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Doug Smith - Cool Toy - Episode 52

JBS Show·podcast_episode·56m 40s·analyzed·Jan 24, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Doug Smith (Cool Toy) discusses content creation philosophy, D&D pinball impressions, and arcade nostalgia with Jamie Burchill.

Summary

Jamie Burchill interviews Doug Smith of the Cool Toy YouTube channel (50K subscribers) about his content creation journey, arcade/pinball nostalgia, and recent coverage of Stern's D&D pinball reveal. Doug discusses his creative philosophy (prioritizing personal passion over algorithm optimization), his media production background, and his evolving views on DLC/monetization in gaming and pinball. The conversation spans nostalgia for 90s arcades, classic gaming consoles (Sega Genesis, Dreamcast), and the challenges of growing pinball with younger audiences.

Key Claims

  • Dwight Sullivan stated there will never be DLC in pinball, citing development cost and complexity

    high confidence · Doug and Jamie discussing Stern Media Day event where Dwight was asked about DLC; Doug confirmed witnessing this statement

  • D&D pinball represents significant progression from Venom, with better-realized game systems and character progression mechanics

    high confidence · Doug's detailed analysis comparing D&D favorably to Venom in terms of breadth and depth of mechanics

  • The designer Dwight Sullivan is a personal board game/D&D enthusiast, which motivated authentic game design

    high confidence · Doug observed Dwight's passion during media event and noted designers rarely get personally passionate projects

  • Only approximately 4 out of 30 attendees at Stern Media Day had played D&D

    high confidence · Doug and Jamie discussing show of hands at the media event, highlighting gap between pinball and D&D audiences

  • P3 platform requires $199 purchase for Dungeon Door Defender DLC/game module

    high confidence · Doug discussing Multimorphic P3 platform pricing with Jamie; confirmed through personal experience

Notable Quotes

  • “you could really tell this is kind of a passion project specifically with Dwight like I could tell like he is a board game nerd specifically has some experience with D&D so you know that's somebody you want assigned to that project”

    Doug Smith @ early in interview — Identifies designer passion as key differentiator in D&D machine quality

  • “I don't play nice with it [YouTube algorithm] and I mess with it all the time And I'm sure I would be more, quote unquote, successful on YouTube if I played by its rules. But I feel better about myself when I put my head on the pillow doing things my way”

    Doug Smith @ discussion of Cool Toy philosophy — Core philosophy of content creator prioritizing authenticity over algorithm optimization

  • “there will never be DLC in pinball”

    Dwight Sullivan (reported by Doug) @ Stern Media Day event — Official statement on Stern's position on monetization strategy for pinball machines

  • “I think the problem, their biggest hurdle is, you know, growing pinball as a whole, not necessarily adding to the revenue stream via DLC and, you know, monthly subscriptions”

    Doug Smith @ DLC discussion — Articulates industry consensus on growth priorities vs. monetization

  • “those younger generations, they just expect it... they've known nothing but loot boxes and DLC”

    Doug Smith @ DLC/monetization discussion — Commentary on generational expectations around game monetization models

  • “I'm a middle finger success story to youtube and its algorithm because i i don't play nice with it”

    Doug Smith @ Cool Toy channel philosophy discussion — Characterizes unconventional approach to content creation strategy

Entities

Doug SmithpersonJamie BurchillpersonCool ToyproductDungeons & Dragons (Stern)gameDwight SullivanpersonBrian EddypersonVenom (Stern)gameStern Pinball Media Dayevent

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern leadership officially rejecting DLC monetization model for pinball machines; stated policy: 'there will never be DLC in pinball' with cost/complexity justification

    high · Doug reporting Dwight Sullivan's statement at media event: 'he quickly shot that down. Like, right? He said, no DLC in pinball... there will never be DLC in pinball'

  • ?

    community_signal: D&D/Pinball audience gap evident: only ~13% of Stern media attendees familiar with D&D tabletop game; highlights design challenge in bridging niche communities

    high · Doug: 'there's what 30 of us or so in that room... maybe four of us raised our hands' when asked who played D&D

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dwight Sullivan confirmed as passionate D&D enthusiast directing D&D pinball; designer passion identified as key differentiator in game quality versus typical IP licensing approach

    high · Doug: 'you could really tell this is kind of a passion project specifically with Dwight like I could tell like he is a board game nerd specifically has some experience with D&D'

  • $

    market_signal: Industry positioning D&D pinball to appeal to both tabletop RPG fans and traditional pinball players; explicit strategy to grow younger demographic through IP licensing rather than monetization

    medium · Doug: 'you can play the hell out of that game and then you can learn to appreciate dnd in a way that i don't think other pinball machines have done so far... if you know you bring some new people to pinball via dnd... you get new people to play pinball that's great'

  • $

    market_signal: P3 platform monetization model ($199 DLC for Dungeon Door Defender) demonstrates emerging virtual pinball revenue strategies separate from physical machine pricing

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.170

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamie Burchill, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today, I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today, I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello and welcome to the Wormhole, and our podcast we call Wormhole Pinball Presents, an interview series we started to highlight those in pinball and arcades. And today I'm excited to introduce you to someone I met at the Stern Pinball media event for D&D a couple of weeks ago, Doug Smith of the popular YouTube channel Cool Toy, 50,000 subscribers. Doug, thank you for joining the podcast. I'm so pumped to talk to you today Hey, my pleasure, I appreciate the invite It was nice to chat with you up there at Stern While we were waiting for the D&D unveiling So I'm looking forward to Chat about arcades, pinball Just general nerdiness Yeah, so my background's a little different today I'm not at the wormhole, I'm actually at my house We're snowed in I saw that I've got family in Houston And they're sending me pictures of grandnephews And kids playing in the snow And I'm just like, man, it snowed like one time when I lived there. And it was like a dusting would be, you know, a generous description of it. No, we got about six. Versus what you guys have now. Yeah, we got about six, seven inches. And this city just does not have the infrastructure to deal with this. So they're freaking out. And everyone worked remote all day today, right? There's no one else on the roads. And we got about a one to 36 degrees. So now it's all melting. And then we're going to hit 25 tonight. And so that's all ice.
1:49
Yeah. There's a lot of people that get that false sense of security once it, like, melts a little bit. They're like, oh, this isn't so bad. And they hit it, you know, coming home late from work or whatever, and it's nothing but a sheet of ice. And I don't care what kind of vehicle you have. You're SOL when you're on ice. Oh, you're screwed. Yeah, it's all ice tonight, ladies and gentlemen. So I knew I could get to the wormhole, Doug, but I don't think I could get back. Yeah, getting back is always the trouble, not worth it. I live about a mile and a half away from the wormhole. And I was a cold walk. That's a cold. Yeah. I brought the road caster with me. I brought all my gear to make it look good and sound good. But we're just doing a remote. So here we go. You lived in Texas for a while, right? I did. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. What part of Houston?
P3 Platform (Multimorphic)
product
Dungeon Door Defendergame
Mystery Pinball Theater 3000person/content
Sega Dreamcastproduct
Mark Treboniperson
Wormhole Pinballvenue/organization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Ryan Greggperson

