but there's a part of me that believes arcades will come back when the world improves. But the scope of Pinberg replay, not sure I can see it coming back. So it hurts so much more. I've been holding August 2021 as my thing to look forward to, praying that it could happen. Alas, I think we all were hoping 2021 would be a possibility, Tracy. Understandably now, as we know the details, just not the case. Eric Russell from Syracuse writes, Pinberg memories. The first time being there, just taking in the massiveness of it. My first time was the first year in the convention center. Another year was the first time I got a 12-0 medal, with very mediocre scores that probably didn't deserve to win one game, much less four. Fast forward a couple years, and the second perfect 12-0 medal, this time with more legitimate scores. However, that was offset by an 0-12 in the final round that year, after seeing my playoff chances slip away after a close loss on a Luckbox EM called Magic City. How many people have a 12-0 and an 0-12 in the same pinberg? Can't imagine many, Eric. Then last year, making a good run in B division playoffs until face-planting in the semifinals and taking 8th place. Still earning enough to cover the trip, at least. Also, just in general, getting to hang out with people who you don't see very often and meet new people from all over the world. Always a great and unique experience. Definitely going to miss it a ton. Thanks, Eric. Scott Elliott from Columbia City, Indiana writes, Just watched your live stream about an hour too late. Thank you for giving a small place to grieve in a way. 2016 was my first ReplayFX as a stand-up arcade collector. I remember seeing everyone gathered around the stage watching one guy play pinball and thought, I couldn't even imagine that. But I got into competing myself, and 2019 was my first pinball. I believe it was the fourth or fifth round I got a chance to rematch Phil Birnbaum after he knocked me out at the Nationals in the second round of Vegas earlier this year. I remember being up on him in the last ball of at least two of the four games, and then he just came back and crushed me, old Chicago especially. But he was so fun and engaging that I couldn't be mad. I was just happy to see him again and compete. I made A division that year, but not the finals. My last round, I got to play on the stage and finish by playing Willy Walker for the first time ever, and won. Thanks for sharing, Scott. Elizabeth Cromwell didn't send me a note. I know, obviously, she's definitely hurting about this, but she did send me one of her favorite moments, and it was a clip of stormtroopers in cosplay on the Dance Dance Revolution machine. Cosplay. We haven't even talked about how great that was. There was just something for everyone at ReplayFX. We certainly focus in on pinball, but that really, just a part of it. The video games, the cosplay, the music, there was so much. And luckily, you can see a lot of these great videos of ReplayFX, and especially Pinberg, thanks to Papa TV, and thanks in part to James Koontz. He was one of the producers there and put together just an incredible production, and he writes, Just watching the stream from last night, thanks for the kind words. I'm going to miss our times making those finals special for the players and the crowd. Special indeed, James. I know I'm very proud to have just a small part in that. Really, it was the players, the crowd, the staff who made it just incredible. Back to the live stream recording. Derek from Pintastic. I think the Pinball Hall of Fame will be the next Pinberg. Jeez, you know, I never thought of that. They certainly have the games. That's also a volunteer basis, and we'll see what Tim and the crew do there. That's something you've got to remember, though. I think of Fred Cochran and some of the other staff at certainly Doug Polka, and I'm forgetting some of these other wonderful people, that took the time to figure out how the banks would be, how the games would play. Would they play too long? Would rubbers need to come off? Would the tilts need to be adjusted? Would ball saves? All those types of things, again, to make this match play tournament perfect and timed out. Sanjay, memories forever. Sanjay, yes, we're going to see each other again, I know, once this COVID thing's all done. Brian Broyles, Brian who runs Portal in Georgia. I've got to get there, Brian, and I will. He writes, I used to go to Papa headquarters twice a year, the Papa World Championship in Pinberg. Before it moved, it was like a family reunion. Brian, that's probably where we met. You're right. Absolutely. And, okay, I thought of another possible good thing from this. Again, I'm making terrible jokes. California Extreme and Southern Fried Gaming Expo will never have to worry about conflicting with Pinberg again. I can't