uh hello and welcome to the wormhole my name is jamie birchall and you are listening to and are watching our podcast called wormhole pinball presents today i'm joined by don garrison of don's pinball podcast welcome to the wormhole virtually don how are you hey howdy hey everybody i'm fantastic what is it monday tuesday i don't even know sometime in the week and i'm in the game room at district don here and i'm happy to hang out so thanks for the invite i saw the unboxings last night and then we were here to about 11 30 last night we had a 3x and it went a little late it started at 6 30 and went to about 11 30 see that's where i'm fortunate my pinball ability being as low as it is i always like crash out early and then i can bail yeah no that's it i well my issue is i stream the damn thing so i start out i get three strikes after six rounds and then i gotta wait till oh man the semis anyway so i might as well try to play as good as i can so someday someday i'll be more in that world i'm getting better i am you know it just takes practice we have really good players that come to normal and i've been dead balancing i'm doing everything i can possibly but i'm still not good enough and the youth are kicking my ass but it is what it is no worries fun that's all that really matters so yeah i'm digging your spot i need to come check it out i saw with the uh the the labyrinth reveal trailer was filmed there right yeah we we filmed the labyrinth uh trailer here uh and then they filmed uh the what else did they film here the reveal and with erin winnick yeah yeah she she's fantastic and they found here so uh that was really cool um let's see so you started your podcast this year like on january second like 12 months ago yeah yeah so one year ago from today i was i was hemming and hawing should i shouldn't i people don't want to hear what i have to say dang it i deserve to be out there so i ordered some equipment and said heck it and went live yeah january 1 january 2 and i was trying to like i i went to your rss feeds and i was going to upload them in excel just to see how many hours you've done and then my he kicked in and i couldn't figure it out anymore so uh i never finished a spreadsheet, but you've put in a lot of hours here. And my question is, it's got to be because you have passion to do this, right? Because we're not making any money. Oh, man, there's nothing funner than some news drop in, you know, nap arcade comes out with something or, you know, I get, you know, consumed with, you know, some passionate release or something. And I'm like, well, I want to go down and talk about it. So it hasn't felt like work at all, really. It's just something fun to look forward to at the end of the day. But yeah, I've been recording 20 to 30 minute episodes two to three times a week since the first week of January. So I'm about, I just did episode 89 the other day. So I don't know what that math works out to, but yeah, holy crap. That's a lot of time in the basement. It's a lot of time and it's a lot of passion for what you do. I think that's really awesome. Sorry. Can you hear that beep? I do hear the beep. That's me fooling with the sound and I'll try to edit it out if I can. I love the beep. I want more beep. So I'm obsessed with the wormhole. true yeah well right like uh some of it's healthy some of it's not you know my wife's like you know we could put in a little more hours in the company this week uh and so i you know but my passion comes out just as like your passion comes out i think as so-called content creators we're just trying to show people how much we love pinball and that's it that is trailer you see that machine right there that is a playmatic trailer and it doesn't shut up so throughout the night throughout this podcast trailer we'll keep yelling it is from spain it's really rare but you can't throttle the trailer man let that jake break go i know it's really cool actually it is really cool um so your podcast has like a lot of musical drops where did that come from oh so well i have intro and outro music that i had made i went on fiverr hired some artists from around the world and uh they did some stuff for me and then i then i cross pass with some guy scott denisi i guess he does pinball audio um that guy so i paid him some money and he did another intro song for me which just blew my mind you know so i love doing that um otherwise i just found like you know open source sound effects i've been able to use i know a lot of people use licensed music um in their podcasts and for the most part i don't think i'd ever probably get big enough to get shut down uh but i'd hate to be you know slapped with some something later on so i try to find open source uh they hate to have that one podcast that blows up and then all of a sudden you can't do anything with it because it's like that's the one yeah yeah yeah so um yeah and i just record live i mix it all live so i've got you know all my sounds are on sound pads and i just hit record hit the button and as long as i don't mess it up but there really isn't much editing that needs to be done i edit a little bit because we take this and then i i drop it to the mp3 just like you do and i also drop it to video on demand on YouTube. It's not too bad. It's not really a cumbersome process. I'm sure the quality would be improved if I did a little more editing, to be honest. Talk me through your setup. Your microphone, everything that you bought there looks really great. I did a little bit of work before I launched it because I wanted to come out as best as I could, not stumbling. I was watching a lot of the YouTube videos. Here's how you do a podcast. Here's how you get an RSS feed. Here's the equipment we use. Here's how to use it. So I got a Rode pod mic set up. I've got the Rode Podcaster, the version one. There's a version two out that's got even more LEDs in it. And