For those that don't know what's happening right now, if you're not watching this on YouTube, behind Bob right now is, it's literally just a bunch of video games behind him. And I mistakenly thought it was books. When I first got on, I was just like, wow, Bob, you have a lot of books behind you. and he just lost it. So, yeah, there's, right here is, like, PlayStation 1, big box, Lycan games, Sega Master System for all the kids whose parents hated them and didn't buy them a Nintendo in the 80s. And then there's a bunch of other crap that you can't see. Gosh, okay, so do you have any pinball machines, at least? Yeah, they're all buried under arcade boards and have various issues. But, yeah, I've got a getaway, which has never actually been in my physical possession because it's in my friend's parents' basement and went through a window into their basement. So it's never exactly been a priority to get it back out of the window. And then here I have a roller games, an earth shaker, a diner, and a whirlwind. And the whirlwind, actually, I bought off eBay, right? So this is college, like 2001. I was making like $7 an hour, right? And I saved up all this money because all I used to do is like I'd lift weights and play soccer and be like a cheapskate and basically like use the campus meal plan, even though I went to college here in St. Louis and my parents live here, obviously. but um i see like ebay whirlwind and it's st louis and uh i've been saving up money because i i had this idea i was like well like why can't i own a pinball machine you know and uh that was one i i played a lot back in the day and uh so it's like 1200 bucks which back at that time was like oh like you you probably overpaid right and so i win it because i'm like oh well whatever i i don't have to uh i don't have to ship it right right so uh i'm the only person who bids on it i win it and the guy's like i like i emailed the dude and he's like uh where do you live and i was like i live in south county and he's like oh i do too it turns out we live like basically like a mile and a half away and at the time the guy was doing container re-imports and he had like uh he had this pretty big house but with like a like probably like a four or five car like detached garage and he just had like a bunch of machines in there that he'd restore and uh that that's how i got my first machine gosh and so you seem to really like system 11s then yeah that that's mainly like uh you know i'm about to be 40 here in february so like when i'm like you know growing up like that's predominantly what there was and right i mean like i've come around on gottlieb now but at the time in like data yeast but well maybe not so much data yeast but at the time like i mean i just thought like williams pretty much blew everybody out and like that that's all you saw on location so like the first three that i really really really learned on were uh police force taxi and black knight 2000 nice so police force i'm assuming you just went ramp all day right pretty much so uh i i didn't actually like the game but it has that like award on the back where you could win like five free credits so being like a little knucklehead i would play that just in the hope that i could get five free games hey that's the way to do it and that that kind of segues into how i got into pinball so uh my mom bowled at uh the bowling alley down the street here uh show me lanes for any st louis people who probably aren't watching but um they had a gauntlet in there gauntlet by atari which is funny being an adult and looking up about like gauntlet basically there's no end is basically like you might as well like light money on fire so i would like my mom would give me like five bucks which is you know back in the day i'm trying to think like it might have just switched like 50 cents for pinball but you know like video games for like a quarter so i'd go play like the hell out of gauntlet and then go bug her for more money and she'd be like no that's all that's all i got you got to sit here and watch me play or watch me bowl which i didn't want to do you didn't watch mama bowl what you didn't want to watch mama bowl no i didn't want to watch her bowl so i used to get lectured that i needed to play pinball because i could match or win a free game and i remember like i guess i was about i don't know like seven or eight and i won my first free game on taxi and I was like oh like okay and then like that that's what started it all and so that really just like clued you in like this is this is what I need to play in the future so instead of going bowling because it's it's funny you mentioned bowling because I've noticed there's a lot of people that are in pinball that for whatever reason are into bowling too well well there's another component to it it was either like you come bowling with me you get five bucks and we'll go out to like McDonald's afterwards or it was I get a babysitter and you have to stay at home so basically it was like uh the the fight or flight of like well I don't want to watch bowling and the arcade's cool so I have to get good at pinball because then I can stay in the arcade see that's the way to do it that's a good reason right there that's hilarious so is that so how long ago was that that had to be what mid 80s late 80s like probably like uh my dating you like way too far it would probably be late 80s right yeah it was like later 80s i mean i can remember playing pinball like with my parents when like high speed first came out and like my dad was huge into cars so he thought like high speed was like the coolest thing ever and uh i mean that they like they played pinball you know i mean my parents i mean my dad's not around anymore obviously but like my mom's 65 and like that was just something you did was play pinball so like growing up i mean we would like go to arcades and stuff and play but and but they always played pinball because they always told me like i guess you know they were around before video games hit it big as far as like the arcade games go and they just always view those as a waste of money which now being like a massive arcade collector i always tell people the like the ultimate flaw of arcade games is like uh what i call like the the restart or reset syndrome like there's certain points where if you