thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 77 i am josh roop and with me my co-host as always scott larson and scott why don't you uh why don't we talk about our sponsor really quick and then i want you to introduce the guest sounds good so uh our sponsor is Flip N Out Pinball with Zach and Nicole Mini. I just placed an order to upgrade my Deadpool, so I actually got the Pop Cap Stars, and I then ordered the Art Blades, and then I decided to order the Armor, and then I got a Topper and a Shaker Motor, so I'm pretty much converting it to an LE. But, hey, the good news is, if you have your eye on something, send them a message see what they have the production as you all know is is challenging and unpredictable but if you are on their list for that game that you want they can certainly make something happen or at least give you an estimate on when that can be available so check out zach and nicole many flipping out pinball well let's be honest too like there's some of these premiums and stuff they're going for ridiculous prices it's like uh why don't you just call zach and see if they're producing it anytime soon and then if you can wait a couple months it's better than buying it now for what two thousand dollars over msrp or something whatever it is right now sure or or you can buy my uh my new customized premium deadpool for twenty thousand dollars just took me up yeah yep all right why don't you go ahead and introduce our guests today scott all right so i'm super excited about this because we are talking about rush uh yeah i'm a slight fan of rush uh may have been following him basically my entire life But today we have the lead designer, Tim Sexton, and also the co-designer, the co-captain, the Robin to your Batman. I'm not sure exactly how this works, but world number one player in the world, Raymond Davidson. So welcome to the show, guys. Thanks for having us here, Scott. And Josh. Scott introduced us, that's why I addressed him. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it's no biggie. So I guess that begs the first question. Are you going to go as Batman, Tim, to the – what, Indus? I assume you and Ray are going to Indus. So you go as Batman and he's going to be there as Robin? When we go to pinball tournaments, we have to switch it up because Raymond's better than me at competitive pinball. But he couldn't have Robin win the tournament. We'll both be there, you know, cheering each other on. Go Team Stern. Between us two and Keith, I think I like our odds. Yeah, that's pretty low. Yeah, oh, man. Oh, Zach's coming too. Imagine a final four of four of us four. That'd be a strong final four. We'll try to make it happen. I did find out today I was playing around with the Stern Insider, and the Stern employees are actually on a tab. So if you want to follow any of those guys, I definitely followed all the people I know. Yeah, I think most of us have profiles too. Yeah, if you just – If you just search Stern, it'll pretty much pop up the whole company. And try both all caps and capital S because I think some of them are cased differently. Yeah. No, if you click under connections, that's how I found most people. Yes. I have all my activities set to public on there as well, so people can stalk me and find exactly where I'm playing. I don't think it shows that, does it? I think it just says what games you've been playing. It doesn't say where. I know it says on mine, like, location, like, Loser Kid's Awesome Arcade or whatever. Yeah, and your activity. But I think when you look at someone else, it just says, like, how many achievements, their XP. Oh, gotcha. Oh, gotcha. Okay. There you go. So another plug for the Stern Insider. Oh, that's also another thing I got for my Deadpool is I got my Insider. And so I'm going to be upgrading that here soon, too. So anyway. All right, guys. Rush. So we watched the reveal, as everybody else did, and it looks really fun. It looks like, obviously, a lot of similar themes to X-Men. I had an X-Men for a while. But it seems like it's even X-Men on steroids in that it seems to flow very well. You guys didn't seem to be breaking anything. I know you guys are elite-level players. But at least that shows me that the geometry and everything looked really good. So I'm really excited to get my hands on mine. I have my LE coming whenever those get produced, probably in a month or so. And to start off with, okay, tell me how long you've been working on this project. So Raymond and I have been working on this since probably around when, or even before 1.0 of Led Zeppelin. So we didn't have a break in between. I mean, it actually is a lot of work to do 13 months or whatever it was between two games. You know, it's a pretty tight schedule, but we were iterating on designs of Rush before Led Zeppelin was announced. And, you know, I was talking to John, you know, infrequently as he was drawing the play field, working with Elliot on the parts and stuff. when we get to the point where we have Whitewoods and we have, you know, lamps and stuff and devices on the game, which is months and months ago at this point, then, you know, Raymond and I are spending some split time or more of our time on Rush development. It was to the point where I think it was the earliest Raymond had ever entered a cycle of game development because often a lot of people join towards the end of the project before we ship because that's when all the art's coming in and all the focus on the company is on the next game hitting the line. So Raymond joined. His official title in the game is Wingman, so we call it the second-in-command software. Do I need to get the owl costume? Yeah, there you go. Absolutely, yes. When we get the first game and it doesn't light up and nothing moves, Raymond joined at that point, and we both had Whitewoods. Yeah, and Tim was like, all right, make all the devices do stuff. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Yeah, let me know if you have any questions. Good luck. So coming from you're both very top-tier competitive people, you obviously were competing before you worked at Stern. how has that background helped progress the way that you want to do code over the last couple of games both for I don't know if Ray Day's got to do much because this is the early cycle but how has it helped progress you guys through the code sets and also has it helped knowing those little nuances too because like some of the deeper codes have just wonderful little nuances that you get that just make it that much more savory and so So I want to know how bringing your competitive background has helped you make these codes. So for me, I think I'm going to go into just an explanation of what the competitive pinball scene requires to set this up. So when you play competitive pinball, you have to be prepared for a lot of games. You could be playing Tales from the Crypt and then immediately play Guardians of the Galaxy and Modern Stern. and then going back and playing a game like Countdown from Gottlieb that doesn't even have a multiball. So you have to get good at learning what the differences between every single game are. And what this gives you is a really good language for talking about pinball's features over the years, referring to a rule set, referring to some geometry things. That means when you get to Stern and you're looking at the code of the game, which is written in C++, it's pretty easy to think, oh, I've seen this in a game, right? I've seen the way the kickback code works on, you know, Star Trek, where there's a virtual kickback on one and then there's a physical kickback on the other game. Let's see how that was implemented, right? So something like that, if you have that familiarity from playing competitive pinball that just makes working here and you know diving into the code a lot easier just from the get-go so that to me is what the advantages of the competitive yeah aspects of it i was gonna add basically build on top of that where oftentimes i'll need to come up with rules for for multi balls or jackpot regressions or cool risk reward sort of things and because i've played so many different games throughout tournaments, I have an encyclopedia of like, oh, I could do the ACDC similar rule or the Family Guy inspired rule and I always mix and match and add my own spin to it, but if I ever am low on inspiration, I have a whole back catalog to pull stuff that was fun, and then I can bring those fun elements into the game. So you're telling me Bugs Bunny's probably not going to make the cut? I've yet to see the Bugs Bunny in a tournament yet, but since you're forced to play all those games, you have to just be ready. So I think when it comes to like what you want as a competitive player in the games, really, you just want something that people are going to like because you're caring more about the game doing well, selling well, being popular. Yeah, there's been a couple times where I'll come up with some cool, intricate rule and then I'll implement it. And then I'll just realize like, wait, that that wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be, and then I actually make it simpler, and it's