aside from that, I just upload on Spotify, copy the RSS, and then I registered it with every other podcast host I could find. And then it's just been kind of automatic since then. But yeah, I love how this amplifier makes my audio sound. I've got a Radio Man voice in my head on the microphones when I'm talking. And it's almost like I'm in that character, so I'm not even being myself. It's crazy. No, it's really good. You do a really good job, and I'm not just blowing smoke. It really is. You do a really good job. Appreciate it. Do you like the podcast or the live session more? Which one do you prefer? So I'm kind of split because they're both so different. I write myself a little show outline when I'm ready to go live. I hit record, and I've just got just brief little notes that I can expand upon. I was in speech and debate in high school and college, So like that's how I would do my extemporaneous oratories. Right. So I just kind of stuck with that same format. And then that gets everything flowing really well. And then but it is all just one sided. It's me talking into the microphone, you know, just out into the ether in front of me. The live streams are completely different. I mean, you know, jump in and they can jump in. They put comments up there and that really guides the discussion. And it's more of just an organic flowing river rather than just like the regimented. Here's the show you're getting today. But I like the interaction, too. That's fun. So I don't know which one I like better The lives allow you to do things like Giveaways right I wrote down a random number Whoever gets the banner, gets the translate, gets the t-shirt Gets the sticker package, gets whatever So that's fun for me And I get carried away picking two or three winners Every time I do a live stream It's fun though right It's fun, I dig it And companies make really cool products Whether it be mods Or lit frames for your translates the display and they're like, hey, Don, of course, mention I want to sell more of these. I'm like, okay, let's talk about a way I could get one maybe a little less than cost and in exchange I'll plug you and then we'll give it away to somebody. I don't have enough subscribers to cover these prizes myself, but I've evolved some good relationships with people that are putting things out there, whether they are banners or stickers or mods or something. We can give them out. That's fun. I'm doing that. That's awesome. How many are in your current collection? Pins? Let's see. Currently, I think with the two unboxing I just did, I think I'm back to eight. Happy to list them. They're my little babies. Yeah, please. I got Big Lebowski over there in the corner of the bar and it's fairly bolted to the ground. Got a Godzilla Premium that I've had for over a year now. Love it. Modded to heck. Next to that, what do I have over there next? Oh, I just got Stranger Things Premium in. I played it like three or four times last night. I can't wait to dig back into there. We've got Star Wars Premium, which I love Haters can keep on hating, man I love Star Wars Premium I've got Elvira Blood Red Kiss Edition in Which, oh my goodness Seeing it again in person is fantastic Scooby-Doo from Spooky And then Iron Maiden Premium over the corner And I've got an Ultra VP And on the way, hopefully in February I'll have a Looney Tunes and a TCM to join that So I have a little Spooky corner over there My Stern Row, my Dutch Bar It's going to be great That is fantastic I so we asked this question, you know, we were at a party this weekend. Somebody came up to us and said, what do you what's your favorite pinball machine? And we hemmed and hawed because it's kind of a loaded question, right? Yeah, we've gone through so many, especially with Tim and John have a collection of 200 machines. But I rephrase it. And I said, what pin are you playing nonstop right now? Like what's got your attention every night? I'm going to go play pinball. I'm going to throw a couple of games. which one has got your attention right now? For now, Lebowski, I think. Yeah. I'm riding that wave right now. Just about every night I come down and play it. What do you think about the new code update with that? When they added some of the new Market Zero guys and they added some of these characters that I don't even remember from. Okay, did I just completely miss a code update for Lebowski I'm not aware of yet? They were doing something. I think so. You might want to check it out because there's some new characters that I was looking around and I hadn't seen it before. I'll have to go check it out. I did get the unauthorized sound package upgrade for it, so I hope it doesn't run foul of that because having the full lyrics and instrumentals is awesome. But yeah, now I get that to go check out. Thanks. You're welcome. I hope I'm right and I hope I'm not just teasing you, Don, because that would be terrible. Now you're going to play a lot of Stranger Things, though. Yes. because that has what you would call the playability factor, right? It just, there's a lot of neat stuff. You know, even the little thing, the bullshit mode, it's fun as hell. And you only get it like one every 150 times you try. And almost exclusively on location, it's only the pro. I've only seen the premium a handful of times and I've wanted one. And I've been looking at those prices for the last two years and just like not able to dive in at like $14,000 for a year premium. And then the announcement that they were rerunning him again I couldn't wait So yeah I got the premium I ordered it Yesterday I drove to Chicago and picked it up Unboxed it last night And now it here And I could finally get into this game and get into these modes That a game Don't you think that they just – when it came out, people were like, ugh. Then the code updates kept coming. Right. And it just got better and better to now where