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Episode 84_Nationals or Monopoly

The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 1m·analyzed·Feb 27, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Monopoly pinball restoration project and gameplay strategy discussion on The Spinner Is Lit Podcast.

Summary

Spencer hosts The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcast with co-hosts Mark and Jon, plus guest Michelle Lutzinger. The episode focuses heavily on Monopoly pinball: Dan details his restoration of a damaged Project Monopoly game using a self-imposed $1,500 budget challenge (ultimately spending ~$375 in parts after failing to stay under budget), while Michelle discusses her renewed appreciation for Monopoly through team league play. The conversation covers tournament activity at local venues, league play dynamics, and Dan's plans to restore a Fishtails machine with a custom topper.

Key Claims

  • Dan purchased a Project Monopoly machine for $1,200, then spent approximately $375 in additional parts to restore it to working condition

    high confidence · Dan provided detailed breakdown of parts costs and final spending total during the episode

  • Michelle originally disliked Monopoly but grew to appreciate it through forced team league play with her partner Mike at Comet Kingdom

    high confidence · Michelle directly stated 'I used Tee'd Off hate it' and explained her learning curve

  • Monopoly's left ramp is an 'unobtainium part' due to design flaw where the ball launches and breaks the entry switch

    high confidence · Dan described the design flaw and explained how most operators replace rather than repair the ramp

  • The Monopoly at Comet Kingdom is running at higher turbo speed on the Waterworks flipper compared to Dan's machine which runs factory settings

    medium confidence · Dan and Michelle discussed Waterworks flipper speed variation, with Dan attributing it to ROM version/operator settings

  • Pinball Underground hosted its second tournament in early 2024; first was a women's tournament in December

    high confidence · Michelle corrected Mark's claim it was the first tournament, noting a women's tournament occurred in December

  • Comet Kingdom is running a themed 'pin golf' league with rotating weekly objectives (multiball, extra ball, bonus multipliers)

    high confidence · Mark described the pin golf league structure with specific examples of weekly themes

  • Dan's original Monopoly was purchased from an estate-connected acquisition where the seller received it as severance from a property owner

    high confidence · Dan recounted detailed story about worker who received machine from property owner's severance package

  • Pat Lawlor led the design team for Monopoly pinball, alongside Yowsey, Chris Granner, and an unnamed coder

    high confidence · Dan cited design team credits and referenced a design blog about the project

Notable Quotes

  • “the left ramp on Monopoly is an unobtainium part because they all break because there was a design flaw where the ball would launch off of the entry of the ramp, and it would smash into the switch, and eventually it would snap that off”

    Dan @ mid-episode — Identifies critical mechanical design vulnerability in classic Stern machine

  • “I used to hate it. I used to think it was so brutal, but my partner, Mike, liked it a lot... since Mike liked Monopoly so much, he always wanted to pick Monopoly, so I determined to get better at it. And then I started liking it”

    Michelle Lutzinger @ mid-episode — Describes transformation in player appreciation through forced repetition and team dynamics

  • “why Monopoly? Like, what's so special about Monopoly? And I just tell them, like, there's nothing special about Monopoly. I mean, it's a Lawler. And honestly, for its moment, it was an important game because it was Lawler's return to pinball after the whole Bally Williams thing.”

    Dan @ mid-episode — Contextualizes Monopoly's historical significance in pinball design lineage

  • “I ended up spending about $375 in parts in addition to the stuff that I kind of took out of my own collection because I had all kinds of used parts, extra parts, parts from other projects, even some Monopoly stuff that was included”

    Dan @ early-mid episode — Demonstrates restoration project economics and parts sourcing strategy

  • “I love taking those early Sterns, you know, like my Transformers and Monopoly out there because they're that perfect blend of you don't see them every day, but they're definitely hardy enough to take the pounding”

    Dan @ mid-episode — Reflects on gameplay durability and exhibition viability of classic machines

  • “there's actually a whole, like, you can go online and find it. It was like a design, like, blog that, like, Pat Lawlor and his team did about designing Monopoly and the life and times at Sam Stern, which is really interesting if you ever find it”

    Dan @ mid-episode — References documented design history resource for interested players

Entities

SpencerpersonMarkpersonJonpersonMichelle LutzingerpersonDanpersonPat LawlorpersonCodypersonMikeperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Multiple local venues (Comet Kingdom, Pinball Underground, Press Start, Playfield Sports, The Games) hosting structured league play and tournaments; community expanding with new tournament operators

    high · Mark described tournaments at Pinball Underground, pin golf league at Comet Kingdom, and upcoming league starts at Press Start and Playfield Sports

  • ?

    community_signal: Sacramento/Elk Grove/Lodi area demonstrated as significant pinball hub with multiple venues, leagues, and active tournament infrastructure; substantial competitive community presence

    high · Discussion of Comet Kingdom, Pinball Underground, Press Start, Playfield Sports, The Games, and Capital Corridor Pinball League all in same regional area

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Monopoly strategy discussion indicates players focusing on multiball cycles and Cash Grab/Tax modes as primary scoring methods rather than multiball jackpots; ramp-heavy play strategy dominant

    high · Michelle and speakers discussed avoiding multiball jackpots and instead 'whaling on the bank door because it's a big, wide target, and you're getting 200,000 points a hit'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Monopoly left ramp exhibits known design flaw causing ball launch impact damage; most operators replace rather than repair; service bulletin exists to mitigate via plastic rail addition

    high · Dan detailed design flaw where 'ball would launch off of the entry of the ramp, and it would smash into the switch' and noted 'most people, I would say, don't bother to fix it. They just replace it'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Pat Lawlor's Monopoly design represents significant return-to-pinball moment after industry disruption period; game features characteristic Lawlor complex ruleset and 'whirlwind-y feel' with accessible wizard mode difficulty

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.363

0:00
Welcome to the Spinner's Lip Pinball Podcast, I'm your host Spencer. Tonight's episode, episode 84, Nationals or Monopoly? With me, of course, are my co-hosts, Mark.
0:33
Hey, everyone. Dan. Hey, how we doing? And our very special guest host, I'm going to make sure I don't mess up your name, and it's Michelle... Lutzinger. Thank you. Michelle Lutzinger. Hey, Michelle, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That's good to have you here. So what have you been up to lately? um practicing pinball a lot work pinball dogs that's basically my whole life right now awesome okay all right how about you mark been playing a lot of pinball like michelle in fact everywhere i go she plays pretty much in the same tournaments um we got a lot of cool stuff going on we just participated in a really fun tournament over at the first tournament at reno pinball Underground that Jason hosted his place and Michael LaFrida ran the tournament. And it was a lot of fun. We had a seven, it was a seven round match play tournament. And then we had a two strike final. And yeah, it was really fun. Really great machines to play and a lot of interest with people coming in. We thought we were going to have a lot less people, but it turned out to be a really nice amount of people that attended. It was about 28 people that played in the tournament, which was great for a first tournament and a new location. So props to Jason and Michael for having that. And we're also having a unique, I guess you could call it a league or a selfie league, but it's pin golf, and it's over at Comet Kingdom. And I know a lot of times when I go over there, I see Michelle practicing or working on the course, and there's nine holes every week. But what Cody has done is he's made it so that each week is a specific focus or theme of an objective on all the machines. For example, the first one was trying to start a multiball. So we had all these different classic machines and newer ones that basically taught the rules about how you start a multiball and getting it in a certain amount of strokes. And what's cool is he set some of the machines with higher ball counts than others to make it kind of like a real golf course, having like a par five, knowing that's much harder. And some were nearly impossible to do. I know I got a lot of sixes on that first round. And then the next one was, if I'm not mistaken, it was having to earn an extra ball. So how could you earn an extra ball on the different machines? It was really nice because some of the rules I didn't even know on some of them. and it's continuing for five weeks. And right now I am working on the bonus multipliers, which I haven't done yet, but I kind of looked at it and practiced a little bit and then I'm going to play it with my son this week. So that's going on. Of course, we have the tournaments over at Press Start and League just started up over at Playfield Sports and Games. So lots of pinball, more coming in different locations as well as they get planned. So yeah, it's exciting. and I'm working on my skills as well.
Jason
person
Michael LaFridaperson
Shannonperson
Joe Abateperson
Brianperson
Yowseyperson
Chris Grannerperson
Comet Kingdomorganization
Pinball Undergroundorganization
Playfieldorganization
Capital Corridor Pinball Leagueorganization
Monopolygame
Fishtailsgame
Judge Dreddgame
Doctor Whogame
Whitewatergame

high · Dan discussed Lawlor's return significance and design blog documentation; described Land Grab wizard mode as accessible but not trivial

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Michelle's gameplay appreciation arc demonstrates player retention through team league dynamics and forced skill development; initial game dislike overcome through repetition and team obligation

    high · Michelle: 'I used to hate it... but my partner Mike liked it a lot... he always wanted to pick Monopoly, so I determined to get better at it. And then I started liking it'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Dan purchased Pin Pad DMD (color display upgrade) for Monopoly after completing restoration, indicating post-release machine enhancement trend

    high · Dan stated 'I immediately splurged on it and bought a pin Pad DMD because you Game of Thrones AC/DC have a color display'

  • ?

    product_concern: Fishtails machine purchased as buyback despite heavy route play ('whooped') demonstrates durability of well-designed machines; plays well despite cosmetic wear

    medium · Dan: 'It plays really nice. Like, I can't even tell you why this game plays so nice because it is so whooped'