high · Doug discussing P3 module requirement: 'if you have a P3 module, you've got to download Dungeon Door Defender for $199'

  • ?

    product_strategy: D&D pinball explicitly positioned as progression/evolution from Venom with significantly better-realized game systems and character progression mechanics

    high · Doug: 'D&D, I could see the broader picture, especially when it comes to like the game progress and the different, you know, character progressions and what those do for different gameplay aspects. I felt that was more realized on D&D than it was with the predecessor and Venom'

  • ?

    product_concern: Venom characterized as prototype/underdeveloped, suggesting Stern iterative approach but also quality control variation across releases

    medium · Doug: 'Venom was like uh the you know the prototype, if you will, for that kind of... it just didn't feel fully developed and fully realized'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Doug initially skeptical of D&D theme (pre-reveal rumor) but pleasantly surprised by actual game design depth; suggests manufacturing and code quality exceeded expectations despite IP novelty

    high · Doug: 'I wasn't surprised with the the theme reveal... but I was pleasantly surprised with just the game design and the depth they went through with the code'

  • ?

    technology_signal: P3 platform Dungeon Door Defender difficulty balancing issue reported; progression ramps sharply (Doug reached level 5-6 on first play, found level 8+ inaccessible); suggests game design may alienate casual players

    medium · Doug: 'level eight, you are just getting your hiney kick. I can't even see getting a level nine... the difficulty ramped up pretty quick'