it's just, yeah, is it Attack from Mars? Fine. Who cares? It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have fun every time. I put the ball to the Demogorgon's throat last night, and that's a great feeling. It's a great. Yeah. Come on. I really like it. You know, some of it's dark, like Where's Barb and some of the crazy modes, but it's really, it's a lot of fun. We had one here at the Wormhole, but Tim has it at his house right now. And when I asked him, what are you playing right now? He's like, I'm playing a lot of Stranger Things. Yeah. I got an audio upgrade kit ready to go into it. So I was going to be playing this game like by itself in the home with all the music and the lights. And I can't wait to actually finally experience what this game has in it. Where in Wisconsin are you? Right dead center, right along the river, about 90 minutes upriver from Madison. You've been all over the place, though, haven't you? All over the place. So I've got this roller coaster hobby as well. So that's taken us to every state, 20 countries. I've traveled the country. I've lived in five different parts of it. And so a couple years ago, this job opportunity opened up in the middle of Wisconsin, and I'm like, fantastic, back to the Midwest, cost of living is lower, food is decent, and I'm adjacent to Wisconsin Dells, so let's do it. And you're close to Spooky, which is kind of cool, right? Yeah, yeah. They're about three hours away. It's only about 80 miles, though, but just with constant records. Oh, with the roads, yeah. Yeah, but it was fun. You know, yeah, I could go down there when I needed to pick up a game. I could skip shipping, and I was graciously able to come down and play their two brand-new games two days after they were released. Let's talk about it because I like the looks of them, but I never played them. How are they? Right, yeah. So the short of it, they play great, and they're super fun, and they both play very, very differently. When they were announced, I was like, dang it. I'm still waiting on Labyrinth. Do I have money in the budget for another pin? I was thinking maybe I could wait and pick one up at a show or wait and see it by someone's deposit or something. And then the thing that was getting me with this one is I was actually interested in both themes. With Halloween Ultraman, Halloween was the one that I wanted. so I didn't have to worry about it. We got an Ultraman. That's funny. Yeah, I was like, which one do I need to get? But this one, I'm like, well, shoot. If I buy one, I'm always going to think I'm missing out on that other one, so then I can have none. Fine. And then I go down there in front of me, and they're both playing so well, and my wife is enamored with Looney Tunes, and TCM is just such an environment, such a vibe, to the point that I don't even think it feels like the same game at all. Oh, that's good, because Ultraman and Halloween are basically the same game, right? Yeah, so, I mean, they had the same coding team for both of them. So, essentially, like, let's, you know, copy-paste the basic gameplay points and put them in each one. You know, shoot this scoop three times, get a multiball. You know, this scoop is what starts the modes every time. But having two different teams was, like, the absolute best way to approach the dual-team thing. Because even the mechanisms, though they're similar, they're implemented differently throughout the gameplay. And they haven't been able to release gameplay of Looney Tunes yet because they're waiting for the ink to dry on the licensor agreement. But once you see how the modes that are structured in there are so much different than how they are in TCM. In Looney Tunes, when you start a mode, the cartoon starts playing and plays the entirety while you're playing that mode. That's great. So it's not just clip arts that are drug around and crude animations. I mean, they're the cartoon playing. And so I can't wait to dive more into that. The sound effects are different with each. The vibe is totally different. The way the skill shots work is different. I will say for the gameplay itself, I mean, the ramps, they're hittable. They're easy to hit. Nothing felt like it was rejecting or rattling. There was no Rick and Morty portal rattle going up there. And every shot feeds another flipper. So it's flowing back and forth the whole time. I was having fun and giggling playing both of them. A nice flowing game is fun to play. Yeah, for sure. And I know they're going to be there on the code. They say that the code is farthest along for any one of their launch titles before, I believe it, because they released six full cartoon modes that were already in Looney Tunes, and they already have more coming. And while I was there, they actually had another code drop for TCM that they put in. So, like, they're working on the code real time. And I know they're going to support it for years because they're still doing code updates for Ultraman, you know? Yeah. TCM scares me a little. I don't know if I want that in my house. So, it's, yeah, when I watched their featurette for that, I was really like, man, these guys made a pretty crushingly brutal game that might turn off some people. Playing it, though, I don't get that sense as brutal as they were making it sound. So, you know, I think we're going to know more once more people get to play it, because I just want to know, like, am I just in my own head with the thing and excited that it's brand new and I got to go play it? Or is it legitimately as good as it was? Nevertheless, I've got two preordered and I'm hoping to have them soon. That's awesome. Congrats, man. I can't wait. I did see that you did stream Jim Henson's Labyrinth. Yeah, that was a fun opportunity. I loved it. That was great. I mean, the barrels of fun guys are cool. yeah it was fun to step up to that game and it's another really well