don't play it perfectly like you might as well just turn the game off whereas pinball is like well just suck it up you got to keep playing you know yeah at least for the most part i know some of you out there watching and listening you guys are probably the restarters in pinball. And we're not going to look down on you. Well, if you're like me and mainly play on location, you don't restart. But, yeah, at home, I know guys who do that constantly. Oh, yeah, and they get high scores every game. Every game they complete, it's a high score. That's the way it goes. All right, so you were telling me also about your genesis of pinball. There's another story after this, correct? Yes, there definitely is. So fast forward on, like later on, the arcade in the bowling alley expands. Well, it moves. They turn the old arcade into an office, and then they moved it down next to the snack bar. So, like, right inside the door you had, like, I think it was, like, about five pins, one of which was Whirlwind, and I think they had, like, an Addams Family. And I can't really remember what else there was. I know they had a Gilligan's Island for a while just because, like, still to this day, I don't really care for Gilligan's Island. Of course, it's a location crusher. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, let's put it this way. One day they were going to take out Whirlwind for Gilligan's Island. I legit told the operator, I go, just put that back in the truck. I was like, don't take Whirlwind out. And the guy's like, oh, I just throw whatever in. He goes, if you like Whirlwind, I'll just leave it in. I was like, yeah, yeah, don't take that out. Oh, I was about to say that. That would be a terrible trade. So anyway, like there was like, if you walked in the bar or walked in the bowling alley, like right to your right would have been the arcade with like a line of games, like pinball machines against the wall. And then the snack bar was kind of like an L shape. So you could order from the regular area, like bowling out area or the snack bar. So, uh, these two guys would come in and I don't know what they delivered to the bowling alley, probably food or whatever, but they would come in, um, while I was there and they would play pinball and order food and so like they were always in there like probably around like my mom bowled between like nine and like one so they would always be in there around like say 11 30 to one well uh fast forward to one day my mom goes hey come here look at this look at this on the news and uh some dude had like climbed up the arch with like suction cups on like his knees and on like his forearms like like pseudo spider-man right which and we're talking about the st louis arch yeah which if you like so me being the quintessential like uh you know debbie downer on certain things i've actually never been in the arch but uh if you stand right next to the arch it's basically just like stainless steel like nothing about this says like you would be confident in thinking that suction cups are going to hold to this thing much less go up like 650 feet in the air doing this right right so uh i looked it up today on wikipedia just to confirm that like this isn't you know like a bunch of memories melting together but anyway this dude climbs up gets up to the top jumps off with the parachute and two and like he has a getaway car waiting and two guys filming well the two guys who were filming who got caught were the two guys who would be in there playing pinball when i was at the bowling alley of course i remember my mom goes look at this look at this and i go oh yeah i know those guys and she goes how do you know those guys let's go they're they're always in there playing pinball right next to me oh and you're bowling oh my god and then your mom was like where am i leaving little bob around like who am i leaving them around right now that's right you meet all all kinds of people and i think the one guy even has like federal offenses against them for it because that's what it said on wikipedia today so some real winners at the bowling alley there's definitely a lot of characters in pinball too that is for sure okay so one of the last times bob the last time that i actually got to see you in person just because of all this covid stuff was actually back in january which i believe is what like 11 months ago now pretty much or right at it it it legit it feels like uh almost like a decade ago but yeah january at indisc yeah and you freaking at the classics you tore it up or at least the target match play you were on freaking fire target match play is probably some of the worst I've ever felt in my life while playing pinball because um I know I've told you this story so like uh I forget where I connected I think might have been like Dallas or something but um I get on the plane and this lady got like there's I think like half the plane was empty and she goes oh can can I sit down the row from you and I always sit on the aisle because I'm a bigger guy I'm like oh yeah sure no problem well on the planes where the uh the luggage flips up like you can stand up from the aisle and not hit the overhead well on the planes where it folds down and you know they always have the the fold down down uh when everyone's getting on yeah that's definitely like directly over your head so I stood up and hit that thing like insanely hard so fast forward to the next day is that target match play and uh i felt like lightning bolts were going through my head like the entire time but uh i remember i was like well whatever like you're here like if you feel bad like just drop out like who cares and i remember i played one warm-up game and i think it was like bronco and i think i rolled it twice and i remember thinking like all right game on like let's go you know yeah i remember it was like pretty much miserable the entire time and I don't know I was in the lead for most of it and then pretty I don't know I mean it's the nature of classics like I was really hot at the beginning and then everyone else kind of caught up you know I had a few games that I took zeros on like when it actually mattered but yeah looking back on it was like well I'm sure there's guys who are way better than me who you know had worse luck I mean that that's kind of the nature of some of