    • 2:39
    Literally like in the middle of Houston. I think the elementary school I went to was Green Valley. And it has like a Houston address. so it's not even one of the suburbs. I was a burb guy when we moved here and raised the kids in Pearland.
    2:54
    Now we're back in the Heights, my wife and I. The burbs is where it's at. My parents stayed in Houston for a little while and then they moved us to Baytown and that's where my sister still kind of resides in that area and that's where a lot of my growing up was later on, especially with where I went to the mall and played the arcade games and all that kind of stuff was in the baytown baytown huh all right well there you go baytown shout out here in the h town uh there's like three people i mean it's it's bigger than that but there's you know probably yeah for people that listen there's gonna be like three people going yeah yeah um all right so these podcasts obviously are very very informal i love entering folks for a living is what i do so it just made sense to do this podcast here so buckle up here we go let's start with dnd right uh you recently published your review of the dungeons and dragons on your youtube channel over 10 000 views let's chat about dnd quickly what did you think i enjoyed it i was uh i mean i wasn't surprised with the the theme reveal i think that was you know the ongoing rumor for several months and uh lately the rumor mill has been pretty accurate with those stern guesses so i wasn't shocked to see it was dnd or anything like that but i was pleasantly surprised with just the game design and the depth they went through with the code and just hearing like Dwight and Brian talk about you know the development of it and the code and the processes and the decisions they went into it you could really tell this is kind of a passion project specifically with Dwight like I could tell like he is a board game nerd specifically has some experience with D&D so you know that's somebody you want assigned to that project a lot of these you know themes i think the designers you know maybe get a a little bit of a yeah sure type of thing but very seldom do i think they get like something that's really true near and dear to their heart every so often so i i think that helps a lot especially with something as complicated as dnd can be is for anybody that's ever played an actual game of dungeons and dragon it can get super intricate and it could also be very high level and just blow people's minds so I think having him geeking out right oh absolutely that was the thing I could tell like they were truly passionate about what they wanted to do and they wanted to do it justice they wanted to do it for pinball fans and Dungeons and Dragons fans because those are two completely different fan bases so to appease them both simultaneously is a tall order in itself wow you hand all both you know I don't know about the Dungeons and Dragons crowd but I know the pinball crowd could be a little tough right I'm sure okay so if they're even close to being as tough as the pinball crowd you know tough sell there but I I dug it I really did no pun intended I I thought it was a great game I loved the the progress that they took from Venom and said okay let's put that on some steroids yeah because it for whatever reason like to me like Venom was like uh the the you know the prototype, if you will, for that kind of, like they tried something, but like for whatever, to me, it just didn't feel fully developed and fully, you know, realized. D&D, I could see the broader picture, especially when it comes to like the game progress and the different, you know, character progressions and what those do for different gameplay aspects. I felt that was more realized on D&D than it was with the predecessor and Venom and even so going further back with Turtles. yeah true uh but you can see you know dwight in those right and you can see uh he was just there was a point during that meeting where his dnd knowledge went right over my head and i was just like oh boy oh yeah i mean i think they asked you know show of hands how many of us played dnd and there's what 30 of us or so in that room yeah maybe four of us raised our hands So, like, that shows you, like, you're dealing, you know, two different niches, even though it's broad spectrum, all-encompassing, you know, nerdy type of stuff. Right. But there are two different audiences. Yeah, that would have been a good, like, read the room, man.
    7:10
    Well, that just goes to show you, like, you know, how intricate and, you know, detailed some of that mythology is, how it can go. It's, you know, it's public knowledge that, hey, Dungeons and Dragons is a thing. But that's surface level knowledge for pop culture. You go anywhere below that surface level, you start getting people going, huh? Yeah. This guy's speaking a different language. What? Yeah, I know. This guy's dressing up. I went into it saying to myself, all right, I'm going up to Chicago. I'm going to meet all these great people. I've never thrown this die in my life. I've never even thrown a die. so uh okay what go up there with an open mind you know don't go up there and go this is ridiculous you know and i love the fact that you don't have to love dnd to play that game you can play the hell out of that game and then you can learn to appreciate the rules and learn to appreciate dnd in a way that i don't think other pinball machines have done so far i dug it yeah i think they did a good job of making it at at its heart you know just a fun enjoyable pinball experience because you know you got to appease your your core crowd first and then later on if you know you bring some new people to pinball via dnd with you know it's whether it be the art or just the fact that hey it's a dungeon is a dragon pinball machine that has you know things that i associate to dungeon dragon maybe you bring those people into it and you get new people to play pinball that's great But I think, like you said, it's just a fun game to play. Shots are great. The shots are great. The layout, like if you just blank canvas. If we were playing a whitewood and it didn't have a theme on it, I think a lot of people would still have the same impression that, yeah, that was a fun game to play. Yeah. I mean, we played it. Me and you played it. And we were supposed to be going to Interium.
    9:03
    And then you blew it up. And I was like, I'm not letting him just come in here and just whip my hat. Yeah, wreck it. Yeah, I know. Got to represent. I got to try. And then Colin Alzheimer was all over me like, we got to go, dude. Come on. Yeah. I heard you guys. It's like, we got to be there in 15 minutes. And I'm like, that's not a 15-minute drive. There's no way. Okay, good. Sorry. Sometimes Zoom switches microphones on you. Yeah, I know that all too well. I use it professionally for my day job, and it's inconsistent, to say the least. It freaks me out. I might go to Teams, but Teams is so much more expensive that it pisses me off. So I just won't do it. And it's the same problem. I've done Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, like you name it. Every company that I associate, there's a different brand that somebody uses, and we all kind of just go with the flow. So I've used them all on a daily basis. We were joking that before we started recording that I recorded the cloud, and then I sent that recording to my intern editor, and then he does all the editing. He's fantastic. Shout out, Ryan Gregg. And then it just makes it easy. So I don't have to download it, then send it up on the Google file. I just send them this link. But there's going to be a podcast that's not going to work. And I'm going to have to either redo it or something. And this, you were joking that you knew it would happen to you. Oh, absolutely. But it happened to me.
    10:30
