of us and we add in somebody, maybe add in Ryan C. or somebody, and we play a four-person tournament and then we put up our scores or we have our bragging rights someplace somehow. Yeah, that's a very cool feature. I like that a lot too, and I think you're right. That will be a thing of the future, and I'm glad that's in there. I'm glad a lot of it's in there too. Dwight, before we let you go, thank you very much. You and I recently visited Australia, Martin's fine country and continent. What did you think of it? I know I loved it. I had a blast. I had an absolute blast. And I didn't even get to see much. I was there for 10 days. And I saw a little bit of Sydney. I saw a little bit of Brisbane. And I saw a little bit of Melbourne. But I could easily go back for a month. And it was great.
    48:34
    I'm obviously a bit biased. I love it here. but I also love coming over to the States as well. Right, right. So, you know, we all just like to do something a little bit different. But, yeah, hopefully next time, if you do get to come out to Australia, more time in between seminars and shows that you're doing. Yep. I was lucky enough, though. I did get to see – I got to spend one night in Melbourne with Martin, and for a few minutes, Ryan C. I wish I could have seen or talked to Ryan C. some more. Not that big a deal. Don't worry about it. He seemed like a nice guy for the 10 seconds I talked to him. overrated actually yeah overrated and then and you know but then i got to hang out with damien damien's great and i got to hang out with um simon i don't know if you guys know simon i mean i know but but simon simon's pretty awesome and and he's so god simon simon's me on steroids right you know he's so passionate and and you know and excited and excitable and i i think you know i think we're made we're cut from the same cloth simon and i agreed you have a lot of fans dwight we're all excited about this game. I know it's going to do very well. Thanks very much for coming on Final Round. Thanks. I had a blast. We'll have to get you on for our next little trivia battle. I know you're a big fan of it. I know. Yeah. It's your least favorite show. You know what? It was for us. It wasn't for you. It was for us to let our hair down and go, what the hell's going on in this world? This week especially. And you know what? It was a nice, relaxing, fun time for us. It wasn't really pinball, but it was fun. I like the trivia part of it. I like, you know, I like the actual pinball parts of it they were great I love Final Round, I think you guys make a great show and you've set the bar really really high and that's that was mostly what I was thinking about Marty, end on that before we fuck it up I was getting into by saying that trivia episode was the equivalent of our apron button mash, it was there just for fun it was just for fun Yeah, yeah. Is that all right? You got a problem with our action button there, Dwight? You got a problem with that? I have no problem with your action button.
    50:40
    Hey, man, take care. Thanks very much. Thank you. Later, guys. That was nice of Dwight to come on final round. Appreciate that, and especially knowing how busy he has been over the last few days, few months. Yeah, absolutely. It's always a joy to speak to Dwight, really for a number of reasons. But the one reason that I really like speaking to Dwight, and I did when he was in Melbourne, we sat down for a chat and I hate to say it, but we literally sat down for, I think, half an hour and we talked about monsters and code. And what I really like about Dwight is he's really passionate about what he does, but he's also really humble. If you say to him, I don't like this, he says, okay, tell me more about why you don't like it and tell me what we can do to improve it. I like that. He wants a quality product. Some people can't take constructive criticism, and it's too bad because it's a great skill set to have. If you can withstand that, not take it personal, and become better for it. And Dwight has certainly taken his share of criticisms in the past. You and I both feel the same way. We absolutely, really, not like, love the man. He's a wonderful person. I enjoy talking to him every chance I get. And I want to see him succeed. And just looking at what I've seen with this game, the first time I saw it, I was like, wow, this is going to be fun. I am really excited to flip this because there's just so much there. Yeah. And look, we spoke to him about it. And, you know, he was very appreciative of the comment in that it is a complicated rule set, but he spent a lot of time presenting it to us so it's digestible. I think that's probably a really big step for the coding here to make something that is so broad easily understood. Especially over the next few weeks, you're going to probably hear Dwight and John and some of the other people, hopefully Jeremy and Jerry and everybody that was involved in this kind of talk more about it on other podcasts we just gave you a little sample of you know kind of digesting it from an audio sense of really what Dwight has put together and again really really looking forward to playing this yeah which brings us to how we can afford it well thank god we have a sponsor of the week don't we we we do indeed a a very special sponsor this week this episode's sponsor of the week is the Oxford Dictionary. What a better way to educate yourself. Learn important words and meanings to help you understand your fellow man and woman. Learn words like, well, let's see. Here, I'll just pick one at random.
    53:19
    Peace. A period of time in which there is no war or violence in a country or an area. What a great word. Here's another one. Equality. Ensuring individuals or groups are not treated less favorably on the basis of their characteristics like race gender sexual orientation religion disability age or belief Hmm peace and equality I like the sounds of those words Thanks Oxford Dictionary With that in mind, Jeff, let's see if there's going to be peace with our next interview. Oh my goodness, Marty, we have competition news. i know you say that like it's funny because we haven't had a lot of competitions to talk about but there has been something that's been out there in the media that's worthy of talking about ifpa now has a new metric of telling you how good or how weak you may be when it comes to competitions it's called the icr and here to join us right now one josh sharp second time now on the Sure. Hey, Josh. May I speak now? I don't want to talk over anyone.