like, oh, this is actually more fun. So yeah, you really got to play it out and see if the theory works in practice as well. And you have to put your ego behind yourself, because if I'm really good at recovery and nudging the game, and Raymond's really good at shot making, and he thinks he could win if he just has some rule where you loop the ramp 20 times, and I think you could win if you just have to shoot a bash toy all day you have to come up with a compromise between you know what is achievable for all players what's going to be fun at the location and the competition stuff is secondary to it the competition stuff to me is just what don't you want to see in a competition because it's going to be embarrassing like what's going to show up and say oh players are ignoring all the features in this game and just doing this one thing right like that could be a problem or even if just one feature is totally neglected in the game you know you haven't done a good job of making that important to hit or valuable yeah and what's nice is with all the software adjustments and you can make competition installs so you know for instance on led zeppelin if you install the competition it doesn't light your locks at the beginning of the game or you know it'll do something different um or it changes how the icarus multiplier works because like the icarus multiplier, that was a really fun rule, but if it's in tournaments and people find the ways to abuse it, we can have a setting that's only on in those really, really tough competition situations, and that can help alleviate it without spoiling it for normal play. I'm assuming that with the new connectivity, that will really help you out too. I would guess you would get some sort of feedback to find out how often this feature is used or how difficult this thing is or how many things. And so you can, before, you would just have to use your own experience or location to try to rebalance things. But it seems like you're getting, and this is probably one of the first games where you are going to start getting a lot of feedback very quickly onto how it's functioning in the real world. Is that a correct assumption? it's definitely an avenue that could help us gather more feedback um you know we plan to continue to develop insider connected and to just deliver more features that people want um you know we have a lot of ways we already collect feedback one of the biggest ones is we just go in person and we watch people play if we can't do that we watch streams of people playing People stream at home, people stream in tournaments, and we do have people who before Insider Connected would voluntarily give us audits because we gave audits to operators in the first place. And, you know, potentially we could gather more information about the games, but I think what you miss out if you just are getting information from a computer sometimes is someone having fun. And going in person and watching people play the games is the best way to see if they're enjoying something. Are they aiming for something? Are they ignoring it? Do they understand what's happening? And, you know, with COVID, it's been harder, but it might be a certain feature isn't getting activated because people don't know about it rather than it's too difficult or the other way around. Maybe people are going for it, but it's very difficult, so it doesn't happen very often. And depending on the scenario, one of those might be acceptable, one of them might not be. But if you're just looking at a spreadsheet, you won't know the nuance between the two. But, yeah, it definitely is cool, the potential there to gather the information. But we are constantly talking while we develop about, like, is this fun? Am I enjoying this? What's annoying? We don't hesitate to say, oh, I don't like this or something like that. And then we fix it. We work with other testers in the company, you know, put the code out. when we do releases we work with beta testers like there's so many ways we try to gather information and we're just trying to move as fast as we can to make the game as fun as it could be sorry when you're speaking of ego earlier it just i i had this visual in my mind of you guys sitting around the table and raymond's like well let me show you something on the computer it's like number one and ifpa and tim busts out a trophy well let me show you this trophy and keith's like what have i have you ever heard of an event called pinberg and puts his trophy on the table Yeah, I'm pretty sure Keith just has boxes of trophies in an attic somewhere, overflowing. He has a landfill of just trophies he has in his backyard. It seems like Sauron, he has one trophy to rule them all. Okay, Tim, this is your third game. And so coming, you're no longer a rookie. you have two established games behind you and this is your third one. How has that process been and what has surprised you from going from a hobbyist to writing the rule set? Were there things that you expected or what surprised you about that process? Yeah, this is my third game as lead developer, but it's actually the eighth game I've contributed to at Stern. So it's been a lot of games really fast. what's better now is I've just learned so much more than I had when I first started I learned just instinctively you know what's going to work in our code base what problems have been solved already that I where do I need to look we have people here like Dwight Sullivan and Lonnie D. Ropp who have just worked for over a decade in the pinball industry. Lonnie's worked here since 1987. So since literally the first line of code was written at Stern, he's been here until now. So he's a tremendous resource. And I think now what's different is I have a lot of good relationships with the people I work with. I enjoy the teams. I have to work with, and I'm more confident in what I could do in what could be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, because I have to go to management and convince them that this game needs three wizard modes, right? And that is a valuable use of our time. And so having gone through the process, I think the confidence in what we can accomplish with the rule set, what I can accomplish, what my teammates can accomplish, and what our art team can accomplish, So that's been a big thing to understand exactly what those guys could do in the computer graphics team where they're putting all this stuff on the LCD display. Just that allows me to just get a better understanding of what a game could be at Starry Pinball right now with the team we have. And we have a great team of people here. How has been writing rule sets for both of you? I know that, Raymond, this is your first co-lead, but... I was second. You're second? I mean, I was pretty much tag teaming with Tim on Led Zeppelin mostly. Like I didn't start from as early on Rush, but from a rules, like when I started Led Zeppelin, there was maybe one song mode done. So like the framework was all there and I was able to jump in really fast as opposed to Rush where I had to also do the framework. But yeah, I'd say it's my second game being a wingman. Okay. So what kind of went through expectations when you guys were writing these rule sets versus what kind of surprised you when you were trying to put this all together? Oftentimes, I would think too hard and long and complicated and then realizing, oh, it doesn't need to be this complicated because it's, oh, I get to do whatever I want. And so I come up with this cool thing and then I'm like, oh, but I need to kind of relay that. How am I going to relay that to the player? So I'll put a bunch of stuff on screen and then I actually play it. I'm like, there's no way I can read five lines of text in two seconds. Like, this is not helpful. And and even if I could read it, I'm playing pinball. Like, how am I going to actually, you know, fall like set up a thing the way I want it to. um and so then i'll just start kind of removing layers until i get to something that is a nice compromise of it's intuitive to grasp but there's still something that's like maybe one extra step of like oh this or that will double your super and that's it as opposed to like you know five extra layers of rules i i i start there and then then i realize okay i need to scale back and just you know simplify it and it works it ends up working uh pretty well that way um so that was the one thing i realized is that more complicated doesn't necessarily mean more fun i think that was a big big thing because uh well i actually was working on avengers with keith and thor multiball is like the simplest multiball in the game it's like you hit x number jackpots and you hit the captive ball then you hit x plus one jackpots then you hit the captive ball and like keith's like that mode's super fun. I'm like, yeah, it is. It's so simple, though. Like, like just realizing that, you know, more complicated doesn't equal more fun. But I also like to add my own spin where I can and leave little nuggets for people that really want to geek out, you know, if they want to. So how familiar were either of you with Rush? I mean, you're, you're younger than me. And I'm in I certainly