thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast i am josh roop here with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott should we hurry let's hurry and talk about flipping out really quick yeah let's talk about the the um sponsor of the show uh flipping out pinball if you're looking for that new pinball machine and uh you've been cooped up a little bit inside your game room and you're looking for that new itch uh go ahead and contact zach and nicole at flipping out pinball they are able to if they get some sock in soon they'll be able to hook you up with the new machine but they also know when the manufacturing guidelines are and when they're planned so if you have that guardians of the galaxy that you really want in your game room go ahead and contact them they'll be able to get you on the list or also if you want to get on maybe a future title if you want keith l1's next game just go ahead and say hey put me on the list so wait keith's designing i didn't know that okay all right so let's i want to talk about this is a pre-epic guest we have on I would dare say that pinball would not be what it is today without this man, not only because of the partnership he made early on with Gary Stern, but because of the licensing and changing the game from what it was in the 80s into the 90s. We have Mr. Joe Kamenkow on. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on, guys. And you're in the Pinball Hall of Fame. You're in the Slots Awards Hall of Fame. Gaming. You're very titled, yes. And so I feel very honored to have you on. It's awesome to have you here. Yeah, I wanted you to go, I guess. Yeah. Okay, so I'm curious because when you get in an industry like this, you start as a fan. And then you figure out how to get in and, like, be part of the industry. So what started you out? Because you were a young man when you started getting into the gaming industry. Well, younger than most actually would know, I was actually five. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. When I was five years of age, my father became the controller of a company called General Vending in Baltimore, Maryland. And they were the largest game distributor jukebox vending machine company in the Baltimore, Maryland area. So at that point in time, they were a Gottlieb Pinball company. I used to go on Saturdays with my dad to work. He seemed to work on Saturdays as well. Would hang out in the showroom and play games, see the games. Then eventually, after I got bored doing that and had my crackers and juice box or whatever and I'd start folding brochures and putting them in envelopes or learn to go to the back of the house and watch the guys fix the games or do whatever so really at a very early form of age I may even have a picture here I could probably show you if you give me one moment my favorites I have an interesting photo of me at the Virginia Music Operators Show, probably when I was about six or seven years of age and a kid. So I sort of dare say I grew up in the business. I became a second generation person in the industry. And then in 1974, my father moved to Boston and went to work with a company called Bally Northeast. It used to be Robert Jones International. Bally had three distributorships. They had Advance in San Francisco run by Tech McMurdy. Joe Robbins ran Empire in Chicago, and Dad ran Bally Northeast in New Robert Englunds. And, of course, they were Bally and Midway and early Atari distributors. distributors. Dad knew Nolan and all these guys at the very beginning of all of their careers. And again, moved to Boston when I'm 14 or whatever. I go after work. I go on the weekends. It was my summer job working at the distributors. I was always around games. And then when I was in college in the 80s, I started operating games. So I had Curry College, University of Maine in Orono, Stonehill College. I owned video games and pinball machines that I would put in their jukeboxes, work as an operator, and then opened up a chain of arcades called That's Entertainment in Maryland with a friend whose father owned a variety of Luskins. If you remember Luskins, they owned a variety of appliance stores, and we carved like 2,500 square feet out of the appliance stores when the arcade business was Pac-Man Red Hot and started operating games there. So at some point in time, I was 20 years old. I owned several hundred games while I operated. What was where that led to next is, you know, I met, you know, for instance, you know, in 75 or 76, whenever it was, when the Who's Tommy came out, Tom Neiman got tickets for me and dad, and we went to New York and saw the opening of Tommy. So, you know, it was very intriguing to me. I looked at some of the pinballs. I was really disappointed when Space Invaders came out that it looked like a Geiger thing. I like Paul Faris' work, of course, but it didn't look like what I thought Space Invaders should look like. So when I had my arcades, I was buying a lot of games and Kickman or things like that. I'm like, man, this is really not something I want to play, and I'm sitting here spending money. I probably could do something better than these guys are doing currently. Now I had an engineer named Tom Doe That used to come into my arcade From Westinghouse Missile Systems Engineering And he's like Oh he loved playing games We started talking He goes I could make a better game than this I was like I'd like to make a better game than this And in 1981 We had a company called Logical Highs That we