    54:25
    Now is okay? Go ahead, Josh. Yes. How are you? I'm doing wonderful. I'm sure you are. Obviously, you know, Jeff mentioned we've got the ICR that's coming up. Can I start by asking you just the impacts of IFPA in this time? You've obviously just put an announcement out that Whopper points are still going to be delayed. You're not encouraging people to play. How does this impact you and the IFPA? I mean, I have a lot less hobby work to do every evening. So Adam Becker and I can share a daily laugh at that. I think, you know, as someone who is very passionate about, you know, pushing the sport forward and making it, helping it grow and whatnot, it sucks to not be able to sort of push my efforts to that campaign. You know what I mean? It is nice to have a break because the work every day is a lot of work, but I miss using sort of my powers for good in that direction.
    55:34
    But you're also getting, I would imagine, I've seen some of it on social media platforms, but I imagine you're getting it direct as well, that there are people pressuring you to start it back up. Is that correct? What are you talking about, Marty?
    55:51
    I don't know. just putting it out there. Not only Josh, but I'd imagine the country directors and state directors are also getting that kind of pressure. And luckily, Josh has said in the past on this program here on Final Round, you said that you're letting those people give you the feedback and they have their vote, they have their say. And it still hasn't changed much. It has changed a little bit. Here we are now in June. But what's the latest? The latest and it's interesting in our Slack channel today, we sort of talked about what is the organization supposed to be doing here as places reopen and whatnot. And, you know, I feel very strongly that it's not our place to give our opinion on whether we feel something is safe enough to play or not. I feel like it's the organization's job to connect, you know, through our local representation, whether it's legal and advise for people to be able to gather and play per those local recommendations. And, you know, the shutdown really came because we were, instead of, instead of shutting everything down, our initial response was, hey, everyone, listen to your local recommendations and do the right thing. Don't play if the local recommendations are telling you not to. And that was clearly not happening. So, you know, we had to step in when we felt like people weren't, you know, people were being encouraged to not follow like real life rules, not pinball rules, but like real life gathering rules. So I see us sort of backing off the same way and having that connection to, you know, the state reps and the country directors who are able to let us know, you know, the world is so huge that there's some areas that haven't been affected at all. There's some areas that are way further along than, you know, we are here in Chicago. And the fact that all I can do as the Illinois state rep is, is know that we can't get together in groups of larger than 10 any earlier than like August. So for me as the Illinois state rep, you know, the answer for do I think that the IFPA should be sanctioning tournaments in Illinois, I would say no, because most of our tournaments here are more than 10 people, you know, based on historical data of the tournaments that get submitted. So because you're the Illinois state rep, you do actually offer an opinion in a sense, just because of the facts that the governor's order says, this is how big you can be. And we have like a little comments box. So like, I would advise, like a perfect example is we got an email from David Peck this morning out of New Zealand that I think it's immediately, Marty you may know because you're closer over there but he said that groups of less than a hundred are now fine in New Zealand I think in Australia it's also being relaxed and I guess that's part of the dilemma that you have yes it's going to be relaxed in Australia and you know we all know Australia has done very well in squashing the curve dramatically so they're now sort of releasing it because I think they feel that Australians are being responsible with the situation. But the dilemma that you've now got is what if Australia is absolutely fine with groups of 100 and we can put these tournaments on but the rest of the world can't and then globally there's no whoppers but Australia's fine? Yeah, I think that's where we've sort of fallen on the majority rule, right? So if a majority of the world can compete within their regions, then we'll turn the green light back on, knowing that slightly less than half the world may be at that disadvantage of being further behind the curve than a majority of the world. So it's nice to know that Australia and New Zealand will definitely be ready to go when we're ready to go. There will be places that will not be. That's just how, you know, you don't go to 100% from zero. At some point we'll cross that threshold where we'll feel comfortable enough that most people can play. So what's the logical reasoning for it being majority rule? I know the answer to this. I'm asking you for it because what's wrong with saying, okay, Australia, you can start your whoppers now? The fact that the world ranking system is a global initiative for us, that it's the same way, you know, for every step of the way, when I feel confident in turning Illinois back on, it will be when I feel that a majority of Illinois can play. So that's the way that I've sort of pushed people to look at it, even from the smallest of communities, and just at what level that you're representing, you know, looking at it with that same sort of level, if that makes any sense. So the U.S. will be a yes when most of the states are yeses.
    60:58
    How many different parties are voting on this? I think I've seen the numbers. I don't know if that's public or not. So 46.
    61:07
    Okay, my next question. Of those 46, how many are in North America? Good question. There's a bunch that haven't voted. Out of like the 46 people that have said yes or no, probably 30, 25 to 30. I guess that's my point. I think when we're going to see this, the IFPA, first of all, is certainly international. It's the first word in IFPA, but it is primarily, and I'm sorry to say this to the rest of the world, it's based out of North America. And if the majority of the voters are in North America, that's probably going to tell you how this is going to be dictated. Is that fair to say? I don't know. I mean, I think that when the time comes, we'll have to discuss that when, let's just say, it's easiest to say, like, let's say 30 out of the 45 are states and provinces and 15 are country directors. We may decide, hey, when it comes to turning things back on globally, it's really going to be 16 votes, and Canada and the U.S. will each have one. that's a good to hear i'm sure the rest of the world and we are a global show here on final round i'm sure our friends in romania and russia and sweden are all happy to hear that herbert's ready to play man so then i just want to call out the desire that people have to play tournaments because it's really easy people to say hang on just stay at home and just don't worry about it but I kind of sympathize with a lot of people because pinball is everything to them, and tournament pinball is everything to them, and that's kind of been taken away. The reason I bring that up is that I see really two camps on social media. One is, I'm okay, I can wait. The other is, I desperately need to play pinball, and one side says, hey, just relax, it's only pinball.