    I had Mark Treboni next to me, who's the guitarist for Creed and the guitarist for Alter Bridge. I had Alter Bridge in the wormhole I am freaking out because I love Miles Kennedy he's one of my favorite lead singer and he's just sitting there and I'm just geeking out and I finally get Mark to get on the microphone with me and we're talking and the audio did not take any of the audio the computer totally screwed up I had him work for 30 minutes dude we were geeking on pinball it was a fantastic podcast before i even started podcasting it was awesome we just bullshitted pinball and he's such a normal regular guy you know and i've gotten to get go see him again and developing a thing with altar bridge and creed but that pissed me off it's gonna absolutely it's gonna yeah because not only did it like it drained it It took everything. You didn't even have garbled audio to maybe salvage. No, I have video that I could put over a video. Benny Hill music? Yeah, or maybe AI one day will be able to take my voice on his and figure out what the hell I was doing. I'm sure we're already at that world with AI. It scares me how quickly it's progressing. All right, last thing on the Stern Media Day. Someone at the media event asked Dwight. I don't know if you remember this question. and they asked him if they would have DLC, and he quickly shot that down. Like, right? He said, no DLC in pinball. I think his, like, statement was, there will never be DLC in pinball. And then he went on to explain how expensive it is for them to create a wizard mode or, you know, develop things like that.
    12:19
    That's great. as far as what I envisioned I was like I don't want DLC to come into my world because especially in pinball we spend all this money on these fancy light boxes that interesting perspective from you I didn't think that you'd have that perspective it's not I have DLC in video games console games, PC games everything in our life is DLC everything right and i've i maybe as i get older i get more of a curmudgeon about it but like i remember specifically there was a game on xbox that i played where you had to pay uh it was uh dead rising battlefront oh dead right yeah battlefront's a terrible example example too right that pissed us all off but uh dead rising 2 like you had to buy dlc to get the true ending of the game and i was like no i'm like how how do we how do we get to the point where i'm paying extra on top of the $59.99 price point to get the real ending of the game that should have been included. Here's a bonus mission, but it's another thing completely to say, here's the actual end of the game. I could talk to you about this forever, but real quick.
    13:33
    I was talking to a marketing person at Stern at Interium for a very, very long time. I said, I've been playing video games forever. forever i've seen this first dlc shit when it hit call duty and everything else right i pay it i say thank you sir can i have another all right okay because i want the maps and i want to play online and i want to do all these things if you charge me a dollar 99 a month for stern insider connect but i get more shit than the free person gets Like I really get stuff I get downloadable content before they get it I get to beta test the code, or I get to do all these stupid things, like we used to do in Call of Duty. Yeah. I mean, I get it, and I'm honestly with you. I'd be the guy that raises his hand and does, you know, buy it and say, thank you, may I have another? but like the precedent, like it's a very fine line you go between like consumer outrage and consumer. I do too. And I think the problem, their biggest hurdle is, you know, growing pinball as a whole, not necessarily adding to the revenue stream via DLC and, you know, monthly subscriptions. I think that's a good way to, you know, circumvent certain dips and, you know, trends and, you know, market. But I don't think that's what grows them as a business. I think you need more people playing pinball, specifically the younger generation, than you do us older generation, giving them $5.99 a month or whatever. True. But I'm telling you, those younger generations, they just expect it. Oh, they do. Look at MindPack. Yeah, they've known nothing but loot boxes and DLC. We've all read those articles. about five-year-old kids spending $1,000 on Fortnite and the credit card bill shows up and mom and dad have a conniption.
    15:34
    A good example to me is the P3 platform sometimes of what they're trying to do. Dungeon Door Defender. I don't know anyone who's ever played this, but if you have a P3 module, you've got to download Dungeon Door Defender for $199. Have you ever played it? I have my buddy Manu Smith, Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 on Twitch. We were at Texas Pinball Festival last year, and he was giving me the sales pitch on P3 because he's like, you like virtual pinball. You like physical pinball. He's like, here's the best of both worlds. And then I was like, okay, I get that. But I'm like, until Princess Bride, there wasn't really a theme that grabbed my attention because I'm first. And then he's like, but wait, there's more. and then that's when he showed me the DLC, if you will, with the dungeon thing, and I played it, and he was explaining what we had to do. I'm like, this is like a fun, enjoyable game in itself that had nothing to do with the main theme that was on. Donovan Wade and I on our Twitch channel played the shit out of it. It's fun, and it's fun with friends too because I got to really see what was going on with different. And it was a very, very fun, outstanding adaptation of a video game on pinball. Yep. And, like, the difficulty ramps up, so it gets, like, you know, your excitement, your heartbeat. It got too hard on me. It started pissing me off.
    17:01
    I told the – we actually interviewed the creator, Michael, on Twitch, and I told him it was too hard. Because that's my only problem with it. It's like level eight, you are just getting your hiney kick. I can't even see getting a level nine. I understand. It ramped up pretty quick. I think I made it like five or six on my first play, and I thought that was big. And I was like, how many levels are there? And I heard it. I was like, oh. Yeah, there's like no way you can get to those. There's no way. But, you know, buying your attributes and the whole thing that they do. Anyone that has P3, spend it to $199. Get that thing. All right, let's talk about your YouTube channel. Cool toy. You review everything from video games to VR to actual toys, right? When did you start this channel, and how did you decide to produce this type of content? So I had a YouTube since like 2006 because when I was in college, I was doing a media production degree. And hard drives back in 2006 were the size of a textbook, and you had to plug them into the wall, and they held like 100 megabytes or 100 gigabytes. That was like huge. so I was having these media classes where I had these massive files that I was having to take home and transfer and edit and bring back to class so I started a YouTube then just for a free like hard drive on the cloud before the cloud was a thing but I really didn't upload any content until May 2018 and I really just started that out as a frustration of what I saw and what I viewed on YouTube, it was always like people were either too negative or didn't talk about certain things in a way that I preferred or glassed over certain things that I cared about and vice versa. And I was like, yeah, I could do that. I mean, I went to school for media production and I got a boring day job that had nothing to do with that. And I had this, you know, creative itch. I'm like, I gotta do something. I like, I have all these skills built up that I literally don't use at all i'm like kind of bored why not so i started a youtube channel and just started talking about things i like i do the thing on youtube that you're like absolutely not supposed to do which is talk about a breadth of subjects like you're supposed to find like one niche and just be that dead horse and i don't do that and i've always jokingly said i'm a middle finger success story to youtube and its algorithm because i i don't play nice with it and i mess with it all the time And I'm sure I would be more, quote unquote, successful on YouTube if I played by its rules. But I feel better about myself when I put my head on the pillow doing things my way versus trying to appease some robot overlord. Yeah. I mean, you could have made you could have just decided I'm just going to do lightsabers and Star Wars, right? Toys. Absolutely. And been like Mike Zero or some of those guys that do stuff like that. But, you know, I like that you've just said these are my passions. I'm going to review