    • 3:43
    And I do want to interrupt for Jeff for a second because I heard this again yesterday too that it was the first tournament at the Pinball on Grand. It's actually the second. We had a women's tournament in December there. That's right. Thank you for correcting me, Michelle. You're right. It was an open one, but, yeah, we did have one in December. Nice. Your guys' zine is ridiculous, by the way. It's so good. Zine. Oh, I know. We're so spoiled for the size of our city. No, be proud of it and protect it. Mm-hmm. Damn, you got something going on too lately, don't you? Yeah, so I've been running league here in Elk Grove and Lodi. We're doing the Capital Corridor Pinball League. And I don't remember if we talked about this on the last show. I know I posted about it on the Facebook page, But I picked up a couple games in the last month or so, actually a little bit further, but I hadn't really done much with them. I picked up a Fishtails, which was a player. It needed just, you know, a couple little tweaks to get going, and it's in the queue for a little bit more. But I also picked up a Project Monopoly, and I decided with this Project Monopoly, because of the price that I got in it at, that I was going to do a bit of a low buck challenge for myself. So does anyone else here play Monopoly? I love it. Sweet. Great game. I love you already.
    5:14
    Not the pinball, but the board game. How much money do you start with when you play Monopoly? $1,200. A little more.
    5:26
    $1,500? $1,500. bucks. And in fact, when you started the game, it gives you 1500 points just because that's how much money you start with. Although you can't spend it. It'd be cool if there was a plus minus, a plus minus aspect of that game, like in, you know, a whodunit or something where you could gamble or you could pay rent. But so I, I basically challenged myself. I'm like, this game is really rough. It's really dirty. It has a lot of stuff on it that's broken. But I'm going to see if I can get this game done just using my skills and the stuff that I have in stock for less than you start off with on the Monopoly board. So, and I'm going to go ahead and spoil it. I did not make it, but I was close, right?
    6:19
    You know, with any project like this, you know, the first thing that you do is you just want to get it to fire, right? When I got it, it would light up, but it wouldn't play. It was playing blind. So I had to go in and I had to figure out why the DMD wasn't working. It had a brand new, like a literally brand new DMD in it, so I knew it wasn't the DMD. It turned out that it was just some wiring, but just kind of tearing into the game, you know, my little post-mortem. It was missing the left flipper mech just entirely, missing the slingshot, I think, left or right slingshot coil. It had a bad relay board and a broken switch in the waterworks. The bank door was broken off. The chance scoop was broken, and it turned out that there was a coil that was fried, which had actually cooked the Q12 on the driver board. broken drop target, some other broken welds on the various scoops. And the biggest thing is the left ramp had two large brakes on it. And so looking at this machine, you know, and it had just, it was filthy. It had been left out. I think the back story is it had kind of belonged to this guy who was an op in like the foothills of California. Shannon and I had picked it up from a buddy of his who had bought it from him because the guy needed money. And so he had bought the game, and then the game had sat in his storage unit. And Shannon had bought it from the guy for $1,200. And this was right after I bought my last Monopoly, my really nice one, for $1,200. And Shannon didn't touch it for five years, and then he sold it to me. And so I'm like, I'm going to fix this thing. But, you know, I tore into it, and I started cleaning and just cleaning and scrubbing and troubleshooting and fixing and using stuff that I had in stock. and I documented a lot of this on the Facebook if you want to see pictures. But in the last, just the last basic week or so, finally got it together. The ramp repairs actually turned out pretty good. I mean, aesthetically, they're not gorgeous, but they're good.
    8:26
    And, you know, I ended up spending just in actual parts and I didn't count shipping or tax because I would have just completely went over, and that's just, you know, that's not fair to the project. I ended up spending about $375 in parts in addition to the stuff that I kind of took out of my own collection because I had all kinds of used parts, extra parts, parts from other projects, even some Monopoly stuff that was included. You know, he had included a set of rubbers. He had included a new set of romps, which I actually think I had given him from my old Monopoly, a new drop target, the DMD. So ultimately, I ended up spending about $375 in parts on the project and walking out with a fully working and cosmetically not terrible game once I cleaned all the scum off of it. And, yeah, I'm really, really happy with how the project turned out. It looks great. It's playing great. I'm going to definitely take it to the show this year so that people can pound on it, see if my ramp repairs will hold up. Hopefully it'll make it through league night.
    9:38
    But I'm just, you know, super, super excited that, you know, this game, whether it's, you know, the best game in the world or not, you know, I think Monopoly is a cool game, right? It's a neat game. I always love finding a game that, like, somebody had abandoned, but it had the capability of being saved and bringing it back. And even though it's not minty and even though it's not high-end by any means, it's a little special to me to take some of these project games. You know, my last one was a Whitewater, right? And, of course, you know, if you're comparing Whitewater and Monopoly, you know, they're not the same quote-unquote league of game. But, you know, the nature of the project is the same, just to take this collection of parts and this machine that had been neglected and somebody had left it in really, really bad shape, and to bring it back and make it nice and presentable and, you know, put it in your lineup and set it up so that you and your friends can enjoy it. So Project Low Buck Monopoly, I close to achieved the goal. If I hadn't, I did two big mistakes on it that I could have been under $1,500. I had to buy a set of labels because when we welded the bank door, the one that was on there got disintegrated.
    11:00
    And I probably could have scabbed something together with like a printer and some Mylar and whatnot. But it also needed apron decals, like the apron decals were peeling up. And I just said, ah, this is what kind of two birds with one stone is. So that was $45. bucks. And then the other thing that I had to do was when I was troubleshooting waterworks, there was a relay board. And that's what everybody pointed me towards when I, you know, went online and said, hey, here's my problem. So I went in there and I used my meager soldering skills and I quote unquote fixed the relay board. And then I metered it out, you know, and all the, everything seemed to be working, but it still didn't work. And I decided, you know, I can get the board for 50 bucks and getting the board for 50 bucks will at least let me remove this from the troubleshooting flow chart as the problem. And, you know, the truth is once I plugged it in and wired everything up, it worked. So I was like, well, obviously that board and my shoddy attempt at board work was the problem. So if I could have avoided spending about $90 on that, I would have completely won for $1,500.
    12:17
    Now, this is including the game as well. Yeah, including the machine. That's pretty amazing. That's really great that you did that. How did you repair the ramps? I'm curious how you did that. They were cracked, right? Did you use epoxy, or what did you use? So I used JB Weld Quick Weld, which is a two-part epoxy, and I used this thin plastic called Macrolon, which I've had this sheet of Macrolon ever since I bought my first pinball machine, my Judge Dredd, and we used it to fix a ramp in a very similar fashion.
    12:55
    Huh, interesting. That's been 20 years, and I was telling somebody about it, and they were like, oh, man, that's a good thing you held on to that. And I'm like, you know, the hoarder motto is just like, as soon as I throw something away, I'll need it, so I keep everything. Yeah. That's how it works. Oh, yeah, right. And I was just super, super excited because this, I was, you know, really like looking at this ramp and it probably, you know, froze me in my tracks for two or three weeks. Just like, do I even want to get into this dealing with this ramp or do I want to, you know, bite the bullet and pay whatever it's going to take to get a new ramp? and the left ramp on Monopoly is an unobtainium part because they all break because there was a design flaw where the ball would launch off of the entry of the ramp, and it would smash into the switch, and eventually it would snap that off, and most people, I would say, don't bother to fix it. They just replace it. Some people probably just move the switch, and then it would happen again. And so to avoid that and give my repairs a fighting chance, there was a service bulletin where you can add a piece of plastic to the top of that ramp to kind of hold the ball down. And that also has the effect of, like, when you hit a screamer up that ramp, it stays flat and it goes around that ramp fast. So you get a real satisfying shot through the bank and all the way around to the lock or the return since there's that little diverter. that's all that turned out and then they had a corner break too and i redid that so it has a little extra material on there to uh give that next i didn't want to try just to fix it like it was originally i wanted to add some material so that it would be a little extra durable well that's a little bit of the old durability now i get to uh test out the durability when I come out there and visit you. I'm excited to play it. Yeah, well, and for sure we're going to slap that thing out to the show. Cool. So I love taking those early sterns, you know, like my Transformers and Monopoly out there because they're that perfect blend of you don't see them every day, but they're definitely hardy enough to take the pounding. And hopefully, you know, they don't have some sort of unobtainium mechanism like Miss Multiball or like the turbocharger on the D500 or the time expander on Doctor Who that you're just like, oh, my God, I hope this part survives. Right.
    15:37
    Right, right, exactly. We have a monopoly over at Comic Kingdom. So the one at Comic Kingdom, that was mine. Oh, that's right. I swapped that to Cody for his Doctor Who, which is the Doctor Who that I have now. he reached out to me and he basically said hey I'm going to offer you a great trade it's on the up and up I hate Doctor Who and I love Monopoly and I said okay so me and Brian loaded it in the back of my Viper truck and steamed out Torino to drop it off and that was at his old location backing your truck around that building sucks oh the old location that was terrible it's so thin so narrow You know, we were trying to get as close to the back door as possible to unload this game, and I thought I was going to hit the fence or the building. It was so stressful. But I think that ended up being a deal that everybody was happy with. And that Monopoly, that thing I bought out of some guy's garage for $1,200, and that thing, as far as I know, is home use only. It has the manual and the goodie bag. We're all still stapled inside of it. It had the original ROMs. It showed $1.50 in plays, and there were six quarters in a coin box. Wow. That is crazy. So I think that it had been bought off of someone's estate. Actually, it hadn't been bought. This guy worked for, he worked at one of these estates up in Napa, and when the guy sold his property to, like, some country music singer, the guy's severance was he gave him the truck that he used for work, and he gave him the pinball machine. Wow. That's an interesting story. I wish I remembered who it actually was. But, yeah, the guy was telling me about it, and he's like, yeah, I've been meaning to take it up to my man cave for years, but I want to take it up the stairs. And the wife finally got mad at being in the garage, so, you know, he put it up on Facebook Marketplace. It was my first and only successful Facebook Marketplace buy. Wow. I've done a couple sales, but it was my first and only buy. And I was like, I'll be right there. I got a truck.
    17:39
    So, Michelle, what do you like about Monopoly, just out of curiosity since we're talking about Monopoly? I used to hate it. I used to think it was so brutal, but my partner, Mike, liked it a lot. And when we started doing team leagues, and Comic Kingdom is our home base, you know, that's where our team is based out of. In our team league, we always do doubles.
    18:01
    And since Mike liked Monopoly so much, he always wanted to pick Monopoly, so I got determined to get better at it. And then I started liking it because, you know, And once you've figured out how to do it and what to do and how to not bang the stuff that's right up front to kill you, then it's one of those games. I like it because it's one of those games that either you can blow it up or you get, you know, 500 points, and that's it. Yes.
    18:32
    You know, a lot of people, when I'm talking about it, too, they ask me, why Monopoly? Like, what's so special about Monopoly? And I just tell them, like, there's nothing special about Monopoly. I mean, it's a lawler. And honestly, for its moment, it was an important game because it was Lawler's return to pinball after the whole Valley Williams thing.
    18:54
    And there's actually a whole, like, you can go online and find it. It was like a design, like, blog that, like, Pat Lawler and his team did about designing Monopoly and the life and times at Stern, which is pretty interesting if you ever find it. But, you know, it's a great game. Like, it's got all those Lawlerisms, right? It's got that kind of Addams Family, whirlwind-y kind of feel.
    19:18
    But, yeah, I think it's super fun. It's a really, really nice use of the theme. And, honestly, it's got, you know, if you look at the design team, it's Lawler, it's Yowsey, it's Chris Granner.
    19:30
    I think it's Lewis, is it Kazarian? Kazarek? Something like that did the code. So it wasn't his old school coder. But, yeah, it's a real all-stars of pinball at that moment. Have you ever made it to get all the properties?
    19:49
    Yeah. The final mode is land grab. Land grab. Yes. I got that one time. There's pass grab, which you get pretty early on, and then land grab is the quote-unquote wizard mode. That's the wizard mode. Because I got it, and then I didn't even realize, because I really didn't know how to play it. I was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, out of all places. My brother knows a friend who owns a place called Pinpoint, which is a really awesome pinball bar right in downtown Fayetteville, real close to where he works. And I had a chance to play that, and I think it was my first game. And all of a sudden, I got to this wizard mode, not knowing how I got to it, realizing I looked down at the board, and they were all lit up, getting all the properties. And I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. I didn't even know there was a wizard mode in this one. So, yeah, that felt really good. And it was really satisfying as far as trying to get through it. There were a lot of shots I had to make. But then, like most games, when you get to the wizard mode, it's like, well, did I beat it? Or is this the victory lap type thing, you know, where you have it on other games?