sold the right of first refusal To our very first video game To Williams We had talked to Stern and a bunch of others. This coincidentally is a picture of me at the West Virginia Operator Show. Okay, that's so great. It's a great video. It's probably like what, late 60s, early 70s? Oh, I would say that was probably 67. Yeah. Okay. We just decided to make a game. We had never made a game. I really didn't know what I was doing. I talked a good game. I think we got $500,000 advance from Williams and went off and made a really suck-ass bad game. A really bad game. You're fine. Yeah. But we learned a lot, and then it turned into a second product. And then Williams, Mike Stroll offered me an opportunity to come work at the company in marketing and market research, which my goal was get there and get into game design. And one of the games, my very first pinball was a defender pinball, which was kind of funny when I think about it. I sold Williams the right to make defender pinball, even though they own the right to defender. But I came up with the idea of turning it into a pinball. So if anybody ever sees defender and you see there's like two pop bumpers on that game, right by it, All the credit they would give me was certain design services by to Williams Electronics Inc. by Logical Highs Inc. is on that game. Is that around the time they also made Joust, too? Because those were right in the same era. Yeah, this was me at Williams. That was the first video game I made. Oh, wow. Very cool. Yeah, so kind of fun. I'm sure I have a picture of Defender in here somewhere, too. And then, of course, Williams hit the skids The video game industry crashed in around 1982 It imploded It was really 83 I went over to Japan, I got the rights to 1942 But Williams really didn't want to sell a conversion kit Didn't think they could sell a real game And Star Rider happened, which is the LaserDisc game that Bill Foodston and Python worked on, and it was a beyond disaster product. There's me with Larry Holmes at a Bally trade show booth, and I was probably 77, 78. But the business imploded. I mean, literally the factory shut down. There was no hope. I went over a license in 1942 Arobato, we sold a couple hundred Conversion kits Lou Nicascio basically said If you don't get like 4,500 orders Or some number, I don't remember the exact number But it was a very large number of Games He basically said I'm not reopening Williams ever again It's done We had just finished Making like Mystic Marathon I don't remember the name of the dumb game was a dumb pinball with like mushroom theme. It was awful. And we had like two games in, in, in process. One was Mark. Richie was working on a game called sorcerer. Okay. And we were working on a game that became space shuttle. Mark Sprenger came in, did the first art on the game. Larry was programming it. Eugene, Gene, we got to go. He was at Berkeley getting his MBA. We got him to do a new sound package for us. Went back and convinced everybody to put the Harris CVSD back on it to do speech. Mark Sprenger came in, and it was really funny. He was having a hard time drawing the back glass and not having the tail kind of look like it was laying down. So Larry and I went over to Toys R Us at lunch one day, which was on the other side of the river behind Williams. bought a styrofoam space shuttle and brought it back. And Barry had the drawing on his play field where the ramp came up into the orbit. And said, just here, show this to Mark. And Barry's cutting a hole out of the piece of styrofoam, and it's sitting on the ramp, and it's under the glass. And that's sort of how that happened. And Mark did eventually get his tail fixed. And we told Mike, you know, if the future of the company depends on the game, We weren't scheduled to be next, but Larry and I lobbied hard to make Space Shuttle the next game. And we went to the trade show, had a $1,000 marketing budget where we bought a bunch of blow-up Space Shuttles. And if it wasn't for that game, Williams wouldn't exist. Williams would have closed. It was over. And what year was that? Because I distinctly remember when the Challenger exploded because that was a very – That was summer of 80. That was AMOA of 1984. The game went into production in 85. We had a post in the middle and flash lamps, and it was dynamic and it was exciting. And the business was done. That literally reopened Williams. I've got notes here that you sold about 7,000 of those. Does that sound about right? It might have been more, but at least seven. I think it was a pretty big number. And the big thing was we got enough games to get the factory open again on that order from the MOH. And then Mike left the company about four months later. And then I left not too far after Mike went over to Game Plan and made, what was it called? Let's see. Loch Ness Monster. And they kind of ran out of money. They made Cyclops instead of Loch Ness Monster. which Roger did, didn't go anywhere. And, uh, that's kind of like, you know, Gary and I knew of each other. That's where Gary, Gary was doing pin star at the time. And he connected with me and I was the young, hot designer, right? Like they get to make something cool and did something interesting and had a different vision of how to get, get it done. And, um, we kind of, you know, struck our, our partnership and, you know, It was me, Gary, and Shelly in the basement of his house. We were going to start a pinball company, and we went to Konami and Data East to see if either