shooting game with a lot of hidden shots like I like that sense when I walk up to a game like Starship Troopers does this where I see a ramp and I'm like how the heck do I get the ball to whatever I need to do to get up there yeah and you know Labyrinth had a lot of that you know you know my ball would shoot around and follow a path and all of a sudden it would pop up somewhere else and I'm like okay mechanistically something cool is going on in there I'm a little biased with with obviously because it's Houston and I know everyone at Barrels of Fun. Yeah. But here's my testament to them, right? We had a party here this weekend. It was my Christmas party. We had about 50 people here and 40 of which are non-pinballers. They were playing Labyrinth all night long. So one in the morning, I couldn't even get on Labyrinth because they were playing it all night long. And I think that's a testament, right? People are coming in and they're saying, what is this game? Labyrinth? Oh my god, this is amazing and it just, we were hearing David Bowie rocking all night long Oh man, dance, magic dance dance, magic dance all night long Once the topper gets up there and is talking to you, come on man Oh, the topper We wanted the topper, but I know the person that designed the topper once that topper comes out, that's actually really cool I'm not really a topper guy I've become a topper guy Yeah A lot of money It is, it is So, yeah. You've been modding all your games and doing all these things. It's really for you, right? Right. It's your hobby and it's your... I want to play the full-featured game is what I want to do. I know that the Shaker code is in there, but you can only have it if you've got the motor. I put actual knockers in my games because I want them to startle people when I do well enough to get another game. So I like putting the plastics in there. and if a topper kind of comes from Stern, they're expensive though, so I don't fault anybody for not being in there. So the knockers are fun but I don't have a basement so when I'm playing I'm waking the whole house up when I'm playing Mandalorian with the shaker motor and everything, you know, it's just I'm scaring the hell out of the entire house Sure, yeah, shake the house I've got a full basement down here You can shake all you want, you're good to go down there you know you have to have it you have to be able to put it in roommate mode i guess if you know yeah texas doesn't have uh we don't have basements uh so we don't really not a lot of our there's all this Joshua Clay underneath so none of these i don't know if that's why pinball's so popular in chicago just because somebody everybody has a basement and a basement bar yeah here you do yeah uh where are you are you did you live in chicago for a while or no no i'm from a small coastal town in california called los angeles uh i was born and raised there and then up in Northern California. And then as part of a social experiment, I moved to West Virginia because I had friends out in the East Coast. I always wanted to live East as we called it. And I was close. I was able to drive to Dollywood to go on coasters. I go and drive out to Busch Gardens. It was great. And then I decided to pursue education as a hobby. And then that is that led to me living in, you know, Hershey, Pennsylvania, Northern Idaho. And then because I had the coaster hobby, I'd been through the upper Midwest and, you know, MSP, Chicago, the Wisconsin Dells. And then an opportunity showed up in middle wisconsin i'm like perfect we know that area um it's cool let's get up there we can kind of be chicago adjacent so that's kind of my story my wife's from chicago that's the reason i ask yeah my wife i was driving around yesterday and parts of it feel like rural orange county almost it does um only it's it's 19 degrees right now and windy so that you don't get in la but no thank you yeah uh you know that you love roller coasters i'm from i'm from uh new york in New Jersey. Do you ever heard of a place called Action Park? Absolutely. I went to Action Park. I grew up going to Action Park. There's a really good Netflix documentary called Class Action Park. Yeah, yeah. I know all about the looping water slide photo was notorious. The bobsled thing, you would just fall off your ass on that. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. It's really cool. Oh, man. Fracture factory. Have you played Elton John? Yes, sir. Yeah. Talk to me about Elton John because I want to play it. I want to see that light show. I love it. So it shoots great. It reminds me a lot of Star Trek for obvious reasons. Played it first at Expo. Played it again at Apple. Played it again at location at IO here. And, yeah, fun game. Lighting package is great. The mechanism with Elton is cool. I'm not sure about code-wise. Is it just a spectacle to play, like playing a jukebox full of lights, or is there an actual story and mode progression and things to get to? and I don't know if that's because the code's still early or I'm just not good enough to see all that but it is fun, it's fun to stack the Crocodile Rock multiball and the Rocketman multiball into the Crockett Rock or whatever they call it but the game looks great, the game shoots great and so the only decision I need to make, like is it worthwhile bringing it into the house, is how deep is that gameplay going to last and the price is still $12,000 and $15,000 and for that I've got to absolutely love the machine you know the playability factor right does it right you know can you keep playing it and uh or once it's done you're like yeah i mean when i listen to all you know 12 or whatever songs and i do the multiballs it's like okay is there many more there or is this more of an arcade machine you know right yeah so you know yeah godfather for me it's a location machine elton as well um and part of that you know is the price i