    20:54
    It's early enough that, like, in a good game, you're probably going to see a couple run-throughs. It's not like getting to Valinor or something where you've been standing there for an hour. Or, you know, if you play that game for, you know, 20, 30 minutes and you're proficient, you'll probably see land grab twice. Okay. And I think it's easier than touring the mansion. I think it's probably a little bit easier than touring the mansion. It's definitely easier than lost in the zone. Okay. But it's a little bit harder than, you know, I don't know, like Redline Mania or something where you're going to see the wizard mode a lot. You know, like Monster Bash, right? If you're ever going to give a Monster Bash, you're going to see monsters of rock two or three times. Right, right. Okay. That's kind of that 90s design mentality, which I like. I like knowing that I could see the end of the game rather than it being like, okay, I need to sit down here and bend my will towards I'm going to see the end of this game or die trying. Yeah. Michelle, is your strategy to go railroad so you get around the board to go? You know what? I actually, when you were talking about this winged mode, I realized I actually just try to hit the ramps enough to get the lock lit, get multiball. And I just try to do all the multiballs. I do the regular multiball, the train multiball, and then just try to, if the side ramp is lit for something, try to go for that. Okay. Yeah, I'm not, I don't even pay attention to the board, really. I'm just like, okay, it's giving me this. I'll do that. Yeah, because you have to go all the way around to go to get a lock, right? Once you open up the bank or the door or whatever, right? Is that correct, Dan? Okay. I'm making sure I don't get the wrong one. You hit the right ramp, and that lights roll. Then you hit roll. And depending on the version of the ROM, pretty much any working version, it's going to be a random number. I don't know if that changes in competition mode, but it's going to get you around the board the fastest.
    22:54
    And once you do that, once you go around the board, it'll light you for a full multi-ball cycle. so you can lock two balls and then start the multiball. After that, you need to do a round of the board every time to light another lock. Okay. Yeah, because I was thinking if you go railroad, you can get around the board faster, but it's more riskier. Is that a good method, or is that not true? I'm not sure if that counts, but I know that once you hit railroad, was it four or five times you do railroad multiball? Right, right. Okay, so that's not the multiball. See, I don't find the multiballs on that machine to be incredibly lucrative because the jackpot shot is super hard to hit, and it's only a million points. It's so hard to hit. Cash grab is the way to go when you get that. Right. Cash grab or the tax one, just anything where you're whaling on the bank door because it's a big, wide target, and you're getting 200,000 points a hit, and you can do it five or ten times over the course of the mode. That's, I think, where the money's at. Yeah, yeah. Cool. That's great. I'm really happy that you got that all restored. And that was definitely what you described before you went through all the details. That definitely was a project pinball choice that you made, for sure. Yeah, I know. It was the perfect project, and I finished with it, and now I'm going to be not finished with it because there's still a couple little things I'd like to accomplish on it. But I will be starting on a little light shop job of my fishtails, and for that one, I'm going to build the topper because it doesn't have a topper. So I'll probably document that on the Facebook as well. Plus, I'll put the postmortem of all the details of the project up on the Facebook for anyone who's interested in hearing how you fix a Monopoly cheap. And once I fixed it cheap, I immediately splurged on it and bought a pen to DMD because you got to have a color display. Absolutely. So, yeah, that's it for me. That's it for me on Monopoly. So hopefully, and again, I'm glad to hear that Michelle's a Monopoly fan and that she's enjoying my original Monopoly because that's a good machine. That's one of the nicest, probably the nicest I've ever seen and played, that former machine you owned. So good. Now, did you make the Waterworks flipper go at turbo speed, or was that something Cody did? No, that's just in the ROM. That's in the ROM. Okay, because that thing is. I avoid it. All it is is a motor. Yeah, yeah. And then on the motor, there's a pulley, right, or there's like a gearbox, and then that actually, the way it works is so weird. You put a flipper rubber, like not a flipper rubber, but like a one-inch rubber ring around it, and then it rolls against this big wheel, and that's what the flipper's inside of. Oh, okay. So once I saw how that actually worked, I was like, This is the most hilarious setup. You know, you figure it would have a belt.
    26:04
    But depending on the version of the ROM, and I think that most folks are running like 3.02. Okay. Or maybe 3.03 because I think 3.02 might have had a problem. It runs kind of medium speed, and it pretty much just kind of goes counterclockwise all the time. Okay. But I see some machines you watch online and maybe some people set up, yeah, it seems like that thing is just flying. Yeah, the one at Comic Kingdom is flying. Don't you agree, Michelle? I try to avoid that mostly because I've gotten the ball stuck there a bunch. Yep, or it kicks it right into the middle. Yeah, right down. It just suddenly just whoop. Yep. But I think that, you know, if he's still running what I gave him, and I'm sure he probably is, it should be the same version that I ran. So, you know, maybe he changed the setting, you know, or maybe I'm sure he probably did whatever he could do to make that machine competition ready where mine is still right out of the box, new settings. So, you know. The only thing about Comic Kingdom or really any of the arcades that you guys have there is they don't have to use the settings that it's like, we need to make sure that this thing is going to work because nobody's watching it. You know, if there's a ball gets stuck or something happens because he is running like a higher speed feature, someone will come over and clear the ball jam. That's true.
    27:38
    Well, I don't know, man. It's really exciting to see that come together. I remember when you first got it, you were really excited about it. I'm going to get this thing fixed and working again. I mean, we knew you would, but, you know, all the work you did with, you know, repairing the ramps and things, really cool. Well, I'm glad to hear that you had that confidence in me because there were many times where I looked at that thing and I was like, why did I give Shannon money for this?
    28:03
    What was I thinking? Dan, you're an idiot. You turned down a deal. So on your fishtails topper that you're creating, though, are you going to use the talking fish, the bigmouth bass? I've seen that modification on some toppers, and I was like, why don't all of them have that? Oh, what a good question. You know what I'm talking about from like the 90s, the commercial? Yeah, I do know.
    28:27
    Let me regale you with the tales of how stupid I am. So I buy this fishtails, and it was a buyback. I had sold this to a buddy. It was his first pin, and, you know, he's got Harry Potter and Godzilla and all those now, but he started with my old fishtails. And he reached out to me and he said, hey, do you want to buy your fishtails back? And I said, if you want to sell it to me for what I sold it to you, sure. And he goes, yeah, that's the idea. So I said, fantastic. So I buy this fishtails back. It's pretty cheap for a fishtails. It had never had a topper. It was an off-route game. I bought it from Joe Abate at Playfield. So you know it had seen some stuff. But it plays really nice. Like, I can't even tell you why this game plays so nice because it is so whooped.
    29:12
    But it didn't have a topper. And I read online how to build a topper. And one of the things that you read is it's like, yeah, use a Big Mouth Billy Bass. So I went on to eBay and I bought a Big Mouth Billy Bass for like 20 bucks. But then when I was shopping online for the real parts, I quickly found out that it's like the dome itself is $150. I was like well if I'm going to do this I'll go the whole way so I actually ordered a fishtails fish so I have the real fish but I do also have a bigmouth billy bass and since the topper itself is mostly just a piece of wood I have some options as to what I'm going to do but I'll probably make a traditional factory topper first and then if I enjoy that project maybe I'll see if I can use that big mouth Billy Bass and do like maybe a secondary topper or maybe an enhanced version of the topper There a lot of people who build their own fishtails toppers and they do all kinds of cool stuff now with LEDs and whatnot But at least my initial take is going to be very traditional with the solenoids and the flashers and it's going to look as factory as I can make it before I try to do something fancy. So the answer is probably both, but I'm going to start with a real fish. Not a real, real fish, a real fishtail fish. A real fish would be sneaky, just way too stinky. Have people been able to do, like, coughs and have it, like, mouth, like the big mouth? That would be really cool if it was. Yeah, that's something, too. Right? Like, hey, you picked it, or whatever. How big was it? Yeah, how big was it? And then it looks at you and then it goes back. That would be sweet. Yeah. And for the longest time, I swore that the fishtail's fish talked. Uh-huh. But it doesn't. The soprano's fish talks. Yeah, that's true. But I was sure. All the fish tells fish does is flap its tail. Yep.
    31:10
    But, yeah, early on in my pinball life, you know, when I was thinking about fish tails, I was always like, well, the fish on the topper talks, right? No, Dan. The fish on the topper does not talk. It's just like getting going nuts or whatever the two caddy shack golf games are. Oh, yeah, yeah.
    31:30
    Doesn't no good gophers have a topper with the headshots on it? No, that's the other one. Right, right. What is the other one? I love the game. I can't think of what it's called now.
    31:41
    First T or something? T-Dolph. Yeah, going nuts is the super rare prototype one, right? Yeah. We had one of those in Reno.
    31:50
    We do. That's the one with, like, yeah, without the outlanes and you have, like, a timer. Yeah, that was Steve Charlton's, which is the one they used for the Pinball Arcade, one of the digitizer Steve's when he was still alive and then Mr. Huntsman owns it now, our friend Mike Huntsman that's right so yeah, I remember when he was making the deal on that but yeah, I'm glad it's out in public because a lot of times I was at his house it's not in public it's in Reno who's going to route that? But I didn't know. I haven't talked to Mike in a while. It's been a bit. So I thought, oh, we can put it on location. But, yeah, it's his house. So, yeah. And last time I played, it was playing perfect. So that's such a cool rarity.
    32:44
    So, Michelle. Yes. We heard that you're headed to the national championships. I am. I have to rent a car. I've made all my other arrangements. But, yes, Nevada, I got that one.
    32:58
    Awesome. And, yeah, it was really fun. It was, I mean, do you guys want the nitty-gritty broken down by round like Mark did? Or do you want just like a high level? Whatever you want, Michelle. I would say, okay, yeah, we went, you know, started off, my first round was against Michelle Z, who is the state IFPA rep for women.
    33:24
    And so that one was a little rough just mostly because she was also trying to run the tournament at the same time. So it kind of was like, I was trying to make sure that I didn't get too impatient.
    33:39
    But that went that one for two. She came back. I had like 93,000 or yeah, 93,000 on freedom. And I was like, I got this. She was at like 30 and she came back on her ball three and rolled the machine and got on that one. but uh and then round the next round I think yeah it was the next round I had to play Devin who is so our state championship was at Incline Village at Incline to Play and Devin lives right there and that's where she typically plays and she helps out Tony with the tournaments and stuff so she was the one I was most afraid of just because we were playing on her home turf and She's a really good player. And that one we did go 4-3, and the tiebreaker was X-Men.
    34:30
    And I won by, like, 2 million points on X-Men. So it was really close. Ooh, that is really close. And it was, like, bonus. Like, I think I was at, like, 37, and she drained at, like, 34. And I'm like, ooh, X-Men has a big bonus. But she didn't get that much of a bonus. So I was like barely squeaked by.
    34:53
    And then the next round was against Kim. And I think this is where I really got like determined that, okay, I think I can do this. So that one went 4-1. And then it was the finals was against Marge, who is also a really good player and somebody I play with a lot.
    35:13
    And by then, at that point, like we were outside, you know, chatting before the round started. And both Marge and I were both kind of like, hey, I'm really happy it's you because, you know, you're a very good player and we're friends. And I think that took a ton of pressure off because I was like, you know what, I'm happy whether I win or she wins at this point.
    35:36
    Isn't that a nice thing that you find especially in competitive pinball where even if you're not winning, you're happy for the person it is because you play with them a lot and they're just cool people. Yeah. And you want them to do well, too. That's one of the things I love most about competitive pinball and the competitive pinball scene is, you know, it's like, you know, even if, like, I'm probably going to get second or third, but, you know, I'm happy for my friend because I know, you know, they've been working hard to get here. Mm-hmm. And especially, like, those times where – I don't know, that's not when you're going better when you beat your friends.
    36:10
    But there's also times where, like, you know, like, I might put up a really good game, but somebody comes up and puts up a really better game, and you're just happy that you can't get mad at that. You're like, okay, well, you just really got a billion on Godzilla. You kind of deserve the first.
    36:26
    So I can definitely get mad at that. There's nothing worse than when you put up a good score, and you're just like, oh, it just has to hold, and they reel you in. Yeah. Oh, it's the worst. You know, and it's funny you talk about Godzilla, because speaking of Marge, I played against her, and I felt so bad that she got that crappy drain that was only like $5 million short of my score. And I was like, oh, man, I felt really bad for her. And then when I lost the next round, I was kind of happy that she was able to move on through the tournament because I was like, I felt so bad about that. Even though it was out of my control or her control, I just wanted her to go further even though I was the cheating answer. I think it was straight down the middle. yeah it was one of those unfortunate yeah I think it was off the building if I'm not mistaken but I was happy that she was able to go further I was like yes that's really awesome that she didn't get screwed on that and it totally you know because I know I've done that before to her where she got unfortunate drain or something and I just squeaked by so it was nice to see her continue on after I failed miserably in my next round so that was cool What was your final game that you played on to win? Joker poker. And what was funny was I was up at that point, I think it was 3-2.