solidly in the dad rock generation And so I followed Rush my entire life but I know that I not in the majority And generation and so i mean i i followed rush my entire life but i know that i i not in my in the majority and so how was that um just getting used to a deep catalog like rush has so my dad is in the dad rock generation all right son showing the age difference here but uh You know, growing up, he drove the car, so he had control of the radio, which meant he had it locked in on the classic rock station, which means over the hours and hours I spent in the car growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I've listened to plenty of Rush songs. And I got familiar with who the bands were, you know, what their music sounded like. my generation had Guitar Hero, right? Which was kind of a revival for some of the rock music because it was really just rock focused. And I remember, you know, playing YYZ and Guitar Hero 3 was one of the hardest songs in that game. So that was probably the deepest I ever went on a Rush song before then. But I have like a little anecdote where when I went to the IFPA Championships in Canada, uh ramie do you remember what year that was uh i think it was 2017 maybe yeah around then my friend levy rented a car and as we drove up from the airport to the tournament uh he was explaining to me that canada has a rule where over 30 of the music you play has to be from canadian artists is that an actual rule is that rule is that is that serious or is that like yeah Yeah, that's true. France has that for French artists. This is actually pretty common. We don't think about it as Americans because so much entertainment is produced in America that it would be silly to even impose a rule like that. It's almost like you'd want a 30 percent of non-American rule. Right. So as we flip through the radio stations there back to the car again, you know, you get Justin Bieber on station one and then you'd go to a rock station. And you'd get like a band that kind of sounded like, you know, Led Zeppelin, but wasn't Led Zeppelin. And it wasn't anything. It was like they're trying. And then you would like finally get a Rush song. You'd be like, oh, wow, this is music now. This isn't just some cheap imitation. This is like a real band with their own sound. Right. And, you know, every time a Rush song came on, like Tom Sawyer would come and we'd just pump our fists. Like, yeah, it's Rush. It's not some Canadian band we've never heard of before that kind of sounds like Motorhead, but kind of doesn't. So I would say he was a good casual fan of Rush before working on this project. Diving into it, I was a little bit intimidated because of the fandom and the passion from the Rush fans being incredible. I mean, Rush fans, there are stereotypes about them. That's how well noted it is. They only listen to Rush, right? And you'll ask them, how do I get into Rush? And they'll be like, listen to this, all their music and every live recording and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I was actually working with Ed Ed Robertson on the project. He's a big pinball enthusiast and another Canadian musician. He probably benefits from that 30% rule on Canadian radio. he was like here's where you want to go you want to watch the documentary on netflix rush beyond the lighted stage because that actually gets you an insight into them into alex getty and neil and what they want to be known as and what they are as people and you don't have to listen to every single version of every concert they've done in all 85 hours of live dvd they have just you know start with start here that's what he said so starting there obviously listening to every song they had and then for me it was every song we had in the game i was looking at every time they performed that song live in concert so going through all the dvds and all the blu-ray releases they had and just watching the different concerts and then seeing what they had actually performed you know instead of just listening to the audio you get a little bit more that way so you notice things like every time they do tom sawyer in a concert they do something silly and special with it right like you know one of the funniest things they've ever done is they had south park playing tom sawyer as the intro to tom sawyer when they played it in their concert so just a fun thing like that really would it's a better way to get into it than just trying to listen to all 19 albums like front to back and then listening to live like you know there's just too many hours of stuff to get into it but it's great for the fans i mean they have all the rush they could want and more i think well that was a that was actually a follow-up question i have is uh you you were able to get a lot of songs for this game i mean that that was a uh an embarrassment of riches but i'm sure as a rush fan i would say yeah go ahead and put 150 songs in there but we know that that's not reasonable um you can do about 114 instead uh but the so you were able to get 16 however you have a lot of live footage which is great it's not you're not handicapped by doing the way you had to do for Aerosmith where you had a caricature of them playing the songs you have the real footage doing it um for each song is it is it the same footage every time or were you able to mix that up from different live sessions or how was that and so you can keep it fresh and stay in a collection so in this game we have you know the the audio of the game is the studio album track and we created a video for each of the songs that covers that entire track and it's assembled from live footage which means it's not one-to-one but you know thanks to jody director of licensing we were able to get just the footage we needed to cover what we have in the game. So sometimes, like, we were looking for footage for 2112, right? It's a log song. Most performances of 2112 have been just the overture, maybe just the overture and the finale. But there were two times where they did on footage that I could find the entire song. Well, on the Different Stages tour, they did the whole thing. Yeah. And so we cut together the 21-12 video from both of those, but it is just one video. So every time you do play the song, you're seeing one long video, but it's a unique video of the entire song. There's nothing that repeats as long as the audio is playing. So I want to know, because this is another music pin. Do you have to approach music pins differently than you do another theme like Super Heroes or Elvira by chance, since it's mostly music ingrained? I think you do, but I think you have to approach every license, every theme with what the theme is about. Obviously, you can't just do whatever you want. you have to work with the licensor to get approvals. They want to represent the product a certain way. You want to make the game fun. You meet and you make the best game you can. And we can't, for instance, just start adding music we don't have to this game, right? So we're stuck with the songs we do have. And if we start telling a story that's too far outside of that, we're just not going to have enough content in the game that relates to what we're trying to talk about. Like if we didn't have 2112 and we started doing a game about 2112 Rush, it wouldn't make a lot of sense because we wouldn't have any sound effects from it, right? Like we wouldn't have anything there. I don't know if that example makes any sense, but you kind of get what I'm saying. And with the music games and in the LCD era, you want to create an audio and visual and pinball experience that makes sense with what you have because the music is like that main ingredient of the game where you are not you're stuck with it it's like what you are putting into the game that's your first layer if you do let's say a superhero game you might be getting music composed by someone else so you can you're in you're inverted you're now saying this is a battle i need energetic fight music and then this is a you know exploring the city i need kind of you know enchanted like nightlife music whatever you need you know you could kind of ask for it this is the other way around you're just this is the mood set by the track and what the music's about so how do you bring that to life in pinball Yeah, I think John Borg developing Rush Heat from the get-go, he figured Bastille Day, you're going to start it, and it's going to start pumping you up, and you're going to have all these targets lit, and you're going to want to pump the ramp over and over again and then cash in on the targets. There's big explosions going on. You can really tell that song set the feel for that mode. And I heard that as the song progresses from the, I guess, the verses to the chorus to different parts of the song, there are different things that are illuminated. Is that correct? No, that is the rules of Led Zeppelin. Oh, okay. All right. Okay, I have that too. And this was repeated on another podcast, I think, and it was not true. I'm not exactly sure where it came from, but that was the Led Zeppelin rule set. This is more of your traditional when you start a feature, the rules are based on