would fund us. Both were very interested. Eddie Pellegrini lent us some money, helped us get this thing going. And as I said, the rest is history. We started the company. We made Laser War, cobbled together the first four games with parts. The first game I designed started on Thanksgiving Day, 1986. It was a Thursday. On Monday, I had a finished playfield design, and by the end of the week, we had a working whitewood. And we had a Road King that we bought, took off all the parts, rewired it on our whiteboard and stuck it back in their cabinet and turned on the lights and just kind of made it a cycle of ball to shoot it and pop some pop-up to make sure it worked. And that's how it started. It wasn't very fancy, but it worked. Now, you were pretty early on seeing the value in licensing, and I'm looking at what you did. And the things that always jumped out at me of the Data East era is that they had identifiable themes already purchased and put into a pinball machine. I mean, you have Playboy, you have Robocop, Back to the Future, A Family of the Opera, which, you know, it was probably... It was almost hard, but not quite, yeah. Right, it was leveraging a musical that was well-known. And so, you know, you had Turtles, you had Batman, you had Star Trek. So all these titles are well-known. What led you in that direction? Well, you know, Bally did in the early days. even Laser War, by the way, was supposed to be Laser Tag. We just couldn't get with Worlds of Wonder to get the deal done. So we just kind of did a derivative of what was really red hot at the moment. You know, Bally's heyday when Tom Neiman was there was stuff like Bally Pardon, right? Or Six Million Dollar Man or Tommy or, you know, Pinball Wizard, right? Gary did Ted Nugent and we had Globetrotters and Nitro Groundshaker was kind of a Prudhomme type of thing you know, snake versus mongoose and there was always value in you know, that something will end up in your basement and have more intrinsic value and it was a really good reflection of pop culture, I mean, one of the ones I'm really probably two that were really ones I was super proud of I mean, we were the second licensor in the world to have the Simpsons. I mean, the Simpsons, the Tracy Ullman show, we identified this brand and went after it. I mean, Matt was so shocked that we were so early. You know, you know, we ended up spending a lot of time with Matt Granning, the creator of Simpsons. And, you know, he actually flew to David Letterman show. Talked about the pinball and David Letterman show and flew to New Orleans the next day for the MOA show. which we had four of the biggest security guards you've ever seen walk somebody into a trade show. Nobody knew who Matt was, but next thing you know, it's like, wow, who is this guy with all these security guards? And he signed autographs for, I think, the next eight hours and drew pictures of Bart. Had it broken by then? Because exactly what you said. It just happened in a big way, but we were a year ahead of it in the license. Yeah, because for those of you who don't know the origin of the Simpsons, was it was on a variety show. It was a one-woman variety show, the Tracy Ullman Show. Yeah, it was. Yeah, Matt was doing Life is Hell before that. Or South Park, you know, before we had YouTube and viral videos, all my friends in Hollywood are sending me these videotapes of this thing called The Spirit of Christmas, right? I got like 30 videotapes like in a week of The Spirit of Christmas, like what the hell is South Park? And went and got that brand very early. Jurassic Park was a, you know, product, but we had a relationship through Back to the Future and through Amblin and through doing book that allowed us to, you know, get Jurassic Park and not have other competitors get it. But I mean, some of the things we did were amazingly serendipitous. So for instance, we did Back to the Future. We only had six weeks to do the game from the time we licensed it till the time it came out. Six weeks. Six weeks. I mean, the play field we did in two days and programmed it in a month. And we had a game that, you know, someone had created, which wasn't very good, and we scrapped it and we had to fill the line, keep the line running. And then at the last minute, Michael J. Fox decided not to be on the game. And, you know, we still pulled off a great game. But, you know, I looked at that relationship. I built a great friendship. As a matter of fact, this past weekend I was in London with Bob Gale, who wrote Back to the Future and the new Back to the Future musical just open there and I an investor in it Oh good for you Bob and Bob all these years later But Back to the Future you know I ended up becoming great friends with Bob Gale I was at his 40th birthday party. He and Zemeckis came up and said, hey, why don't you go back and do Tales from the Crypt? because Walter Hill, Bob Zemeckis, Dick Donner, and Tol Silver own that brand. So I went over to see Dick Donner. He was filming Lethal Weapon 3. And the next thing you know, I'm with Mel Gibson in this trailer, and he's doing Three Stooges impersonations for me. And I think I'm the only person that Mel ever gave his likeness rights to between that lethal weapon and Maverick. So that happened because of Back to the Future that then we got to Joel Silver and did Tales from the Crypt. And you probably heard I did a custom one-of-a-kind Joel Silver pinball that Dick gave to Joel as a Christmas gift that year. And then that led to Aaron Spelling, right? So, I mean, it's been a very serendipitous ride. And, you know, fortunately, we've been able to network. and build wonderful friendships that have been enduring for decades. And obviously these same brands and these same friendships became very valuable at IGT as we changed the slot machine business and the social game business at Edzinga. We have games that are played by literally have a billion downloads that we've created that I'll wake up and 1.8 million people are concurrently playing one of my games. 