    63:00
    Marty, I hate to cut you off, But you brought up a point that made – it was something that we included in our announcement that the women's board wrote up. And there is a difference between playing in tournaments and having the IFPA sanction tournaments. This sounds just like when DollarGate happened. I mean it's similar, right? It's far more life-threatening than the dollar thing. I get it, but I'm just saying people opposed to paying a dollar could still play pinball. Right. You're running into people that are yelling at us because they want to play. And really, it's not that they want to play. They just want their Whoppers. And to me, I find that to be a little disappointing that and maybe it's because I'm not a new player. And I said this hundreds of times, but, you know, I've been playing competitively since 1993. I played for 13 years without a Whopper point, and I had a blast doing it. That it's not a necessity to be able to get a group together and play if you really want to. But you understand the Whopper drug. It is a drug. And you're right. I've never played in a tournament. I didn't start playing in tournaments where there was no Whopper system. And it's really addictive. and it's like I'm blaming you. Josh Sharp, you have made people go cold turkey. How fucking dare you?
    64:29
    But that's honestly what it's kind of like. You've cut off that supply that makes people feel really good. Their endorphin rush is gone and some people really haven't been able to replace that with anything. That's fair. That's a fair point. I'm obviously not blaming you because I think you had to do what you had to do But I'm sort of just trying to sympathize with those people that are like, come on, give us my whoppers. I want it. But the other point I'd make to it is people don't know what the path to recovery is, meaning what happens. What's going to happen at the end of the year? I was having a conversation yesterday with someone saying, well, I'd imagine the new state and final championships in Australia aren't going to happen because there's not going to be points. It's like, well, I don't know. I can't speak. I'm not part of that committee, but I'm sure there is a path to getting it back on track. And I think that's probably what people want to know is how do we get back to normality? How long is it going to take and what's it going to look like? And I know it's hard for us to know right now. By the way, let me just jump in here for a second here. Marty, I really don't appreciate when we have guests on you badgering our guests, okay? They're doing us a favor. All right. I feel very uncomfortable for our guests when you do that. I apologize, Josh. That's another show. Anyway, that's exactly it.
    65:51
    Anyway, Josh, I think what Marty's trying to say in his very abrupt way is, have you found a vaccine yet? And why not? Where is it? What are you doing with those dollars, for fuck's sakes? It's funny. on our Slack channel today, I said that I would probably, I will probably mark Illinois as a yes, you know, for IFPA sanctioning before I'm comfortable enough to play or organize a tournament myself. I can't picture me playing in that kind of group setting. Colin was on last week and he had some good points. I think the next time we all play, probably going to be wearing definitely a face mask, maybe some gloves, certainly sanitizing before every single time I go to flip, and social distancing. That will probably continue. Once we all have a vaccine, different story. Yeah, for me, I mean, obviously my primary focus is, you know, playing in majors, which typically are attached to shows that would be a heavy attendance count that I just, I mean, I was talking with a man about it, I just don't see how that stuff will be back without a vaccine when you're getting into like the thousands of people in the same spot. It looked like the Ozarks had a pinball tournament last weekend. They sure did. So did Toronto. I don't know what you're seeing there, Marty, but in North America, over the last couple of weeks, there have been just mass gatherings. It was Memorial Weekend in the States. It was a holiday in Canada too. And people just went apeshit and just said, you know what i'm fine here we go and guess what funny how the covid number of cases spiked do you know what i i would say overall australia has handled this whole social distancing thing very well and like other countries i'm not going to say that we're we're more so than anybody else but we're a very social culture we love a beer at the pub we love a cafe we we love all that kind the stuff whereas australians have just gone yeah okay it's annoying but we'll stay at home there have been pockets of it and you know this weekend that's just gone there were people flocking to a lot of tourist destinations probably more than they should but for the most part we've been okay the and again we've said it before we per capita don't have a lot of people dying That's great. Great news. I know here in Canada, we have not the number of tests that we'd like to have. I know the states have been testing more than anyone else. It's certainly a very large country. Because of the size of the country, they've surpassed the 100,000 in unfortunate deaths from this. But again, all this goes back to a vaccine. And as it relates to pinball tournaments and gatherings, it's kind of what we need to see. But you have a solution, thank goodness. Josh to the rescue. He doesn't sit at home and do nothing. He thinks, how can we connect some way, somehow, during this pandemic? And that's what the ICR is. Josh, can you please tell us what the ICR is and how we can compete once again? Sure. Unless you'd like to, Jeff. No, I brought you on because I have no freaking idea. You know whenever you launch something, I'm like, I can read out the announcement and make it sound like it's on the top of my head. I'll jump in. So a few years back before the dollar gate as sort of an insurance policy to the dollar gate, you know, destroying everything that we had built the decade plus building, We launched a campaign with Andreas over at Matchplay to offer an alternative competitive outlet that would have been able to not worry about paying a dollar per player for competitive action, if you will. And that was through a week called IFPA Challenge Matches. And Mr. Teolis and myself, I believe, did the first one. Is that right, Jeff? The very first one? I think we even streamed it live or did something like that on Pinball Profile. On your Facebook, I think. You did a Facebook live or something. Yep, and we played five matches, if I recall. I forget who won. We did. You know what? We'll look it up later, and you can edit that out, you piece of shit.