shot making and timers. Okay. you heard it here first we're we're setting the truth right yeah get that on the record we got it on record so you talked about borg kind of giving you some direction on some of the stuff how much input does he have on the code does he help drive a lot of the direction or does he kind of give you guys free reign of what you want to do john likes to give us control of it he likes to give his programmer control on some stuff. John and all designers that I've ever worked with here at Stern, you know, George, Steve, John, Keith, they all insist on some stuff, right? Like, if they're giving you a lock device, they want you to be able to start multiball there. If they put an insert on the playfield that says light lock, they probably want, and they'll tell I want this to light the lock for the multiball, right? So on this game, John wanted the targets next to the ramp to light the lock, and he wanted the locks at the scoops in the middle. Now, it came later that we decided that Far Cry would be the multiball on that scoop, and that one little victory would be what happens when you beat Far Cry multiball and got to victory laps. but you know the the lower level before you're making those decisions you're just deciding where the feature is going to happen before you decide what it is what the jackpot rules are it's just built in layers so every designer does say this is what i want people to shoot this is what i want people to see if i'm giving you this device if my budget is going to be spending this much money on this sculpt i want it to you know be a main feature of this game right so that they all have insistence on it but when it comes to something like let's say the skill shot we might be able to put something in and john will say here's my feedback on it and then we'll say here's our feedback on it we'll reach a compromise but yeah originally funny story on the skill shot um i only had the like the side ramp lit for a skill shot and if you shot the inner loop and then combo it into the side ramp you'd get the super skill shot john would always shoot the side loop because it would be lit um but then he'd miss the ramp and he'd be like raymond i didn't get a skill shot i i shot the inner loop it was blinking uh and i'm like oh that's only for the super skill shot he's like oh okay then he comes back to me later yeah i i know it's a super skill shot but i i really feel like i should get something for for getting half of it so he wants half credit he wants a he wants a three a second ball save that would actually be a perfect uh rush joke in there it's like it's not it's kind of a minor skill shot it's a it's a semi skill shot you should put a semi skill shot in there sometimes it's hard to talk about even like how these decisions are made because they're made through ongoing evolving discussions you know throughout the entire project right like at some point we do say this is what we're going to do but we don't have just one person run off and decree something it's it's all are you okay with this what do you think want to try it this way and as long as everyone's on the same page we'll go in that direction and if someone says hey this isn't working for me is there something i'm missing you know it's discussions are happening with uh other input constantly there right and i go to john and i say hey you know what if we did this or i want somehow the ball to kind of move this way throughout the play field and he goes oh i'll think about that right and then he'll come back to me and say what about this so there's just ongoing discussions throughout the game that's really hard to pin down when something was decided or when it came to be i can't put down like okay june 28th we put a time machine on the playfield it just doesn't happen that way i do love that you continued with the expression lighting um that is that is a huge plus on music pins and i that's the first thing that people notice when they go up to Led Zeppelin is the interactivity of the light show, which makes it feel a lot more like a concert. So I'm really glad that you kept it. And where I'm sure there's budgetary constraints that you can't put in every model, you still made that available if people wanted to purchase it after aftermarket and put it in. And so I I really applaud that design option because I it does take music pins to an X level. Yeah, I really liked it. I worked on that on Led Zeppelin initially with Steve, and I've talked about that before. That took some evolutions and it took some research with Tanya, Klyce, and myself in looking at how we could create those light shows. And then Mike Vinikour, who you may know, he works at Stern. He's the head of our testing department, but he's also become really, really good at creating the light shows in the software tool and bringing them into the game for the music pins. He also has a skill shot named after him in pretty much every game. this is true well i appreciate him for like the work he's done putting all these light shows in led zeppelin and rush and i think because when they are music driven like they are with the expressive lighting the fact that i could just give him a song right sort of in tandem with what raymond and i are doing on rules or display effects or playfield light shows i could give him the music and he could take the time he needs to balance with all his other tasks at work to work on that stuff and that frees us up to you know do what we need to do on the play field so you know the story i keep repeating i guess is like everything is done kind of you know this coordinated dance of software development and art development and light shows and everything it's all kind of moving toward the day when we put the game in a box and start packing it i could see in and Corby and like, so now that we've done Rush and Iron Maiden, let's go with like a Ramones for the Slash, right? I'll compromise. We don't have to do Sick Puppies, but we can do the Ramones. How about that? We already decided that Creed was the next music pin, so. I thought you said Nickelback. You're pushing for another Canadian band. Nickelback would work too. It's Canadian, so I think they're Canadian. Yes, they're Canadian. Okay, so the one thing that Dwight started with Ghostbusters, which a lot of these games have been implemented, is kind of a jump mode. And so you can jump to a wizard mode or a challenge mode. And I think that has been such a great way of allowing people to see more of the game because there's so few people that actually get to the end of the game that if you have the ability to, okay, I want to play that mode, it does two things. One, it shows off more of the game, and it also gives you incentive to actually put some time into coding this really awesome mode because more people are going to see it. that's my subtle take to say, hey, are there any plans like that for Rush, including a 1-3 mode or a 1-2 or 2-2 or anything like that? Yeah, I'm ready to reveal a secret. On the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, this game will have three challenge modes. Whoa. It will have a 21-12 challenge mode, a Cygnus X1 challenge mode, in a Cygnus X1 Book 2 challenge mode. The Cygnus X1 will be split up into two parts like the planets are split up on the playfield. Yeah, and so you have two epic modes based on black holes. Exactly. Yeah. Just in case anybody who really didn't know about Cygnus X1 and Cygnus X2 is it's a black hole circling a star, which is what the song was about, which was huge in the 70s, I guess. they did take a lot rush definitely took a lot of pop science influence for their themes you know that's sort of as i'm unpacking what the song's about and i learned that cygnus x1 was the first discovered black hole you know and of course growing up at the time i did where i was taught pluto was a planet then it wasn't right still a planet i roll with pluto Thanks, cancel culture. Yeah. You know, maybe that would have been the topic of a song if they had been 30 years later in their music career, like Goodbye Pluto. I'm surprised they didn't have a Hubble telescope song. So, yeah. Hey, I'm super excited about that because those – for those who are unfamiliar with Rush's catalog, one, go listen to the Stern Insider interview with Ed Ed Robertson. because he talks about the song selection, and I don't want to rehash it and steal their thunder, but the bottom line is 15 of the songs were all selected by Ed Ed Robertson, who's the lead singer of Bare Naked Ladies, and Alex Alex Lifeson who the lead guitarist of Rush and Geddy Lee who the lead bass and also the lead vocals And so they got together and selected these songs Now three of these songs are close to 20 minutes because they basically half an album And so all of those epic challenge modes that Tim just talked about, those are all those three epic songs. And so if you can last 18 minutes, 18 to 20 minutes on one ball, you are in Ray Day territory right there. I think people have liked those challenge modes. They do pretty well when there's like a victory condition and a condition where you don't win, right? And because it gives you a