the stuff that I love to review and build your audience that way. It's really great. Yeah. And it doesn't feel like work, which makes it nice because I put a ton of time and energy into it. So if I'm going to do something which essentially turns into a second job, I don't want it to feel like work after my normal day job because then you're just burning yourself out. And then, again, you go back to that, you're trying to appease algorithms and all this stuff that if you're not really passionate about what you're talking about, then you're just killing yourself. Yeah, scratching that itch is real, man. It's a real thing. I went to school initially. I've told this story before, but I went to school to be a broadcaster, to be on the radio. It's what I wanted to do. And then I canceled that program, and I went, shit, I went into business, and I had a different life. But this itch, this damn. It doesn't go away, yeah. It really doesn't. And I think YouTube and Spotify and all these podcast things have given us an opportunity to scratch that creative itch in such a way that I love that. If people like it, great. Tune in. If you don't like it, all right, no worries. And that's the best thing about it because it's so accessible to the masses, whether you want to be a creator or not. There is something out there for you. There's a podcast, a storyteller, something. Like there's some sort of content that's going to be right up your alley, whether you want to be the person creating it or consuming it. And I love it because, you know, this didn't exist. You know, a lot of these mediums that we do now didn't exist 20 years ago. So I love it. It's created so many different avenues and opportunities. Like even, you know, TikTok going away and then coming back. Like that's a whole other world of, you know, content creation that people, you know, my wife obsesses over it. She was almost physically ill that TikTok was going away for all of seven hours. I was more pissed at CapCut getting cut because they own CapCut. Do you use CapCut to edit? I don't. I use Final Cut. Okay. It's better, Final Cut, but I don't want to pay any money, so I use CapCut. It's $80 a year, and it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Oh, it's probably cheaper than Final Cut, isn't it? Final Cut's probably cheaper. I mean it's weird because Apple's kind of like Adobe where they started you know you don't buy the software you rent it type of stuff but like I've had Final Cut when I bought my computer and I paid like a one time fee oh you're on OG I don't have to worry about it did you grow up going to arcades and playing video games at home yes not trying to throw my parents under the bus but my parents were pretty bad when it came to child care um obviously times have changed too but uh they would literally just give me like a five or ten dollar bill and drop me off at the arcade and say hey don't leave this place until we come pick you up at that's good partners with that yeah like i mean it worked out great but like you know i look i got a two-year-old now and i look back and think of dropping him off at a strange area, ran by adults, unsupervised by anybody, and leave them there for eight hours. I grew up where I got on my bike and I drove the arcade. Yeah, same thing. I think about how far I went on my bike. Hey, Mom, I'm going to go ride on my bike. She's like, be back when the street lamps come on. That's right, but you'll never let your two-year-old just ride your bike. Oh, absolutely not. My wife will never let my kids do it, ever. Yeah, I was like in a different town on my bicycle. Oh, I know. The adventures I had back then. It's just been that. Different times, different world, it feels like. But, yeah, that was, I mean, going. And arcades were so much more plentiful, too. There was an arcade machine at every laundromat, every grocery store lobby. They were everywhere. So, I mean, they were my babysitter for most of my youth. What, any machines? Did you play pinball or mostly arcade? I mostly arcade but I did play a lot of pinball I always focused on it was always like the movie IP themes I specifically when we moved to Missouri there was this taco place that had an arcade in it and they specifically had Adam's Family Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park and me and my brother and just every kid I grew up with we put all our money in all the arcades and those three pinball machines and that was my youth and that 90's arcade scene slash pinball scene is kind of the last hurrah if you will before things started to go down and out so I got to see the last rise before the fall me too the only difference I'm older than you is I was able to drive to the arcades in high school and that's where I found solace but I migrated to video games big time too did you really migrate in the 90s to to video games absolutely consoles on a console sega nerd um i'm a sega nerd so we're gonna so all right so here's let's play a yes no game okay i played this game with ko because ko and i are very very similar in arcade just as much me and you are so i played this exact game with ko from quarter drop arcade so These are in some sequential order. You just play yes, no. Have you played it or owned it? Okay. Let's go with the Atari 2600. You're a little younger.
    25:38
    It was my first console. Okay. Dad bought it and then handed it down to me when we got a Nintendo Entertainment System. But, yeah, it used to have blisters in the inside from our Atari 2600 joysticks.
    25:50
    Yeah, you took it. Galaga, Pac-Man. Yeah, you just wore it. Tanks. Wore it. Pitfall. Combat. yep combat i mean like 40 cartridges when it was all said and done i remember uh taking it into a pawn shop to sell it to try to get money for nintendo games and dad was like all right i'm gonna teach you how to haggle and i think it was like you know nine years old at the time so the thought of haggling with the pawn shop owner as a nine-year-old was kind of daunting and yeah that guy was laughing hysterical at me i was like what do i do he's like well you know ask him how much he'll give it for you and then whatever he tells you say more and then you start the dance until you get him out you're happy with I'm like I want $30 and he's like no don't start there it was a terrible experience I'm sorry no game with you no you're good no Buddy had one, but I never had one. All right. Let's go. Commodore 64.
    27:00
    Same. A friend of mine had one. I played his, but I never owned one. So my answer, by the way, is yes to all these. That's how ridiculous that was. Okay. Well, I mean, you also have a couple of years on me. I didn't have any television. All right. Sega. Did you get the original Sega Master System or the Sega Genesis? Genesis. Okay. So let's skip ahead.
    27:22
    Sega Genesis. Do you have the Nintendo NES? Yes Sega CD Yep You're a Sega guy So this is going to work If you name a Sega console Moving forward from Genesis The answer is yes Will there be add-on You had the 32 I had 32 Everything you can name from Sega Genesis moving forward Sega Saturn yep We used to drive three towns over to try to rent Sega Saturn games because they were never No one had them See because I had this I was a first day Sega Dreamcast Yep Can we talk about the Dreamcast for a second And how it was the best system ever And how it was Three years you know It was three years too early is what it was You so right on this Doug okay Now I getting excited That system ladies and gentlemen if you don know this system first of all, you could get a keyboard for it and a mouse. You could scroll the Internet with it. Scroll the Internet, play online, download stuff online. Play online. You could download stuff. It was beyond. It was arcade hardware essentially consolized at home. I mean so ahead of its time What were your first day games? Do you remember your first day games?
    28:50