1.8 million at the moment. So, you know, it's kind of been, but back to the licensed product, you know, and I think Gary even strayed for a while and made some non-licensed product, you know, early in the post-Sega days and realized the great value of good brand ends up in some of these basements. Or if you remember how our business used to operate, An operator buys a game, operates it for a year or two years, whatever it is. Hard codes, they last a lot longer. They don't wear out. And then they sell the game at the value of what they paid for it or more. The profit that the game made during that period of time is really their net value in what the game produced. And, you know, obviously something that's not as generic gets a higher dollar back into the house. Right. Because, you know, somebody is more excited about putting lethal. I mean, I look at, you know, we made almost 11,000 lethal weapons. I never see a lethal weapon hardly ever for sale. I mean, that game was 20 years old. I never see a South Park for sale. I never see my original Simpsons for sale. I never see a Rocky and Bullwinkle for sale. I mean, these games had they they they they're just like a sponge. They got sucked up and they're just gone. right I mean they just they had great great value even when I see something like the original Guns and Roses we did you know sells for more than the one that's being sold by Jersey Jack today you know it had better value so yeah that's a little bit about the license space oh that's awesome my other question too I don't know if you know a bunch about this but how did you guys get because you had the very first dot matrix display pinball machine what brought that about and how did you guys decide to implement that well we decided to implement it poorly we had the bigger one originally and the game was actually supposed to have been out on the Simpsons we actually had it up and running working on the Simpsons and Gene Lipkin at the time basically said to me and Gary your feet are in cement if you basically mess this up the company's going to go out of business and we're going to fire you. So delay it again. It probably would have been out, you know, eight months before. And at the time we looked at the bigger display, one that Williams ended up going to, and just in our BOM cost and going from displays to other things, it was more in line with what our expense was for the existing, you know, 16-segment alphanumerics. hindsight being 2020 we ended up going to the bigger one again and then even eventually even a bigger or the better dot pitch when we got to you know games like um they watch but you know we always looked at if you're if you're a student of the industry and you think about what things made the business go through growth spurts. It was going from numeric displays from six segments to seven, going to alphanumeric, all of a sudden having score inflation where you could not just put up text but put up the word a million or make a million for a shot. So all of a sudden, you know, the flexibility of being able to have more digits, the dot matrix kind of gave you or six players. You know, we had versions that two players would play against each other, six players at a time, or the bigger player to have a bigger font that was up. But it always drove new, it wasn't a wider cabinet or a wider play field that drove new sales. It was obsolescence, right? So when you went from score reels to numerics, from numerics to alphanumerics, from alphanumerics to dot, and now from dot to full TFT color displays, right? You look at, you know, the new stuff Gary makes a day, and you put it next to a dot matrix game, it looks like a dinosaur, right? It's old and feeble, and, you know, at some point, Gary will come up with another version that will be bigger, wider, whatever, that will make the generation before it less attractive. You know, a blinking light is a blinking light. I don't care if it's an incandescent light or if it's a tricolor LED. Now, certainly the tricolor LEDs give you the opportunity to put a clear insert on and make it red sometimes or make it blue or make the light shows more interesting. But more than anything, the dot matrix is what had or display changes throughout the history. Right. Score. You know, we started with a back glass that had light bulbs. Right. 