classics but let's face facts though you were absolutely crushing that day and for those that are listening this was this was a legit at the beginning of the day when we first met up you told me the exact story and you you were clearly you clearly had a headache and you were talking about possibly dropping out and i was like well just just try it just see you know the worst that could happen is you just get a seizure and you just fall down and we'll just pick you back up it's fine you made it all the way out get me going yeah i was like you made it all the way here we got to play we got to play and then immediately you're right you played it was bronco and you did roll it and you were just a couple of times you were just on fire and you were just like i got this i'm like okay we're good and then i checked up on you a couple rounds later and you were just i mean literally that you coined the term ride the lightning and you did that whole time it was amazing it was funny in that first half of that tournament when i played bad i won and when i played good i still like just crushed it because i went like you could go back and look at some of the scores and like the very first game i remember is uh incredible hulk which i don't really know that well at all i think it's just like let's get down the drop targets to build the bonus a bunch on the right and i look back and like i think my score was like number one overall for the whole tournament on it i just remember thinking like oh okay like whatever but then there was like a game of like space shuttle where i think i came in first with like 130 000 so you gotta get lucky sometimes that's just how it rolls yeah i mean that's what i mean in classics you know there's some luck to it but then there was uh i remember you remember excalibur that upper flipper broke and i was pretty much like i think i would have had like 27 points so i was a win away from winning it and the upper flipper breaks and we get put back on uh space shuttle again and of course i take a zero to go down to 24 i remember that because that was uh i think derrick price was in your group and i forget the other two i was there in your group um nick de stefano right and uh geez i feel bad i can't remember who the fourth person was there was so much going on i just remember i was on a facetime with dom and we were talking about your game and all that and i was like yeah bob's in the zone bob's in the zone i was like oh shit whole pin it's malfunctioning now and i'm like i'm like crap what do we do now and dom's like just tell bob to stay in the zone i'm like i can't because they're already on this game and then he just did a house ball and i'm like i don't even know what to say to him right now because that was such a bad break it really was part of the problem was the spinner on a space shuttle i don't think was registering yeah i Outbursts were like barely strong enough to make the center ramp. Yep, I remember that. So basically I was like, well, if the spinner ain't working, I got to hit the center ramp and I could never find it. But then I remember the next game was Fireball 2, and I think like the first two balls I had like, I think it was like 30 or 40,000. And I remember like, I don't really have outbursts when I play, even though I seem talkative here. especially when I'm like around like more national people right I don't really say a whole lot or get too mad but uh I remember just like at one after ball two I was just like I shouldn even be playing this I was so pissed And I remember the last ball I went into like street fight mode I think on that ball alone, I put 1.1 million on fireball two. And I don't fully, I really don't even know what the hell I'm doing on that. I was basically like, okay, it's an older game. Like we're just going to wear out these drop targets. and it has those like that striker thing in the middle that you can build up yep and uh basically i think when i drained i had like seven or eight of those like left over which are worth like forget i think they might be worth like 10 000 for leftover but um like you know i came back i roared back on that and then the last game was volton which uh derrick price beat me by like less than 5,000 might've been 3,000. And so me and Derek tied for third. And, uh, I mean, you know, it averages out, I figure over a tournament like that. So when I looked at that before I came out there, I looked at the list of people at work. Yeah. I remember thinking like, man, I don't even know if I should be playing in this, you know, like, like look at this list of people, you know, I was about to say you, you did really well because yeah, that tournament was definitely a who's who i mean basically everybody that was at end disc pretty much all the heavy hitters were over there playing the target match play too it was like it was a couple of heavy hitters that decided to stay out or they just didn't make it in time and then little old me just chilling out in the main area just trying to play over there that's what it amounted to well i remember at one point like is like me uh i think jason wardrick uh jim Belzito and Josh Sharp playing in the top group and I just remember thinking like uh you know which one of these is not like the other what were you guys playing was it mystic or um we played uh X's and O's that's what it was yeah funny enough uh bowling alley story and I posted this on Facebook a little while back there is an X's and O's in the background of like my I think it's like my sixth birthday party because it's like people from kindergarten in there and i just had to laugh like when i saw it saw it in there then you're then you travel all the way to california and you play it against the top players in the world and you hold your own though when i posted it someone said something i was like oh i just play that out in california for basically like a thousand bucks you know if i would have won it or whatever well they're like that's weird one of the things with you though is that you are it's funny because you have like this i've watched you play enough that you have this hybrid style that it's almost like the slower you play the the worse off you are but once you completely once you get into a rhythm though it's like that ball refuses to drain it's the damnedest