    I know it was NFL 2K I can't remember what denomination it was but NFL 2K I had Soul Calibur I don't think Tony Hawk was a day one game I think it was later I had Crazy Taxi and I had Royal Rumble Oh yeah Those were my three I told you I love the system Yeah it's great And I'm so pissed that it didn't work out Because it was so much better than everything That was out there It just wasn't handled well It was ahead of its time I had a Nintendo 64 as well And I had a PS2 At the same time But I was really Did not and a Gamecube for the kids Sorry I did not want to move to Xbox I didn't I had all those systems And Xbox was the last one I bought And I think the only reason that got me To come over to buy an Xbox Was Halo That was it too Because other than that I was like I can play this on my Playstation I can play this on my game I was playing a lot of Medal of Honor online And that was a hot game on PS2 for a little bit. It was like the predecessor to Call of Duty. Metal Arm. It was Call of Duty, yeah. And that was another system that screwed themselves because Medal of Honor was a better game than Call of Duty. But, anyway, finally went to the Xbox and the rest is history. I've been an Xbox. I've had every Xbox. I still dip my toes in all the waters. I have the newest Xbox, newest PlayStation, newest Switch. I did buy a PS5 for the kid. That's in Florida. Boca Raton was my 22. And my Switch is with my 25-year-old down the street. So I don't get to play those. But I am now playing the hell out of Call of Duty. It's addictive. Me and a bunch of coworkers used to, we'd get off work and we'd go play Call of Duty and we'd be up till like 2 a.m. And this is before a child came into my life. So my priorities changed. I stopped playing for five years during this pinball world. I really stopped playing. And then my son bought me Call of Duty for Christmas. He's like, Dad, come on. And we leveled up our guns again. Because I used to be really big on Prestige and leveling a lot of my dudes and getting all that orange for advanced weapons. Absolutely. I had a coworker that would take the week off of release for Call of Duty. And I remember like I got it released day, but I had to go to work or whatever. And I came back and he had already like prestige in the first 24 hours. And it was like halfway to the second one. I was like texting him like, how many hours you got in this? He's like, 18 hours so far. I'm like, it's been out for 24. He's like, yeah, sleep's getting in the way, but I'll be back tonight. And I was like, good Lord, man. He knows the maps, I guarantee. Oh, for sure. And that's the thing. Like when a new Call of Duty came out or Battlefront or whatever, like you have a week. that's your window to learn those maps in and out otherwise you're just getting murdered you're just getting hammered by some guy behind a bush that you don't even know exists and I play hardcore so no maps no nothing yeah I don't want that HUD crap on me so I have no idea where this guy came up so I used to be really good at it and I was in a clan and all that shit but pinball man pinball that's just got me it's addictive too and it's the one thing that me and my wife share as a commonality everything else she doesn't give a crap about she didn't care about arcades she didn't care about console games she didn't care about my toy collections none of this nostalgia she cares about she enjoys pinball so that has been something that's helped me tremendously as far as bringing stupid expensive toys home she's a-okay with the pinball because she enjoys playing it so it's been a nice thing. What do you have in your collection right now? Right now I have Labyrinth, I have a WWF Royal Rumble, and I have Simpsons Pinball Party, and I'm on the market for a fourth. I've had as many as five, and a four is kind of like my sweet spot, because I still have a bunch of arcades, so I have to juggle my space. What arcades do you have? I've got a Sega Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. That's a good one. Yeah. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Another great one. Paperboy. Another fantastic one. Play Choice 10 Arcade from Nintendo.
    33:30
    daytona usa and then i have a multi-cade okay i put a lot of quarters in some of those machines you're talking about i've yeah teenage mutant ninja turtles in the arcade was like the first experience i had of like beating an arcade game i remember going in like a ten dollar roll of quarters and like walk up onto a group that had already made it to like maybe level three and there was only three of them playing and i'm like can i get into like absolutely and i'm just feeding that thing quarters until we beat that game it was amazing yeah that was a that was a game that was very similar what was the one where you were in a maze and four of you were wizards oh uh gauntlet gauntlet all right yeah yeah gauntlet i was about to talk about the original one or yeah the original gauntlet okay yeah gauntlet was one of the first that you can all get together and kind of kick some ass yeah that was a crazy game for its time because the amount of like enemies on screen and how fast they came at you and then you know you got the real speech it's like you know elf needs food yeah it was wild right yeah i put a lot of quarters in that you know your friends go and play some gauntlet but that to me because i was older so then when teenage mutant ninja turtles came out and i was like okay gauntlet gauntlet with but going this way and you were kicking some ass and we're all together and yeah ninja turtles was like the sweet spot for me because the cartoon had been out and I was already glued to Saturday morning cartoons. And so I was already well enamored with spending all my allowance on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures. So when I saw an arcade game that looked like the cartoon that I already watched, I was in love.
    35:09
    What kind of action figures do you have? What is your toy collection? What does this encompass? Like what genre? It's probably split evenly. 33% Star Wars, 33% Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the other 30% Masters of the Universe, and then odds and ends, Power Rangers, Transformers. So this totally makes sense for me because I'm 52 now, right? You're in your 40s. And when I was in college, Ninja Turtles was on, and I was just like, fuck this Ninja Turtles, man. Yeah, it already passed you over. It already passed me over, right? mine was G.I. Joe when I was the 12, right? I watched G.I. Joe religiously. I just never got into the toys because they were, you know, the three and three quarter, and then I already had Ninja Turtles that were bigger and the same thing with He-Man. But she already had the small Star Wars. Yeah, so I was like, this isn't really cool. Like, I got all these buff He-Man and Ninja Turtle figures that are all roided out, and then I got these little Star Wars and G.I. Joe guys that wasn't as impressive. But G.I. Joe had some of the most amazing vehicles, oh yeah oh yeah oh man they blew that stuff out of the water like they're a real freaking hovercraft for crying out of mirror buddy i had that i was just i was just i was like holy crap i'm like this let's take it on water and i'm gonna throw one at you here that okay a little ridiculous and this is really for kale hernandez of electric bat who shares his love for gi joe as much as i have a love gi joe i had bought myself because i worked at a golf course at 12 years old i was making like 200 a weekend printing cats i was a carp boy i was a carp boy my parents did not have any clue how much money i was making all in singles yeah and i would i literally bought myself the gi joe aircraft carrier oh the uss flag are you kidding me not kidding you that is like the grail to it's like to this day like i know just how ridiculously over the that's yeah i wish toy companies were this you know adventurous ridiculous even as an adult it's ridiculously large like it's bigger than my dinner table my father was like what the hell did you spend on what how much was this i don't even remember i think it was like 250 i was but i was supposed to say i want to say it was like 199 or something yeah it was probably 199 yeah it was a stuff of legend yeah yeah i had it but then i the problem was i then turned 13 and started like liking girls and now i've got this aircraft carrier i mean it's just a little ridiculous so i got rid of that when we moved to florida but i i sympathize i had a teenage ninja turtles technodrome which is like you know their aircraft carrier is the biggest baddest place that you could get and as i got older and turned in my teenage years like that thing and like falling apart because i'd played with it for many many years and i think like all that left all that was left was the eyeball on top of it and i remember literally using that as like a wiffle ball in the backyard with my buddies when we were playing wiffle ball because we'd like hit the ball over the fence so i'm like this is about the same size and weight as a wiffle ball so we started using the ninja turtles technodrome eyeball as a baseball for our wiffle you still had that today and I still had that aircraft carrier in great shape. They were worth a couple of bucks, wasn't it? Oh, for sure. I think the box alone would net you $500.