    37:56
    And Joker poker was my last game to play, you know, my last pick. And after ball three, I was player one, Marge was player two. And after her ball three, she came over and shook my hand and congratulated me. And I'm like, dude, there's two more balls.
    38:13
    So that was kind of funny. Because she thought it was a three-ball game? She thought it was a three-ball, and she was like, you won. And I was like, not yet. Yeah, that's right.
    38:22
    I don't know. Mark, isn't that the game that took you down? That's the game that took me down against Jeff Reinhardt. Yeah. Yep. That was the game that took me down. I couldn't hit the damn 10 to save my life. Could you hit it? I couldn't hit it. I had a stellar game on Saturday, so I also competed in Opens for Nevada, and that was on Saturday. So that was kind of nice because I got a chance to get in the groove before Sunday.
    38:50
    And I had a game against Ted on Joker Parker, and I got like 600,000 or something. I was hitting everything. I know one of them, I knocked down all of the targets three times on one ball. Holy cow. Damn.
    39:05
    And so that's why I picked it for finals. I actually don't. I prefer newer games, but I realized that I sucked at EMs and I sucked at, kind of suck at solid states. So I spent more time working on those.
    39:25
    So, yeah, I was definitely trying to, like, okay, learn. For me, I'm a very, I tend to be a very impatient player. I like to play on the fly. I like to get a flow going. I like to play fast. And you can't play old games like that. And so I had to teach myself patience. And Joker Poker is like an execution-heavy game. Yeah. I do like game. I do like shooters. Yeah, the rules are so easy to understand. So you just need to make the shots. Mm-hmm. So I can see how, like, for a flow player, that game would be torturous. Uh-huh. But I picked it because I did so well against Ted on it on Saturday. And I was also, I did not, I know some players in finals have their same three games, and each round that they're in, they pick their same three games. I wasn't doing that. I was, like, all over the board. So Joker-Proker, that was the only time I played it on Sunday was that last game. But that makes you less predictable and more dangerous, and I like that. Yeah. My wife's like that. She thinks she's that good of a player, but Dan and I both played against her in the league, and she's one of the people that nobody wants to go up against because she's so unpredictable. You never know. She's tough. Mark played against her, yeah.
    40:39
    Rusty crashes me every time I play her. I don't know what you're talking about. She's vicious and unrelenting and brutal. Did she compete in California? Well, yeah, we're in Wyoming now. Oh, you're in Wyoming. We did, yeah. We moved to Wyoming four and a half years ago. But when we were in California, me and my wife and Dan all played league together. And then I know we played with Mark on some tournaments and stuff because he's, you know, in Reno. But, yeah, in fact, that's how, you know, we met. Mark was waiting in line to play Hobbit when it was the brand-new game at Pinagogo is how we met Mark. That's how we met. Yep. I remember seeing Rusty go deep in a couple tournaments. I remember she went to second in league finals. Yeah. And that was a rough day because I was watching two friends play. I think she got beat by Jeff Claybaugh, and we're just like, oh, man, any day you'd want to see Jeff win, but today I really want to see Rusty win. Yeah. And what was she like, third or fourth in the first Golden State women's tournament? She was fourth in the first Golden State women's tournament. She was fourth. But that was a really exciting, like a really exciting run with some really good players. Yeah, I think Wagon, Louise Wagon, Wagon, sir, is it? I think she won that. Yeah. She is a good player. She beat me to get into finals in 2024. It was, yeah, that was a. Yeah.
    42:09
    We all had our turn being beat by Louise. Are you talking about Golden State? That was Golden State for the women's tournament, and I had a round. The last round before finals was me, Jackie Olsen, Louise Wagonesser, and then another woman, Miriam. Wow. I was like, it was a sort of rage, and I got like almost 100 on my first ball.
    42:34
    And then my balls two and three sucked, and Louise passed me. Awesome. It was like whoever won that out of me, Jackie and Louise, were going to go into finals, and Louise won. But that game, I will always kind of hold on to it because I beat Jackie Olsen on it, and she's a really good player. Nice. And speaking of California, if states were to happen today, I would be qualified for California too right now. Oh, wow. Wow, that's awesome. That is awesome. Good for you. And open, and women's open. Wow.
    43:13
    But that was just based on one tournament. That is wonderful. Now, did you get through all the things that you talked about? Or are you still going on with that? with the... I mean, that's pretty much it. Now it's... Okay. Now it's planning for nationals, and you know, I don't know if you all are familiar or aware of, like, all of the... I don't want to call it confusion, because it's not really confusion, but just kind of upheaval in women's pinball right now.
    43:47
    You know, we've heard a little bit of stuff about it. It was something that happened in, like, Washington State. It was out of the world. It was in North Carolina. It was the OBX tournament. And what happened was that there was a venue employee, so not an IFPA person, but a venue employee who was harassing and not allowing transgender women to use the bathrooms. and so they the trans women were like and a lot of other people in solidarity were like well no we don't want to play here because it's not inclusive it's not welcoming it's kind of you know she was threatening to call the cops on them and stuff and so they you know didn't do the tournament and there was some conversation with ifpa about whether the points should count considering, you know, one of their guidelines was that tournaments should be inclusive and nobody gets turned away. And they reached out to the Women's Advisory Board and were like, what should we do? And Women's Advisory Board all unanimously said, this should not be sanctioned.
    44:54
    You know, don't sanction it because people were turned away. And they went against that decision. So the Women's Advisory Board all collectively resigned. They basically said, if you're not going to take our advice, why have an advisory board? Wow. So I agree with that. And so it's been a little confusing because it's like, you know, obviously this happened in like November. So towards the end of the year, and it's like, you're working for this goal all year long to qualify for state or qualify for nationals. And you don't want to give up all of that in solidarity. So I'm curious to see how it pans out in Colorado. They did say that they were sticking around for nationals before they officially stopped.
    45:42
    So they're still doing the running of it and everything, and I'm sure it's going to be a great tournament, and I'm really excited to play against a bunch of these players that I've been watching on Twitch and YouTube for years and get to meet them in person. But I'm going to be curious to see how that all shakes out and what happens. Now, the location, if I'm correct, that's Lions Classic. Lions, yeah. I have yet to go there. It's about a three-and-a-half-hour drive, and it's been on my list. I've been slowly hitting different arcades every time I get a chance to get over to the Denver area. And that's been huge on my list because have you been to their website? I have. There's something like over 70 games. We haven't gotten a list yet of which games are actually in the tournament. So I just looked up the 70 games and kind of mixed it up. So there's a couple on here if you have to play. I don't know if you've played before, like Flash Gordon, College School Champ, those two I've owned for a long time and love them. And there's one that's on my wish list is Alien Star. I love that one too. Okay, so you're familiar with all these? Great. Yeah. And Flash Gordon, Cody has one at Comic Kingdom, and it's one of my favorite games there. Okay, yeah. Great game. My kids are always asking, what's your favorite game, Dad? What's your favorite game? I'm like, oh, I have several favorite games. I can't pick just one. It's like asking me which one you use my favorite. I love y'all, you know? I have a vendetta against Surf Champ because I lost state in 2024 on that. Oh, did you? Surf Champ, that's my favorite game. Yeah, I have all of that.
    47:21
    I'm game seven. Oh, damn, they have Spanish eyes. Ooh, I love that one, too. I love me some Spanish eyes. You know, Spanish eyes, everybody used to hate that game. They all complained about how ugly it was. And we had one dude in our group, one old guy, Al Garber, who was always like, don't trust what anybody says. Spanish eyes is awesome. And it's great to see how much people love Spanish eyes now. It's the one EM I would buy. Have you ever seen, it was at Pinnagogo. Did you see the setup that Maurice did, the Spanish duel? Mm-mm. So he has a setup where they have two Spanish eyes, and they're hooked together.
    48:02
    And by hitting the, I think it's the saucer target, or is it the horseshoe? I think it's the horseshoe, yeah. You can cause your opponent's ball to drain.
    48:11
    Oh, so it's kind of like the tilt-off, but with a drain. It's exactly, it's the EM version of tilt-out. From the minds who brought you, we didn't bring you to Italica, but from the maniacs who brought Italica to the show, now we have Spanish Duel or Cross Eyes or whatever you want to call it. Cross Eyes was my name, but I didn't end up building it.
    48:31
    Cross Eyes, that's funny. And I love the artwork on Spanish Eyes. I think it's pretty. I think that's actually what drew me to it first, is I was like, this doesn't look like every other pinball game in here. And then the shots were fine, too. It's like Picasso almost, right? Yeah. Yeah, that cubism. Cubism. Hey, Michelle, let me ask you a question going back to the controversy.
    48:53
    Wouldn't desanctioning it have punished the players really more than the venue? Possibly, but from what I've read is that there were a lot of players who were in the top ten who were fine with desanctioning it. And I think anybody below the top ten, I don't know if there would have been enough points to really value it. But basically, like, the feeling of the Women's Advisory Board was that the IFPA chose points over people. And that these people who did travel and, you know, were planning on being there and, you know, especially because people traveled and stuff and then had to just sit it out. I think that's, that was what was really bothersome to a lot of people.
    49:38
    Yeah, that sucks. And I mean, you know, obviously they're not going to play at that location any longer, I hope. No, they said they're giving them a one-year ban, but apparently they only ever did this one tournament a year, so I don't know how effective or how painful that is for them. Not much of a punishment.
    49:56
    Because I made national news, and my wife was asking me about it. Yeah, yeah, I think. Because she's speaking to the LBGTQ scene, and she was like, hey, did you hear about this thing? And I'm like, oh, yeah, it was quite the topic of conversation. And, you know, I was just looking at it from the perspective that I was all like, yeah, you know, F the location, like, you know, kick them out. But why should players lose their points? But I also didn't realize that some people didn't get the opportunity to play or they decided not to play because of the situation. And, you know, you can't blame somebody for not, you know, for not wanting to stick around and absorb that kind of treatment. Like that's just, you know. And a tournament that size probably goes at least eight hours, if not like 12 or longer. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, you're obviously going to the bathroom. But, you know, just a toilet is a toilet. Like, I do not understand why people get so freaking hot and bothered over the symbol on the bathroom door. But, yeah, you know, that's a real shame. Thanks for the perspective on it. I didn't have all the details just when I read on the various reporting services. I think that Kineticist did the most thorough reporting. I don't know if all of it is still up there because I believe that some of the, they were sharing screenshots and stuff from Discord. And I guess some people were pissed off that they didn't give consent for those to be shared. But I don't know all of the, I don't know all of the background of that.
    51:23
    Interesting. We'll hope that going forward they'll iron out some things so everybody can just come home and have a good time. Yeah. You know, like I said, that's, you know, what it's all about is going and playing pinball in a competitive but fun environment and having a good time. And, oh, man, maybe even make a new friend.
    51:41
    Yeah. And it is a situation where if locations aren't willing to play by the rules, if, you know, their personal politics or opinions are, hey, we want to do it this way. And they're in the opposition to what, you know, the IPSC that they'll do. They just need to stick to their guns and not play at those spots. I know in a lot of cases, places aren't as blessed as Reno and Northern California where we have tons and tons of options. But, you know, and I mean, I know that does punish the players, too. But it's like, hey, if places don't want to let people come and play and those are the people who are coming and playing, you know, then don't offer to host. And that is actually a thing that they did implement after this. So I don't know if you guys run tournaments, but when you submit a tournament now, there is a banner that pops up on the IFBA website that basically says, hey, you know, if there's any sort of discrimination, you can't do this, and you have to ensure that the place that you're having this is not going to be discriminatory towards people. And you click a little I agree box and then set up the tournament.
    52:49
    Yeah, I haven't run anything larger than league finals, and that's actually mostly taken care of by the sanctioning body, you know, Mr. Hozier. But it's interesting, too, because now you've got, like, the punk rock pinball that's starting up in the Northwest is kind of an answer to, hey, maybe the IFPA is a monopoly that we should not be beholden to, that we have other options. And so I've been kind of watching that from a distance and seeing, you know, how that pans out and gets the kinks ironed out and everything. And I know that here in Reno, Jim was talking about doing some non-IFPA tournaments and kind of just seeing what other options we have. Also the idea that, you know, none of us are Jack Slovacek. So, you know, can we have tournaments that, you know, the more mid-level players feel comfortable competing in.
    53:48