thing i've ever seen it's amazing and you do this on classics too correct oh yeah classics so what what kind of like got me figured out on classics is um so way way before i even played tournament pinball you know like i was still involved in the sense like i was still clued in enough to kind of keep up with it but um i went out to vegas for a series of concerts it was matador records 21st birthday party so it was like three days of all the bands on their record label not on their record label but say bands that had released the record on their label and uh they had three days at the palms so i go out to vegas i have six days and uh three of those days i spent at pinball hall of fame and uh i always say i hazed myself with pinball because one day i literally started on one side of the building and was like all right you're playing one game of every single machine in here till you get to the other side oh god That completely sucked, but I did it. So anyway, I was trying to play these classics, real exact some of them. Right. And I realized that some of them, it's more about keeping the ball going fast and up top than it is precision. So there's a certain realm where it's like, if you try and play them too cutesy, I don't think it helps as much. Plus, it kind of comes back to something I had in soccer. Like, when I played a lot of soccer, guys would go, like, you know when you show up mad? And, like, I can just tell you're stressed. Like, you play amazing. They're like, it's because you're not thinking. And that kind of comes back to, like, so I've only played one Pimberg. And Pimberg was the story of if I tried to play exactly how you're supposed to play under control, oh, I sucked. But if I just played it wide open, man, I was, like, locked in cruise control. so i try not to uh overthink it too much you know well that just means you figured out your style you know what i mean you got it all figured out no so my style comes from you know i didn't even know tournament stuff existed until like well i knew that it existed but it wasn't on my radar until like uh you know maybe four years ago and so all that mattered to me was like oh how do i get an extra ball how do i start multi-ball what's the score i gotta get to keep playing right i mean i don't know i would just kind of go around and play pretty loose right so what did your uh what was your first tournament then first tournament ever was a california extreme 2016 and i what so whole reason i ever went to that is my buddy dave who won't watch this so he doesn't care that i'm naming him we're gonna tell dave to watch this yes he saw like some clickbait article it was like uh i don't even know if it's about video games but it mentioned california extreme it was like oh this is really cool you know like they have all this super rare stuff he's like why haven't we ever gone to this and i was just like well i just figured no one else really cared so like i'm not gonna be like hey guys let's fly out there for this you know because i figured everyone's like whatever yeah so uh he's like well you want to go and i was like yeah and so at this time you know I'd have my current job and as I say I went from paycheck to paycheck to no longer paycheck to paycheck so it was like okay I can do this whatever and uh I remember I buy a ticket and time goes by and I can tell like he's not gonna go but um I knew enough people out there from buying and selling arcade stuff I was like well whatever I probably know like 10 people so whatever i'll still go and like around this time my job had just acquired a much larger company so the uh the merger was a complete mess and i was like whatever like i'm gonna go to this who cares yeah and so i roll out there and i remember like that year i walk in and like all it is is like dance dance revolution like pump it up like whatever rhythm or like dance games you can think of right like crank to the roof which if you go to a lot of these shows like typically it becomes like a volume fest like who can turn their machine up louder than the next guy and oh yeah it's not really like people are trying to do it it's just more factor of like all the noise inside the place but um i walk in and it's like it was like tinnitus level you know like concert volume in there and i'm just like man i gotta get out of here right so uh i remember seeing on the map which if you've ever been in California extreme, the tournament isn't in the main area. It's like you go to the lobby, go up an escalator and it's in like a ballroom where you might have like a meeting or something. So I walk in and, uh, I think it was Greg DeFeo who I literally, I didn't know who anybody was at the time other than like, I'd seen Bowen on like YouTube videos enough to go like, Oh, that like, that's the guy from YouTube. I didn't know his name. That's him. Look at him. So, I walk in and I asked the dude, I'm like, yeah, like, how does this work? And he's like, oh, well, you know, you get 20 credits across any five machines here, you know, your, your top highest score on any five builds up your qualifying score. So, you know, like there's a max of 500, say, you know, first place gets a hundred, say 20th place gets 80. So if you score 80 on all of them, you get like 400. I'm like, okay, cool. So I see a whirlwind in there and I'm like, all right, well, I've owned a Whirlwind since 2001. Like, we got this one locked down. So I'm like, all right, I'll play. And the guy's like, oh, like, you're going to play? And, like, I think it was about, like, 2 p.m., right? Right. Which I didn't even know, like, there was qualifying on Friday. Right. So I remember I walk in, and, like, the first game, I'm, like, I'm chimping. Like, I'm just flipping like an idiot on Whirlwind. And I remember thinking, like, what the hell are you doing? Like, no one's standing over your shoulder. like just play like you're playing in the basement so like i think the next game i i played whirlwind again and i think i had like 14 or i think it was 14 million which was good enough for like i don't know i think like top 10 and i think like 170 people played and uh i'm trying to think what else i played there i think it was like beat time um attack from attack from mars I think was there that year, right? Well, we'll get to Attack from the Borders.