All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed with syrup and honey Almost a laugh with his family in a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 648 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, and on today's show, I've got the dote himself, Joe Chervino, fresh just off the airplane runway coming all the way from Chicago. Welcome to the show, Joe Cervino. Hey, Albert. How's it going, my friend? We missed you out there in Chicago, man. Everybody was asking me, hey, where's Albert? Where's Orby? Where is he? Oh, man, he didn't make it. I'm so bummed. I wanted to meet Albert. You know, Ryan and Kimba from Australia especially, they really missed you, man. And a bunch of people. I could go on and on. You were sorely missed this year. Maybe we can make it happen next year or the year after, but you've got to come, Albert. It's an amazing experience. And I'm sorry to your listeners for my incredibly hoarse voice. I'm amazed that I actually have this left. Usually I lose my voice on day one, but it's an amazing experience. You meet so many people, and we missed you there this year, Albert. Wow. Wow. Thanks so much for saying that, Joe. I hope it doesn't come across as like I never want someone to feel sorry for me because literally like if we had used credit cards and such, you know, I could have gone, you know. But I didn't want to do it on the cheap. Like that's the thing about me. I get anxiety enough with traveling as it is. I don't need to go, but I still remember back at Pemburg five years ago, you know, Jeff was telling me a whole bunch of the guys were going out to that, the really good, is it a steakhouse there? They have really good sandwiches. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sandwiches. There's a big one there. There's an Italian one as well. Yeah, they were going to some really nice place, and he was saying, but just to let you know, it's probably like $100 a meal. And I wanted to go. There was going to be all these other content creators there, and I think the Sharp brothers were going. And I was like, dude, I can barely afford five guys in prize right now. I'm sleeping at Peace's house in his spare bedroom. You know what I mean? I got here on Zoom. Brother, I know. I'm completely tapped out. I barely made it. you know, like, am I going to afford the Uber back to the airport? They're like, okay, I think I've got enough. You know, like, oh, man, like, I get it. Like, it is of no small expense for sure. But, like, yeah, nobody feels like, sorry for you, but I'm just saying people feel bummed. I appreciate it. They really wanted to meet you, man. They really wanted to see you and talk to you and tell you how much they love your commitment to the show all these years and all the episodes you've done and talk about all the crazy tangents you love to go on. Because, you know, for me, as a fan, as your number one listener, you know, I listen to the pinball stuff, but that's not really the real reason I listen. I'm your friend, and, you know, I listen just to kind of catch up with what's going on in your life and, you know, what's happening with you. So that's what makes it really special for me, the show. So don't change anything, and I think people feel the same. You know, they want to meet, you know, get to know you more on a personal level. And, of course, talk pinball. But that's the whole beauty is that it's more than just that. The pinball just brings the people. It's really about the people. And I talked to so many pinball people about non-pinball related things. It was just unbelievable. Like, again, I don't want to name drop because there's so many people that are there. Name drop away. I don't want to miss it. But, like, I was talking to this guy and I felt so embarrassed because, I don't know, do you watch? I don't really watch a lot of Twitch streaming. You do. you know don't panic flip yes so George I had no idea he was just this cool guy sitting next to me and you know we talked about his whole thing and it was mind blowing him doing like AI to like create these scenarios and then voting on the scenarios it's mind blowing what this guy's been doing for like 8 years and pioneering in the streaming world but you know we talked about that but we also talked about his job working in the agriculture industry and how that's being impacted right now and how crucial his job is working in the IT world of that. I love all the different things that people do in their real-world life as well. It's so wonderful discovering all these incredible people and what they do outside of pinball is what I'm trying to say. It's funny that you should say that because I was at a pinball arcade having a really fun tournament on Saturday in Fredericton at Flippin's. and I think between every single solitary round, we would go outside, and you might ask the person, like, how was your round? Did you win or whatever? And then, yeah, you're right, because these are, you know, people that you've built relationships for years. It's almost like, well, how's your family? How's your friends? I want to know about everything else other than pinball, because we both know pinball so well, we want to get to know each other in these times that we have. So that's got to be the best part of, you know, the entire show, I would assume, for you. Am I right, Joe? Absolutely. 100%. 100%. And I'm telling you, again, I don't mean to brag. Like, I know a few people there. Really, when you walk into Expo, you're like, wow, I don't know anybody here. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of people that you've never met. And as many people as I've met in the pinball world so far in my journey of my own, it's overwhelming to see how many people you do not know and how many amazing people. I've met now twice as many people that I did not know on the Thursday that I now know. now I'm friends and I'm like now connecting with on Facebook or on social media or whatever their phone, I got their phone number they got my phone number, like twice as many people now I know that I didn't know, that I already know now it's crazy, the amount of people that you meet and you just talk to people you're standing in line, I mean the lines are, you know we can go into lineups for all the great games and all that stuff, and yeah sure it's a bummer to wait like an hour for like a single play of a game that you really want to play but also like make the most of that and like you know maybe kind of like compliment somebody on their shirt and strike up a conversation that's what happened with this guy in front of me i can't remember his name i think his name is ben uh it doesn't really shout out to ben whatever yeah shout out to ben and you know i know i'm a movie guy so he had this like gremlins uh t-shirt with all these gremlins in a movie theater it was like this whole pattern of gremlins all over his shirt i was like i like your shirt man can i take a picture of it it's like yeah and then we got to talking about all kinds of stuff, pinball and non-pinball stuff. And, you know, we got to know each other over like an hour of waiting in line for a game. And, you know, it's not necessarily like just a waste of time. You've got to make the most of everything you're doing there. That's my number one, like, suggestion is, like, try your best to make the most of everything, an opportunity to meet people and be open and talk to people and, like, and just to get to know them. Because that is the most satisfying thing, honestly. It's why we all go, I think, really. The games are just a lure, but the real big fish is meeting the people. That's the real catch. That's the real prize. Honestly, if I had to wait even an hour and a half or two hours in line with – Never was two hours, even for Winchester Mystery House. Winchester. Which was incredible. Just absolutely – we could go into the games and all that stuff. that Carl honestly I told many people there that the excitement that was building for this game it makes me feel very similar to you know Keith Elwin's release of his first game for Stern it's like Carl has built up so much good will and he's an amazing player an amazing guy like he supported my stuff in the past and he's been so open and communicative and helpful for so many people streaming the guy's a freaking genius the guy built that you know scaled down portable streaming rig that now is like the gold standard of pretty much every streaming rig right now yeah uh like we have so much that we have to thank carl for and i think that really shows in the support that people have just instant like insta buy for for this game which literally sold out in 24 hours okay okay hold on hold on hold on that's amazing sorry that's okay here's the thing i do want to go around uh you know and talk about each of the companies. Here's what I was going to say. If I was in line... It's so crazy. There's so much stuff. Where do you want to start, Orby? You tell me. If I was in line for Winchester for two hours, and I was standing there... It was like maybe an hour. Okay, even an hour. I don't care. If I was standing there, and I was talking to Rad Ralph, as I call him, or maybe Retro Ralph, as you would know him. I think he's more Rad than Retro. He's a bit of both, to be honest. And I was standing there with Jeremy Burchill, or Jamie Burchill, or I was there with Rachel and Taylor, or I was there with you or Glenn or any of these people, or even random pinball people who happen to have listened to my show and I've never got to talk to in real life, it would just be a pleasure for me. That would be great. The hardest part for me, I think, is getting there. But if we're going to back this up, just beep, beep, beep, come back to the start. I'm curious to hear like an overall vibe check. And it sounds to me like the most excitement was coming because of Winchester, but in comparison to other years, because you've been to a lot of these expos, just, okay, so you get there the very first day when you're just walking around and everything, the one thing I heard was it was the biggest homebrew area they've ever had, and that seemed to have a lot of excitement in it as well. But what was just the overall vibe? Yeah, what was the overall vibe there that people were most excited about? It was insane. I mean, it was just like a gangbuster from the gate, you know, from the rope drop onward, you know? Like, it was crazy. Like, I was helping out the morning of with, like, doing all that. And shout out to the volunteers and the staff. Shout out. Rob Burke, who do an exceptional job, and Rob and his whole family, his wife Bridget, his daughters and his son who help out all day, every day, like the entire show. The volunteers especially and the staff do an incredible job. They were ready to go. I was asking them the night before if I could volunteer. They're like, no, we're like 95% ready to go. Like we're like on it. and then I was helping out in the morning and I was able to see just the stream of people that came in and just boom ran out of the gate it was unbelievable it's like a floodgates and so it's incredible to see such enthusiasm and people, all kinds of walks of life families guys my age younger and older and it's just an incredible swath of people that just, boom, flood the entire place. And it's just so exciting. And it was unbelievable. It was like, again, like going back to Winchester, history house, there was already a lineup at like 11 a.m. on the Thursday that was an hour long, like straight up from the very beginning of the show. It's insane. Wow. And the homebrew was absolutely incredible. You know, our buddy, Glenn the Skateboarder, Glenn Glenn Waechter. Yes. And Jake Danzig and Brad Brad Albright. And I'm missing him. And Antoine Johnson and Manny, they did the artwork, and they were doing voices for the game there that they had. Monster League Hockey. Yes. It was so much fun. That game, we can talk about that. That won the homebrew, but there were so many great other homebrews. There was this Coming to America game. I talked to the guy that built Coming to America. Right. He has these gold pinballs. And I'm like, so, hey, man, just tell me one thing. Unfortunately, it wasn't operational. It was just there on display. And I was like, hey, man, tell me – like you know Coming to America, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that movie. The royal – we'll say the royal elbow has been cleaned. Yes, I asked him exactly that. He goes, look at this mode. He points on the play field as an insert. It says bath. And I'm like, all right, I'm in, man. This is the game. You know what this – and I was standing right next to him. I'm talking to this guy. I've never met before. And then Randy Martinez, the guy who did the Star Wars art, is right next to him. I'm completely ignoring him. And I'm like, oh, shit. Oh, my God. Randy Martinez. Oh, yeah. You did the artwork on this? That's amazing. You know, like, it's just, you know, like the people