    70:27
    You were top two. I think not failure of the challenge match system, but the lack of interest, I think, came from the fact that the dollar gate thing never really happened. It didn't slow anything down. So most people didn't need any sort of different outlet to satisfy that competitive pinball need and urge. So I figure, you know, as we're sitting here not being able to do anything with respect to sanctioning events, trying to put the IFPA hat on and see what we can do to try within, as people start to reopen and sort of like we talked about earlier, the questions from people that are like, hey, my league can meet again. You know, it's 11 people and we're, in our area, it's groups of 25 or less, so we're fine. And I can't tell anything to that league organizer with respect to being able to sanction that activity, but it's clear that people can begin competing against each other live. And outside of sort of the live process, watching, I don't know if you guys watched any of it, but seeing Carl and Escher do their little Twitch heads up between each other on the same title machine, but different physical games, to me was sort of that light bulb moment of like, they're having a lot of fun and they're really competing against each other. They're watching each other play live as they're doing it. I mean, it was legit. and figured I can't think of a better time to try something like this than right now. So the ICR is really a new ranking system with challenge whoppers, if you will, based on these head-to-head matches that you can play either in person or over the Internet, over Zoom, Twitch, Discord, Skype, however you want to connect with someone else. Submit that match through Match Play. Select that it's an official IFPA Challenge match, and for every win you get, depending on your level of opponent, you will earn Challenge Whoppers. And to top it all off, we are going to sponsor the first annual, the inaugural IFPA Challenge Rankings Championship. That will be similar to all of our other championships. It'll be based off of what those rankings look like at year end. And because I love the idea of a dollar a player, we're going to fund that prize pool out of our own pocket, $1 per player that gets ranked in the system. Up to $1,000. Small asterisk, up to $1,000. So the question I have is about validity. How do you validate these matches? Or is it an honor system? I mean, the same way we take results from someone who submits results for Whopper Points and we take them at face value, right? I mean, people have been known to submit fabricated results over the past 14 years. And when that happens, we deal with it accordingly. I think the important part of the way that Andreas has set up his challenge match system is that someone will challenge someone else and it has to be an accepted challenge by the other person. So unless, you know, someone wants to create a hundred new fake match play accounts and then challenge yourself, I mean, you can get as creative as you want and we'll tackle it later. But also one thing I noticed as well is that when you sort of got the finals that happen as well, it's almost in a similar format that as long as you can get connected, but I think you were saying like with the finals, if it can be streamed so it can be monitored live, then there's your finals. You mean it's not live at one place? The finals won't be live? The finals is not live. But you have to have the same games. You do not have to have the same games. Now I'm confused. so players all right before you even get to the finals like you can if if me and you want to play jeff i've already beat you why would i want to do that again right and you're you're at home and i'm at home like we could create a pin golf course based on the games we have and agree upon you know if setting par scores that we feel are of equivalent difficulty and off you go and i'm willing to agree like hey Jeff your par score sound good you know I think you feel my target scores are equivalent on these titles like let's play these nine holes against each other and whoever has the lower pin golf score wins like we're leaving it open-ended for players to get creative on how to challenge each other I feel like a lot of the challenges are going to be like speed run type stuff that you saw from Escher and Carl because I feel like game setup is less of a factor when you're racing to get to something versus standard three-ball play or whatever. That's a great idea. I'll tell you why I like that, because if the games are different, Marty, we don't have any of the same games, but you know what we can say to each other? Okay, the first person to hit the left ramp five times wins. And you could do it on Jurassic Park. I could do it on, I don't know. Attack from Mars. Anything, yeah. It doesn't matter. As long as the two players agree, off you go. So the finals can be that same way. Like the two players can agree to their challenge. And if they don't, we're going full American Idol, America's Got Talent style, where we are going to have celebrity pinball judges that will be watching both players play. And they will pick a winner based off of the play that they watched. and the match will be a three-game pop-a-ticket on three games chosen by both players. Three-game pop-a-ticket? A three-game pop-a-ticket. Or an indis ticket. Do you get that, Marty? Do you understand that? Yeah, you're selecting three games, kind of like the pop-a-format, you've got to do well on all three games and then submit your three-game ticket. But how do you compare if they're different games? I'm confused. You compare if you thought that was a good gift. If I go play Attack from Mars and I get 300 million, that sucks. If I play, it's sort of one of those things where, like, internally the judges will rate, like, that Attack from Mars from 0 to 100, how good they thought it was. And through the course of a three-game run, I'm hoping it will be clear enough that Player A had a better run than Player B. and I think having, you know, high-level players who have already reached out and said they're very excited about being a judge for this sort of thing, I