    Well, and I don't know if you organize or if you just play, but do you think that not having IFPA, not being in the IFPA, would necessarily hurt the turnout that you guys get at some of your events? I think for right now, because there's not a lot of alternatives, it's really the only ranking system that people really pay attention to right now. then yes, I think that not being IFPA is going to hurt participation. Yeah, we had this conversation like a year ago, right? And we basically came to the conclusion that it's like, while all players don't necessarily follow their IFPA and don't care about their whoppers, some do, but it legitimizes your organization that you're nationally ranked and, you know, your points count towards something. even if you're just the smallest of the Bush League. So it's like, oh, it's really hard to say, you know. The nice thing about not being IFPA is you can experiment with wackier formats and different kinds of games that don't beat the IFPA's classification. Like I wanted to have Are You a God as a playable category in one of our competitions. Oh, yeah, yeah. But because it's not a three-ball game, you couldn't do it. You can't do it. But I was like, oh, man, how great would it be? We're just going to play Are You a God mode. And it's like, that does sound fun, but unfortunately, if it's not this format, you can't do it. I was like, oh, man, a bunch of no fun kill joys. Well, and I know here, like Jim started doing every other week IFPA. So he still does every Tuesday, but every other week is IFPA, and the non-IFPA weeks are just for fun and money. You still win money if you play. And I do notice that the non-IFPA weeks tend to get more new players because they don't care about the competition. And they just want to have fun. And it's really hard and intimidating to walk into a room full of, you know, players who are there just for the points versus the other weeks where it's, like, more casual. People are having beers, chatting more. You know, it's more fun for them. I think some of us that are super hard competitors, we like the competitive weeks because we're like, yeah, bring it. But I can see where if you're just wanting to play every now and then, that can be off-putting sometimes.
    56:16
    Right. Yeah, because for you guys, that would suck. Because you guys are working towards that, you know. Mark, I mean, I'm sure you get it too, but Mark constantly is talking about his IFPA ranking. And I'm like, bro, nobody cares. I know, I know. Yes, we know you're number one. Good job. Only for a short time, like you said.
    56:40
    We're very proud of him, and we're very proud of you. We do have a lot of options here, too. So, like, you know, I think you can do IFPA tournaments at least three times a week here most times, and then you'll have the random once a month that show up, too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, Michelle, you made it all the way to nationals, which is incredible. You play amazing. Every time I play against you, I always have fear in me. Believe me, you are a great player. So what got you into pinball? Because you went from a total beginner to going to nationals. What is your story? It's funny because you go back way back, way back, 1990s, when I was in college, they put an Adams family game in the student center. and that's what really got me into it, but that was, you know, 30 years ago. So I got really into it then, and then, you know, life happened. I went off and got married, had kids, did all that, and pinball wasn't on my radar at all because you're busy. So 20-something years passes, and then I saw a Reddit post saying, hey, we're doing this pinball tournament.
    57:55
    I don't remember if it was a league or if it was just the one tournament or something, But it was basically a Reddit post, and it was the old press start. And I showed up. It was a Tuesday. I think there was three women out of, like, maybe 15 people.
    58:08
    I think it was me, Rhiannon, and Stacey were the only women. I just remember being like, this is such a boys' club. And I literally got last place for, like, the first year I played every game, every match.
    58:23
    But I was having fun, and I was enjoying it. And then COVID happened, and I was bored because it was COVID. And that's when John from Press Start was doing, hey, rent a game from me for a month to help us keep our doors open when all of this passes. And so I rented a game. I rented Guardians for a month. That became my favorite game.
    58:49
    And I think that time during COVID is where I really ramped up, where I figured out, that's when I figured out, oh, you know, You're supposed to be trying to complete these modes and get to this wizard mode and all of that.
    59:01
    Wow. So it was COVID that had you have a guardians to really get into the rules, and then that just kind of branched off to any game that came out or any game that's available to play, and you started really learning the rules because you really know how to play it. I still don't have my own game. I don't have one at home. I can't believe that. and part of that is that I don't want to get so good at one game that I suck at all the other ones. Good point. I like to have a lot of variety and have that kind of space in my house. We do. So my partner, Mike, just moved in a couple of months ago, and we've been reorganizing and redistributing everything and trying to find homes for everything, but we have decided that eventually we're going to turn the dining room into a pinball room. Ooh, nice. That's always a wasted area of the house anyway. No one uses the dining room anymore. And once you know, you eat together as a family. We do that once a week now, but I was like, eh, we can eat in the living room for that. We'll go out to dinner. We'll eat outside in the summer. There you go. We have a hard table. We have a picnic table.
    60:11
    Our dining room has been a pinball room for years. Boys, that's why I bought a house with a basement Yeah, there you go We don't have basements in Reno, do we? We do have older houses but a lot of them are I think in a lot of the older houses with the basements everyone that I known always has issues with water leaking in Yep Mark don you kind of have a basement Kind of. It's a split-level home, so it really doesn't matter. Technically not a basement. Yeah, it's a split level. Split levels are neat. There's a lot of those here. Yeah, but no basement. I have a storage room, which I know I need to get going on because I am going to get some machines and put them in there, but not quite done with my career yet. But once I am, all that stuff is going in the trash, and I'm going to start making space in there. I have it all wired and ready to go. I just don't have any machines in there. I still got my bond that's sitting in the family room down in the next to the basically in front of windows where it shouldn't be, but that's the only place I have it. This time next year, Mark's going to have more games than I do. I highly doubt it. How many do you have now? One. I just have Bond, Bond Pro. That's it. I have 22. Yeah. Wow. I'm down to one. Yeah, it's really, it's a sickness. I'm down to one, but I'm looking for a couple more right now. I still want my two. It's not working out for me. Well, if you ever need somebody just to babysit a game for a couple months of you.
    61:45
    Like, hey, if you run out of room. All the way in Reno, I would put five games at your house today. I'd be like, you got room, huh? I'm on my way. Yeah, that's the truth, Michelle. Because when I still live in California. Oh, you like Monopoly. I get a Monopoly. I bought three games. I'm bringing two to your house. Okay. Because I have room.
    62:05
    Spencer knows I speak truth. When Spencer says, oh, you got room for like four or five games? I'm on my way home.
    62:13
    Two days later or five days later, hey, I sold one of those games. Me and the guy are coming to pick it up. You home? I'm like, yeah, cool. I'll be home in the afternoon. I really regret selling that last action hero, too. I know. I got to play like four games. It was so good, and I miss it so much. There's one for sale. It's been for sale over in Denver area for like $2,900. It's been on there for a while. Dude, go off from $2,500 for it right now. As long as the scoops are in good shape and the crane works and that blue plastic isn't broken, there's nothing else in that game that you can't fix. Yeah, that's why I've been thinking about it. I love that stupid game. It's so frantic, but it's great. A buddy of ours just got a Harry Potter collector's edition. Oh, it's gorgeous. And I go over to his house, and I'm like, oh, dude, you got a Last Action Hero. I made $3,000 for it. Everyone else was playing Harry Potter. I must have stood there for like an hour and just hammered away at Last Action Hero. It's a good game. Tony had one, didn't Tony? Tony actually got that one from Jim, and it was a funny story because he was texting me. He was like, I want to buy this last action hero. And I was like, oh, I know the guy who's selling it, and I can vouch for the fact that he takes really good care of his games.
    63:37
    And he's like, well, I want to get it, but my truck's in the shop. I won't be able to pick it up until I get my truck back. And I was like, I can go pick you up right now, and we can go get it right now. And we found out that our pinball machine definitely fits in a RAV4. Yep.
    63:55
    So, yeah, I scooped up Tony. We went down to Jim's. Jim came to the door and was like, oh, you're the friend? And I said, yeah, that's me. I just didn't want him to miss out on it. And then I think he wound up selling it for something else, though. He did, yeah. He did sell it. But it was a nice one because it was Jim's.
    64:15
    But Tony has some great games, too. But, yeah, when I was thinking about that, yeah, it used to be at Jim's. And, yeah, it's a fun game. You know, if you look at Last Action Hero, the game it released against at Valley Williams was Twilight Zone. Oh, wow. So it is stacked. It has so many features. Even stuff that Twilight Zone doesn't have. It's got shaker motor and the laser kicker and the six-ball multivall and the magnets and the crane and, you know, the smart missile. And it just does so much stuff. and the movie was such a bomb and it kind of brought the pinball machine with it. But it's a shame because I love that movie so I'm just like, this movie is amazing. Some of the best games are from terrible movies. I tried watching Congo the other night because I love the games that were bad. It was bad. It's so bad.
    65:05
    Demolition Man, which I love both those movies. Demolition Man's not that bad a movie. Iron Man, it's pretty rough but that pinball machine owns The Shadow. I have a shadow. And I know people love John Wick, but I tried watching that too, and I fell asleep. He fell asleep. He fell asleep to Keanu Reeves killing like 60 dudes because they killed his dog and stole his car. I mean, I could relate to wanting to kill people who stole his dog, but.
    65:34
    How many dogs do you have? Well, two. One is technically Mike's, but since she moved in with me, she's mine now too. So two. cool kind of dog i would have more if uh i would have more if i had the room same here i have two also i have a okay oh no so mine is a big 85 pound mutt we think shepherd and lab mix and then his is an english bulldog oh love english bulls yeah she's she's the bar dog Sometimes he brings her to pinball. She is the bar dog. Yeah, my ex-wife's mom, my ex-mother-in-law had an English Bulldog when my daughter was a baby. He was such a good dog with her. And so he was so mellow and, you know, just look after baby, take care of baby. And my daughter is 33 now. But I have a red-boned coonhound. So if you've ever read Where the Red Fern Grows or seen the movie and cried a lot, that was – so her name is Daisy. She's a shelter dog, a rescue. And then we have Jack, which is an American foxhound, also a shelter dog, another rescue. So I have two hound dogs. And they're protecting the family from that leaf blowing outside or the mailman. You've been there. That's how my big one is, and that's why she does not come to the bar.
    67:02
    She's very protective and very skittish. He's been on the show more than any of us. Yes, they have been on the show more. You'll constantly hear, or if you go way back to old episodes, when I was still in California, we had a mutt named Bud, unfortunately. Bud the dog. And constantly I'd be in the middle of the podcast and just, he's hearing me yell out, Bud, get out of the trap.
    67:27
    And barking in the background. Barking in the background, yeah. The dog's barking in the background. Or he's in the front ground, like, because at the time we were doing a snowball. Front ground. And Bud would just come and sit on top of the mic and be like ridiculously loud. Like, one of our earliest reviews is like, you know, babies crying, dogs barking, you know, no thanks. And it's just like, look, if you don't get it, you don't get it.
    67:53
    If you're not down with Bud the dog, we didn't need you here anyway. Yeah, no, I can get behind anybody that loves dogs because I'm a huge dog lover. Me too.
    68:04
    But that's awesome. Dogs and pinball, I can get with, you know. It's like, you like dogs and pinball? Me too. We can be friends.
    68:13
    You like red balls? We should hang out. We should play pinball, pet dogs. No, it's a cool thing about Wyoming is if your clothes aren't covered in dog or cat hair, people look at you like, you don't have animal hair on you. What's wrong with you?
    68:29
    Like, you better be a normal person and have animal hair stuck to you. That's funny. Okay, we know where you're playing for the Nationals. When is that? March 27th. So I'm heading to Colorado on the 26th. Then I think they're doing some sort of just fun tournament there on that Thursday night, so I'm going to play in that just because I'm there. And then the World's Champion, Women's World is on – so the Nationals is on Friday, Women's World is on Saturday. So I'm staying through Sunday because I want to watch Worlds in person too. I'm not playing in it, but, you know, again, like I've been watching so many Twitch streams and YouTube that I kind of fangirl over all of these top players. So I may be really excited to watch them play in person. That is so cool. That is cool. So obviously you don't have a machine at home.
    69:27
    What would be your theme that you would be like sight unseen? Because I was curious. I guess you like a lot of different games, but, like, what would be your theme that if you, if money was not an issue. If it magically appeared and it didn't exist and it doesn't exist yet, but it were to exist, money, I thought, on the Holy Grail. Nice. Oh, good one. Good one. I want to design that game so bad because I have so many ideas for different shots and modes and things you can do. You know that theme does kind of exist, right? Who? Oh, Medieval Madness? That's pretty much what Medieval Madness does. Kind of, yeah. I really want, like, a hot school movie, you know, Your Mother Smells of Elderberry's Fallout and things like that. Kill a rabbit. I mean, it's going to cost you $10,000, but you can have that. No way.
    70:17