doing the homework. I played the Invaders, which is this crazy French game. So smooth. Butter smooth. The ramps, really cool. Has like a, almost like an Attack from Mars kind of fan layout. But imagine Attack from Mars with an upper right flipper. and so the the ramps are like kind of in your standard kind of left right position but the left ramp can be completely made by the upper right uh flipper and um a friend of mine who's worked in the industry i don't want to say his name but he's a pretty well-known programmer used to work for uh data east uh sega he might be doing the code for that at some point down the line which is super exciting if they can get that going um like uh what else i mean you know Or like, I got to play the Tony's Pro Skater. I didn't get a chance to play that. Oh, that looks so cool, dude. It was a new version of it. It was Nick Neitzel, his game. Right. And the ramps in that are crazy. I don't even know what's going on. Pardon me? Oh, the loop-to-loop looks insane. The loop-to-loop, it's just so much crazy stuff in there in the back of that game. And I'm like, how did the ball get the hell over the right? Like, it's like an orbit, but it went up a ramp. I'm like, wow. That's like crazy shit. and like um like uh what else i mean there's this guy he did this game oh man and again dude we do it like the stories that people have behind us this guy did this game called enigma okay okay completely original uh theme this guy got fired or laid off temporarily got like furloughed from his job for like three months and he was so pissed he's so angry he's like you know what i'm gonna take all this rage and this anger and like frustration with like what's going on my day job and I'm going to make a pinball machine. And in three months, this guy put together a fully working pinball machine with the most incredible powder-coated side. This thing was pimped out, like deluxe, beautiful design, original artwork on the play field and back glass, ready to go, played it. And he's got this cluster of pop-upers that rotates, like the rotating platter on Winchester or Batman 66. The pop-upers rotate. Yeah, Gilligan's Island. That's the one I remember the most. And this guy engineered everything he did. I'm like, so who'd you get to do the clear coat on the play field? He's like, I did it myself. And it's got, like, you know, that sparkle effect clear coat that you see on some of the high-end, like, collector J.J.P. games. Wow, yeah. Like, he did it himself. Like, everything in three months, man. Like, holy moly. And there's, like, a story about, like, this grandfather who was in the war who was, like, a double agent. and like this guy like it's like for me like oh i made a movie in three months i'm like how how did you do that by yourself you know let alone three months like um there's there was over 40 homebrew games there it was just incredible and it's incredibly inspiring you know mad max go on elf the harry potter guy who you know you're a big harry potter yeah oh man the new oh god that world under glass wow yeah so you've seen that one right with the playfield that raised the upper playfield, the Quidditch playfield, and the whole sculpts of the Hogwarts Tower, you know, castle, and jeez Louise, man, it's just like, you could spend the entire three days there, and like, be happy with that. Yeah, and then, Ryan McQuaid as well, I saw that he is getting some props for his Sonic game, of course, which was nice to see, because of all the, yes, but it is nice to see he's getting those a very similar one that you had yes for your rig game it's very similar like it was like an interactive uh you know roller coaster that was his had his had lights this was better yeah okay it has headlights but the same kind of concept like and it was like interactive when you were like setting certain modes that it would activate the roller coaster like when you started multiball or whatever and um that's just why like so and he had an amazing uh high speed uh to the getaway next to it as well which was uh insane um yeah i mean okay for a second go back to uh yeah what is the okay the one that glenn worked on i know with jake danzig it's is it zombie league what what is it no it's it's monster league monster league okay so i don't know if you knew this that was the whole uh with the joe farnsworth and um oh man i'm forgetting all the actual design Guys that were working on it. I don't know them as well, but it's the whole crew that did the SOC, the team that worked on SOC. That did SOC. They're called Killdozer, Team Killdozer. Are you familiar with the Killdozer? No. Are you really serious? No, what's that? Oh, my God. The Killdozer is like this crazy real thing that this guy was so disgruntled with these people that were trying to buy his property. Okay. And they were like pressuring him to sell his land. So he built this impenetrable, bulletproof bulldozer. He welded it himself and went on a rampage. It's a real thing. I don't know if he killed anybody, but it was like he was just running over people's houses, and he was unstoppable like a tank. It's insane. It's kind of like this crazy internet meme, the killdozer. You've got to Google that. Check that out. But these guys, their games have nothing to do with that other than the name. But so you played it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you know this. You were in the Cary Hardy video, actually, as well, while he was walking around. You were playing it. So I told him to say hi to you in the video. But anyway, tell us your thoughts on playing it. Like, how is that, like, as a two-player game? It's so different, right? Ryan Claytor of Elephant Eater Comic Books, my friend, Ryan Claytor, who's an amazing illustrator. He did the logo for the new Papa, the reborn, like, re-cerned renaissance of Papa. all the new logos for that uh ryan clader has done the illustration for that what was the book he wrote the part of me he wrote a book that joe selvaggi got for me for my birthday a couple years ago yeah there's there's a few i bought all of his books and i got i've already had a few i've had his compendium and again we're going off on a crazy tangent i'm sorry i want to plug it's pinball adjacent right yeah yeah ryan is such an amazing pinball ambassador his own race an incredible artist and uh maybe the one that he has like a hunter's tale which is like a story about his father and going and doing and connecting with his dad but there's also other kind of story like crazy comic books that he's did about like biography about he uh interviewed people uh covertly i guess like i haven't really read it yet but it's about him interviewing people in his life and asking about what they thought of him but like them not knowing that was actually him asking them it's like this weird kind of anonymous god i could never do that that he did and he learned so much about himself and like how he is seen by other people and how he thinks that he is perceived by his friends and family it's an amazing experiment he did that in a comic book he did one that's about like obviously about like his marriage and and going through that uh of like getting a marriage and getting married for you know uh that whole experience and so brian clare of elf theater comics excuse me to bring it back to monster zombie league i was playing with him because you got to play you got to play with a friend that's a beautiful player about that game is that, you know, unlike pinball, which we all love, it is you play in series, right? You play in sequence. Right. It's ball one, ball one, ball one, ball one for a four-player game, and then everybody plays their ball two, and then everybody plays their ball three. Pardon me. But with, you know, a game that's head-to-head, like, there was another one that was called Battleground as well. There was another great head-to-head one as well. There was also a home run. I want to shout out to that guy as well. He was there last year. Really, really super fun. But the zombie league hockey, it's just got so many great call-outs and music and Glenn and Antoinette that you can hear their voices taunting each other. Awesome call-outs. And you've got to play with a friend, interact with a friend directly, like one-on-one in the same time. You know what I mean? And that's the really cool thing that pinball can be adapted to. And I don't know how they built it, but the play field, it slopes downward towards either end. I don't know how they had to manufacture that. It's not like a level playing field. It slopes down from the middle, downward towards either side of the flippers of either end of the game. And there's a goalie that's a drop target. So if you hit the drop target, it will save the ball. But if the ball goes down again, if it drops in front of it twice within a certain amount of time, the goalie can't save it. So then it can drain down the middle. So it's not like a full save. You've got to be able to recover after the goalie saves it. so it's really cool and apparently the game plays it um it can play like itself like i said like on a track mode that's insane just go completely like like completely autonomously play itself which is insane i i'm joe i'm shocked we don't see that more often to more arcades can you imagine if you just walked by harry potter and magically the flipper started going like dialed in you could play remotely right flips like a thing flips kind of thing you know remember how dialed in you could play remotely on your phone yeah yeah yeah yeah so like obviously they have they can do that somehow some way right you should be able to have an app on your phone and make it autoplay yeah but that's an amazing that'd be an amazing way to show how to play the gamer as a demonstration yeah like the easiest multiball start just sequencing over and over you know for sure yeah and and again i want to shout out to my also my other artist friend brad Brad Albright uh who was on the panel yes that we talked uh brad Brad Albright's an amazing guy he's done stuff for me i've commissioned his work in the past and uh he was very very gracious to do at a very very reasonable uh rate that i think you know like i you know he's doing for passion and so i think that you know he did the artwork all over this game you know uh is amazing he's got this gorgeous style i love his stuff because he does so much stuff on like movies and pop culture i bought so many of his posters that were like um i've got this great one which is like the the thing the the movie you know the John Carpenter's The Thing. The poster's an iconic poster with this light coming out of this guy's face. But it's like a combination of The Thing and the movie Alien, where instead of the light coming out of The Thing's face, it's a facehugger that's on the guy's face. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. That's like a combination of two of the greatest horror sci-fi movies of all time. I've got to get that. And he's also got all kinds of crazy woodcuts. He's done work for my buddy, hey, our buddy in Montreal, Phil, from Ace Grimm Studios, who does all the clocks, those custom like um electromechanical real clocks have you seen those before i think i have seen them not for a while but yeah i think i have seen them but they're amazing there's like these like you know countertop clocks that have like the back glass of like a classic uh gauntlet game or original that like uh that i think um brad has done at least two of them now and also johnny crack has done uh from montreal he's done some artwork there so it's just unbelievably beautifully precision uh like uh assembled like it's like having like a mini a back glass of a classic gotley game like um uh atlantis or oh man i'm forgetting all the games uh it's it's all these classic uh like gotley artwork uh and then having like the reels of that as like your clock and it's just such a brilliant concept and um but yeah brad has done a couple of those original uh what What is Brad's main pinball claims to fame? I don't want to confuse the two artists who are sitting beside each other. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the two of them that really come to mind are Portal, which I've been a friend of Ian Ian Harrower for Multimorphic. Shout out to the Gamma Goat. The P3, yeah, on the P3 system. Just amazing. Just did an incredible job. And, yeah, I got a chance to play Portal. We can talk about that. is mind-blowingly amazing. Just incredible. I got a partial tutorial from Stephen Silver. Okay, let's do all the – But Brad was also on Winchester Mystery House. Yes, that's his – He did all of that as well. So three games. Already. The Monster League Hockey, Winchester Mystery House, and Portal are just – all banger games, and they're so different. It's amazing that, like, when you think of it, those games couldn be like they in different worlds They in almost entirely you know and and he got a chance to work with and work for uh with all those great people that that develop those games it's amazing okay do you want to go around the horn and talk about i guess like all the different pinball companies and we can start sure let's start with winchester because you already started talking about winchester we just we know the art's incredible i was a little bit i thought there was a couple areas like if i was going to be really critical for me on the cab that were like kind of open a little bit i thought the art that was there is incredible i love the back glass the back glass to me is like a plus plus plus i thought the playfield was done absolutely gorgeous i just you know that would be my minor minor critique but uh overall i think that there's a lot of stuff mid playfield just like interact with the ball no no no i'm okay with that no i think the artwork is fine i'm saying the artwork i thought on the cab wasn't like is oh the cabinet the cabinet yeah sorry the left the left side of the cabinet there's just a little area that was a bit open i might have like filled it up a bit more but i don't know i'm not yeah i don't know art honestly remember too much of the side art i'm looking at right now no no the uh the back glass is incredible the machine looks awesome but this is why i think they sold out you can tell me if you think i'm right or wrong i think it was a combination of a we didn't have time to be negative nancy's and debbie downers about the theme because nobody knew so they kept it a secret b right you have the carl factor carl has so much gosh darn toot and goodwill like just through years of uh doing ie pinball and live streaming and all the way through covid you know beating big buck hunter i was there for half those live streams also him you know teaching everyone like you said about streaming so there's that and then there's the key component because i do think even if carl was working for stern and made this exact title i don't think it'd be their biggest seller but the key component is there was only 525 and when you put those three things together, I think it really made it like, yeah, I think that's why it sold out. I can't wait to see what Carl does next. Oh, for all of us. So you shot it. You played Winchester. Tell us about the shots. Tell us about the flow, the multi-balls, the experience of playing it. I mean, again, I did get a chance to – I just got one game on it. Fair enough, fair enough. First impressions, one game warning. Yeah, very impressive. right off the bat the game looks beautiful I think the you know oh hold on one second Joe hold on I have absolutely no clue why but my bluetooth speaker turned off isn't that wonderful okay well I will plug this in just hold on like do like a 30 second like grab a if you need like a recola or something here we go Okay, talk again for a sec. Hey, how's it going, Orby? Oh, my God. Sorry. So my Bluetooth cut out. I'm going to plug it back in here. And go ahead. You were just talking about how much you enjoyed shooting Winchester. Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the play field, straight off the bat, the colors and the design of the play field looks gorgeous. The lighting is spectacular, just absolutely stunning. As you would see in a lot of the Barrels of Fun games that are coming out now, Like the lighting is really spectacular with their, I forget what they call it. Oh, man. Like expression lighting or something like that? Yeah, it's like their version of it. I forget what they call it. But anyhow, but also just the LED inserts are just really well beautifully programmed in the light show. And so you walk up to it, and it's like this beautiful glowing box that's almost, you know, like a haunting glow, which makes sense, right? Right. Get haunted. Those callouts are scary, Joe. I didn't hear much of the callouts, to be honest with you. That's one thing I didn't – I did hear the music, the music from Jeff Dobson. Yes. From Dirty Pool. Shout out. Great job as well. Shout out to him as well. I know there's so many great people that worked on it, and I'm really sorry if I've left anybody out. But anyway, but about the shot geometry, you know, just spectacular, just like a world under glass. Like you're just like drawn right into this, all these like return ramps and stuff. But one thing in particular, you know, there's the rotating of platinum that we talked about earlier, and there's the ghost. I didn't really notice too much of the effects in that back area while I was playing because I wasn't looking up there as much. I should have been looking when somebody else was playing while I was waiting, but anyhow. But really, for me, the key, there's inline drops, and it was very, very easy to understand how to get the multiball, how to start a mode in that game, and I thought that the communication of the game, even if I wasn't looking at the LCD in the backbox the non-verbal communication of the game through the lighting was very very clear in the insert information there and the way that the game was guiding you through the game in various other ways other than just like a voice call like shoot this you know which is fine I love that that's great but like if the game can tell you that without telling you that then you know you've got something really good like something that feels really good and the thing that is really hilarious I was playing with a friend the guy I was waiting in line with and I was playing on my ball and I got multiball and I was like oh man this is amazing and then I got back to single ball play and there's an amazing shot where there's a line of drops similar to a guy where you would see like they're drop targets but it's kind of mid play field and they're sweepable kind of like King Kong in the mid play field area but you can bank off those drop targets and the ball almost perfectly, almost always, every single time, will ricochet off those drop targets, sweep off of them, collect all three, and then go into the scoop of the rotating platter. And I was so impressed that that kept on happening so consistently. I was giving it like a chef's kiss. But as my hand was coming up off the flipper, the ball came to the return lane and drained right down the middle. I couldn't help it. I lost my ball free. I was in so much awe of the game's geometry that I literally had to take my hands off to like, wow, this is amazing. And then I drank. So I'm an idiot. But that's how incredibly well-tuned and smooth. That platter that rotates, rotates so quickly, so smoothly. Like, boom, boom, boom. It switches and walks into place. And the flippers were super crazy snappy. like as snappy as any other manufacturer you can find out there really really cool stuff I talked to Carl D'Python Anghelo and I don't know if you're aware of the Alvin G. Gopley game Mystery Castle yes I saw it was in the finals of a big disc that Jim Balcino and Carl so I asked Carl is there going to be a Mystery Castle reference in the game and he said no no not yet but i'm definitely thinking about putting it in and i i think i know where i'll put it in so just for you mystery castle fans soon to come and of course it's got to be like an adams family you know i mean you that's literally what you do is tour the mansion in this game you're touring the mystery house right that's the whole game so there's got to be probably some kind of like cute little i'm sure they'll put in some kind of easter egg for like you adams family uh fans and stuff because carl's like a you know a big nerd like us he's Like, he's played all the games, and he knows all the little subtle call-outs and stuff. So, great game. Incredible. Wish him incredible success with this, and Carl, for the next game of Future Camp. I can't wait to play it again. I hope I can find a place where I can find a place or someone to play it with again soon. Well, standing O to the entire team over there. I think Barrels of Fun is really, because I think Labyrinth is just such a, I think Labyrinth looks to be a bit of a tight shooter, but besides that, it looks to be a whole world under glass. Really, really good for their first machine. And then I think Dune is even more beautiful, has more interesting geometry. I think the launch maybe wasn't perfect, but now they're firing on all freaking cylinders. They got Jeff over there helping with the call-outs, the sound, the mixing, all that kind of stuff. You brought on Carl D'Python Anghelo. You went from me not knowing any of your designers to me being like, what? How did you get Carl? and why didn't some other companies scoop him up first, right? And so I think they're doing great. Now, just, oh, minor side tangent here. I don't know if you saw this or not. Don of Don's Pinball Podcast is actually my Patreon, and he wrote in the chat four days ago, will we see a hidden Orbeez show up at Expo? And I was like, well, no, dude, it's too last minute. Like, it's just not going to happen. He's like, I think we still might, and I didn't really get it. Now, did you see the Orbeez Easter egg? In Winchester? No, I wish. No, no, no, no. Sorry, at Expo. At Expo. Oh, at Expo. No. Okay. Was it like a sticker or something he put somewhere? Look, I don't... Well, kind of. Sort of. So he's been kind enough to purchase coffee and tea for me before. Okay. As you have as well. Thank you. I got repre... Yes. And repack a shout out. Well, he put me in the background. Now, I'm not suggesting he did this on purpose, but he put me in the background of this, the homebrew topper competition so it and i was just right above the poor man's pinball podcast they had the turkey topper which was absolutely hilarious it's literally just a stuffed turkey that says turkey topper but right yeah i got to touch the turkey you touched the turkey i touched the turkey i didn't know what the hell it was for i just saw the poor man's okay giant black is my turkey i love turkey it's a turkey topper so right above the turkey topper in the homebrew topper competition was this these double katana blades i'm assuming don made but it looks like right where the katana blade is coming out from the topper it's like going into the side of orby's head which is like from like but i you know it's he's having fun he thinks it's funny i think it's hilarious i don't really care no no no i think it's not it's just it's this the cool cartoon picture from the d jenny's that that you got that's on my orby's pinball potion yeah that's just on one of my tees right so yeah that's your orby i think it's hilarious i was there kind of sort of because of Don. So that is just so cool. I also wanted to give a shout out to Don who saved our buddies over there at the pinball round table because they were missing part of their setup. So he saved them there which was awesome. And then the third shout I wanted to give before we move on to talking about P3 Multimorphic a little bit was to Rachel Risto. She did this thing called the hug counter and she got like 200 some odd hugs. I think that is the funniest thing ever. I got two good big bear hugs. We got two big bear hugs together. And honestly, like, I don't know what it is about Rachel. We just start talking about, you know, how important pinball is to us as a community and just our mental health and stuff like that. And, you know, the people that we know and how special they are. And, like, we just have a cry session, man. We just, like, start crying. We just are so overwhelmed by how amazing this community is and how important it is to tell people that you care about them. And Rachel embodies that 100%. And, yeah, the count counter, I think she got to like over 320 or something. I took a picture of her final hug count. And if you get a hug from Rachel, that's pretty much, however bad your day was or good your day was, it just got a little brighter, a little bit better. And what I love so much, this is the asterisk to this, is that she won that Cactus Canyon. And I thought she was the perfect person to win that. Perfect, yeah, she just got it set up. She was telling me about it. And, you know, she's still saying she's, like, overwhelmed by that. I mean, you should talk to her about it. But it's just, yeah, it's just she was there supporting Project Pinball. I was talking to her there. And, you know, she just gives so much of herself. And she does an amazing job with commentary. Yeah. You know, Tom and Fox Cities and all that stuff. Like, again, we all bring whatever we can to the hobby from whatever background we have. And, you know, she's an amazing emotional support person if you need it. And there's some people out there that don't want to get hugged. I'm a hugger, right? Like, I don't usually initiate the hug. But if somebody wants to hug me, anybody, I'll hug them. You know, I will hug you. Unless we're, like, you know, me. Unless we know each other. You and me, like, I'll hug you. Like, you know, I'll start the hug. But whatever. But, like, if you're a stranger, a complete stranger, I'll be good. And it's funny you mentioned the