think having people that have sort of walked that walk of having successful pop-up tickets, I think with confidence can judge, you know, the difference between those two qualifying tickets. And if players don't want to, you know, I mean, ultimately, guys, this is for fun, right? We're giving away some money, and we're going to do a little bracket thing that we can do as best we can with what we have available. And hopefully those players will, sort of like what we just said, maybe they can just stick to creating a pin golf course that they feel is fair based on each other's collections. This is a last-ditch effort before we forfeit both players and move on to another match. Do you have to check the tilt bobs beforehand? Like put the camera in there, bring out the level, let's see what angle the machine is? I think depending on the level of opponents, you know, maybe someone does want to see a little camera shot of like, hey, man, before I start speed racing you on your attack, show me what I'm working with here, man. Let me see your outline post really quick. If you are at home and you do not have a pinball machine, but you and your friend have the pinball arcade, will that count if you're both playing the same machines? so not yet not to start it's physical games only i mean i guess if both players agree to submit whatever they want on match play as long as it's sort of it's sort of the the easiest cheat you guys can play rock paper scissors if you want we're not going to know right we're going to take every result that andrea sends us at face value so we would not encourage virtual pinball at this time but if we see that that the rankings need a boost from people that just don't have either the means to have games at home or there's just not as much reopening as as we would like to see i mean this has less to do with homeowners and more to do with with people that can now safely play at a bar on location that's open and is is looking for any kind of business that they can and having 30 league members come in and play at that bar. It's just not going to happen anymore, but someone can go in by themselves if they want. So I see the potential for virtual challenges being included, but not yet. So you said not now, as in maybe down the road? I mean, I think of what we're seeing in esports and video games. I'm just saying at some point, you know, this is our new pinball ranking system and it has to do with playing real pinball if you will So in a similar vein to the level of what we consider pinball when it comes to sanctioning events i would at least start as that as the baseline there no tgp or anything with respect to what a challenge is worth every challenge is worth a win or a loss but uh i would stick to real game playing for now but i i you know with that said marty if you want to slide one past the goalie, we're not going to be watching, man. You can challenge people on Pinball Arcade all you want if you really want to. And like playing for whoppers and playing for fun, you don't have to make it an official ICR match to be able to do that, right? You can do that on your own. Well, I think this will certainly generate more traffic than the original concept that was done on Matchplay. Do you have to be a subscriber to Matchplay to do this? You have to have an account, a player account. Okay. You don't need a deluxe organizer account to be able to run events. You just need a player account that's linked to your email address. And forgive me, when we did our challenge match, we didn't go through the process of setting it up ahead of time, but I believe that if you wanted to challenge me at FreePlay Florida like you did, through MatchPlay, you can go to create a challenge, look me up click that you want to challenge me and i will get an email about it first ever winner some good times some good times yeah so in the ifpa you only take your top 20 scores to make up your ranking what's it going to be like for icr so there's a difference between Whopper, what are we on? 5 point something? And ICR version 1.0. I think if you get into the formula aspect a little bit, you'll notice that ICR version 1.0 is extremely similar to Whopper version 1.0. So when Whopper started in 2006, all those many moons ago, we had a flat scoring system for every event no matter what it was whether it was papa or whether it was joe's bar the winner got 25 points if you finished in second place you got 15 points if you finished in third place you got 10 points if you finished in fourth place you got five points and if you played in the event at all you got a participation point you got one and there was no rolling period. There were no caps. It was a lifetime point total. So that first 2006 ranking was like 20 years worth of tournament data that I could find over the internet. And that was just the standings. It was, you know, Keith Owen was in first because I had all the tournaments that he had played in since 1993 as part of that initial system. So the ICR is going to be the same thing. The different tiers in terms of the value of a win against whatever players you're competing against, the highest level tier is worth 25 points, then it's 15, then it's 10, then it's 5, then it's 1 for the five tiers. And there's no cap on how many wins you can get, and there's no sort of rolling period where there's going to be any decay to those victories yet. Is this going to be on the IFPA website? Is Brian looking after this? Who's looking after all the data? So Andreas will be housing the data over at MatchPlay, and Adam Lefkoff has graciously volunteered to scrape that data from MatchPlay and spit out a file to my liking in the format that I want incorporating the different values for wins and sort of the adjustments we make to get to someone's challenge whopper total.
    84:26
    And from there, he can send me that file every day, and I will be updating our website. There will be a spot on our website for those standings that I can update any time Adam kicks me over a new updated ranking. And so when does this all start? June 1st. This show airs June 3rd, so... It starts two days ago. Which is also six days from now.