believe they did that a couple times. You don't mess with Pinberg. You see the date and you go, we're moving. Pinberg, that's it. Tommy. Hi, Tommy. Steven Silver, who created Heist for P3's multimorphic great system. He never got to go. Sad. He'll probably never get to. That's the thing. You think of the buildup of this tournament, and we're talking about the second generation of Pinbird. A hundred people continued, continued, grew outside the PAPA facility. I can't remember if there was another place before the David L. Lawrence Center. Historians will know. But I remember when it went to 400, and then 700, and then 800, and then 840. and then the 1,000 in 2019. And it still sold out. That is crazy to think of, that that many people just won it. I mean, that's it. This tournament was many people's only tournament of the year, or only big tournament, only time they would go out of town. Stacey Borg, who is in Melbourne, Australia. Man, I wish I'd flown across before the world blew up. We'll get back there, Stacey. But as you say, they will be back, no doubt about it. There are a lot of passionate, passionate people in Pittsburgh. And that's the one thing that I always was impressed with is that these people gave up their time, not just the day of, not just the weekend, like taking days off work, maybe losing salary, whatever the case may be, using their vacation time for the benefit of all of us. You know, I think of, obviously, Kevin Martin starts with him and the tough decision that he had to make for this. But let's not forget how he kept this afloat for many, many years. So as sad as we are we have to be just as thankful that we got to play in Pinnberg and that it existed for so long with people like Kevin Doug Polka Elizabeth Cromwell Mark Steinman I think of AJ and John Replogle Fred Cochran who I mentioned earlier Petey and Virginia Hendricks, Brian Dye. A lot of good people gave us many, many great memories. James Kuntz, who I worked with. My first Pinberg was 2015. I mentioned that earlier. Ta-da! Still have the shirt. Still fits. I'm not that chubby yet. There were other Pinbergs as well. and then of course it didn't happen this year but I know a lot of people purchased this because it was pretty cool. I tied for first at Pinberg 2020. Josh Sharp this was an opportunity I hope you bought the shirt come on man. But 2015 was my first year. 2016 was my second year of Pinberg and also my first year of pop-up. It was the year Pinball Profile was created in November 1st 2016. So I'd only been doing this thing for seven to eight months and I was asked to MC at Pinberg be there on the stage and talk to people. Can't tell you how cool that was to be asked. And then to apparently have done a good enough job that they asked me in 2018, 2019, it would have been 2020, but that meant a lot to me. And James was the producer who I worked with and behind the scenes a lot for Papa TV as well. Wonderful standup guy. And I hope to see more work from you guys. Back to the chats. Joe Cherovino. Oh, I am not even reading your chat right now. I'm just thinking of Joe. How many people that went to Pimberg on Facebook would change their Facebook profile picture to a great shot that Joe Cherovino has taken. Hands up right here. In fact, my Walter Day trading card picture was a picture from me at Pimberg taken by Joe Cherovino. So thank you, Joe. The first year I came to Pimberg Papa was for the games, probably like many of us. He writes, every subsequent year, I came back for the people. We all did. That was it. Robert Byers, they need to add a donation section to paying entry fees. Certainly would help. A lot of people have pride and don't want to ask that difficult question. So I respect that. Maybe we have to take the onus and ask, is there any way we can help, including financially, if you can? There's a lot of people chatting here, and I'm going to get to every one of you. So please type away because I don't like talking about myself. Frank Nielsen, I've never been so lucky as to experience one of these great tournaments, but I already miss it. Was really hoping to get the chance someday. Jen Rupert, who does a wonderful YouTube series. memories of hearing the class of 1812 from across the convention center. And that convention center, boy, that was a big undertaking. I just couldn't believe when you went there how big it was. And me telling my non-pinball friends about this almost bigger than football stadium-size arena full of pinball machines, players, video games, consoles, concert stage, it blew you away how big it was, the magnitude of it. Remember a few years ago, remember 2016 was raining outside. There was going to be an outdoor convention for Hillary Clinton as she was running for president back in the time. Weather didn't allow that to happen. They moved the David L. Lawrence Center, not to