hugging. I was with Ron Hallett of Slam Tilt at the same time. He famously does not like hugs. And I said to Rachel, you know, Ron loves hugs. Like, I was kind of joking. But, like, he would be, like, the white whale of all the hugs. Like, if he could get a hug out of a month, you know. But whatever. Yeah, I respect people's personal space and all that stuff, for sure. But it was just kind of a joke. It was kind of funny. Like, a complete hugger, like, super hugger person, and then a very non-hugger person sitting right, you know. And that's the beauty of pinball, right? We have all these different personalities and all these different things. I just think that's beautiful. It's great. There's so much diversity in people's personalities and people's thing. And it's just respect everybody and all that stuff. But I just thought that was kind of funny that I had Rachel standing and I was talking right next to Ron. And we all love pinball. Just by chance. The most famous hugger in pinball and the most famous would prefer not to hug, which is totally fine, right? I got a kick out of that. I'm sorry. I actually – I kind of mess with both sides. So let's try to go – I know that you're probably exhausted. You had to travel all day today. Let's try to quickly go through some of the other companies. Maybe we don't have to get into all the smaller boutique ones. But I really did want to touch on P3 Multimorphic and have you played Portal now? Yes. I got one full game. I was playing with my buddy Ethan Bent, who I won the World Cup Pinball Championship, the Expo World Cup Pinball Championship last year with from Edmonton. Great. Oh, he used to live in Toronto, but he moved out west. Edmonton. Great guy. And like I said, Stephen Silver from Multimorphic. He's a creative director. Also Poor Man's Tribe member, along with myself. Oh, the Poor Man's Tribe member, that's right. Shout out. And so, great guy. So passionate about all the projects he works on, from Heist to Princess Bride, and now Portal. it's just, it gave us, you know, he was like, he's like do you want to just play it and experience it or do you want me to kind of guide you through and kind of like i'm like please guide me through because this is an Ian Harrower's game yes like i i know and it's portal it's kind of an abstract kind of thing with like levels and you know go to like the lobby and then you go to different portal levels so you know i think generally if even if you just went into it fresh it'd be you know an extremely fun and satisfying game to shoot but just having steven there go okay well you're on level one and on level one you've got to shoot the ramps. When you shoot a ramp, it goes up, right? And then you've got to shoot three ramps, and then you're out of the portal. Or to start the portal, you've got to hit this target, and then you've got to go into this scoop, and that's how you get to the next level. You know what I mean? And, like, stuff like that really helped me with, like, understanding this kind of, like, because it's almost like a 3D complex world where you have, like, these stacked levels, and you can choose from, like, the first six levels, like the first six modes, I guess you could call them, are the levels and then the seventh one you have to do like it's kind of like a mini wizard mode when you get all six of them done right so it's locked out number portal level number seven and you know there's all these amazing synergistic like it's crazy like even just a skill shot it's like you can you can shoot the right ramp and then if he's right back to shoot the same right ramp you can keep on doing that and build that up and build it up or cash it out you know it's really really cool even for the skill shot is like its own objective like real objective of like a hurry up, you know? And just like, oh yeah, I did get a chance. I did get one of the multiballs. I forget what it was. Oh, I can't remember now which one it was, but it wasn't like the main cube multiball. It was the other one. I can't remember what it was called, but it just, you know, like I was able to progress through the game. I was able to complete a few levels and it's just gorgeous to get Brad Brad Albright to do an amazing job. Marc Silk as, you know, the little widget guy. I forget what they call him in the game the eyeball robot he does a great job in like leading you and the mystery awards are hilarious like all the different kinds are very very like on brand thematically for the game portal and I didn't get to the cake but I got a really good sense of the game they had cakes there as well which was hilarious well I'm so excited to play it I'm so excited to Oh, I was just saying, I'm so excited to play it. I know that Ian Harrower might have a demo game at his house when I'm back for Mabel next month. So I may get to play a game on it. I'd love to get to play it. I still haven't played Princess Bride. I haven't even played Weird Al yet. So would you say that... Weird Al's great, too. Do you think Portal is close to your favorite by them as far as being a shooter, like how it shoots? Or is it just so hard to choose? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I mean, again, I can't go too deep in the code. And I think, you know, we all know Ian. Ian is a brilliant guy. And they just released the 1.0 code just before Expo opened. So it's essentially like code complete without bug fixes and all these other kind of tweaks. I'm sure some tweaks can still happen. But basically the whole game is in the box. And they are shipping them now. And it's just really, really spectacular. Like honestly, if you're going to get into the P3 with this, I would say this is really the one to get. if you haven't been convinced yet I don't know why with Weird Al and Princess Bride and Heist the incredible mechanical stuff that's in there as well as the playfield as well it's mesmerizing it has an incredible animation to the playfield it's simple because it's like grids simple kind of like the interior of the portal world it's very spartan, very sparse it's not a lot of crazy colors yeah it's very minimalistic right but it's also like incredibly complex in the way that it's moving it like in a 3d space underneath like it's it really gives you this incredible depth into the playfield art uh the art as you're playing and and you know the hard like bridge when you have to make that shot from the top to cross across and like hit it with this like like slap like the one of the extra flipper buttons to pop it across to the other side you really get the sense that like it's manifesting in on the play field and what you're shooting and when the when the ramp moves up and down you can see the the the like the shadow and also like how the the tiles are kind of changing and moving like almost like physically with the actual physical game on the lcd display incredible integration between the lcd display and the um um the actual physical ramps and physical nature of the design of the game. Really great. Incredible. Like seamless. Seamless is the word I would use. And that spinning little robot is just so gosh darn toot and cute. It follows the ball with its eye. You know, I mean, that's really a fun, interesting, unique mech. And the jump shot, I mean, it's so good. It's so good. Congrats to the whole team there. There's the, what's it called? The middle one? I forget what they call it. the platform that jumps you right up to the center. There's also the one that jumps you across the ass pool. It's like a skate park almost. Yeah, 100%. Like Tony Hawk, but also with robots. It's wild. It totally has that skate park vibe to it. And you've got to build up the venture with this loop, and then you've got to shoot it out. It's crazy. It's unbelievably... Everybody can play a portal. point i like honestly this is you're like honest i don't know what you're if you can afford because again like you know we you and me we have a limited budget with our world i i can't afford any new pinball machine honestly at this point in my life but honestly this would be one of the top games uh and this would be like a must buy if you're even curious about the the the the multi-morphic platform uh it's so so good it's it's really i think it's going to do very well for them and it's going to do well for them for a long time. It's going to be a very consistent seller, I think, especially when people get their hands on it and really start to spread word of mouth in this game. It's not, you know, it really is a pinball. It's a complete pinball experience and I'm so happy. This is incredibly passionate people working on this product. Me personally, I do really truly feel that P3 Multimorphic is probably the most underrated company out there and if more of the machines were on location, then I think that, you know, and also it's going to take some time and energy. We know that whenever you change something it doesn't matter if it's in computers or any new industry. When you change something as much as they did, it will take, you know, there's going to be early adopters and then other people are going to take longer. But I just, I love it in every way, shape and form. I got to live stream actually a long time ago at Ian's house on P3 Multimorphic like me, like Ian teaching me how to play all the farm game back then and all this is like 5-6 years ago so that was my first introduction was like in a live stream I believe at his house so I've always had a lot of respect for it. I don't even know if there's a single one out here on the east coast of Canada but if there is one I will find one. Let's jump over into Spooky Pinball so they did not have a new pinball machine there that day but tell me thoughts on Evil Dead. Yeah, Evil Dead I finally got a chance to play that game, thank God. And I was playing with Johnny Crap, actually. No way. On that game, yeah. And I saw the Loser Kid guys playing. Scott was playing with his son. He was playing with his son. I got to meet his son. I got to know his son quite well. And his son really loved Portal, by the way. Really? That's another thing. Just go back to Portal. His stand-up game, 100%, he loved that game. He was 100% on board with Portal. He was like, that game is awesome. But also, But moving on, Spooky, I finally got a chance to play Evil Dead, and man, oh man, is it so cool. I loved also every game. They had almost a dozen Evil Dead games in a row there, which is insane. All the toppers going nuts, and it was crazy. And it was busy the entire show. It's not like this is old news. People like me, a lot of people haven't played this game yet, right? And so I was super excited to play it because I'm a big movie guy. I'm not a big horror guy, but I do love the Evil Dead series, especially for me. I hope that because this game is such a success, they will try to re-up the license with the studio. I forget what the studio is, but it gets Army of Darkness. It's like a follow-up sometime down the street. But anyway, this game, Evil Dead, is so good. It is so cool, man. The shotgun shell sort of targets that you hit are so satisfying to smash. They look so cool. Yeah, yeah, no. I played a little bit of the mini play field underneath in the cellar that opens up. And there's a troll head that pops up. I totally forgot even that was in the game. There's like a troll, you know, from Medieval Madness type thing. A head that pops up of a deadite. And it's just great. I didn't get the multiball. That's one thing. I didn't get the multiball. It wasn't super clear to me how to get that. But, like, I love, like, you look at that game, you're like, holy crap. look at the stuff they put in this game mechanically and just you know with the team you know thematically integrated mechanical action I'm all about that and there's so much cool stuff going on in the game it's like an unbelievable amount of stuff they put in there and it's done so lovingly you know the art package is sick Franchi did an amazing job with the color and the choices of everything it just really pops it makes all those you know some of the imagery you've seen before from the movies and the posters and stuff, but really putting it in a new light and reimagining it in a new, literally a new color palette, really gives it an incredible new look, a fresh new look with the greens and the magentas and purples on the game. Really, that really stands out incredibly well, especially for, like, you know, if you love his work, you can get that, but then this amazing, you know, color treatment that's given to the game. And it's great, all the games there, you know, the hand is just a standard open palm hand, but every one of the games there had the mod with the middle finger. I don't know if that's standard or an extra thing. Every single one, like all 12 of them. All of them were bought. All of them were paid for. Bought and paid for. You saw a little sticker that was bought by this person. Sold, sold, sold, sold, sold, sold, sold. Right? Wow. And yeah. Good