    84:51
    Are you implying that we're not recording this in June as it's airing? Right. So you've had good feedback early on about this. I'm excited. It's new. And, you know, we deal a lot, Marty and I, and I guess you would too, whether it be at shows or wherever the case may be, there are a lot of collectors, probably more so than competitors, and then, of course, there are the people that like to play for Whoppers. Well, this might bring in more collectors, perhaps. You know, the collectors who we've heard say, I don't want to go to those competitions. I don't want to do long lineups. I don't want to fork out some money or whatever. It's not real. I want to just play pinball. You can just play pinball and be part of the ICR. Yeah, I think it's funny. We opened up a Discord channel for where players can connect. And I forget, I think Ed Robertson was on some podcast. I think it was the Super Awesome podcast, but he talked about how he doesn't play tournaments, right? Yeah, it was this podcast. Oh, whatever. So he doesn't play tournaments, right, because he doesn't want to waste the entire day standing in line not playing pinball. And talked about he's happy to play and sort of that icebreaker for the people that walk up to him in wonderment about, like, hey, let's just play a game. like the ICR is that version of, Hey, let's just play a game, but it actually counts for something. So it's more than just, it's slightly more than just a friendly game. It's whatever you want to make of it. And I think there's from the emails that I've gotten, it's a lot of that, like, Hey man, I'd never wait in a four hour pump and dump queue to play anything, but this is right up my alley. So like, I, I think you're right. You know, Jeff, like the, the opportunity to bring in a different kind of player to experience some sort of competitive thing i think that that's where something like this could uh hopefully get some stickiness to it strikes to me it sort of sounds like dollar games with a ranking system yeah yeah and i mean i know you know going back to to when you know i was a kid like going to pinball expo and staying up in the hall all night. We would play, I was too young for dollar games, but we'd play quarter games, you know, for hours and hours. And it's like, if you won, you got 75 cents from the other three guys and you moved on to the next game and you hoped you were up some quarters before the night was over. But like, I mean, that was sort of the, it's more fun to compete, you know, part of the Gottlieb artwork that you see on the back glass. It's really about that kind of competing, It was less back in the 70s, 60s. They weren't talking about organized, high-level tournament play. They were talking about getting together over a pint and playing the game together. I will be curious to see when this is done what the data is like as far as number of players that play in this ICR versus players that have never played in an IFPA ranked. Because I think what will happen is your sampling crack is basically what you're doing. You're getting people addicted to competing. Myth light. This is like New Jack City. You are running the Carter. Well, I think, and for us, you know, whether this is something that continues long-term or it's just a quarantine campaign, like, I think we have some data points that we can look at to whether it's a success or not. You know, I don't anticipate Keith Elwin being ranked in this thing, right? Like, I don't plan on playing myself. It's just sort of not my bag, but I'm hoping it's a lot of people's bags. You guys going to play? Well, for me, I would rather play this than normal tournaments because I've just sort of gone a bit cool on the big tournament. I love running them. I'm just not necessarily enjoying playing them. But I'd love to be able to do this to someone and just say, hey, let's have a challenge game. Sure, why not? It's just for shits and giggles. I think I certainly prefer the competitions. We are not anywhere near to having those right now. This might be interesting, and I'll put that out there. If anybody wants to challenge me, sure, send me an email. You can shoot us one at finalroundpinball at gmail.com. And Marty, if someone wants to challenge you, you can step it up. You can do it. Oh, absolutely. If someone reaches out and challenges, I will definitely challenge. That'd be fun. Now, just be warned, if we win, we will talk nonstop about it on this podcast. Correct. If we lose, it will never be mentioned. Never. You'll never know. I'm going to put it out there that I'm hopeful maybe you guys can find a way to indirectly compete against each other and then broadcast with different games how you were able to come to an agreement that worked. Yeah, okay. You know what? I was at his place one time. I played Jurassic Park maybe two or three times. Pull up the GC the third time I ever played the game. I mean, Marty, do we have to go through the motions? I mean... Well, it was a brand new machine with the default scores on it, so it was very easy to get GCs, is what I'm saying. Or I didn't have the tilt bob in there, is actually the story. So you were throwing that machine all over the place, whereas you probably shouldn't have. There might have been a little of that. Even if you didn't have a premium or an LE, I still made that T-Rex move. This sounds like a preview to the emails we'll be getting that this challenge match should not have counted. Because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, correct. All right, bring it on. Send us an email. Yeah, you know what? I'll do it for this reason. I like the concept. I like the initiative that it's something we can do while we're isolated. I hope it brings new people into competitions. And it's pinball. It's going to be my marketing hype, man.
    90:46
    I'm excited. Now I might do this. So if somebody reached out to you, Josh Sharp, and challenged you, would you accept the challenge? I don't know. I think it would be rude not to. You're probably right. But maybe this is the start of my kid's competitive pinball career.
    91:06
    I would let Charlotte and Colin beat the hell out of me. Although I say let. They probably will, especially on something like Monster Bash. Colin's great at that. You know what, Josh? I don't want you to be scarred. I think when you say you wouldn't do it or you're not going to do it, you're going to let others do it. I get that. I don't want you to be scarred by the first ever match in which you lost in Florida. It was for charity, if I recall, for Project Pinball. So I know you came in second that day, and it's there in the history books. Just put that aside. Turn a new page. It's 2020. Go for it. Thanks, Jeff.
    91:40
    Anything else, Josh, you want to plug that we forgot? Player of the Month for April was nobody. player of the month for me was nobody.
    91:51
    Now that we're in June here, I can safely say I don't have to wait for all the results to come in. It's nobody. Such a dick move, and that's why we need a new president for the IFPA, because you say nobody when I would have said everybody.
    92:07
    Everybody tied. Half glass full, Josh. Come on. Can you edit that in? No. No, I'll just highlight once again how fucking negative you are.