mean if it was nine thousand dollars i'd have it and do projections on the ceiling and be Elton John partying all day. Right. Yeah, so you have to take that into consideration. And part of that is, you know, I know their build is probably high. I mean they Radcald the thing out It sparkly You know I sure the cost is high and probably support something close to that I don know if they could make that and be profitable at Probably not I not just saying they cash but that kind of my thoughts on the game. It plays well. I want to keep playing it on location for sure. I haven't seen it here yet. I haven't seen it down here yet. I didn't go to Expo. I've seen photos of them on the line, so I'm hoping that they're going to be showing up more soon. The one that's on location here has been a show game that Kingpin or Distributor has been touring around, so I don't think it's one of the production machines that's come out. So I think I'm hopeful that their production kicks up so locations start putting these out so people can play them. I was listening to you the other day, and you were talking about Galactic Tank Force. You were saying that it's weird. That was your phrase. And so we're getting Galactic Tank Force I think by Thursday or Friday of this week. the whole nine yards. Oh, man. All right. I want to play it again. And it is weird, but I want to give it another shot. What are your thoughts on that? So weird is good. It's an original theme. People put a lot of work into it. A lot of great video production and things went into this game. There's just some weird decisions that went into the whole project. And things like, where's this game even at? It was revealed in March, but it wasn't even really fully revealed. This is an original title with a strange theme, and it took until Christopher Franchi went on a podcast to actually explain months later what the story is before I finally understood what the heck was even going on. You know, you have space cows, you have some tank force. Am I the tank force? Am I fighting the tank force? Am I saving the cows? Am I collecting the cows? What's Sonya from Mortal Kombat doing? And then there was some frustration early on, and I don't know if this was a QC problem or a design problem, but I had balls that would jump off the wire forms and just roll right down the plastics and then Empress Anoya comes on there and yells at me for losing my balls and it's like, listen lady, I was doing well I was ripping that ramp you're the one that lost my ball so then I'm getting frustrated and I want to flip the table It was hitting a lot of glass It was banging a lot of glass and we'll see we're really excited about it I know it's one of the first of the LE type, whatever their LE. The tanks, yeah. And then where's the production at? Because this is a game that needed to be rolling out on location so people could get hands-on with it. And then Fix was just on a podcast saying that they're looking at hitting their goal of 300 machines a year, and that's got to be wrong. A company like that size should be doing 300 games a quarter at least. I would assume so, but... But it makes sense because I've not seen... I mean, I go to all the local arcades, and some of the ones in Madison, I mean, they drive a truck up to Stern as soon as something comes off the line and it's on their location, and they still don't have them. So there's got to be some kind of hiccup here somewhere. You know, this game needs to get out there and breathe, and it's just not doing it. We've had some issues shipping, and that's all I'll say. I don't want to disparage David and the crew. We had some issues shipping through our distributor, but I think it should be here in the next few days. But we've been hearing that for a few weeks. Yeah, I mean, I was in a warehouse yesterday, and I'm seeing rows of Cactus Canyon SEs with the toppers. I'm seeing Elvira, Stranger Things everywhere. I didn't see any GTFs sitting anywhere waiting to go out to customers. It's strange, and I don't know. I want them to be successful. I don't want to see any company go out. We need a successful American pinball just as well to the other ones to keep pushing everybody else in what they can do and their capabilities. So, right. Yeah, if I had a location, this is a game I'd want there. Because that's the thing. I think not everybody's jumping to put in their homes, so they would come and put $10 in a weekend playing it on location. Yeah. Have you toyed with buying and being an operator a little bit? A little bit, yeah. I've got a good friend of mine, and he operates District 1 here in Stevens Point. And he allowed me to put one of my games on location for a bit, so I had a Halloween that I routed for a few months to get a taste of that. and it's something that I totally would be open to. My wife especially, she would love to have, you know, one of those tiny arcades that's in a mall where there's just, you know, a bunch of games from Redemption Games and then a little snack counter. We don't really have a mall infrastructure in our little town here, but we have a lot of strip mall space. And so I was trying to think of some kind of, you know, hybrid, you know, ice cream bar, pin bar, little retro games that we could just operate for fun for the community. So it's something I'm definitely thinking about. And then John, who is one of the wormholers, he has been he's got, I think, four out right now. So he's pulling in. He's he's started. He's starting his, you know, out of different bars. And then we know a lot of guys here in Houston that have machines out and about and they're doing well. So it's the maintenance that would scare me. Right. Right. You know, because it's a balance. You know, you don't want to be the place that buys four Stern pros and they're not connected. and they're never updated and never really taken care of. You know, we don't take like pristine LEs with toppers and put them out in places where people are dumping pint glasses all over them either. Right. You know, but I think hitting that, you know, specialty curated collection in a nice either barcade situation or, you know, snack bar situation or family friendly forward place, I think there's room for that. I think people would appreciate it. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Jaws has to be great, right? Oh, yeah. So that was the thing, right? I've got some money squirreled away, which was going to be the Jaws money. And then here comes Spooky with their duo. They keep doing this to us. Yeah, yeah. So I cleared out Foo Fighters and Venom. And so, you know, I'm good there. But Jaws, I'm kind of thinking I may wait on a bit, which is crazy because this is like, you know, Elwynn, this is the goat. This is the game you need to buy, buy, buy as soon as you can. Right, right, right. But we're not two years ago when Godzilla came out and there was years long waiting lists because of production delays. You know, and you had to pay thousands over sticker in order to get one early to jump the line. The line's moving now. Actually, three lines are probably moving now at Stern. Jaws as a game is going to be in production for at least five years. And they're churning them out. They're going to be everywhere. Every arcade's going to have one. So it's kind of something I think I can, you know, I don't need to rush out and get the first run build of them, I think. And that'll allow my budget to recover a bit, you know, at least after tax season. I know John was thinking, I'm going to buy a pro right away and put that on location. Yeah. I think that's a great idea to do. Yeah, for location, I would be right there. Yeah, get that out. That's what people are going to want to come and play. And, yeah, I think it's going to be fine. I'm hoping that, you know, because it's Elwynn, they're not going to have a pro that's as stripped down as the Venom pro was. You know, I actually grew to really appreciate my Venom premium that I had. And then playing the pro in location, I almost don't even want to do it just because there's so much that's missing. So, you know, if we get a really good shooting pro that has even more fun, game slowing down mechs for the premium in LE, I think it's probably what we're going to see. I haven't put a lot of time in on Venom. And I love Mark Mark Tremonti. And I love that dude. We hosted him here, and I got to hang with him in the band. That's awesome. One of my best nights of my life. Totally awesome. We had Mammoth, Wolfgang Van Halen's birthday party here. Oh, nice. Venom was a game that was perfect for home because I could play it 500 times in three months level up several times beat it several times, unlock the characters and really kind of explore that aspect of it when it's just quarters it's going to take you a while to get to the max level or something so for me that was fun to go down every night I was playing Venom just repeatedly, just leveling up learning the shots, getting them dialed it was a fun experience but it would be harder to do that on a location unless it was a free play arcade. Last question about upcoming games. Sure. I know everyone's talking about potentially Back to the Future. That sounds pretty cool. Oh, man. Yeah. If Dutch is doing it. So having a Lebowski and being able to open it up and look at how they built that cabinet, it's got to be 7-8 inch plywood. I mean, the thing is thick and rigid, and a lot of money went into that. This thing is like expensive cabinet quality with what they put together. So if they take that same build quality and put it to a license like Back to the Future and just manage to grab assets, this is going to be another Lebowski for the next 10 years. Back to Lebowski. We have one here, and we play it in the tournaments. And I'll tell you, people love it. It's interesting how people don't know it, right? So they don't really know what they should be doing. Should they go for the dude multiball? Should they go for the characters? Should they go for the rug? whatever they should do. But, you know, we're starting to see 15, 20 million in tournament play. Nice. And we've got all the rubbers off, and it's really, we made it as difficult as possible. And everyone loves that machine that's coming through here. Yeah, I love how. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. Yeah, I like how you can stack the characters too. You know, like you hit each character a certain amount of times, and then the saucer to start a multiball. But even once you start one character's multiball, then you can still collect the other ones and start them while you're in the same one. So once you get the ball rolling, it's easier to get to those upper millions with scores because it just kind of feeds itself in that way. And then, you know, a rug mode unlocks, and then you're bashing the car, and you're going bowling, and come on. We did the unboxing when it came in, and the fact that it came with a rug is just the coolest thing. It's just a really nice touch from that. Yeah, love it. Yeah, yeah. It's really cool. Yeah, I put it in its own spot just so it can be on the hardwood floor for that carpet, it and it's right by the bar and just fits i love it yeah that's gonna be there we're supposed to see a topper from leor soon here okay so you know you're you know i'm just the topper community we have some good friends that have a really great collection and they are topper crazy yeah they mods and toppers and and all that stuff you know if it's like your game and you want to have it at home you want to celebrate it you know you want to hang the banner on the wall it speaks to that you know yeah arcade operator with 200 games you'll go broke buying toppers tim is very kind with his collection he lets me house a few games