    Yeah, run away. Run away. If I could own any game that exists currently, I really love Alice in Wonderland, but I don't love how it plays so much. I love how it looks. Yeah. it is a beautiful game a lot of the games I like to play I think the themes aren't great like No Fears is one of my favorite games but I like a lot of Steve Ritchie games I didn't even know that until I was talking to Cody once and he was asking me about my favorite games and I listed off like 5 Steve Ritchie games in a row have you met Steve Ritchie? I have not oh he's hilarious he's fun to hang around with Most down-to-earth guy on the planet. He's so fun to hang out with. You have to talk really loud and about anything but pinball. Yeah.
    71:10
    Ask him about his Porsche. Yeah. No, yeah, no fear. We're always talking about that. I'm always on the hunt for a no fear, always. I love that game. Oh, I want another no fear so bad. Oh, that jump ramp is just so satisfying where you can just keep hitting it nonstop. I love that feeling. The problem is I already have Black Knight 2000,
    71:34
    and it's almost the exact same layout. But No Fear just has such a different vibe. It's very flowy, and that's why I like it. And I like to play it fast and hard. Like, I don't like to stop the ball.
    71:50
    That one you have no choice but to keep hitting it. Yeah, I know. When I do try to slow it down, that's when I die. So I'm like, no, just crank up some, I don't know, I feel like when you're playing it, you have to listen to douchey music. Like, you know, what's that guy's name?
    72:09
    Limp Bizkit or something. I'm not the only one that thinks Fred Durst is a douche. Okay, good to know. So, yeah, I agree. The music is pretty cool. But, yeah, it's like, dude. So. Mm-hmm. No, that's cool.
    72:28
    So the world championships are starting as soon as the nationals are over? Well, it's like Friday and Saturday. So I assume Friday is going to go all day long. There's like 56 players, including the Canadian provinces. Okay. And then I think Saturday, I don't remember if it was like top 24 or top 16 women players in the world are invited.
    72:57
    Oh, wow. But yeah, I watched it last year just on Twitch or something. And I will tell you, if you can find Women's World from 2025, the final game between Carrie Wing and Kaylee Campbell on Deadpool. Epic. Epic. Yeah, I watched that one time. It is mind-boggling. And I don't even want to give any spoilers, but I sometimes will just go back and watch it just for fun.
    73:28
    Kerry Wing is such a great player. Oh, my gosh. She's so calm. That's what I first thing that came to mind, too. You read my mind. She's just so calm. The best players usually are. That's so true. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that's something I'm definitely going to work on. Adam's always so calm. Adam's calm. Always. Brandon in our group, he's the calm player. Yeah, all those people that are just calm and focused just nail the shots and know what they're doing. They're just already thinking five steps ahead of what they need to shoot for next.
    74:05
    And I'm like you, Michelle. I don't have the patience. A lot of times I'll hit on the fly too, but I do find that I do play better when I trap up and wait for my next shot, especially like on Godzilla or something. that can just bite me and I know I've seen you where you've really been focused on what you know to shoot for and that really helps you sometimes it helps and sometimes it's like you know like I always joke around is that when Monster Bash is lit that scoop becomes the hardest shot in all of pinball I know I hit it a million times a day until it's lit sometimes that focus you're too focused, you want it too bad, and then I screw up. So I always have to just like, okay, calm down, relax, stop trying to, I play best if I'm not thinking too much, which, you know, probably bites me in the butt sometimes, but. No, when you're in a zone, it's pretty impressive. Now, when you started getting better and you got to this level, what was your focus as far as like flipper skills? Like, did you really focus on... For the longest time, it was nudging. I was a really bad nudger when I first started. And I thought that that's where men would have an advantage over women. And so I kind of had a tip on my shoulder of like, well, I can't nudge because I'm not a big burly man. And then I saw Scarlett, who was seven at the time, outnudge me. And I realized that wasn't true. Yeah. If a seven-year-old girl can move the machine that much, I can probably do it too. And then so I started really working on that. And I think that was what really took me from being last place constantly to not being last place constantly. You are a good nudger. Yeah, you do nudge well. I've noticed that. The absolute dude I've seen who manhandles games the most is?
    76:00
    Dan. Dan does give the games what for? No, Joe. Joe Abate. Oh, Joe. He will throw games across the room. and he's the littlest dude. Yep. Yeah, you just, it's not really about size. It's really just about knowing what you can get away with. Yeah, exactly. You know, the way it works is as long as you keep it moving, the tilt bob doesn't, I'm just like, dude, you're out of your mind. I'm like, I wouldn't do that because these are your games.
    76:31
    Exactly. He's the guy, they're on location. It's fair game. Sliding the games into each other. I'm like, oh, my God. Well, Dan always makes those miraculous saves. We're talking about Dan Armstrong. Hey, I make miraculous saves, too, one in every 38 tries. But he does these miraculous saves where you swear he's going to tilt the machine, and he gets, like, one warning. I don't know how he does it. It's magical. It's about being smooth. Yeah. It's the trick. Like, I'm very abrupt when I, like, move my games or when I move anybody's games. But, like, if you're smooth about it and you know how the pendulum is working, you can go with it. It's just, it's disgusting. Like, they have a sixth sense for what they're going to be able to get away with.
    77:20
    It doesn't help that, like, I grew up in an environment where, like, they set their games so tight that if I tilted a game, it would tilt the game three games down. Yeah. The hosier tilt. Mark knows. Immediately. But he's so glad, our commish, Michael Hoser, that we named a tilt after him. Yep. That's funny. Yeah, it's his life's work. Yeah, it is. It's like, why do you make us hate pinball? He's like, why do you assume you should like it? Yeah, exactly.
    77:56
    Oh, no, just kidding, Mike. We love you. That's a good line. I like that. That's a good line. So, Michelle, do you know if anybody's going to be – you said somebody's going to be streaming the women's championships? I assume so because every other one has been streamed. I haven't seen any, like, definitive this is happening, but I know, like, Backhand Pinball and Fox Cities Pinball were big ones that did a lot of the big tournaments. It probably has somebody in Colorado, though, so I don't know, like, where people are based out of and who they have. Well, if we see anything, we'll definitely post it. We're definitely going to be watching it. I know I'll be watching it. I would like to be able to get up there because I'm only three and a half hours away and, you know, cheer you on. I don't know if I'm going to be able to, you know, do it with more work schedule. But if I can't get away, definitely. Well, I think they're having a lot of, like, satellite tournaments there at Lions because they have enough games. Yeah. So that, you know, which is fun because if you get knocked out first round, hopefully there's other things you can do. and saw that they were doing one on Thursday night. So they're probably having some random open tournaments during that weekend too.
    79:07
    Wow. Sounds fun. Yeah, we'll have to look and see where it's being streamed. I know I was really happy to see that the Nevada Women's State Championship was being streamed, and I watched the whole thing, and it was very exciting. Yeah, I didn't even realize I was on stream half the time. Yeah, I was like, oh, there's Michelle again. Awesome. And then I was thinking, should I keep texting her, encourage her because they're not probably bothering you and making you lose your concentration but i was just cheering you on it was oh i had my phone on do not disturb in the last two or three rounds i think i was like you know what i'm just gonna put my phone away because that can sometimes psych out right when you're like oh you can do this you could do this and then you're like oh no i just disappointed my friend you know on the other line ah darn but that's great that uh it did not uh cause you to get distracted because obviously you still made it all the way to the end but um I still wanted to encourage you. Thanks. It was really great to see all the texts after I finished. And I was like, okay, I'm going to look at my phone. And I was like, oh. And I had a text from other people, too. Congratulating. Yeah. Oh, cool. Then you realize you guys are watching.
    80:13
    It's really neat. It's really an awesome story for you because I remember when you started. And you never gave up. You just had fun. You were always coming out to have fun. Yeah, there was nothing else to do on a Tuesday. You were never upset when you got last. You know, you just kept going and going, and then you just started learning and practicing. And, man, you did good. Well, and I do think we're really lucky in Reno. Not only do we have the really, you know, we have some great places to play, but the community has been fantastic. Incredible. Like, the people are really cool. Like I said, when I first started, I think there was three women, and now, like, most of our tournaments have almost half, like, at least a third. We're 50-50 now, which is so awesome. I just love that. Yeah. And so seeing that whole scene grow, because I think when I first started, a big tournament was like 20 people. And now it's like they're turning people away at 48. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I know it's funny because I don't – how did you get the Reddit message? I'm just curious on that because – I was just perusing Reddit, and I go into the Reno Reddit because I like to stay on top of what's going on locally and saw a post about it. And I said, you know, it was Tuesday. And, again, I was like, I don't have anything going on on Tuesdays. And I think I was trying to, like, you know, get out of the house a little bit more because I was feeling pretty, like, you know, you have your weekend stuff. But I wanted to find things to do during the week, too, so I wasn't just sitting around watching TV all the time. Sure, absolutely. Well, it's interesting because we tried doing tournaments at Press Start, but we only got, like, 12 people. and then at first I was like basically saying, well, let's try out a league and see if that works and get people because then we'll have more people realizing they can make a commitment and come every week or every other week or whatever we had decided. And it's really great to see players like you get caught with the bug of, wow, there's actually a competitive scene here and I can, I can learn this game and learn from others. And before you know it, Now you're going to nationals. It's, it's pretty exciting story because, uh, press start is what started it all. It was, that's where everything began with the scene of the community building. And like you said, before COVID we had, I think we had like almost 48 players or something like that. And then COVID just shut it down. But we were at that point where we were like, wow, we got to figure out a good format here. Cause I know we did the four games and, um, It was kind of like what we did at Playfield Sports and Game, where you play four different games, and then you play the next week, and then the total points is based on where you stand, and then you have your playoffs. And I remember when he came on the scene, and it's really cool to see that you're continuing that. Yeah, you were one of the first people to, like, welcome me. You know, you were very welcoming, very encouraging, and you always have been. So it was good because, again, like, I walked into it and I was like, oh, no, this is a boys club. Like, are they going to be weird? And nobody was. That was good because I know, I mean, that's another area that we're lucky in our market. I've heard horror stories from other pinball players in other markets of men being sexist. Yeah, and just wrote things. Or wrote me or him. Yeah, that's wrong. Okay. That's wrong. I'm just saying. Pinball people are weird, but that's not weird. Yeah. In this case, they're still weird. They're just, you're kind of weird. yeah and like yeah and like that's not creepy terrible don't want to be around them weird yeah not creepy not not yeah and any kind of weird you're right it's it's the it's the okay we're gonna sit around and be nerding out on our nerdy hobbies and yeah and that's what i love about it it is fun nerding out on pinball i mean come on i mean yeah it is a lot of part of our lives like, oh, when's the next tournament? Oh, I have my podcast about pinball. Oh, I got league tonight for pinball. Yeah, it pretty much consumes our life. But I have a pinball machine in my house.
    84:33
    See, that's, that's the final step. That's where you know, you're just you've given up that you're you're going to be beaten. Because as soon as you dedicate space in your life, You know, people who love pinball go someplace and play pinball. At the point that you buy a pinball machine, yeah, you are too hardcore. And then you have the – and you start contemplating, hey, how long can we just live off top of each other? Yeah.
    84:58
    That was my strategy in college. I actually literally spent all my food money on Alan's family and would go to Costco and get the $3 pack of ramen. Oh, my gosh, that's so funny. I got two bucks for pinball if I can replay it eight times.
    85:19
    It's just five players in a round, but we're good. We got variety. I don't know if you've been playing long enough. I'm sure Spencer remembers this. Mark might remember. But it used to be that you'd identify the place in town that had the newest Stern because they never really changed the settings. And you could replay it super easily. So you'd go in there and you'd rack up replays until they got too hard to rack up. But once you lost a few times, the replay score would come back down so you could start getting replays again. And if you weren't walking away from that machine with $2 or $3 left on it, you just weren't working hard enough. So true.
    85:59
    Yeah, there was that. That's how we played pinball on a budget. It's like, oh, yeah, they got a new Austin Powers. Austin Powers ain't the best game, yeah, but the replay is like 12 million points. and get it in like two minutes. Boom. Free games. Yeah, I mean, I still play on location. So my rule is on my practice days when I'm just going on a, you know, Wednesday night, I take five bucks and I get $5 in quarters and I play for as long as $5 lets me play. And sometimes that's like 20 minutes and sometimes it's, you know, two hours. That's a good method instead of trying to do five bucks trying to get the GC on Congo, which I did just on Friday, which I couldn't do. What was your score? Because I just got like $2 billion and I wasn't. I was $40 million short of Dan's GC on Congo. $2.4 billion.
    86:54
    Okay, yeah. On Friday I played and I got $2.1 billion. Cool. That was Friday afternoon. So if you played Friday night, you probably beat me. Well, that's what I always see. I see Joe. I see all those initials, and it's like, oh, and then I see Dan. It's like, I've got to get my name on there. That's an addiction of mine. But I think it's really exciting when you talk about going to the union. Are you talking about UNR? Did they have a pinball machine there? Yeah, it was at UNR, and it was Adam's family back when Adam's family first came out. Or when it first came out. You know, it's really interesting. I think it was like 93 or something. Was it 93, 94? That's really interesting because I got my addiction playing pinball at the union too.