    92:20
    All right, Josh, I'm really happy about this, the ICR. It's available on MatchPay. Thanks for Andreas for doing this. Thanks for yourself and Adam Lefkoff and everybody else putting this together. Let's get more people competing. Let's have fun. And I bet you're going to – you know what? Let's also post, too, the different challenges. Where can we see those? Because I hadn't thought about pin golf like you mentioned. I suggested, okay, Marty, well, first person to five ramps or something like that, or first person to two multi-walls, whatever the games are, it doesn't matter. You agree? I want to see more of these challenges. Yeah, I would jump in. I think one of the channels within the Discord chat has to do with things like that. So coming up with unique ways, because it is a challenge, no pun intended, to try if I'm a dude with a fishtails in my apartment and it's like, hey, man, I really just, I'll play anybody and anything, man. I just want to play. That you could do something like, hey, does anybody have an Indiana Jones? Because both games have that same rule, like Monster Fish, where you could string ramps together and then shoot that hurry up to collect. Like I'll race someone, you know, fishtails versus Indy Jones. I don't care. Like, I just want to play someone, anyone out there. Or if you have an EM in your collection, somebody else has an EM in their collection, why not do a one-handed challenge? Who plays longer? You could do that. It could be on one ball or something like that. You could time it. There's plenty of scores on games that are comparable, you know, against one another anyway. Or if two people have got Thunderbirds machines, whoever can spell international rescue first or die. Just waiting to get there. To continue this challenge next week, we're running out of time. Last Thunderbirds challenge, first person to press start loses.
    94:14
    That's not nice, but fair. All right. All the best, Josh. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, boys. So we recorded Josh because the idiot told us. Sorry, did I say idiot? I meant moron. Told us that we recorded that kind of late May. today recording right now we do the interviews and segments i think dwight was recorded sunday night right now it's june 1st for me june 2nd for marty i already know that june 1st there have been a lot of people on that icr yeah i'm really getting into it why not it's competition absolutely and again we've said it we'll say it again reach out to us if you want to challenge us absolutely go for it i think it'll be fun you know i i probably won't initiate any and you probably won't either marty Maybe we will against each other and people can take bets who's the better player. We're going to have to obviously give you odds because of your weaker skills. But we'll figure that out later. No reaction. Are you going to mention Jurassic Park at my place again? Oh, my God.
    95:14
    I'm sure people have saved that. Oh, look at me. I won my own tournament when I came to Australia. Woo.
    95:21
    Was I sucking helium there? Did my voice go off? No, that is exactly how you sound. I just want to let you know. That's exactly how you sound. Marty, come on. All right. Peace. We talked about it, for God's sake. You've already forgotten.
    95:36
    All right. I have to give a couple of nice shout-outs. A good friend of this podcast, of the Pinball Network, of pinball in general, and really a great guy. I don't know if you've had a chance to meet him, but he's actually from my home league in the London, Ontario Pinball League. He has moved. I have moved, but we're still obviously in touch. Orbital Albert of the Pinball Nerds podcast. He has given us quite a few nice shout-outs lately. Love his show. It's kind of a blog. He used to do it every single day. He's at 360-some-odd shows right now, and he occasionally does a top three on the Pinball Network when he's not having router problems at home in the Maritimes in Canada. But some very nice words, and I wanted to thank Albert for those. Thank you. And, yes, he watches my stream. So there you go. Thank you. Also, Ian Harrower mentioned to me that he is enjoying part of this program. He loves and agrees with everything that you do, but disagrees with everything that I do, which brings us to another word from our sponsor of the week, the Oxford Dictionary, jealousy. I'm not going to read the definition, but basically means that Gamma Goat's years of looking at his head-to-head IFPA stats and seeing red on his player-versus-player top competitor has caused delusion and resentment. But kudos to you anyway, Marty. I've always loved Ian Harrow and now even more. He is an intelligent man. I think what Ian was referring to is our crap movie, Great Pinball Pool, which brings us to our next guest. What, a third guest? That's right. First we had Dwight, then Josh. Now, ladies and gentlemen, time to meet Stats Boy. Mild-mannered Marty Robbins by day, but in front of a spreadsheet. His superpowers excel as he transforms into Stats Boy.
    97:20
    You know who I love? I love stats. I love a good spreadsheet. I love graphs. Most people go to a computer to look at porn to get a boner. Marty goes to a spreadsheet. Yeah. You know what? Those bar charts, you know what I mean?