    38:40
    It's stupid. It's so stupid, the crap that I had. I had all of those wrestlers from the WWF. The LJNs or the Hasbros? The LJNs were the ones that were rubber and... Rubber, LJNs. You had them all. Yeah, I had the Hasbro like the one generation later when they were. Yeah, yeah. I had the LG. You could bounce them. Absolutely. They were just giant molded rubber that were just boom. And I had the ring. I had Miss Elizabeth. Dude, I had them all. But I was making too much money. You know, a 12-year-old and 13-year-old cannot make that much money. No. I was lucky enough to be relegated to like a $5 a week allowance, And I remember I could get an internal action figure or He-Man or whatever. It was typically $3.97. And I would have leftover money. And that leftover change, I would either get some Topps baseball cards, Fleer football cards. And if I had something left, I think it was like 50 cents for a three-night movie rental or a video game rental at Blockbuster. And that's how I would spend my $5 weekly allowance for doing chores.
    39:48
    Yeah, every single week. Here I was just like, oh, absolutely. Yeah, savings. I remember my parents were like, you know, if you save this, you can buy my... Gone. Yeah, I could have bought a car. I had no money when I moved to Florida because I had pissed it all away on all these toys and video games.
    40:08
    That never changed. I remember being in high school, and my taste didn't ever change. My cool toy name comes from a nickname from middle school. But, like, I was a high school kid that put a GameCube, PlayStation 2, and the original Xbox into his car. And I had a TV in my car. And I had three consoles in my actual car in high school. It was a Mustang that I bought, wrecked, and rebuilt, and learned how to do auto body and stuff on it. But, yeah, Mustang 5.0 convertible. Straight out of an LIS Music video. Yeah, in 1986. Was it in 86? 87? It was an 84. Okay. Ooh, I remember. Yeah.
    40:52
    Hideous. Hideous by today's standards. Yeah, it was terrible looking. Yeah, but I was like, all right, I can do this. And, yeah, I was just blowing money left and right. I drove a Dodge Omni. Nice. Yeah, very nice. Mercury Sable was my car when I was 16. My parents were like, you're not getting anything until you learn to drive for a year and don't wreck anything. So I drove a Mercury Sable for the first year. I drove a Plymouth Horizon that had no air conditioning because my father drove. This is such off the wall. So sorry. We lived in Long Island, so my father didn't need a car because he took the train from Ronkonkoma. So all he needed was a mile and a half in the snow. So he bought the cheapest car humanly possible. And then, of course, we relocate to Orlando. And he's like, well, here's your car. I go, there's no air. There's no air conditioning. Roll the window down. He's like, well, it has a fan.
    41:53
    So you just get that blow dryer feeling. And this is like, why did I not save my money? I could be driving something totally badass as a 16-year-old in Florida. Nope, I drove a Plymouth Horizon. All right, are you ready for a rapid-fire hot seat game that we call the hurry up? Absolutely. This is a random questions here for you. Doug from Cool Toy.
    42:17
    All right. PlayStation or Xbox? PlayStation. Hurts me PlayStation Library Online Ecosystem Xbox So like Yeah true true true true true Best toy out of this three We talked about this. Are these four? Ninja Turtles. You can only have one. He-Man, Transformers, or G.I. Joe?
    42:46
    Ninja Turtles as a personal favorite, Transformers are better toys. I mean, I'm still amazed at the intricacy of the 80s Transformers to this day. Favorite lightsaber to build From your Star Wars character From my like Collection? Yeah for your collection Darth Vader for sure You can't go wrong with Vader Episode 7, 8, and 9 Are absolutely terrible Agree or disagree Disagree They have their moments Just like the prequel We don't remember When we were bitching about the prequels we didn't know how good we had it true i mean we didn't know it could get worse but there's like kylo ren was badass until you know the helmet came off and he turned into kylo ren was good in episode seven badass that's what i'm saying right that's what i'm saying there's moments it's as the characters progress they got worse takes his shirt off and then episode nine is such a debacle of a movie that i pretend it doesn't happen i mean in their defense they didn't do the Marvel thing where they had like a cohesive vision for the entire, they should have done that. And they did the whole, Hey, we're just going to hand the story off. There was a thing. There was a cohesive. There were those books. If you implement those books with Mar Jade. And I don't know if you read that too. Oh yeah. I read the expanded universe stuff. It was there, but Disney was like, we want to do our own thing. Like they basically gave Lucas $4 billion to shut up and go away.
    44:18
    Yeah. George. God bless you. All right. Which pinball machine should be made from one of these themes?
    44:27
    He-Man, Superman, or Van Halen? That's for me. Yeah. He-Man, personal choice. They all should be made. Van Halen, definitely, for sure. Let's have an eruption solo that lasts the entire duration before you get to pull your ball. Superman deserves something. I mean the original EM Yeah But it needs a modern something I mean these are three great titles We should do this right now I don't understand The amount of titles that are out there and available It blows me away that they're not created Especially in the 90s To name drop Wolfgang Van Halen Who I actually have met He said That was the first thing I said to him When he came in to the War Memorial I said dude why is there not a Van Halen pinball machine He said, we have too many damn lead singers. You're never going to get them to get along. Exactly. Rights issues ruin it all. Best video game that did not have a joystick. I asked this question to Ko. Track and Field, Tempest, a little bit before your time, or Paperboy.
    45:38
    I mean, they all have controls. They don't have any. I enjoy Paperboy. They don't have a joystick. That's right. Traditional joystick, yeah. I enjoy Paperboy the most out of those three. I think it's the coolest. I mean, I have one because it's so obsessively unique. It's so obsessively hard, too. Oh, it is, too. Like, even with the handlebars, it's still a pain in the ass to play. Oh, my God.
    46:03
    Yeah. Tempest is fun just to rip that spinner around, though. Yeah, it is really cool. All right. Best fighting video game on a console, Mortal Kombat or your Street Fighter? Street Fighter. I played them both. and when they started getting really crazy in the modern stuff where the combo stuff just, it's well beyond me. Like, I stopped playing Street Fighter competitively at four and ever since then it's even got more and more intricate and I was like, yeah, okay. Tangent, that was one of my favorite things about the arcades growing up was like the fighting game era of the 90s, like me being in my early teens and stuff, being able to like go head to head against adults and have this kind of like level playing ground and be seen on the same kind of level as adults was really fun. You didn't really get that kind of experience anywhere else. Like I couldn't go play basketball at the courts or the pickup games with adults or anything like that and be seen as equal. No, but you could work their ass on Tekken. Exactly. I'd go to the arcade and I could be seen as an equal and or somebody better if I had my skills up to par. This one might not work because you're younger. All right. But let's see. Voltron or Thundercats? Thundercats.