chance to play a game in pinball where you're actually trying to beat the clock. And we've done those timed leaderboards and those untimed leaderboards. I think when, for me, I worked on Jurassic Park a little bit as, you know, I was working on like some T-Rex animation, motor animation when Rick was putting in that escape Nublar wizard mode where you have three chances and it really got to be this big project of itself. and when we put it as a game because i can't remember the timing of that in ghostbusters because ghostbusters we did that software update and i don't remember where that fell in but with the lcd screen with new bar they could lay out like the three high scores that speed and the points challenge and it was just a lot of fun we were just playing it in the office and it was awesome working here you've obviously rubbed shoulders with uh celebrities and stuff like that has it been easy to keep your composure is there anyone you've met so far and you're like uh uh hi how do you have that my most embarrassing story is when i texted Brendon Small because i saw home movies his show was trending on twitter and he kind of just was like yeah whatever that that was i mean home movies is one of my favorite animated shows it didn't run for very long. I didn't see it when it came out, but he was beyond that. I just try to approach them like they're regular people that I'm conducting a business relationship with and not get too crazy with stuff they did in the past. We can't have Raymond on the project anymore. He tried to hug us too much. Well, he was supposed to go hug Ron because Ron loves hugs. Anytime you see Ron at a show, go up and give him a big hug. I don't know about that. Even in the before times, I don't think he would like that. That's a joke. Ron is not a hugger. You can wave at him. His dad's pretty cool to hang out with, though. As far as being starstruck, I still get nervous even just slack messaging Keith about anything. so when you're when you're developing code so now this has been uh for the last 10 years you have had to deal with um not one play field but basically two layouts so you have the premium le layout and you also have the pro layout so when you're designing a code for that do you start with the vision for the premium LE and then start to pull back as you go to the pro? Or do you get the basic layout on the pro because you have similar layout, similar roles, and then try to expand as the flow dictates with premium and LE, I guess? It is tough to answer because it really depends on what's happening. As we're developing the games and they're drawing what's going to change from them, I mean, the designers have different approaches to how they're going to split up the pro and the premium. And sometimes the designer will say that, you know, I just want this to be a premium only rule that goes along with this premium only device. Sometimes they'll leave it up to me or whoever's working on the project. I think with like let's go back to Led Zeppelin on the electric magic device and that just wasn't in the pro right it just didn't feel like something you'd want to simulate because it's really hard to simulate a spinner an opto spinner right it's really hard to simulate a ball locking device when it's just not like it doesn't even go into something right so that just felt I mean just intuitively it just feels like if you're going to try to do something that's the same for both of these games, it's not going to work. When you're doing something like so with Rush, there are a lot of differences kind of scattered throughout. So the gameplay is slightly different just based on those differences. And I think that just matches the design. Like Free Will Multiball on the Premium has a ball lock device. So when you have a ball lock device you want to lock the ball and you know you could bash on it when it's locked so it just feels like you should have some add a ball opportunity there and with the pro since you can't hold the ball there it just doesn't feel like yeah or you can kind of do like on on metallica where you'll still get double scoring you might still get out of ball but it won't physically keep it out of the way for you which if you're a tournament player and you know So it's a lot easier to control one ball than two. So you might prefer the way the Premium plays because you can kind of stuff it over there and then hit the jackpots with the other ball. Whereas on the Pro, you hit it, it's coming right back. You've still got two balls, which can also be fun in its own way. It's just different. So it's just a different style for the different games based on what features are there. and then also i think with like the time machine ramp that goes up to down on the pro and the premium you want to just create the differentiation there in the effects as well and create a rule set that makes it sense for the ramp to go up and down right so you know with the pro you just lose the effect of the actual bashing of the time machine because you're always kind of shooting through it where you got to just make that fun on the premium. Okay, so I'm looking at the time machine and with the ramp that goes up and down, and what are you hitting when the ramp is down? It looks like a metal plate. Is that a target or what is it that you're hitting? You'd have to ask Elliot for exactly what it is, but you're right. You're hitting metal. There's an opto sensor, and then based on the position of the ramp, you are getting progress for the lowered shots versus the raised shots. So it is basically a target of some sort. That was what was confusing to me because I didn't see the typical stand-up. Well, it doesn't register. It doesn't register, yeah. Yeah, it registers it on the ramp, like at the very end of the ramp. So whether it's up or down, you know, it registers a shot. It just knows, oh, I'm down. So award what you would award for bashing, which in Rush is progress towards your time machine multiball. So the premium, it's very easy to differentiate. Oh, the ramp's down. That means I'm building towards my next time machine multiball. Oh, the ramp's up. That means there's some award. It's going to show me if I shoot it up there because the magnet holds the ball. And then in multiball, if it's up and nothing's there, it'll just kind of like shoot through. So there's like different states you can do with the up, down, the magnet, working towards different rules. Yeah, Raymond brings up a good point. It's so much more intuitive on the premium what you're going to get on the time machine, not only because of the ramp going up and down, but because the lights have a language telling you what feature is lit on the time machine. So you know when it's down, you can just bang, bang, bang on that thing to get to a multiball. And if you're in a situation in the game, sensitive to the game, where you really need a multiball, you don't know which one's the closest, Just a few shots away, you'll be able to raise the ramp and start a multiball at the time machine. There also seems to be a lot more, I guess, state changes that you have in this. You have the premium LE anyway. You have the diverger. You also have the time machine. And you also have the ball lock beyond the instrument drop targets. um so i do like that it seems that there are multiple ways the ball can move even if it's uh i guess it mixes it up a lot more it feels a little bit like lord of the rings where different shots do different things um one thing i did notice and you were talking about this on the stream where if you collect albums before you start a mode i'm assuming that is like um it's like in deadpool collecting all your teammates before you go into a battle and so it's probably a score multiplier that it's a more valuable mode if you collect the albums before you start well there's a whole nother system for that those are those are the records so yeah i i can i'll try to keep it the geeking out short but to answer the question about the albums that um those give you you perks on the button the action button called the weapon so if you in order to charge up your weapon, you know, through the power of music. You got that album and they're playing your song on that album, now you can use your weapon and it'll spot all the shots on the playfield for you. So if you collect the Hemispheres album and then you start La Via Strongiato, you know, you can hit that button and depending on, you know, if you want to go really next level, you can actually choose which direction it spots the shot based on the diverter. So it can go left to right or right to left. You can, you know, go as big brain as you want But basically the idea is you get an album, you get a perk with the button. In multiball, that perk is an add-a-ball. So that's the one I think people are going to really pay attention to. They're going to learn which combos go to which albums, go to which songs, go to which multiballs, so they can get their add-a-balls. And then the other thing that you mentioned about raising your values, that's all records-based. So if you can, you shoot the record shots that are scattered around the playfield, there's