and uh usually one at a time and what i do is when he houses when i house a game for him i always add something i try to add something like when i had stranger things i found the the dice uh shooter rod shooter rod yeah okay Just to give something to him for letting me have it for six months or three months It all a dude Yeah But I not going to put a topper on it I mean I not going to That like borrowing your friend car and returning it full of gas You know, you got to return a full gas, you know, a nice, you know, clean. That's awesome. Yeah. So talk to me about some of the expos that you go to. You go to the Chicago Expo, right? Chicago Expo, man. I'm running nonstop. What a blast that was. Yeah. Yeah. Just seeing everybody. I was doing giveaways. I had some T-shirts and things and little gift bags. And I just announced that, you know, if you come up to me and you say whirlwind, that was the phrase that would win that time. You got one of them. And so people are coming up constantly finding me, telling me that, getting a selfie, getting a free T-shirt. That was awesome. Plus, there's so many new games there to play, too. Right. You know, Elton was there. But the people were great, too. You know, hanging out with the Spooky crew. They really helped me out there. I did a couple of raffle giveaways. Did one with Spooky. Did one with Pinball Brothers. so I got to do some interviews it was just a great time what a fun expo that was do you see 2024 what expos do you think you want to get to do you want to get down to Texas Pinball in March so yeah, yeah, TPF for sure I've got the hotel booked I will be there and we're streaming the tournament so we'll be streaming the Wizards and the Classics and then the Women's Championships awesome, I'll swing by and get on the mic with me and I'd love to have you on there that would be fantastic You have time whenever you can. That's going to be great. Penciling in, what's the one in Georgia? Southern Fried Gaming. Yes. Yeah, I want to check that out this year. I missed it because it worked last year, so I want to do that. Expo again for sure, and probably Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee. It's going to be in April this year. Got to make sure it times out with the eclipse because I don't want to miss that. But, yeah. No, we've rented this RV, and we're going to this field, and it's going to be awesome. I haven't heard of me talking about it yet, but I went to the eclipse in North Carolina a few years ago, like 2017 or something. Blew my mind, and I couldn't wait for the next one. So, yeah, we'll be doing this one for sure. You like roller coasters. I geek out on space. Oh, yeah. I geek out on space. Yeah. I can't help it. My mother, when I moved to Florida, and she'd wake me up in the middle of the night at 20 years old just to see the nighttime launches of the shuttle and stuff. I don't know. I geek on that stuff. That's awesome. Let me ask you a question about TPF and This Week in Pinball and the Twippies. Nothing controversial because we steer clear of all that. But they recently canceled the live show, and that's really too bad because that was a really good show. I mean, the production, pregame show, Rebecca Solem did a really good job. For a pinball award show, I thought it was really great. Why do you think they canceled that? Do you have any inside knowledge of that? So I don't know. They're trying to kind of remove some toxic elements within the community. The reason being which a group of people will not like one other guy, and they may say, okay, well, if he's involved, we don't want to be involved. And then all of a sudden the award show has got to choose between do we kind of just leave it open to everybody and risk like 40% of the community not being associated with it? What decision kind of do we make? I don't know what the right decision to make is. um but yeah we know what they did they just kind of like threw the whole bathtub out they sure did and now then they dragged it back but it's on the back porch so i don't know man i always i was wondering like i want to interview them but i don't want to talk about canada or anybody yeah i i interviewed canada we had a good interview and he's been very kind to the wormhole but i you know we're switzerland here all we care about is just people come to wormhole enjoy it and and leave and we have a strict no jerk Ryan Policky here so yeah yeah i mean And, yeah, that's a good place to be. You know, I always wonder if they did, like, a positive T-chart. Like, they, you know, I was like, does it cost money to do the room? Do they have to fly the hosts in? Do they, you know, these are the questions that my business. Oh, sure, yeah. Pragmatic questions about it, yeah. Yeah, and then what's going on with that space now that they're not using it? A hard ticket party event and just all get together and have fun anyway, you know. I'd love to have a tournament in that room. because they stick us all the way up top, and I have to take all these rigs, all my rigs and stuff up there. And if they're not using the – hey, Twippies, if you're not using that room, can we use it for the Texas Pinball Festival? Maybe they can sublet or something. That's external, but that would be awesome over there. Yeah, I voted on the Twippies last year, and then I think I was going to be actually in one of the categories this year, so I was looking forward to it. Now, I don't have any control over what they're doing, so I'm trying not to get all terribly emotionally upset over it you know it is what it is I just you know I wish we could all just get along you know we're it is what it is we'll get through but you know I'm looking at it a pragmatic approach like hey you know was it just too much work is it just too much volunteer time did you guys get money you know it's gotta be a ton of time right And they're just doing a