    97:35
    Yeah. Oh, exponential curve. Oh, God. Trendlines. We sound like Slam Tilt. Okay, slow down. but you do love the stats and we've got some stats for you based on our crap movie great pinball now people are wondering how do we vote in this contest we put up polls on our facebook page on final round pinball and basically great gifts were people picking the favorite gif were they picking which is the better movie which is the better pinball machine there are no rules no there are no rules and people were reaching out saying what am i actually voting for here the point is just vote for what makes you happy and it could be the gif it could be the machine it could be the movie uh it was somewhat controversial in parts people are saying that movie shouldn't be there because it was a great movie or the machine's crap yeah come on let's just have some fun so stats boy give us the status okay so there wasn't really i don't think there was necessarily any surprises round one was bram stoker's dracula or broom stoker's dracula versus stargate joe giovino with a correct pronunciation. Joe Cherovino has a last name that only I know how to say because a lot of people... Caraviarano? Yep. It's Joe. It's Cher, like you said, in Cherovino. Sure. Okay. So, Dracula was 85%, Stargate 15%. That was always going to be that case. And that's because, compare those two, Dracula's a great game, Stargate's just a bit of a... Shoot the Pyramid. Premier, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We then had Flash Gordon versus Starship Troopers and a convincing win. Flash Gordon, 68% to Starship Troopers, 32%. Next, Johnny Mnemonic versus Terminator 3. 74% to Johnny Mnemonic. That was always going to win. I still maintain that I believe that Terminator 3 possibly better than people give it credit, but it's not a great machine. And I think it's always going to be compared to Terminator 2, which is obviously a much superior machine. Yeah, I agree. And then you've got Lethal Weapon 3 versus The Shadow, and The Shadow was pretty much a walkover at 79%. It's funny, I wonder how Lethal Weapon 3 would have done against somebody like Stargate or Starship Troopers even. Yeah, yeah, it probably would have beaten those, but I don't know whether it would have gone far into round two, which was Dracula versus Flash Gordon, Dracula won 63%. That's, you know, somewhat convincing. And then Johnny Mnemonic lost to The Shadow at 61%, which puts Dracula and The Shadow into the finals. So I think there's like an hour left in the poll right now. But right now, as it stands for the finals, I know my vote lost. Yeah, I'm looking it up right now. I can't remember what I voted for. Dracula versus Shadow. No, I would have voted Dracula. and that's because I'm just, I don't mind the shadow, but I think there's something magical about Dracula. A lot of people say that it's a simple machine, but I think it's a very strategic game. Of course, you've got to do the thing, which is the mega stack. I like the missed multi-ball, but I have this feeling that the shadow is going to win. It's currently sitting at 53%. I mean, this is probably the closest, obviously, of all of them. So, yeah, it looks like the Shadow might win. You and I both picked Dracula. And for me, it's the harder game with the lightning flippers, some brutal drains at times, the great stacking, a pretty cool video mode. Oh, great, great video mode. I love the call-outs. Shadow has a good one, too. Oh, that's right, with the furbis coming down and you've got to avoid them. Yeah, it's kind of okay. I just like the overall presentation of Dracula. I mean, it is a foreboding machine with a lot of mood and intensity. That's what I like about it. I really, for the most part, resent upper playfields a lot of the time. I really resent lower playfields even more. Very few games do I enjoy lower playfields. But it's kind of neat on the Shadow. I like it. foreshadow what it is for me that here's it's missed multi-ball being absolutely mind-blowing on dracula and it's how easy con is to get over and over again on shadow that is the one thing it takes away from me depends on how dialed in that scoop is because you can get it lit really easily but a lot of the shadows that i've played very difficult to get it into that side lock shot to start. I can imagine it's difficult for some.
    102:27
    Hilarious. No, you're right, actually. You know, I've seen some that are just it's not even fair. You hold up the upper right flipper and it automatically goes in there. That's stupid. It's more so that you can absolutely nail that shot and it just rejects. There's a lot of rejections in that game, so that's the bit I don't like. But going back to that playfield, what I love about that upper playfield is you're up there, you're not up there for long, you're just back into the game. It's kind of the right amount of time to be up on a mini playfield. And boy, obviously Diverters are pretty popular. We're now seeing that on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yep, bringing that back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's good. So, congratulations Shadow. Does that mean it is the greatest crappy movie, best pinball machine ever? Not necessarily because that was our first battle. We are about to do a second battle. Another? I know, I know, I know. That's kind of what we do. Oh, people were wondering, where is Congo? Where was Demolition Man? Where were all these other movies? I have a feeling we're about to find out. We are about to find out in our second battle. The winner of that battle will go against the shadow. Of course, we need your votes. So please go to Final Round Pinball on Facebook, and we will do it again. We will have a bracket elimination, elimination and you get to decide which game is the terrible movie but great machine by the way i know i have invited quite a few of you friends and people i know that are listening to this program maybe you don't want to be on pages and social media but you do want to be on final round because we need your votes for this one so please like our page if you could please do so that's where you can find us on facebook we're also on instagram final round pinball please follow us there and of course email us too marty because maybe you want to challenge us for icr and we've also got another suggestion for emailing us at final round pinball at gmail.com why would people want to email us marty that's a great question with absolutely no notice except obviously we've spoken about it beforehand it's in the show notes uh someone wrote to us so smooth so smooth So, Michael wrote to us and asked us to give some more simplistic strategies to get high scores. So, rather than, here's your big long journey to get to the wizard mode, what's the one or two things that you can do to blow up a machine, or at least get a reasonable score without having to completely baffle us with a myriad of rules? Which games, though? Which ones can we pick? You know what, I don't... We had Colin give us a couple last week with Lord of the Rings and Deadpool. Yeah, I'm thinking let's go a recent game. I think this one because it actually has quite a comprehensive rule set. And I still myself don't even really know what the thing is to do because I haven't really seen this machine a lot in tournaments. And that is Jurassic Park by Stern. You know what? I would love to hear from people, because I know that game certainly sold a lot, so a lot of people have been playing it, especially now with COVID-19 isolation. Give us your best strats. That would help a lot of people listening to this program, even yours truly. Look at that. I'm humble once in a while, Marty. All right, I admit it. Well, you know, I've got a Jurassic Park, and I stream this all the time, but I'm usually going for mini-wizard modes and trying to get to the wizard mode, and that's all. I'm not even bothered about score at this stage, because I'm not playing it in a tournament. So I genuinely don't know what is the simple strat that you would use to get a good score. We're about to find out on the next episode, the double-digit episode, number 10. Yeah, so please write in to finalroundpinball at gmail.com and tell us your simple strat for Jurassic Park. Until then, more so than ever, please stay safe, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks. My name is Geoff Teolis. My name is Martin Robbins. It's always been our pleasure. Thank you very much.
    107:05
    gonna come oh yes it will