where Pinberg was. No, no, no. These pinball machines were huge. These thousands and thousands of people to go see Hillary Clinton walked the catwalk to go to some other room in the David L. Lawrence Center, much smaller than what Pinberg was. And they're walking by the catwalk and they're like, what is this? This is pretty impressive. The nerds ruled that day. Well done, everybody. Joe Cherovino, as someone who has seen both sides of Pinnberg, both as a player and as a volunteer, I can honestly say they are both equally incredibly exciting and satisfying experiences. I've heard that from many people that volunteer. Bowen Cairns is one of the world's greatest players of all time, and he gave up this tournament every year to be one of the co-TDs. That's big whopper points if you're, you know, chasing the number one title, or things like the IFPA World Champion, whatever these big tournaments are. And I asked him several times why. It's because he got more back from doing this and knowing that they put on a great show. So many people wanted to come back. And we were talking about the convention center. I remember being there, and they had these games in the back room. They kind of, an old configuration was, if you'd been there the last few years, where the bands were playing, they actually had banks there. And it got a little dark, certainly after 6 o'clock. So, heaven forbid you play a game like Centaur. You get into multiball. Lights go out. You don't see anything. Okay? This is before pin stadiums and stuff like that. What do they do? They make changes. They move the games around. They reconfigure. They always were adjusting. The first year they had that stage, I think it was the Zach Sharp year that he won. The stage wasn't the most stable. And they went back to the convention center. And then the next year and every other year, rock solid. The commentating that went on, that was pretty cool. The fact that this big, big audience was there, plus people watching on YouTube or on Twitch. They got to hear the commentators talk as they're watching great monitors and everything else. That was kind of a cool stadium experience. I know you see it a lot in the eSports, but for pinball, that was pretty awesome. I had a chance to talk to Crystal Gemnick, host of The Plum, about her Pinberg memories. Hi, Jeff. I'm doing well. How are you? Good, thank you. I know Pinberg meant a lot to you. It sure did, yeah, as it did so many other people. was one of the places where I realized that I love shows and that I want to work shows and I want to always go to shows as much as possible. So it was a fantastic place. I mean, I met so many people again, as a lot of us did. That was the whole thing about Pimberg. You went for the pinball, but you realized when you came out of it, it was the people that you met. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And it's funny because the first time that I went, I actually did not play in Pimberg. I only went exclusively to ReplayFX, and I got to experience Pittsburgh as well as the ReplayFX event. So I got to go and play all of those machines in that big free play area, and then after, I guess it's Thursday night or Friday night, they open up some of the banks to people to come in and play late at night. So I got to do that, and I enjoyed it so much that everybody said, well, next year you come back, you should compete, and I did. I got a ticket and it ended up being just a really wonderful experience, not just competition wise as far as, you know, learning how to play tournament pinball a little bit better and having that experience, but also, again, meeting people. My first time playing at Pimberg, I met a friend and I might be getting my dates mixed up because when you go like three or four years in a row, they kind of start to meld together. I don't know if I'm the only one that has this sort of like a hard time and all of my memories kind of like, oh, was that 2019 or was that 2018? I can't remember. But definitely one of those years, either 2018 or 2019, I met my really good friend, James Mulvanen, who was a friend that I had made through the dead flip stream. He was a follower. He's one of like the best trolls on the show. And we just always had a really great dynamic, you know, just just communicating with each other through through the through the stream. And I met him at Pinberg one of those years. And I was playing actually I was playing in that Stern Stern had like a booth set up where where they were, you know, they had a couple of games set up and you know, their whole deal. And he came up to me, I heard this voice behind me. And he said, Crystal, and I turn around and there he was, James, this person who I had known for quite a while from the internet. And he was reaching his hand out to shake my hand. And I just look at him and I go, Jimmy.