six of them, and they're actually all color-coded. So when you're collecting colors of a record, that'll determine which mode starts. So if you have three blue records, then it'll start Spirit of the Radio or whatnot. And you can keep collecting records once you light the mode, and that'll give you a 10%, 20%, you know, more and more boost. But you can also, there's even another thing where the record shots that are the same color, those are 2x. So if you really want to, you know, get the biggest mode possible, you'd get all six records the same color. you'd start your mode and now every shot in that mode is amplified by its percentage and it's double you know all that stuff so but you can also just ignore that and just shoot around because all the shots feel so good and basically the more stuff you're hitting you know the more more points you're going to be getting everything raven just said made a complete sense to me and scott when you get your le yeah and have a month on it everything he said will make complete sense to Okay, it actually reminds me of Led Zeppelin when you have the Zoso, the little symbols down at the bottom. I actually – that was one thing I had a question about, and I even mentioned – that was one thing I had a question on Led Zeppelin because it seems very similar in that if you're trying to level up all the icons together, then it works symbiotically. And so it seems like you're implementing a similar vibe here, which I think is really, really good. Yeah, I mean, with a rock and roll pin, you want to be ripping shots and rewarding combos. And yeah, the more shots you're hitting, the more things are going to be set up for you. So I have to know, now that pinball is your official job title of where you're working, how has it changed from being a hobby to being a profession? I'll let Raymond start with this one. I stream, you know, I'm more busy, so I can't stream as much. And I have to ask for time off, but it's a little easier to ask for time off if it's pinball related because it's pinball, so I can go to this pinball tournament. But then also, I'm kind of still learning to balance everybody who are talking to me about pinball and then where to draw the line when they ask a work question that I can't answer. so that's been probably the biggest shift for me is like i want to tell people everything about everything like even as i'm developing the rules for rush as you can just tell i just kind of like spewed out what i've been holding in for the past two months you know like i want to i just want to talk i just want to like tell people about everything but you know sometimes you can't so that's that's probably the biggest the biggest thing so don't buy drinks for ray day while he's at a tournament. Well, it actually reminds me of it. So, Tim, you actually went on slam tilt before you were hired at Stern. And so you had free reign to talk about whatever you wanted. But now it seems it seems different than that. You have to be very careful about what you're allowed to talk about, what you're not. And for Josh and I, we can do a podcast because we can just wildly speculate. There's nothing that we're that we can't talk about. But with you guys, it seems to probably walk in that fine line of being social and being involved in the hobby. But still, you are – that is your job now, and so there are things that you need to be more guarded about. Yeah, the shift is – pinball is now what pays my bills and my rent and everything, and I want to continue to do this because it's fun. I don't want to lose the opportunity to do what I do because I run my mouth or I get someone upset with me. Right. So I just want to be respectful, even though I have a lot of passion for pinball and I have a lot of opinions. It does me no good to just go and tell everyone what I think when I have the opportunity to actually demonstrate what I believe and what I've learned through my work. so you know within the building of stern within our communication on slack and zoom at work i say whatever i want to much smaller group of people right it's not on a podcast it's not on my facebook feed anymore it's just you know we're all on the same team though at stern where we want our games to be as good as they could be or everyone at our company be supported to be able to grow at the company. So it's, you know, it's, this is how people at Stern, like if we aren't making great products and people lose their jobs, like that's something we're partially responsible for in product development. So it makes it, you know, serious in a way where, you know, we're all looking to do this and have fun and make great games, but, people are making a living because this is their job. And we want that to continue for two reasons. One, because people ought to have jobs to be able to make a living and put food on their table. But two, because we want pinball to stick around and we want pinball to continue to grow and thrive and go to this next generation and this current generation of people who are discovering it and continue the growth it's having because that means it'll last that much longer for the next generations and we find it fun so we want to pass that along so do you feel like people have been more respectful to both of you knowing that you work at stern now or are you getting people are dill weeds that are like you know you really should tell me what's coming up next or or why don't you just do this with your code because that makes more sense and like they harp on you for that people are excited because they love pinball that's the main thing you know they want to know what's next because they just can't get enough of pinball. They want to know what's coming. They want to think about how great things are going to be in the future. It's just for everyone. I think it's always hard to live in the moment of enjoying what's going on right now. And, you know, we are trying every day. Like our moment is creating the next moment for people. And it's just, you know, I understand where it comes from. And I just try, you know, when people do come up to me at a show or something and they try to tease out what the next title is going to be, you know, I've heard it now at this point, I know kind of had a smile and say like, you know, is that what you think is coming? That's good for you, man. Like, I hope you're having fun at the show. I hope you enjoy Stern games. You know, that's just kind of take the focus to, you know, what's going on right now. And at Stern, like if we go to a show or something, let's say we go to pinball expo, Raymond and I know rush is next. Raymond and I know what we have to do with Rush to get it to the stream and all the changes that are being made. And we can't talk about that. Some other people might know that there's a game called Rush coming, but they're not going to be able to know where it's going. We're close enough to that. So we just focus on, hey, we've got a new 40th anniversary Elvira and we've got Godzilla here and Insider Connected. And those are things we've seen everyone work really hard on for months and years at Stern. I think Insider Connected, watching the effort of software and marketing and legal and just the outside groups we're working with, everyone involved in this, it was such a big project that we all wanted it to succeed so bad that it wasn't hard to just focus on, this is what we have at Expo. This is Insider Connected. It's awesome. You get achievements now when you play the games. your name pops up automatically when you like log in. Pinball has never been connected to the internet. Isn't this cool? And there's a special, special badge. You can only get at expo. So make sure you, you get it or you won't have a chance. Got to get that shiny badge. We did get the badge. Josh and I got the badge. We did. Yep. Well, what makes, makes me laugh. I'm assuming you guys, I know Raymond comes from a video game background. Cause obviously the Banjo Kazooie, um, there's always that one video game you play. And it's like the second you start, you get an achievement it says like so it starts or something like that you guys need to do that like as soon as you push the start button there's some pretty close to the flipper achievements on each game yeah well i've got rather well and flipper i've got jurassic park and i've got avengers both connected now and um the first came on jurassic park i wasn't even attempting for much and i got like 26 achievements i was like dang and same with uh avengers i think i got 20 in the first. It might have been more because it seems like once you start a gem and once you complete a gem, you get an achievement. There's 10 achievements just there alone plus six Avengers, so there's 16 achievements right there. I've been nervous about converting my Jurassic Park LE and my Avengers LE because I like the way it looks right now. Maybe I'll have to figure out some other way of doing it, but yeah, I'm really excited to get all my games connected and most Most of my games are newer games. I've been able to sell off most of the older ones, so it's been really fun to see the evolution. I think they look a lot less