    87:43
    And it was 20 machines they had. I was fortunate in Minnesota. They had it down in the basement in the bowling alley in the union, and I skipped classes trying to get the jackpots to clear them all out. Remember the good old System 11s? You know, they had all of the up on the board, like Cyclone where it's up at four. It's like, okay, class dismissed. I'm going to go and clear out all the jackpots. And, yep, that's where I blew all my money to. So I can totally relate to you and never knew the competition scene, but that's really interesting. Yeah, I didn't even know competitive pinball was a thing until that Reddit post. And then I thought it was just like a beer thing, like, okay, we're just going to get a bunch of people together and play pinball. Like I didn't know that there was points and stuff until I started getting into it. I had no idea about it too. In fact, when I got introduced to it, it was at Pinnagogo with pin golf is what was the first thing that came. And then then I knew about California Extreme and there was a competition. And I was nervous because I was I think I was talking to Andre Mastikoff at the time, didn't have a clue who he was asking all these questions like, how do you do this? You know, like, how does this work? And I was just totally a newbie on everything. so I can totally relate to how you felt when you came that first day to press start and even then I wasn't well versed in it I was still you know just pretty much just hitting the ball every time I hit the flip or not thinking about shots or anything so it's really cool to see how far you progress and like I said you're a force to be reckoned with Michelle every time you're in my group I always fear you trust me I do I'm just gonna brag for a second because this was this blew my mind yesterday. We were at a tournament yesterday, and on the last round of qualifying, I beat you and Jeff, and I did not expect to do that. You did. Rightfully deserved. Absolutely. I think that was more of you guys messing up than me playing well. Hey, you know, we all have our on and off days. I think you play really well consistently every week as far as I'm concerned. Oh, thanks. so Michelle is there anything else you wanted to add about uh going to uh nationals not that I can think of just that you know um I'm hoping that is this I'm hoping that this podcast maybe reaches some more women who think that pinball is not accessible to them and let them know that yes we do have I we do have a scene here it's that's getting a lot bigger too like we used to only get like maybe 10 players max, and now it's the bulldog is going crazy on her back. I don't know if you guys hear that.
    90:29
    And we've been getting, you know, up to 20, 25 players lately. Yeah, no, that's great. I know we reached some women who are thinking about playing. You know what Mark said and what you said and Dan reiterated is when we still in Sacramento League we would see new people come in man and woman who never played competitively uh were real new to pinball hobby and you know the first season they might not do so great but then you see them progress and get better and eventually like hey you were in the top three last week awesome good job or hey you made the finals awesome you know and so it's just you know you can enjoy it not be great at it but you can see yourself improve. And I do think that's what gets people coming back. It's not like golf. Golf is really hard to get good at. But I don't think pinball is that hard to get good at. So you can see improvements and that keeps you coming back instead of getting frustrated and walking away. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The learning curve is not that huge.
    91:27
    But to get up to national champion status is a jump. But you could finish top three in the league. These results are not typical. There you go. But at the end of the day, just go have fun and meet new people. Maybe make a new friend. You know, get out and try. I have a shirt from the Pinball Museum, and it's a couple of weird kind of, what's the one I'm looking for? Like rat pink, hot rod looking guys hanging around a pinball machine, and it says old school social networking.
    92:04
    Isn't that the truest thing? Yeah. And so, you know, yeah, and it's just like, you know, hang out, meet new people, make new friends, play pinball, have a good time, you know. And it's not expensive. It's so affordable compared to so many forms of entertainment. One round of golf would be two months worth of entertainment, if not. Yeah, it's absolutely, yeah, it's very affordable for sure.
    92:29
    And you don't need a gear, you don't need any, you know, special equipment or anything like that. I mean, I guess if you start getting into buying pinball machines, that changes. But, you know, you can just come straight from work. Or maybe pinball gloves or whatever that are, you know, weight gloves that some people wear. But other than that, you're right. There really is not much to it.
    92:48
    Just use the bottom of your T-shirt to wipe off the lockdown bar. There you go. You know. You're good to go. Wipe your nose on your sleeve. And wash your hands constantly. A pocket full of quarters and you're headed to the arcade Yep, absolutely So with that, I'm going to beer the bus and I'm going to take this next exit So we got a new game that none of us have played but the excitement is just really crazy right now and I wanted each of us to give just a quick two minute you know, hey, what do you think of our first thoughts? And that game It's the new Stern Pinball Pokemon. Michelle, since you're our very special guest, I'll let you start. I haven't played it. I haven't seen it in person. I did see the videos.
    93:40
    I never was really super into pinball as, you know, a franchise, but my kids were, my son especially, who was super into all of the video games and everything.
    93:53
    So I think it's a good concept. I just don't know enough about, like, the trainers and everything. I understand the concept of catching Pokemon, and I think that's going to lend well to a game, hit certain targets and do certain things. So I'm just excited to see what it actually does. It looks fun. It looks – it reminds me of Junkyard with those kind of angled stand-up targets in the back. So I'm going to – I want to see if those are as mean as the ones on Junkyard. Yep.
    94:22
    Yeah. Right on. Mark, your thoughts? I think that they nailed the theme as far as I'm concerned. I am also not a Pokemon fan at all. I know how to say it correctly because I listen to plenty of podcasts about it. But, yeah, I think it looks a lot of fun, and it looks like a machine that is going to be very – let's just say it's going to bring a lot of people that are not into pinball into pinball, which I'm hoping. It's very approachable. The shots are pretty wide open as far as ease of hitting them compared to other games that have come out that are very tight and can be sometimes frustrating. And you know what I'm talking about, Michelle, probably.
    95:06
    And I think the mech is really cool with the balloon hovering over and then coming down and hitting in different directions as a bash toy.
    95:16
    I'm sure the code is going to be really great as it progresses. But overall, I think it's going to definitely be printing money at locations for kids that are going to see it. They're probably going to be as excited as seeing a redemption game. And hopefully we'll see it in a lot of different locations that you wouldn't see it in. But I think it's going to be very successful, and I'm excited to play it. I know Comic Kingdom is getting a pro, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, we're getting a premium at press start when it comes out. So it'll be interesting to see what tournament players think of it. but overall I think they nailed the theme and I'm excited about it. And this is one of those themes that is bigger than Harry Potter, which shocked me until I listened and really did some research on it. But it's awesome to see a mainstream IP come out and hopefully it will really attract a lot of younger folks to keep this excitement and, and interest in pinball.
    96:20
    Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Dan, what are your thoughts? I think that game better have some majestic code because it ain't much to look at, and the playfield layout seems very basic.
    96:36
    The Pokemon that they're drawing off of is the most basic level of the fandom. It's the early, early, early stuff.
    96:47
    So pretty much everyone who I've talked to who's like a hardcore, a hardcore pinball person or a hardcore Pokemon person is like, well, it's a little simple, right? It's just art's simple. The selection of Pokemon is simple. It doesn't have this. It doesn't have that. The play field layout looks very basic. The toys look big and plasticky. but having a generic-y kind of layout gives you the potential to, if Taneo can get in there and just code the hell out of this game, it can do a lot of stuff. And, you know, they've got battles and they've got catching Pokemon, but for the real Pokemon fans, you know, there's a lot to that world of different things that you can do, you know, to build teams and, you know, how you're going to have battles and how you're going to earn Pokemon, and they really need to come up with a really good player versus player answer beyond just multiplayer games, like something that involves insider and putting your team against the next team. If they can really just code the heck out of this game, I think it'll overcome the fact that they clearly made it accessible.
    98:02
    Like they clearly made it to be an easy game with easy-to-hit shots that, you know, someone's not going to walk up to like Ninja Turtles, put in a couple quarters, the ball's going to, you know, betray them, and they're going to be like, oh, dude, screw that. Like, you know, they're going to get a few minutes, and they're going to catch a Pokemon. They're going to be like, oh, that was fun. I want to do that again. Oh, I got multiple balls on the play field. I want to do that again. I think it's going to be low risk, high reward gameplay-wise. So for the people that we know to get something out of it, they're going to need a code.
    98:37
    And the other thing is just like the furor surrounding the LE, it's just making me kind of sick. Like I get it, you know, pinball fandom is the fandom of FOMO.
    98:49
    You know, before Pokemon, LEs sold out. Nobody cared as soon as the LEs sold out. Every one of the pinball pump and dump fanboys has just been all over that game's jock. It's basically disgusting.
    99:03
    You know, act like you've been here, guys. you know if you love the franchise great I'm happy that you love the franchise but just because it's the next $20,000 game you know just quit trying to tell me how great it is I got eyes I can see you know who you are I think they're going to be sorely disappointed to hear down the road the ones that are over valuing L.E. so well the hype is self-sustaining that's the problem as soon as you create the hype then you know it keeps going it's not like it's going to come out and everyone's going to be like oh whoops turns out it wasn't worth that much at all because it's already overhyped and they've already managed to sell them out and now people are fighting in the streets for them you know it's breathing that same air that like you know Beetlejuice is where you know they're like well we're only making so many and they're already sold out so now people are paying you know or trying to get $30,000 for them it's just like come on guys you know make enough games for everyone who wants one to have one that should be the rule like I don't understand why we play this game where it's like well we're going to make 700 and let you guys fight in the street for them and you know for the people who just wanted the game you can get the premium I like the way that JJP did Harry Potter they said look we're going to sell collector's editions until people are done buying them. I like that model you know did it create fury did it create you know this relentless hype? No, and maybe that's why it's failing, you know. Stern got what they wanted from their media day and from this Ellie sellout, which is everyone's talking about it. We're talking about it, but it's like, come on guys, you know, we all saw the video, we all know what's involved. Quit trying to convince us it's going to be great and, you know, now let's get the games out there and we can play it and if it's good, it's good.
    100:55
    Yeah, agreed. Agreed 100%. Yeah, we had this conversation But I will say it looks simple and ugly. Okay, fair enough. Okay.
    101:03
    As I do with every new game, you know, because they release it whatever day, and I get the email while I'm at work. So when I get home, I pull everybody out of the basement and upstairs, and we all sit down. It's like, oh, the new game video's dropped. I'm like, okay. So my two older boys are like, yeah, that's pretty cool. Hey, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I want to play that. Now my youngest, Mickey, who's more into Pokemon, he plays a card game and, you know, more than the older boys. And he's like, we have to have this. My wife was like, yeah, it'll probably do well on route, you know.
    101:39
    But, yeah, my opinion is like I think it's going to do well on location. I think it's going to do well with casual pinball fans. I think it's going to bring more non-pinball, hardcore people, more casual people into pinball. But I'm hoping Tanya can make a great code because I think at the end of the day, it is kind of simple, but simple is not always bad. So, again, I got to play it. It remains to be seen. But it's probably not one I would ever actually buy.
    102:09
    Well, Pokemon is a crazy property. Like, I don't know how much you really know about Pokemon. I assume that you probably know quite a bit because of the boys. Yeah, and Hannah, my daughter. but I remember when she was like four or five when Pokemon first came out.
    102:26
    Yeah. I worked in video games for a long time, you know, through kind of the rise of Pokemon. And it's a franchise that's based on a lot of things, and two of them are collecting and competition, right? Right. And so what I think the game is nailing is, like, you can find Pokemon. You can collect Pokemon. but the competition in Pokemon isn't really against the game cartridge. It's against your friend, right? You want to take the Pokemons that you found in the game, you want to make a better team, and then, you know, I want to say, hey, Spencer, hey, Mark, me and you should have a Pokemon competition, and then they do tournaments and the whole works, right?
    103:14