    47:17
    I was a huge Power Rangers fan, and for whatever reason, I didn't realize until I was into my teens how much Power Rangers ripped off Voltron. Oh, they totally ripped off Voltron. When my cousins were rocking their Power Rangers, I'm like, this is bullshit.
    47:36
    It's so egregious. It's so bad. How do you become a court lawsuit on top of lawsuits? I don't know how that got away with that shit. All right. Yeah. Best shitty movie, but a great pinball machine out of these three. Last Action Hero, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or Johnny Mnemonic. What's the best pinball machine out of those shitty movies? Johnny Mnemonic.
    48:00
    Definitely. Ric Flair, Randy Savage, or Hulk Hogan? Macho Man, Randy Savage. The Rock, John Cena or Stone Cold Steve Austin Stone Cold We're still talking about 90's wrestling Because of Stone Cold Steve Austin Alright last one WCW Nitro or Monday Night Raw I'm going to go with Nitro But it also depends on what time frame you're talking about What years My kids were young When this was happening and my son would come in and go, Daddy's watching Boom. I don't know why. He just thought it was the funniest shit that I was watching. And I would go back and forth. And my wife had to go in the bedroom. I would sit there on the previous channel button and just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Back and forth. It was so good back in the 95 through 98 era. Wow, yeah. That was really great. But I still even did it later on. I was just so great. I loved it. All right, last question. Did you watch the McMahon series on Netflix, the five-part WWE? Oh, man, did I? Yes, that was – It hurts feelings, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean – It like ruined – like literally – and he's – I'm not saying he's not a terrible person. He is an absolutely fucking terrible human being. But as someone that grew up going to Madison Square Garden to watch Hulk Hogan face Randy Macho Man Savage,
    49:38
    This was, you know, like I went to closed caption and watch WrestleMania 2. Like pay-per-view, WrestleMania 3 was like the biggest pay-per-view event of all time at that time. Like no one had done this before. And for me, just growing up with this wrestling love, that damn Netflix thing just ruined it for me. It hurt. It's like finding out how a magician did his tricks or finding out how they make your hamburger at McDonald's. It just ruined it. Like you said, could be a – is a terrible human being by all accounts. But the thing is it doesn't detract from all that he did and created, and that's – I'm almost kind of the same thing with Michael Jackson. I love his music. No. Was he a terrible human being? Could be. I don't know. I don't have enough information other than hearsay But like I can God damn do I love that Earth song Man Both things can be true Wrestling can be so amazing And like is what it is today Thanks to Vince McMahon and he can also be a massive pile of shit That deserves to burn in hell Are you watching it now at all Yeah I still watch it all WWF or excuse me WWE, AEW, Indies Lifelong wrestling fan I'll never change I don't pick sides. I still try to consume as much as I can. I stopped watching. I'm bummed. You know, I watch a little Brock once in a while, and I kind of like Roman Reigns. And now it's on Netflix. It's a little easier. But I want to get back in. But, you know, I'm still on a diet. I'm doing so much crap. I hear you. I've got too many hobbies myself. I just can't. All right, Doug, this was amazing. thank you so much i'm so happy to have met you and sat down and bullshitted with you for you know about 50 minutes uh we've had very similar backgrounds and the minute i started talking to you i was like we're gonna have a great podcast because we're just gonna reminisce about our childhood and and talk about these great things and i love your channel cool tool i got i got hooked up on you about six months ago and um you had done a review i'm like i've First of all, the editing itself is outstanding. How long does it take you to edit? Say you're doing a 10-minute video. How long is that?
    52:05
    It depends. I know I edited the Dungeons & Dragons video on the ride home from Chicago because we were driving back home. And it took me four and a half hours in the backseat with the two-year-old to edit that video on a laptop.
    52:21
    You can tell. Yeah. I mean, it could have been better. It could have been worse. No, I think it was great. You know, we're not making any money in this, right? No, and that's the biggest misconception on anything. I mean, we're just not, right? I went and brought all this shit here so that we can, you know, have this podcast. And I just love doing it. And you can see the passion in your product. Keep doing it. Where can people find you?
    52:49
    You can find me on YouTube, CoolToy, Twitter, slash X, whatever the heck you want to call it. Cool toy as well. Instagram, even though I barely ever use it since it's basically just nothing but vertical video now.
    53:02
    And I'm on Facebook as myself. We do both. We've done a lot of short video and long that format and it seems to be doing really well for us. So we're just going to keep it up. We're having fun with it. I mean, it makes sense for the pinball world, vertical video. It's a natural progression, but me coming from a, you know, editing and cinematic training world, vertical video just crawls up my skin and gives me all sorts of nightmares.
    53:33
    All right, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. And I had a great time. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it, man.
    53:42
    See, I could have talked to him for two hours. I could have talked to him for two hours and no question in my mind, I will have him on again and I'll have him in the wormhole when he comes back to Houston to visit family. So upcoming to the wormhole, first we have the Twippies on February 22nd. Head to our YouTube channel already and click subscribe, all right? There are tickets that are available, so come to Houston. Come to the wormhole. We're going to be giving away a bunch of stuff. It's going to be an awesome night. We have a tour that we're going to be giving for The Vault, which is our top secret super location with about 65 rare, rare pins there, and get a taste of some of what we've got. Then at Eureka Heights Brewery Friday night, we're going to have a tournament there and potentially an unveiling of a new machine at Eureka Heights, potentially, if it comes in time. Then a Barrels of Fun tour on Saturday the 22nd. Visit and then come to the Wormhole to visit the Twippies and be there live and in person. And Sunday we've got a tournament at the Wormhole. So visit twippies.com for all the ticketing information. I've been testing vigorously to make sure the Twippies go on without a hitch. Of course they won't. There's going to be a technical problem here and there, but I'm going to be doing at least four or five more test runs.
    55:11
    Last segment here, it's called Be on the Lookout. We're on the lookout for a few pins that we'd like to add to the wormhole collection. These are really rare, so if you know anyone that knows anyone that has this machine, that would be one to sell it. We're looking for a Mr. Black pinball machine made in 1984 by Taito, which is a Brazilian pinball company. You should check that out on Pinside because it's kind of cool. We really want one of those. and a cerebus uh c-e-r-b-e-r-u-s u-s cerebra cerebrus i don't know but a cerebrus is a 1982 playmatic we really love those playmatics check out flash dragon that's a rare one that we may or may not have so again email us at wormholepinball at gmail.com hit us up on all the socials i will more than likely be the person that responds.
    56:08
    Merch will be live on the new website when we launch that in a few weeks. But if you do want merch, go to our website, wormholepinball.com. We ship, and the material of all this stuff is absolutely amazing. We source a local Houston t-shirt company, and we buy nice shirts. So that's all she wrote. Thank you so much. Thanks, Doug, again. Had a great time. Talk to you guys soon.
    56:34
    Jeg remnants