invasive on a premium LE than they do on a pro. But I don't know what your guys' game plan is. The thing about the Insider Connected kits is they've kind of got an expiration date on them, right? Because you can only put them in so many games because you already put them in the new games, and there's only so many in the back catalog. so it kind of defeats the purpose of like customizing each apron and what stuff uh the back catalog is a lot of games i mean you talking like 17 spike suit games or something that is yeah true there a lot of games out there yeah and think about the skews pro premium le i mean it is it is a lot yeah yeah i guess that's true as well but i didn't know if there i don't know i've got on jp and i'm like i wish i kind of the stickers to put on the apron so it more incorporates but it's kind of nice with a premium because you just pop that little window out and put the reader in. You still have all the Avengers stuff on the apron versus a pro. I think you can transfer your decals from your other apron. Why do I have to do that? There you go. One thing that Rush is known for is they are known for Neil Peart, who passed away, God rest his soul, two years ago from brain cancer. um but this is this was a band that when the drum solo came on that people actually came in to see the drum solo they didn't leave i that's usually when you you decide it's time to go hit the restroom or get a refill on the drink is when the the drummer's playing but rush it it was it was an event to see neil play um is there is there anything like that i don't even know if that would work well in pinballs to have a drum solo uh mode but uh i i saw that there was there was something about a drum solo but there's no specific uh neil solo mode in this is there i guess there's not a neil solo mode i mean we are trying to be you see the giant drum like drums invading the whole lcd screen you know it gives you that that feeling of like all these drums like neil's crazy drum sets when the drum solo starts okay we we are trying to be respectful to neil obviously his contributions to rush the music world it can't be understated and i thought it was cool that stern did support the neil pert research award you know with this game right and talk a little bit about that i i heard you talk about it on the stream so i wanted to give some airtime to that yeah so um you know we actually streamed at the two-year anniversary of the day when neil passed on and i was actually just watching the indus 2020 footage and the news broke you know there and i remember jeff teal as another podcaster you know brought it up did a moment of silence, but you know, he, his impact was incredible for a lot of people and his time came, you know, too early, but one thing he was able to do in his life was set up a research award that goes to cancer research. And so Stern has, it's part of the rush launch plan, like selling Rush, the details and the orders and everything that we do for that, we are making contributions for all the games that we sell to the Neil Peart Research Award. People are going to talk about how I pronounce his last name. I'm sorry. It's a tough one. Yeah, it's kind of a Peart. But yeah, I think everybody just calls him Neil Peart. So it's fine. what is it is there one rush song that you're like if i had to choose one rush song and jam to it what would it be whenever you ask the question about a rush song and you phrase it slightly differently it gives me pause i'm like i'll jam to it okay yeah i don't know favorite rush song it to jam to it for me would be subdivisions though like because i could play keyboard a little bit like i could you know i could match the rhythm there i can't play guitar bass or drums so that's my jam song all right rady got one uh i think my favorite song is probably working man yeah just uh has catchy everything and like the lyrics are funny and it's like yeah i can relate you know working man you know it's it's a good song yeah i heard i was actually watching a football game and i think it was somewhere around uh it was either cleveland or some or buff no it was buffalo where i heard that and they were playing working man as like the outro before they went to a commercial so um all my favorite one is actually not in the game but it's uh the song right after subdivisions it's analog kid and so that's a really great one too uh signals album may be the i know it's a lot of people say i'm not going to say what is what's the best because it's my opinion but well it but it connects to you that that's the that's the good thing about rush is that it really has four eras and and the reason why i call it four eras is because they kind of um they kind of put a bookmark on the end of that era so with 2112 that's when they did their first live album which was all the world's a stage and then after uh after moving pictures that's when they did exit stage left and then after hold your fire they did a show of hands and different you know then uh they did a test for echo different states so each of their their benchmarks was that and so the nice thing is i actually grew up more in the synth era of rush and so that would be signals gracious under pressure uh power windows and hold your fire um And so that speaks to me more than the other stuff. But my brother, who is five years older, he tends to like the earlier generation of Rush a little more. And I think that's one of the best parts about Rush is that most bands don't have that. Most bands, they have that one album. They're like, that's the album. If you don't like that album, you don't like the band. But there's a lot of variability in Rush, which makes it accessible and complex. So I'm impressed by what you guys were able to assemble on such a complex project like Rush. Josh, I have a question for you. Okay. What was your familiarity with Rush before the game was announced? Tim, I am very much like you. I grew up with Guitar Hero. My dad loved the dad rock, you know, Metallica, ACDC, Great White, Blue Oyster Cult. That was all in our house. So I had familiarity with Rush. I did enjoy playing their songs on Guitar Hero. I'm kind of one of those people, too. Like, I enjoy them. I respect them for the musicians they are. I'm probably just vanilla. I like Tom Sawyer. But, yeah, they're good. I can't knock them. I can't knock them for a there's some bands that make it that are just terrible because they're not great musicians. But for some odd reason, they have like some presence about them. And like that's vice versa with Rush. It's like if you hate Rush, it's not because they're bad musicians because they are top of their class. So that's my feelings about Rush. Yeah, I've noticed when Rush fans I did not expect. I mean, just the overlap, I think, between the Rush fans and the pinball fans has been really significant. I think, Scott, you're clearly a Rush fan. Like, I don't, when I talk about Rush, I almost feel embarrassed. I don't gush about them the way you do. I don't start listing off every single studio album and live album that followed it in chronological order. And I think it's because, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to grow up with them, right? because you know i'm a young guy raven's a young guy we were born in the 90s we didn't have we didn't get the chance to see their albums come out in the 70s and the 80s right it just didn't happen when we were around to watch it so that stuff it gets lost but coming into it i think with the fresh perspective and working with someone like ed who has tracked the career of Rush their whole time and then you know through Ed working directly with the band and then just representing just a fun career an awesome career a really impactful career that Rush has had has been just a joy of a project to work on for me how often are you guys working on multiple projects at the same time and do you ever run into the problem when you're like you start working on one project you're like oh crap this isn't the right game like you like accidentally put the wrong code in the wrong game is you have to like back just you know backstep and fix that it doesn't happen too much i mean there's clearly a schedule like and there's a very clear priority of what's important in our heads and we have a really great team at stern led by george gomez and Mark Wehner. Mark Wehner is our executive producer. And because we make a lot of games at Stern, we have the ability to have multiple teams, which is great for me because if I'm working on Rush, I don't have to worry about what they're doing on Mandalorian. I don't have to worry about what they're doing on Godzilla because I get time to focus. And that focus time is really important to develop the game all the way out. So the overlap that might happen, let's say we do something like Insider Connected and our systems team reaches out and says, hey, can you review this achievement spreadsheet for Led Zeppelin? Do you think you'd be able to integrate them at any point? Do we need to get someone else to do it? We always work together and we just work with the bandwidth we have. But if we launched Insider Connected achievements