for them. The games were played great. The sound was great Great calls I didn hear too much of the audio too much because it so loud in that entire room But you could hear the callouts pretty well I could recognize the calls from the movie or certain things. It was like, shoot the shotguns or whatever, shoot the hand or shoot the... And the modes themselves were very clear. The outline, which is one thing I've had a criticism in the past with some spooky games, that the outline of what am I doing in this mode or whatever is not very clear to me in the explanation either on the LCD or on the play field, but I think that was really well done and choreographed for Evil Dead. Another spectacular S-tier game. We're talking all killer, no filler here. From the Homebrews to Winchester to Portal to Evil Dead. There was no Walking Dead. To Star Wars. There was no Walking Dead there, by the way. To Star Wars. It's just great. Like, it's crazy, man. Give us your Star Wars thoughts. Star Wars, yeah. I mean, you know. Was it the fall of the Empire? Yeah. So I played it first. The first time I played it, I was actually at Logan Arcade. Okay. And they had a premium and they had a pro there. And I felt that the premium played a lot better, personally. I just felt that the, I don't know, maybe that's just the way the game was set up. Whatever, maybe more people playing one over the other. I felt that the premium played a lot smoother. And then I played another one. I played another Star Wars at the Star Wars yeah it was a premium at the Flip N Out Pinball kiosk there and that was pretty well and that was like you know they got all their games all tuned up because they gotta sell those games they can't be all beaten up so they really do take a good job in making sure that those games are playing optimally so I really enjoyed it I mean I'm a crazy crazy intensely Star Wars guy. Apparently, originally, the game was only supposed to be within the Empire Strikes Back world, but then they added a little Jedi and a little bit of New Hope in there. But it's clearly Star Wars. It's Empire Strikes Back, very focused. You can tell other than Jabba, there's the Ad Ad Walker and the artwork and everything like that. It's very Empire focused or maybe kind of split between Empire and Jedi mostly like maybe a little touch of New Hope in there. I think the artwork on it looks spectacular. I love I think that yeah, I think it really looks amazing. It shoots very smoothly. I did, in truth, the first time I played it at Logan I shot the Death Star shot. We were talking about the Death Star shot. I shot the Death Star shot with a weak shot and it didn't go up the ramp and it came back down and the thing was open it was on a pro so it's not like the thing opens it closes it's there i think it's open the entire time well i can't remember but it just like hit and just kind of came back and then uh and then i literally the same shot rebounded back to my flipper and then i smashed it right back in there and then it just like skipped and jumped right back up so it was almost like goldilocks where it was like too weak and then too uh hard and neither of them got into the shot, even though directly, like, nailed it. It wasn't even rattling. It went straight up. Like, it wasn't a matter of the angle. It was, like, a matter of the power of the flip. You know what I'm saying? The power of the speed of the ball. And I think unless the speed of the ball is just within that Goldilocks speed, then it's going to be very frustrating to shoot that shot. So, honestly, for the most part, I kind of ignored it. I think they're going to dial it in, though. Like, I heard they're figuring out ways to dial it in. I think that if you kind of raise that whole thing a little more to make it a little bit higher, maybe it won't be hitting the top of that Death Star. I think that's mainly the main issue. It's hitting the top of the opening for the Death Star. So I don't know. There was something about the – there was Mylar that was also making it skip that they removed from a production version that was on the prototype originally. And my boy Kyle, he does so much QA and testing of games. I'm sure he's very aware of this. and they're going to be on top. I have faith in Stern. And you know what else I have faith in? Raymond Davidson doing the code for his first non-music pin. I'm so stoked for this guy. Yeah, he was there. I was at the Stern tour. We can talk about that, which was wild. Very different experience from any other Stern tour I've been in the past. Okay, yeah. Pop into that quickly. I don't want to keep you too long, though. I don't want to keep you too long. He had showed up because he was just in the washroom during our part of the tour. He showed up just as people were just leaving. He's like, hey, guys, I'm Raymond here. I was in the washroom. I really loved the game, and it was a great experience working on it. If anybody's got any questions for me, okay, bye. I was like, okay, I'm going. I saw him. I got to chat with him a little bit about the game. But John Borg was there the whole time just explaining the game at the very end of the tour and just showing, and he was just so happy and excited about the game. He was explaining all the different kind of modes and stuff while Raymond was gone. he was explaining kind of, okay, so this is how you get this multiball locking the ball here the ATF the ATF that falls down and all the other kind of features of the game, so that was super cool I've never really talked to John Borg before or seen really in person, so that was really cool. Do you want to talk about this really quick? I've got a couple interesting thoughts. Yeah, go into it I mean, the only two things I have left on my I don't do a lot of notes, as you know But the only two things I wanted to hit on here maybe would be the AI conversation. And at the very end, if you're willing to go into character, I could ask you what it's like to be Gary Stern for an hour. Oh, my God. Oh, God. That's mainly how I lost my voice was trying to be Gary Stern. But speaking of Gary Stern, so I've been to the Stern. A lot of people probably listening have been to the Stern Factory Tour. And, you know, it's great. It's, you know, you go through the whole thing and there's the new facility and it's huge and all that stuff, right? It's very incredibly awe-inspiring just how big everything is, just from the front end office area to the actual factory floor. But this year, this year was – it was like almost like it should have been like an anniversary or something because they really went all out with this tour, okay? First, they give you a special hat. They welcome you in. By the way, Stern also, they sprang for a really high-end level. I want to say the coach buses, they weren't school buses this year. they were coach buses they were really nice plush school buses oh sorry coach buses not school buses and i'm sure it cost them a pretty penny to get these buses running as well so they the note like it felt like no expense no expense spared for this whole experience it's really a premium experience so we get off these really nice coach buses we go to the building and they give us this you know a custom like a a nice commemorative hat that says you know stern pinball, there's a trucker cap that says the date, factory tour 2025. That's really nice. You don't have to have a little rich face. Wow. Joe, I have no clue why this is not fair at all. Hey, we were there. You didn't get it because you were on the tour. Sorry. Anyhow, you walk into the reception into the main office and they have everything. like they have like someone that greets you and explains and you straight up you're like walking and there's gary and seth standing right on a platform they've got headset mics with that are set up with speakers and it's like the whole experience from the beginning that point onward i tried to describe it it was like you've been to disney world obviously right albert with your family i yeah one time yeah one time you're familiar with the concept of a dark ride right you know what a dark ride is? Yeah, like that roller coaster in Space Mountain or whatever? No, that's a roller coaster. Well, it is dark in Space Mountain. But a dark ride is a kind of different thing. A dark ride is like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride or the Peter Pan ride or something like that where you get into a little vehicle or you walk through an environment and you go from spot to spot to spot and you see different kind of tableaus of this movie or whatever. And so you're in a dark workspace and then like you're just brought into this world it's a very specific disney type thing that they pioneered it's called the dark ride right it's really or nobody else knows what i'm talking about please look into it but anyway so it felt like pirates of the caribbean in a way and then like a disney ride it felt like a disney ride is what i'm trying to say in the most flattering way in the sense there's a very polished choreographed thing where you walk in it's like the hall of presidents it's like oh my god here's like gary and seth welcoming you in hello everyone all my all our pitbull family welcome welcome and uh and you're like is this even real like this is crazy like you're like this is like you know the two heads of the company they're like there the whole day and they're just like you know the gary's and seth are taking questions and talking to people and they're there up on this platform and then you move on they take you in groups and they take you in like groups of like you know 12 people or so and they move on to the george gomez exhibit where george gomez is like he's standing up again on like an elevated platform with like this rail he's like hey everybody i'm george comez and uh we're gonna tell you all about the star travel and it's like it's like this it's almost like they should be like animatronic figures so that's totally new this year right pardon me that's totally new this year right 100 like no there was not that kind of like like like that kind of like level of like the all the the like the the top level people there the entire day like maybe you saw gary he came and said hi and he passed by them at the start of the tour. But they were there and they were there the whole day talking and George Gomez was there the whole time. By the end of it for six hours, his voice was shot because he was just talking non-stop from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. And I really respect that. That's really the ability to go and give a really polished introduction and it's like right off the bat, boom, you see Gary and Seth there. And then George. You're taken in little groups And the cool thing, like I've always had like one kind of tour group person that takes you through in previous years. But now the tour group got person were there. They guide you to these little stations. So it's like section like part one wiring. And then there's a person who like oversees the wiring department that's got a microphone, a headset, microphone and a speaker. And they're telling you about like their day to day job and what they do and their and their direct group and their team does in that particular area of the company. And it was so well done. And then they take it. It's like Stations of the Cross. You go from one to the next, from wiring to the cable assembly and then testing. And then they bring you to probably screwing up the order of things. And then they bring you to the parts area where they do QC on the parts. And you talk to the person that's in charge of parts QC and how they do QC parts. and the inventory, which is insane, the inventory is down to 99%. And they've got literally probably tens of millions of different parts. Unbelievable. They call it the Raiders of the Lost Ark aisle at the end of the movie where the Ark gets lost again in the big warehouse. There's that vibe to these huge, huge racks that go up almost three stories high. It's crazy. And they all – every year they do like an inventory down to like almost every nut and part. They weigh the nuts and bolts and all the kind of really small stuff. But like pretty much all the main parts, they do an incredible inventory every year. And the guy that was doing the inventory was so passionate about the numbers and being accurate and everything. You can get that because these people, they work and they love what they're doing in these different departments. It wasn't just like, oh, I don't exactly know what goes on here, but these are these people. You got a really great in-depth, really personal look of the people that are actually working at the factory in each department. And then, yeah, you go to the cabinet where they put the decals on and then they do the sub-assemblies and then the final playfield population and all the soldering and everything. And it's just an amazing experience. It's like, again, like a Disney ride, like going through