T-chart going, forget it. This is not worth it, right? You know, I wonder maybe they got pressure from some of the manufacturers like, hey, guys, you know, bad press. We don't want a part. Who the hell knows? I would just want to know. Maybe from the ashes of this, a phoenix of some sort of industry award can congeal together. Well, I think the pinball, what is it? I know Canada's doing the pinball people's choice awards, and I think I'm going to win that. Yeah. We're going to win that wormhole because we voted a lot. So who the hell knows? Yeah. Thank you, man. I just wanted to win something. I was just like, hey, that'd be fun, right? Yeah. Every time I get an email from somebody that's like, I really like what you do. Can you send me a t-shirt? What's your Venmo? Or just kind words probably means the most to me. Somebody took time out of their day to say, I'm just going to go to Don's Vemo Podcast gmail.com send him a message and let him know or drop a comment or something or join the patreon for five bucks you know just to give you some money to go play godfather or something um you know i that's that's all the feedback i really need yeah do you have like a favorite podcast that you did or a favorite uh live session that you did where you ended and you went man we're i'm on to something something this is really growing people are giving me really good feedback? I mean, probably the first time I had 10 people show up, you know, with comments, um, and whatever Brian cause comes in and put stars out there. I'm like, you know, maybe this is something I started with, with, with no expectation that I would have even one listener. I was just putting things out to the ether and let's see what happened. I didn't go and recruit on pin side or anything. I'm still don't really have a huge pin side presence. Um, but people have found their way to me. Um, you know, and that's awesome. I'll tell you what, um, you know, when I'm starting to read through articles about pinball and things and pinball websites and then all of a sudden i'm mentioned yeah that's a weird thing right imagine reading nintendo power when you were a kid and there's an article about mega man and then they're talking about oh hey yeah little donnie did well and then beat fireman or something and it's like my magazine is talking about me so you know i was at uh houston arcade expo and i'm walking and i'm playing labyrinth uh at the houston arcade expo and I hear next to me that someone was whispering, they said, hey, those guys recognize you and they want to say hello to you. And I was like, who the hell am I? Come say hello. Right? Yes. Yeah. Come and say hi. I just like putting out content and being a brand ambassador for Wormhole. This is fun. This is a ball, man. This is supposed to be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Let's come be celebrated. So, yeah, exactly like that energy. I love it. But you really can, again, you really can see the passion of what you do, and I really appreciate your time today. So just to update real quick what we're doing in Houston, we've got the Wormhole. We've got 173 pins of Tim and another 50 with John, and we're building a museum. So the museum will be done in about 2025. They bought a building downtown, and they're renovating it to an absolutely beautiful pinball museum that will be open to the public, and that's a 2025 start date, if you will, and I'd love to invite you to that grand opening. I'm there. I'm so there. Man, the amount of crazy pins. One of my favorite things that Nat posts are rare pins. Right. I always IM and go, we got one of those. Yeah. We got one of those. We got Andromeda right there. We got one of these. So I think Tim's passion and John's passion is to open up this museum to show their passion for pinball, and I can't wait for people to see it. So I would love for you to come down for that. That would just be awesome. And we've got to hang out at Tech's Pinball Festival in March. Yeah, Houston's shaving up to be quite the pinball city now. I think that's our goal, right? We want to be on the map with what D82 is doing and what Never Train is in Southern California and these great places, Free Play Florida, all these great places across the United States. And we just want to be on the map and go from there. Yeah, I love Houston. Been visiting since Astroworld. Really? Yeah. So cool. Awesome. All right, Don. Thank you so much. Don, thank you for coming to meet me. This has really been amazing. again, please visit Don Pinball Podcast on Facebook and see his VODs on YouTube. You've been putting those on YouTube a little bit? Yeah, yeah. So follow the Facebook for sure because that's where most of the lives go. That's where a lot of the giveaways happen. And also, yeah, I've been doing more content on YouTube as time allows. I want to build that up more and get back into some streaming. You can email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com and just follow. That's how I got in touch with him. And then, of course, his podcast is everywhere. Yeah, everywhere that you can download podcast media from. You can follow the Wormhole on all the socials as well as our Twitch channel where we stream tournaments and game streams. And all our videos are up on YouTube and Donovan's awesome shorts and all that great stuff. And if you want to reach out to us, we're at wormholepinball.gmail.com. Pretty easy. Hey, this has been great, man. Thank you so much. That's too bad. What about 35 minutes? Not too bad. I can't wait to come back, yeah. Yeah, that was easy. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you man thank you so much you have a great day and keep doing what you're doing man don't let the haters anyone bother you at all I love what you're doing I'm going to keep it up man no signs of slowing down no keep going keep going to the moon alright Don thanks man later