on Led Zeppelin the week before Rush was scheduled to hit the line, I would just say, no, I can't do it. I need some help. And someone would be able to, Mark, Waina, and George would find someone who could help me, and we would get the job done. So it's great to do all those games, and it's great that we have a team that supports us to give us the space and time and resources we need to get the projects done. So, Ray, how about for you coming on the project and looking at Rush with fresh eyes? um just like what was the experience of of like oh we're doing a rush game right i mean it's a you're a you're a younger guy you didn't grow up with uh and you're the peak of russia's popularity was moving pictures and that was probably 10 to 15 years before you were in existence and so you know yeah i mean i i had heard a couple other hits and uh and and then when i saw the song list, I realized I actually recognized more than I had first thought. I just maybe didn't know the name of some of the songs, but I'm like, oh, I've heard I have heard the song before. And so as I'm working through, you know, implementing the song modes, and I'm, I'm hearing the songs. I'm like, oh, yeah, I've heard that one before. And and I was like, oh, this is really cool. They have a lot of different songs, I have different themes, like, you know, the working man mode is all about getting through the day and i you know i really liked working on that one uh because basically you know tim and john come up with this this uh skeleton uh design doc of like what the mode should kind of be and it'll have things like you know working day get through the day with random events thrown in such as this or that and then it's my task to actually go and do it and and i'll just put in what I think is funny, like fire drill might happen or like, you know, uh, pretending to look busy or fight with the printer. And I was kind of like joking when I put those in at first, but then like when it came time, the, the art team, you know, it was like, Oh, we're doing awards for working man. What do you need? And I just kind of joked. I'm like, well, here's the 12 that I came up with. They're like, okay. And then they made all of that. So if you're playing, if you're playing working man, uh, look out for all the fun little, little different events that can happen oh that that's great i can't i actually can't wait to play that that sounds hilarious and yeah if you've seen any of the small videos that rush put in their show it is 100 in keeping with the humor that they have nice yeah yeah no it's it's really cool um i was really uh really kind of just pulled in all the way where i was like oh i can really you know i feel all these different you know la via strongiato is like the song with 12 movements And so it's like a 12-way combo, and I got to come up with, well, how do I plan a 12-way combo? And so it was just a really fun project from beginning to now. I'm not going to say beginning to end because, you know, we're still working on it. And it's just I'm really glad to be on the Rush team here. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you'd be really good at like a Weird Al pinball machine or something. These goofy things. I don't know. And, you know, that would cross a lot of genres. He did rap and pop and rock. I mean, you might want to kick that out there to your team. You could build up some reserve of tickets at the arcade, and one day you could cash them all in and be like, I'm working on Weird Al Pinballs. That would be hilarious, yeah. Well, from my perspective, I am super excited what you guys are doing. it feels like it is a it is a project that has some soul to it in that the people who are involved in it it doesn't feel like a like a quick uh greatest hits album where they just kind of throw things together there seems to be a reason why the songs are are selected there's uh there's a method to uh the art package and the way things are flowing and um as a rush fan i can't ask for a more sincere representation of what I would view a Rush pinball machine to be. So I'm really excited to get my hands on mine, hopefully in the next month. I have a final thought to share. So you're talking to myself and Raymond, we're on the software team, we developed the rules, and we're at the point where we have to make the pinball machine, the best pinball experience it could be. And I feel like that is perfect for Rush because Rush, the performance was so sacred to them. You know, they were so insistent on just delivering these amazing concerts and recording this, you know, really rich, complex music just with three members. And so our contribution to the rush side of it was we're going to make the coolest pinball machine we can make with our team here that just works the best with the team we have. And that is the justice we could do for a theme like rush is just to make it, make it look like, you know, 15 people worked on it when it was just, it was just two or three. Okay. That's perfect. That is absolutely perfect with rush. Every time – the best compliment people always paid Rush was, wait, there's only three guys? And if you listen to it, it sounds like there's about 15 guys. Yeah, I have to say Mike Kizavet did join about two months ago to work on some stuff, so it wasn't just the two of us. Yeah, no, it's been us three mostly these last – yeah, Mike is a really valuable asset. And his brother did some of the art too, Tom Kizavet. So lots of people on the team, not just us two. Well, I think that's probably the best place to leave off. Do you have anything else, Scott, or should we wrap this bad boy up? No, just want to – we're in the process of getting new hats made because they discontinued our version of the hat. So we'll definitely make sure you guys get some Loser Kid swag. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks again for coming on. We really appreciate you guys, one, for being professional about what you do, but also being ambassadors for the sport too, because I, we have, we have interacted with both of you guys and can attest that you guys are genuinely nice guys and good to work with. If you want people to get ahold of you, how should you, how should they get ahold of you, Tim and Ray? Best way is to email me, tim.sexton at sternpinball.com. If you email, if you find a bug in the game and you email bug.report at sternpinball.com, those all get sent to me no matter what, if, if it's my game. So that is another way to get in contact with me, but hopefully not the, the, the way if you just want to send me anything, Tim dot sex at stern pinball.com is the best way to get in touch with me. Yeah, you can, uh, I guess you can shoot me a message on Facebook messenger or, uh, my stern email is just Raymond dot Davidson at stern pinball.com. So, okay. Ray, but also, uh, talk about, uh, your side project too, and, your streaming and what you do. Uh, yeah, I have a Twitch stream. It's just Ray Day Pinball. So twitch.tv slash Ray Day Pinball. Streaming usually Stern games. I got a Beatles here and a Deadpool that I can jump between. And it's just a lot of fun. Interact with people. And then sometimes I'll film little tutorials and you can catch those on YouTube. Just YouTube.com slash Ray Day Pinball. If you want to see like Led Zeppelin and Avengers are the two that I've done that people find helpful. and I'm really happy that people get something out of those. Yeah, and if they want some of your Ray Day swag, where do they go? SilverBallSwag.com, and then just I'm in the giant list of people. Just go to the R section. If you'd like to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. We're also on the socials, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all at Loser Kid Pinball. We're also on Twitch whenever. I think the last time I recorded was like October, so it's been a minute. I need to get back on that. Yeah, if you also want to get a hold of us, honestly, the best way is probably our personal pages, at Scott Larson or at Josh Roof. And yeah, I think that pretty much does it for us this evening. We want to thank Tim and Ray Day for coming on and taking a break out of their busy, busy schedule. We know that it is night and day over there at Stern Pinball. And at Learning at Expo, it seems like there's some hiccups come up every once in a while. it always seems to be a couple days before release so you guys are working around the clock to make sure there's a great product still put out on the put on the market and we appreciate that yeah thanks for having us guys it was a lot of fun to talk to you guys a lot of fun to talk to you guys a lot of fun to talk about Rush a lot of fun to see these games arriving in people's homes I think that's been the most exciting thing for me right now so I'm just looking forward to more people getting to play it soon yeah it's super exciting and uh thanks for having us on definitely send us off send us off scott absolutely you guys have a great weekend and we'll see you in a in one to two weeks we actually have a few more guests lined up to talk more rush pinball so we'll catch you soon shut up and sit down We'll see you next week.