a dark ride. And you come out at the very end. Boom. there's a new game, Star Wars what about it's a small world after all I went on that I hated it they kept playing that stupid song Joe it was the worst no they didn't play that you would be insane if you had to go through that and it was done very discretionately you were in and out of that factory tour within 45 minutes it wasn't like a real song they brought you in, they showed you the Hennepin press they showed you the backup one in case the Hennepin Press dies. They've got a brand new, almost twice the size, four-point press for the playfield pilot holes and all that stuff. And Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske, she was actually given, which is hilarious. I saw her there. She was the one giving that particular section. Shout out to Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske. She's awesome. She's awesome. She's just brilliant. And she was talking about the history of the Hennepin Press, how they got it from Gottlieb for like $9 million, and the whole thing and how it's printed every single pinball machine from Data East all the way back to the early Laser War days of Data East. And yeah, at the very end, yes, it's John Borg and Ray Day are there with this new Star Wars game. And then you can go and get some merch and get some exclusive merch that they have at the store that you're in, it's very, very well choreographed. It's like the most impressive factory tour. It's almost like a ride is what I'm trying to say. It's almost like a Disney ride through the Stern factory. Now I'm even more excited. If it came this far in one or two years, imagine if I don't get there until even next year or the year after for some reason. It's just going to even be that much better. I'm going to do a little minor pivot here because Elizabeth Gieske, Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske, and Jack Danger did this epic, like, I don't know if it was 12 hours, 13 hours, they did a 14-hour commentary for the Stern Pro Circuit Finals, and honestly, like, I feel like I know Jack kind of, I feel like I kind of know him well, as well as you can know a content creator that you've just been in their live streams, but I mean, Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske, I got to know her so well, because for like eight and a half hours, she, near the end, she was going on perhaps more tangents than me, No, close to it. But much more educated, much more interesting tangents, not to worry. It's all about coding. And I didn't even know what she was talking about most of the time, but I just thought it was so cool hearing her breakdown of the, like from a coder's perspective. I thought that was so neat. And just the fact that her and Jack did that whole time. So I had to say that. Then I also want to touch really quickly. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Arvid won the flip out tournament, the 250 person big one. I think I just watched the end of it last night. It was down there. I've literally been in a coma since before. as soon as I touch down. I will correct that on my next show if not, but wow, you did not play in that, correct? You were just too busy with everything else. No, no, there's so much to do. Literally, again, you could just do that tournament all the three and a half days long of Pinball Expo and that's an incredibly involved process that will take your entire three days, just being part of that tournament, doing classics and the women's tournament that I don't know when that wrapped up. Hopefully it wrapped up much earlier than last time. They're still playing. They're still playing. And shout out to Trent and Debra of Tilt Amusements who do that every year for the past 20 years. I don't even know how long. They've been doing it for over a decade easily. Yeah, and Tom of Fox Cities for streaming as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Tom for streaming. The guy is so dedicated and he is such a nice guy and you know he is he's he's great for he's very knowledgeable and very technically proficient and very professional and he just wants to give everybody at home who can't make it the best possible experience you know and and it's just everybody that's involved in that whole part of the that whole part of it is just a killer team and i think we're so thankful to have great people working and all that but i did not really i came and visited people just to say hi. But I didn't participate myself. But the thing about Expo is there's like eight different things to possibly do at the same time. Pinball Olympics, like just so much stuff happening. Oh, yeah, and that's not even an official thing. You know, like the Pinball Olympics wasn't an official thing. Or like going to the Media Maker. Media Mixer. Were you at that? Did you go to that one? Yeah, I made it this year. I scored it. They launched their 2.0. I've got a shout out to Ron and his team. Everybody there did an amazing job with Scorebit. The new rebrand looks beautiful, and the new interface is awesome. And you've got to basically, like, reload. Go to your Apple Store or the App Store in Android, redownload, and upgrade your Scorebit. It's totally worth your time. It's so awesome. They're rolling out some amazing features with Scorebit that they're going to be communicating. And it was really nice of them to just give out so many great prizes and just sponsor the whole event. It was completely catered to drinks and food, everything taken care of. And Colin, I begged him to do it again. He did it this year. Instant cameras that everybody was taking tons of pictures of everybody else. It was great. And that's where I met George. That's where I met Manu. from Mystery Science Pinball Theater 3000. I'm a huge fan of his. Finally got to meet him in person. And so many other media creators who I've known. Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey. I know her. I've met her a couple times. And got to meet so many other people that were there in person. That's also an amazing event. That's not even an official event. That's like a side event that's happening at Interium. It's a side quest. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just saying it's a side quest. Yeah, it's a side quest. It's just a side quest. You can spend the whole weekend doing the side quest. And so there's so many special things. I try to always focus a lot on just the places and the opportunities to meet new people and connect with people that I've already met. For me, that's like the most important thing. So like, you know, again, we all have our own reasons for going. And the seminars, geez, man, I didn't even talk about the seminars. Okay, well, sum up my talk. Yeah, sum up AI for us. we're not going to spend a long time on it people have heard me be a big windbag talk about my thoughts on AI before I love chat GDP but the artwork stuff I'd rather stay homemade that's just my preference if possible what did we all learn from this everyone go watch it on pinball news there's the whole hour there but summarize for me kind of the artist vibes and your vibes and whatever Colin was thinking and I know Ian from Nudge Magazine was there as well very strong opinions for sure on the whole panel, and that's what I wanted, right? And I wanted, I did want a little more of a diversity of opinion, but some people, they originally agreed, but they were asked to not participate by certain management. So we're not going to go there. Fair enough. That's probably a slippery slope. I tried to put together as, you know, I'm still very happy with the group of people that came out, Brad Brad Albright, Brian Allen, and Johnny Kraft were the artists, and as kind of publishers, I had Ian from Nudge, like you mentioned, and Colin from Cometasys, and they're all kind of part of this discussion in their own way. You know, Colin broke the story, was a big part of breaking the story of the Jersey Jack, Harry Potter, Bumpergeist, Tilt Forums, Tilt Post, and, you know, Ian has been very vocal on social media, and also also kind of allowed Ian Herwer, who used a lot of AI in his previous games, like Blood Bank Billiards, and made that an open discussion and a conversation of the use cases for AI. And even Ian said that, you know what, even as much as against AI am, it's still great as a learning tool. If you want to learn how to do things, then it's a great example of how to teach people. So there's things to be learned from a bunch of sides from the spectrum. And, of course, you know, Brian Allen, who's done many reproduction, reimaginings of classic Bally Williams games and did the Funhouse 2.0, entire art package of that. And so many other things for Flyland Designs. Shout out to Brian. And, of course, Brad Brad Albright, we mentioned for Brad Brad Albright Studios. And Johnny Kraft, my boy Johnny Kraft from Montreal. You know, he's done, of course, he's done the Jurassic Park game. also the home version as well as the three cornerstone games for Stern and he did Final Resistance on Multimorphic and he did also Dune and what am I forgetting, a recent one oh jeez, oh and Labyrinth sorry, Dune is the most recent one, Labyrinth and Dune and so they all had most of them don't use AI in any part of the process And I think I'm kind of an artsy-partsy guy. I'm a filmmaker, a photographer. I understand. I use Photoshop. I understand the principles of this. But it's very different when you're using AI to create images because – and what's the scary thing is that you can really narrow down and say, I want to create a Brad Brad Albright poster in the style of Brad Brad Albright or the style of Johnny Craft or the style of Brian Allen or some other artist. I don't like that. And that's really – it is threatening to some degree because at the end of the day, some people won't care that it's a knockoff and that it's soulless and that it has no real personality or it has no real point of view, right? That it's completely like derivative, right? To most people, I hope that most people will reject that. And I think we're seeing a little bit of that right now with the AI slop blowback kind of vibe. Oh, God. Take it over my Facebook. Drop Target, Danielle and I were just talking about this. And she said, is there some way, can I pay for an upgrade so I don't have to see all the AI crap? I want to see stuff from my friends, from my family, even from the small businesses that I like, even from the big companies. Like I want to see stuff from Stern, but I don't want to see AI slop every other like stop. I just I'll pay. That's a whole discussion about we got into like, you know, how it's just a regurgitation and like and and and digestion and regurgitation of the same garbage. And it's becoming like, you know, the idea of like the dead Internet thing where like there's no real information there anymore. It's just a summary of a summary of a summary. And then it just gets warped. It's like that game Broken Telephone, right? Yes. Where it's like the conversation breaks down, the original idea degrades after going through all these iterations and being regurgitated and ingested and regurgitated and ingested. And that's a very scary thing when it comes to the creative arts, right? And also information on the internet, right? Where, say, like a piece of information, like somebody says, this game is great. And then everybody else starts to jump on and pile on and say, oh, the game is great, the game is great. And there's no dissenting voice. There's no minority report, you can call it, of saying, oh, maybe this game isn't so great. Maybe I can criticize this or this or that. And then you have like a monoculture of like this is the only way to think about this thing. And it gets really scary when you talk about history and art and science and all these really important things that are in the world. And pinball is a little part of it. So I tried to bring pinball into that conversation and how it's impacting the life of artists who are trying to breathe new life. Because, again, I gave examples. You know, in the past, we've had in the early 2000s, you know, the Photoshop era where, you know, it didn't really matter what the artist's name was. It was just like a general employee worked for hire. They took whatever marketing materials and whatever the style guide of the IP was. They took all the poster art or whatever, and they just put it on, photoshopped it on, and that was good enough. And that's a real recursion from the incredible artwork that was done in the 90s. And I got a chance to talk to Doug Watson the incredible personally my favorite if not my favorite one of the top five greatest pinball artists of all time Doug Watson And he worked on games like Terminator 2 Indiana Jones The Shadow many many more And talking to him about how he used the artwork to help inform the player on what to do at any given moment. It was his job to help communicate the rules and the story, the narrative, you know, of what the