    They need to figure out a way to do that with the pinball machine. like that would be so huge and if they do i think that you know they might have lightning in a bottle because again at that point the the layout doesn't matter the art doesn't matter what matters is is can you build a team can you customize the team to have it be different enough and can your team can my team competing against your team for example you know get me those those feelings, right? And at that point, yeah, you know, fans will pay $7,000, $10,000, $13,000 for that privilege. As a collector's item, you know, obviously the LE is already, you know, being exploited. I'm sure that the pros and the premiums will be exploited. I'm surprised Stern didn't even go in a little bit heavier and have different Pokemon on each version. So you have to seek out the other games. Because like you've seen with Pokemon over the years, I mean, it's a 30-plus year old franchise. It started back in, you know, 96, 97. You know, Pokemon Go came out, and that was a national sensation. The games are huge. Honestly, the surrounding media doesn't seem to be as big of a deal as it once was. You know, you don't see Pokemon movies and whatnot have this often anymore, but there's been movies and cartoon series, the whole works. It's just shocking to me that pinball took this long to get on board. They even had a Pokemon pinball video version, didn't they?
    104:48
    Yeah. So that's kind of ironic. It was like kind of like a foreshadow. Well, I mean, it was 30 years ago. And you could put a little battery in the cartridge and it would rumble.
    105:01
    But yeah, Pokemon, I mean, Pokemon and pinball, you know, they've been hand in hand for a long time. So, yeah, it's one of those things where as a property, Pokemon is just custom made for this. But I think what they were really waiting for was they were waiting for the code to progress to the point where you were going to be able to do this aspect where you can use Insider Connected to try to collect all 180 Pokemon, I think, are going to be in the game initially. And that's so important because, again, that will keep people hooked. but it's not going to be enough just to say, oh, I've got 150 of 180. You're going to need a way to use that. Right, that's so true. And you know what? The interesting thing is I'm going to have my fourth grade classes go on a field trip to Comic Kingdom, and if everything works out, Cody should have a pro on location by mid-March, I'm hoping. Then that will be the ultimate test to see how fourth graders get attracted to this machine to see if they really like it for the theme or if they like the game. It'll be really interesting to see how many will be, like, waiting in line to play it or if they don't really care. So that's going to be the ultimate test. I'm excited to see that if that machine is there on time. Hopefully it is there.
    106:20
    Oh, they're all going to be buying the cards, man. Pokemon cards. I can't believe how popular Pokemon cards are to this day. Yep.
    106:30
    It's a craze, I'll tell you. It's pretty amazing. I know we're all looking forward to playing it It'll be fun It'll be a fun game but it won't be one that I don't Yeah But it will be like one of those It could be a surprise hit like Attack from Mars or Medieval Madness It's got the fan layout of course we always hear that But It might be fun I mean who knows I can't judge until I play There you go What would Pokemon have to do to sell you one? That's the question that's a mystery I don't know I guess the theme would not be enough for me to get it right it's got to be something in the gameplay right yeah it's got to be something in the gameplay yeah really really cool in the gameplay you know there's got to be a hook to that game that's beyond just okay well I got two flippers and I'm making shots because the funny thing was who was talking all this shit about it's going to be two ramps and a bash play is Don, right? Yeah. And the funny thing is, that's kind of what it is. I mean, yeah, there's a little bit more to it. You know, I know that Don's all gung-ho for it now that he's got a limited edition on the way. But the funny thing was, you know, he talked all this trash for months and months and months about it being, you know, two ramps and a bash toy, and that's pretty much what it is. But I think that simpler layout is going to service the fact that I think that the code is going to do a lot of things. And you don't want these specialized shots, you need them to be hittable so that, you know, when you're trying to either find Pokemon or catch Pokemon or battle Pokemon, that you can do a lot of things with the available eight or nine shots. Well, that's what you're saying is there's so many limited shots. There's not a lot of shots on that play field. So like you said, I don't know how, So what would be the replayability to really see it until you see how the code progresses? So it's not a many shots. It's only what? What did you say? How many was it again? Well, I'm just saying, like, assuming that, you know, there's an inner orbit, an outer orbit, you know, a ramp, a ramp, a captive ball, a scoop, you know, that collective of targets in the middle. And then I think you can shoot straight through, right? So, you know, there's only, you know, in most pinball machines, there's only like seven, eight shots. There's always like, you know, a JJP Harry Potter where somehow there's like 600 shots. But, you know, there's just, there's so much that you can do with those shots depending on how you highlight them, the mode that you're in, what the situation is. So the interesting thing is like, okay, now it's less about like we're going to make this game special with shots, which is, you know, kind of what I think Jack tried to do with X-Men, right? It's got a bunch of wild shots and a little danger room thing and with Foo Fighters. And now it's going to be much more about, okay, you've got kind of a standard array of shots.
    109:32
    What does each one do in the situation? And, of course, there's the one kind of clear capture shot, right, which is the Pokeball with the pop-up ramp or the up post that catches the ball so it gets staged and you can watch the animation. But, yeah, to me, I was, you know, watching the video of the game being played that the guy recorded at, was it the Stern Day or whatever he recorded it? I don't know. But it looked like a really, you know, straightforward, fast, flowy kind of game. You know, like zing, zing, zing, zing, zing. And I'm like, hey, that looks not too unfun to shoot. It looks basic, but it looks satisfying. It just looks like, yeah, it'll get old fast unless the code keeps you coming back. Medieval Madness, right, and Attack from Mars, they're very straightforward games. I've used these as the examples of the modern pinball machine a lot, right? They don't have really complicated mechanisms, even though medieval seems to, but they do a lot with their shots.
    110:34
    And, you know, Pokemon needs to do much more than medieval. or to me, like looking at the code initially, because it's Tamiyo, it looks very Deadpool-y, which I'm like, you know, you can't just have it be like, okay, I'm going to catch a Pokemon and I'm going to have a fight. It's like you got to bring more of the franchise into it because that's the way you're going to get these people excited. Yeah. And I mean, that's just all there is to it. You know, Pokemon people know what they like and they've liked it for years. So you're not trying to make a new recipe. you're trying to crack open the bottle of what they like and pour it on top of their product. Yeah, my daughter's boyfriend is huge into Pokemon, and it'll be interesting to see what his perspective is on it because he's a huge diehard fan. I mean, he collects cards like you'd not believe, and, yeah, he's real into it. So it'll be interesting to see what he thinks. But I'm excited. I mean, it's always fun to have a new pinball machine come out. There's going to be some bangers coming out in the next couple of months. We'll see what happens. Well, it's good timing as a franchise for Pokemon because the people who buy Pokemon, you know, started buying Pokemon in 1997 and have never stopped, and they're reaching their pinnacle of being able to buy stuff. It's not really for the guys who have been in pinball since the 90s. You know, they're in their 60s now because Pokemon was a thing that they know about. But maybe it wasn't their thing. Like, to me, I wouldn't say I grew up with Pokemon because I was an adult by the time it came out. But when I went into my career, when I was managing game stores and I was working in the industry, Pokemon was everywhere, right? Like, it was a big thing. It was a big release. It really mattered. You know, it'll never be a Legend of Zelda or a Super Mario Brothers or a Sonic the Hedgehog. Those are kind of the series of, you know, I'm like, oh, video games. But to a lot of people, Pokemon is video games. Yeah, absolutely. It just is.
    112:44
    And it's funny you say that because I think the most involvement I have with Pokemon is taking away Pokemon cards as a teacher.
    112:52
    And we're selling them on eBay, aren't you, Mark? That's how you retire. Well, I'm nice. I give them back. I wouldn't. What do you mean you have a show, Mike? Oh, Andy Charnard. I'll take that. That's only $2,000.
    113:09
    Yep. All right. So I think we're about ready to take the exit over to shout out some thank yous. Yeah.
    113:18
    Michelle, would you like to start? Oh, I don't know about this section. What are we shouting out and thanking? Okay. I'll do it. Whatever. You can thank your mom, thank the Academy for this award, you know, whatever you're feeling froggy about. Shout-out to, you know, your local place that you play. Shout-out to your family. Yeah, no, I'll definitely shout-out to the Reno pinball scene, Jim Martin, Ted at Elbow Room, Cody at Comic Kingdom, Mike LaFrieda has been doing a lot of tournaments, Jason with his Underground. I just appreciate having so many places and such welcoming places and such fun places. Because, you know, a lot of times when it's a weekend and I don't have anything else to do, I'm like, all right, let's go to Elbow Room. And sometimes I'll even not play pinball. Sometimes I'll watch the TV and drink a beer.
    114:12
    So it's nice to have a variety of places and good people. That's awesome. That was good. Mark? First and foremost, I want to shout out to all the women who want to give pinball a chance here in the Reno scene. Michelle you kind of started with the original three with Stacy and and Rhiannon and it's really great to see it I know there's a couple I'm trying to learn all the names but it's funny because I talk and go it's my first time and I go I'm just warning you and I'm just letting you know you're gonna be hooked and sure enough I think what is it Jackie what's her name who Michelle who's the that just started at Elbow Room?
    114:57
    Janet? Janet. Diane? Janet and Diane? Diane. Diane's a perfect example, right? She comes every week now. So I just want to give just a huge shout-out to all those women that give it a chance and continue growing the community here in Reno. I think it's awesome. And like you said, Michael LaFrieda, I have to give a huge shout-out to him. He's really been putting on a lot of work, putting on these tournaments in all these different locations. He's got other things up his sleeve in different locations in addition to Pinball Underground as he held them. And you too as well, Michelle, for running the women's tournaments. It's awesome to just keep that door open for people who have never heard of a tournament, who have never seen the pinball scene, and then all of a sudden here they are coming every week. And before you know it, they go to the national championship.
    115:50
    Yeah. Nice. Dan, what you got? Hey, you know, I just want to give a shout out to Michelle for coming on with us and telling us her story and really just being a huge, a huge asset to pinball up there in Reno. The whole Reno scene is awesome. I miss getting up there for work because I used to love to pop in there once a month or so and play some pinball with you guys. Hopefully I'll be able to do that again soon. And as always, you know, big, big thanks to my whole CCPL crew down here, to Rick who helps me run the Lodi League or co-runs the Lodi League with me these days mostly. I just kind of make him do the work. I just tuck in behind him. And, you know, of course, you know, huge thanks to my wife for tolerating all this bull crap and to you guys for swimming the seas with me.
    116:41
    Beautifully said, sir. Yeah, my shout-outs are to you guys and to Michelle. Thank you for coming on our show. Again, sharing your story, representing pinball in a wonderful way. And wish you all the best at nationals. And most important, go have fun and play pinball.
    116:59
    Thanks. Yeah. At the end of the day, man, it's just, you know, like we always say about this podcast, we'll stop doing it when we stop having fun because that's the only reason we do it. Well, and that's what I tell people about pinball. Like if it starts getting stressed out, if it starts making you mad and frustrated, take a break. If it's not bringing you happiness, why, you know, it's pinball. It shouldn't feel like a chore.
    117:24
    Yeah, yeah. It should just be, oh, this is fun. I did great tonight. Oh, I did terrible tonight. But I still had fun. Yeah, you still had fun. Exactly. And I want to always, as you know, shout out to, I haven't done it in a while, so I'm going to get back on the horse. Shout out to Project Pinball. For any of our listeners who don't know about Project Pinball, what they do is they put pinball machines in children's hospitals and, like, Ronald McDonald houses. And you can donate on their site. It's projectpinball.org if you want to send them a buck or two or five. Or you can spend a little more money, and they raffle off pinball machines. So for, like, not that much money, you can win a pinball machine. And if you don't win, you still win because you're putting a smile on a kid's face who could really use a smile. So to shout out to Project Pinball That's my shout outs and thank yous for the night I think that's everything We got anything else before we close it up?
    118:21
    Where can everybody find us? My basement in Casper, Wyoming Yes, thank you for asking Mark You can't find me there You already found us listening to us But there's other avenues to find out all the things we're doing That's right, our home, our flagship at SoundCloud. We're available on iTunes and I almost said Stitcher, but they're gone now. What's the other place that I just realized? Oh, you can still say it, Spencer. Nobody will mind. Yeah, people go to Stitcher like Stitcher. Spotify. They start with an S. So you can find us on Spotify and we're a fine podcaster or sold and available. You can reach us via email at thespinneriswit at gmail.com and you can also check out our Facebook page. Just go to Facebook and type in Spinner or Slit. So, from all of us to all of you. Michelle, do you know how we end every show?
    119:24
    I do not. Okay. Give me the quick overview. Badly. Badly, yes. Okay. So, when I was a kid, there was a local Northern California horror and science fiction fantasy show on Fridays or Saturday nights. They're there on two different stations. One in Sacramento, one in Oakland. And the host was Bob Wilkins. It was called Creature Features. And on the intermissions, commercial breaks, they'd have the station identification. It'd be a character of Bob Wilkins smoking his classic cigar with a monster, Godzilla or Dracula. You get the idea. And it'd always say, watch horror films keep America strong. So an homage to the late, great Bob Wilkins, we always end our show with play pinball, keep America strong. So I always say play pinball. And the boys always reply, keep America strong. But never in sync. There we go. Once in a while, we almost think about coming close. So we'll do that one more time together. You ready, Michelle? Okay. Play pinball. Keep America strong. Thank you.