designer and the coder of the game were trying to communicate to the player, right? And then we had, like, a kind of a – so there's been waves of this, right? And this is the next challenge that I think we're all going to have to figure out. And it was amazing. Like I asked people in the audience, how many of you people know about, you know, LLM, like large language models or like use stuff like you do, like chat GPT or, you know, Copilot or Gemini. And, you know, half the half the people there had their hand up. And then I said, how do you use it for your day to day work? And like still like half the people use like had their hand up. So like this has affected us in our personal lives, in our professional lives and in our pinball lives. So I think the thing about – one of my main takeaways that I think that a lot of guys like Brad really brought up and Brian and also Johnny brought up was that for them as an artist, they don't want to use this at any point in the process really. They try to avoid it as much as possible because that really strips them of the creative process of making something. It's finding the roadblocks and overcoming those roadblocks and making mistakes and achieving, struggling and fighting with the project and fighting with the – because pinball is a commercial piece of art. fighting with the licensor and with the client and what they want and making a balance between what you feel is still you and your expression your style or whatever you want to call that your your touch on the game that makes it something that's uniquely your work of art and making it so that it is a uh you know acceptable for a buying paying audience and the the the the people that are paying you commissioning you to do the arc it's always been throughout art that conflict between commerce and art has been like since the very beginning in different degrees you know yeah um you go to art history about the medicis you know commissioning michelangelo and you know the vatican you know they were the big money they they were the big money interests right and they they had a they had a theme that they wanted michelangelo da vinci all these great renaissance painters and sculptors to do but they made it their own right like they did their own thing that use that medium to make their own and communicate their own art through this, you know, what was also commercial art, you know, it was art that was commissioned, right? Yeah, well, I guess the way I think about it is that, no, I agree with like almost everything you're saying. The way I think about it is the best artists out there have a particular style that they're notable for. You know, if you're not notable for, you know, if you don't, if you're not known for a particular style, you're just kind of good at everything, then you're not really ever going to get known in the art world. You're definitely not going to get chosen for pinball, right? So if you make this artwork that is uniquely your own, you can't ever fully get copied by anybody. That's what Neil McCrae made. He made that point there. And I agree that's a very valid point, that the robots will never truly be better. They'll never be better, for sure. They're a little bit better than a human being. I don't think so, personally, like in my lifetime anyhow. I hope not. We'll have Skynet. We'll have bigger problems. We'll have robots trying to kill us by that time, I think, if we get to that level of sophistication. But whatever. We don't know. But my point is, you know, but there's also like, again, if it's a commercial piece of art, will 90% of the buying audience care? will they care that it's an original piece of art which I hope they still do I think they're very aware in the pinball world and they're very vocal but again, like case in point Harry Potter, despite all of this AI controversy, it's still selling so it doesn't matter I think that's a really big question to ask does it matter I think that's coming from the artist's perspective unless you're like Unless you know Mina Lima, unless you know really you're very well-informed and a dedicated, passionate bass, which is – the home buyer, by the way, is also a very passionate bass. So you have to go do those extra check marks in order to fill that stuff because they're going to notice, I hope, that they're going to notice when things are not missing. Like the one thing that Eric Meunier mentioned during his talk about Harry Potter, about the music. right and the music the the hedwig's theme you everybody knows the john williams hedwig's theme the music was so crucial to the game and yet it was a separate license and he said that the cost of the license for just the music was twice the amount of the entire ip of godfather okay so put that in perspective and but yet he fought him and his team his design team fought and and and made a case argument with Jack and the management there at JJP that this game is not complete without the music, at least the Hedwig music, the John Williams music of Hedwig's theme. This game is not Harry Potter without that, right? And so the fans, 100%, like you, super fan, would completely see, like, hey, where's the John Williams theme? Or if it was like an AI thing, you'd be like, what is this? This is not John Williams, right? It was like AI. You would lose your mind, right? Yeah. So I hope, as I think many of the other artists and many of the people in the panel, that this will become more and more important to people. And that, sure, yes, you can use AI, but be transparent about it, what is being used. That's all I'm saying. Just be transparent. If you're going to market something as something being hand-drawn or hand-composed or handwritten or whatever. Make sure it is. You have to be 100% transparent with your buying audience so that they can make that informed decision as a commercial art piece. They can say, well, I feel that this – with Star Wars, again, I'm a big Star Wars fan, right? And I've heard other people that claim to be big Star Wars fans. That's fine. Whatever. We're all big – whatever. We're all different degrees. But they're like, oh, I love Anthony Daniels' call-out. And they got C-3PO's call-outs in the new Star Wars game, and I'm like, I just bite my tongue because that's not Anthony Daniels. I can tell. But I'm a super fan. But for 99% of the public, they're not going to tell the difference. The call-out voice actor in Star Wars is very, very good, the guy that they got to do it. He's very good, but he's not Anthony Daniels. I can tell. You just can tell. It's close, but not quite. Kind of like AI. okay to put a bow to put a bow on AI what I want to say is that if like the most compelling argument for AI use that I've read in artwork anyways internet memes no the most compelling use is Ian Herwer's article that he wrote yes so I would go read that I mean I think if you can lower the bomb of a pinball machine and if a company came in and said hey we're going to keep the artwork 100% just us, no AI, but we are going to use AI to help with coding, we are going to use AI to help with playtesting. I don't think anybody has a problem with coding. Anything that's not artistic or creative. Then no one cares. I don't think anybody has a problem with debugging. I mean even making the production, Joe. If they automated everything and made it 100% AI, you could have a tiny little boutique factory that makes 500 pinball machines a year with probably two people and two robot welder type things. You know what I mean? If they end up doing that in the future, I'm okay with that as long as the price comes down and still a quality product however you're always going to need a real human designer and you're always especially someone overseeing at the very end having an art director and all that's fine you know but okay that is that is the most crucial thing and i just want to say like um you know uh oh man i almost lost it there but um you know like like there was that was the idea for automation for the industrial revolution right is that we would be able to work less We're going to do these menial tasks and that we'll be able to do more artistic pursuits like poetry and painting and music. And now we work more. And now we work more. So we have all these high hopes for this, aspirations. And again, going back to Ian, just one last thing about Ian, who I respect. He used to work at Google, and he's a brilliant guy, but he's not an artist. He's not a composer. Right. He's not a painter. He knows his limitations. Right, but he knows what he wants. He knows what he wants to look for, right? So I think as a learning tool, again, going back to that, as a learning tool, learning how stuff gets made and what to look for is a cool tool. There's no shame in using a calculator to do your taxes. You don't have to do the long arithmetic yourself. But you can't be a jack-of-all-trades. Some people are, but not everybody is. People have their specialization and their talent. and to outsource that whether it be to somebody else as long as it's not the final end product as long as there's somebody, a creative force that's a human being that makes the call because there's been mistakes in pinball art in many other times for many other technical reasons there's a hilarious long list of typos and illustration mistakes and revisions and defects and all this stuff, but at least eventually somebody, a human being, said, oh, we screwed up. We're going to fix this, right? We're going to fix this. So that's the scary thing. If you completely take somebody out of that as a supervisor, then it's like, what are we doing here? Like, what is going on? I hear what you're saying. I try to be like, you know, I don't want to be accused of being like a Luddite or something like that. I literally ask chat, like I'll say, can you help me stack so that I'm not too – I don't get the jitters from the caffeine I'm having. Can you suggest when I should be having my caffeine? How far beforehand? You know, what supplements like Lion's Mane or whatever can I have to like counteract the anxiousness or the jitters or L-theanine or all these other different, you know, like it helps me come up with pinball stuff all the time. And the funniest thing was I actually said to it, I said, well, tell me something. Tell me, tell me a lie that I've told you. and without flinching chat said to me Albert you tell everybody you don't care how well you do at these pinball tournaments but I can tell by the questions you ask that you want to win New Brunswick again and I was like whoa that's too I was like damn I've never even said that on a podcast you son of a anyways let's skip over AL but did you know that let me ask you this did you know that in your heart that you just didn't really want to say verbally but you kind of knew yes of course of course I'd love to win again I don't think I will my point is with that Much like the talking here, like psychology, you want to get into psychology, which might be a talk, by the way, a little teaser. It might be talking about mental health and pinball next year at Pinball Expo. I like that. But, yeah, like it's a little scary for me. I've never used it for like psychological advice or medical advice or anything. But, you know, basic stuff that's not super, super like important. Like I wouldn't – if you're having a heart attack, I would go see a real doctor. No, exactly. But something like – you know, but my point is like you see it as a revelation, but I think like again, it only takes from the input that you've given it, right? Right. So clearly you know in your heart, in the back of your mind, whether you admit it to yourself or not, that you have this thing that – yes, it reinforced. It brought it back up like a mirror, right? It brought it up – the mirror doesn't show you anything original. the mirror shows you what you put in front of it right i like that so that's the way it is right it's like the mirror and harry potter sometimes pardon me it's like the mirror and harry potter yeah right sure yeah um so yeah like like you have to understand that that's it's it's a it's it's you're just putting it's giving back to you exactly what you put into it right so it's not going to give you any new wisdom right like any kind of live wisdom like if i if you ask me like you know life advice or if you ask me hey hey joe what do you think that i've been like been struggling with and what why do you think that like i come across and like what is like a difficult thing that i seem to be have i would probably have a very different answer for you joe i asked chat this i asked chat this i said yeah you have this full memory of me over the last year or so that i've been using you approximate how many hours i have saved from not having to Google things, watch YouTube videos, check Reddit. I said, just tell me how much time approximated. And it said to me within like 20 seconds, Albert, you have asked me 4,692 questions. On average, I have saved you over 7,000 hours in the last year. Because what it can do is it can read the entire internet in 20 seconds. So if I'm researching something for healthcare or, again, not if you're immediately having a heart attack, obviously. but if I'm trying to research something it doesn't matter what it's for uh you know it basically it just saves me so much time and I used to be one of these guys who would dig in on google and get to page four or page five on google reading everything trying to figure out what I thought was real and now this can actually tell me like no here I'm citing you to this this actual peer reviewed you know uh test or something so anyways let's not go on to that too much I want to talk about two things very quickly and I really have to go very shortly because I can tell Franco Franchi needs to go for a bathroom break very soon. He's giving me the look. I do too. There you go. Okay. You dressed up as, I want to just, you can answer these two all at once if you like. Sure. You dressed up as Gary Stern, which I thought was so cool. I want to know, A, like what was it like to go do that? And people's reactions are hilarious. I just saw Cale, like his number one pitcher from Pinball Expo on the front of it. He chose his, like his first pitcher of the 70 pitchers was you dressed up as Gary Stern. So funny. You put up the post with your like goatee gone on there. But I also want to know what can we expect from Pinball Degenerates coming up in the future? So a little bit about maybe, you know, any future ideas for the Eugenics, the Degenerates group, and just tell us all about being Gary Stern and what Gary Stern thought about meeting Gary Stern. Wow, yeah. So, yeah, so actually it kind of starts with the Eugenics because last year, this last one, I dressed up as Gary Stern and did like a musical number. So funny. I'm not sure if you saw it. Oh, I saw it. Yeah, so I was doing like a parody of the Hamilton song. Anyhow, so I already had that costume ready to go from the Jennies. So my buddy Kevin Chow, I don't know if you know Kevin? Yes, shout out. He's a brother to me. He's an amazing guy. Really nice guy. He goes, hey, they're doing a Gary Stern lookalike contest at Expo. You've got to bring the costume that you did for the Jennies. And I go, okay, sure, I'll do that, sure. and like thankfully it was on the last day of the show because i've got a goatee i've got a i've got a shave i can't do gary stern with like a goatee that's weird right you have to so i'm like okay at least i can save it to like the very last moment of like the last hour or two of expo where i can like go without and i was also kind of worried coming across back across the border because my passport has me with a goatee and now i'm showing up with completely shaved and like i It's me. Trust me. I was kind of freaking out a little bit about it. It's like I didn't think that through. I really didn't think that through. But anyhow, and so, yeah, I put on the bald cap and these ridiculous like cotton swab eyebrows. I put on my eyebrows with double-sided tape, like completely like a children's costume kind of vibe. And I had the white shirt with the name tag that said Gary with the picture, the caricature of him on there. and I had the Stern patch, an actual Stern patch that I bought from Stern. I ironed that onto the shirt and had the jeans. The only things that I were missing from the full costume that I had last time was the black belt. I needed to have a belt. I didn't get my belt in time and I didn't have the penny loafers. I didn't wear the penny loafers. But next time... No one noticed. I'm a perfectionist so I've got to have the complete cosplay. So I need all the little details. And I had the glasses. the white glasses like the rectangular you know kind of very specific uh reading glasses that like gary stern has uh that are completely white and yeah so i dress up on the last day on the last like couple hours and i walk into x-bar everyone's like hey gary how's it going i love your game yeah good stuff and like people random people are coming up to me and taking pictures children and families are like oh can we take a picture kind of like you know i'm not the real gary but yeah, yeah, it's hilarious. And it's like, I feel like how Gary must feel every day of Expo, because he's getting swarmed by people trying to ask for photos. I got a little taste of that life for Gary. He's such an iconic, you know, he's been part of pinball for so many years, and, you know, he's such a good sport. And when I walked up to the stage, I started, you know, people that I knew, mainly people that I knew, I was talking to them, I'd go up to Retro Ralph. I'd go, hey, let me tell you about Manifest. He's playing Star Wars. I'd go, hey, this is our newest game. This is my favorite game on the line. It's the newest game on the line, so it's my favorite game. And I'd do all the Gary Stern catchphrases and all these kind of things that Gary always says at talks and discussions and stuff. And then I was doing that. They brought me up on stage. There was supposed to be a contest, but mostly just people dressed up in Halloween costumes because it's close to Halloween. And I was the only person there dressed as Gary. No way. Jodie Dankberg was like, thank you so much. You saved the contest because you're the only person here. At least we did have somebody. So I won by default. If I were to do another costume, I would have a much better idea for a Gary Stern costume. But it would require me to have a newborn baby. If I had a newborn child, I would 100% dress up that child with a little baby Gary Stern getup with fake white hair around his bald little baby head. and put little eyebrows on the baby. I would totally do that to my child to win the contest. I think if somebody does that in a future contest, that would be the ultimate Gary Stern lookalike contest. But anyway, so Gary's like, yeah, come up on stage. Come up on stage. And then they gave me the microphone, and then I'm like, hey, everybody, Stern Pinball's number one. Thank you all for coming. I'm Gary Stern. And I'm like, you know, it was almost like half Gary Stern, half Ric Flair, like wrestler promo that I was cutting. It was just unbelievable. It was like, we're number one, and we've been around for the longest time, the longest continuous pinball company, Gottlieb, Valley Williams, all these other companies, Genco, Chicago Coin, they're all in the dust. They're all gone. We're the only one that's still been standing this entire time, and it's because we're the number one pinball company in the world. And then I go, I do this like bit where I go, because we're the number one manufacturer of pinball. We manufacture pinball all the – wait, hold on. No, wait. We don't manufacture pinball anymore. We're a lifestyle brand. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're a lifestyle brand now, and we're all about pinball. Oh, wait. No, sorry. No. We're actually a technology company now. Now we're a technology company, and it's about the internet, and the internet and connectivity is the future, and the future of the internet is connectivity. And that's the way pinball is going to be. And then, like, Gary is just dying. He's cracking up because he's said this stuff a million times at shows and stuff. And these are all the talking points that he's known for. And he's dying. And I'm like, in my heart, in the back of my mind, I'm like, thank God he's, like, getting it the right way. That it's, like, out of respect and love. And that I've seen him, you know, and not, like, I'm making fun of him and, like, you know, insulting. It's not in any way, shape, or form. And he is dying. He's like, oh, my God. he's like almost like you know in tears he's laughing so hard everybody's cracking up everybody like all the employees that have heard this a million times you know as well they're like dying and and he's and they gave me a playfield and shirts and they're like thank you thank you thank you they're thanking me and gary's saying so gary hey what playfield he gives yeah it was a metallica remastered playfield which luckily i was able to to fence that i was able to sell that because there's no way i was able to bring that on the plane oh yeah so i was able to find somebody to sell it for, I don't even know if I, you know what, I'm just happy I was able to sell it. It wasn't even about the prize. It was just about to be able to have something fun. That's incredible, dude. Is there a video of that somewhere, Joe? Did someone get a video of that? Did someone get a video? Yeah, they had the Stern, they had documentation, they had the Stern media people there, they were doing video and stuff. And so Gary, he pulls out his, like, you know, Walter Day card, right? And he pulls out two of them. And he goes, I'm going to sign one of these, and I want you to sign one of these for me. And so I signed one of those Gary Stern cards, my name as Gary Stern for Gary, and Gary gave me a signed card. And then he gave me a business card. I don't know if he really is sincere about that, but he's like, here's my business card. Get in touch with me. We're going to stay in touch. We're going to do something. That's so great. I don't know if they're going to bring me on for like a show or something to do like a fake Gary Stern. It'd be hilarious. and I'm going to send him a video of the music thing that I did for the Jenny's later on when I recovered from Pinball Expo but yeah, that was really great and then I went directly to Dwight's game show the Let's Make a Deal thing and as soon as I walk in the store on the floor, everybody's like screaming it was like Jerry Springer, people were chanting Jerry, Jerry, Jerry and I was like throwing my hands up in the air and like you know I was like give me the money Gary wants the money come on you know and like I like whenever Dwight was talking like Dwight you're fired you know you gotta pick me for the show and it's just like it was insanity it was so much fun and yeah the Degene's for next year it is a go I'm trying to save now after the next major expense that I'm going to put in my save my money towards will be producing the fifth annual Degenerate Awards, which will be sometime in mid-March 2026. We've got some really interesting concepts for the ideas. I don't know how feasible they are, but we're going to shoot for the moon, as we always do, and put on as best a show within the budget, the very limited budget that I have. We'll just do it for the community. That's all that people care about, is recognizing people in the community. That's the whole concept of the Facebook group, Pinball Degenerates, is it's not about me. It's about, you know, just opening it up, having a forum for people to do all the wacky, wild stuff and contribute in their own weird way how much they love pinball in weird ways and artistic, fantastic, hilarious, weird, strange things. And I love it. And it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, but it's, you know, like anything else, it's worth it at the very end. Joe, I will see you in about a month. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I was telling everybody. I was like, you know what, I'll see Orby next month. And if, listen, if anyone's listening to this and they thought, well, Albert, but how can you make it to this tournament with Jeff Teolis, like, only, like, seven hours away from Chicago? I'll tell you why. It's $138 round trip from Flair, from Halifax to Kitchener-Waterloo. And I have friends and family in London that I can stay at their houses for free. Exactly. So I'm spending very little on that. Like, the least I would want to go to Chicago with is probably a grand. And maybe a little bit less if you could sleep on someone's couch or split their hotel room or something. But anyways, I will see you at Maple. Thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for being so generous with your time. I coaxed you into coming on the show by saying, we only need half an hour. We only need half an hour. But thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to get to catch up with you and speak with you, as it always is. Welcome to the Five Timers Club, by the way. I don't know if this is five or six. Oh, wow. Okay. I think it is. I was wondering how many times I've been on. Yeah. Because I'm your number one listener. always will be always am always will be Ian Herwer's been on five times Melvis Megafon's been on five times alright my favorite TV Julie Dorser's been on five times I believe now maybe Mike Diamond as well we'll see Julie as well hopefully we'll see Ian as well I'm assuming Ian will be he usually shows up for the Ontario and yeah can't wait to see you at the Ontario Open at Maple buddy it's going to be awesome it's going to be a blast well thanks for joining me and until next time Pitbull Nerds remember to eat, sleep, and breathe the dote himself, Joe Chervino. Well, maybe not himself, but you know what I mean. The pinball de jennies. You got it, baby.