100 plus 200 plus 50. Oh, I got, you know, that's my score. Right. To score drums. To eventually alphanumerics, alphanumerics, the dot matrix, to bigger dot matrix, to try colored lead dot matrix, to color display. So it's sort of a natural thing. And that's what we were thinking at the time. Yeah. What transitioned you, because after when pinball was declining, I guess, in the 90s, you went in a different direction. So what opened your eyes to those opportunities? Because you've been wildly successful, Adam. Well, a couple of things. First off, the early 90s were unbelievable how many games we made during that period of time. I mean, when we were doing, you know, we went from Jurassic Park to Star Wars to Lethal Weapon, you know, in some order. I think we put out 30,000 games in nine months. Crazy. We were filling up the casinos, and we got to the point we weren't innovating, and we were getting squeezed on build materials and metals and everything else. and I used to go to the trade shows in Vegas and I would look at these slot machines and I go oh my god they're feeble right the lighting sound and one of our good customers Hans Kloss at Valley Wolf became president of Valley when Alan Mace had some issue I think if I recall he got busted for trying to bribe somebody in New Orleans or something so you know he came in and was running it and I went out and visited with them. It was like, why don't we put sounds in a slot machine? Why don't we put a display? So we actually mocked up a firework display. Brian Schmidt did some sounds and they actually adopted it onto a Bally game years before Williams ever came out with the dot matrix and their slots, you know, 15, you know, seven years later, Bally actually had it. They just, they had a guy who just had no creative vision who was their head of engineering. and as the business started to decline and shrink, and Sega had purchased us at that point in time, and I met with Mr. Nakayama about, you know, he asked me if I'd consider helping in the gaming side of Sega at the time. I had been approached by Bally at that time. It was run by like Joel Kirschbaum and Kutz the Caesar and a few others in like 98, and Williams was trying to make inroads as they were pivoting their business into slots and they were doing like the Adam, not Adam's Monopoly, and they had some sounds and some better graphics. And ITT really was not equipped to make that change. And I met with them in like 98 as well and it didn't really go anywhere. And about a year later, Williams was trying to make more inroads and they reached back out to me again and flew back out to Reno. You know, it was a pretty big jump to go back at, you know, 40 years of age and totally change your career. But, you know, there was a skill set that both, you know, I had because I looked at a lot of the things where they were. I mean, at that point in time, Sega was already at a million polygons a second, right, with Virtual Fighter. And I'm looking at this company going, oh, my gosh, there are 32 palettes and 256 colors. Well, that was 1981 Williams Video Game Hardware. I mean, literally, they were 20 years behind the time. I mean, they were still breaking down pallets to try and make colors work when the rest of the world's doing VGA color graphics. So I joined them. I didn't think the business was big enough to financially support both Gary and I. Though when I left Gary, I still helped him get Harley Davidson, and helped him get Austin Powers. As a matter of fact, the artwork for Austin Powers was done by Romy Vasquez, who was an artist at IGT. I don't know if you guys knew that or not. I didn't. Gary was kind of in trouble, was having trouble getting art turned. We have had an artful partnership and collaboration for the 20 years since I left the company. And, you know, I love Gary and I love what we built and would do nothing but help him in any way I always could. And but the business wasn't big enough to support both of us at that time. And I give Gary great credit. I mean, he went through some really tough times with that company. The business really cratered a few times. Dave Peterson came in as a wonderful partner for Gary. He's a great guy, brought a discipline that Gary didn't have in certain aspects of the business, had a different vision of the collectible hobby component of the company, and became a great partner for him. And, you know, for me, I was very fortunate. I was able to use, you know, my skill set, my ability to, you know, walk into a very big company that was very slow. I mean, they had a system that if I wanted to put a sound in a game, I'd have to do an engineering request. The people would have to assess the work and fill out a report of what the work would be. Now, it may take them an hour to do the report for a task that would take them five minutes. They could have done the task. Yeah. But, you know, 12 times over. So we had to change some things there. I remember being there once and saying to an engineer, you know, I need a, you know, I want a sound when you land on the first cymbal. And this is the second cymbal that's also in that pay table, the second sound. And if you miss, then, you know, a losing sound or a winning sound. Or if you don't get the cymbal, you don't, on the first one, you don't make a sound. And if you get it on the second and third, but you can't possibly win it, you don't play the sound. And, you know, someone looked at me and said, well, that'll take us like about six months or six weeks to do. And I said, well, you know, from a code standpoint, logic standpoint, it should take you about six hours maybe. And if you can't get it done, I'll find somebody that can get it done. And for some miraculous reason, it was done in about four hours. Oh. Six months. And that's when everything changed at IGT and got much better because there became, you know, But, you know, fortunately, I've been around enough hardware, software, hardware development, mechanical engineering development that these disciplines and being a hands on manager allowed me to cut through the crap. And so let's just get it done. And if you can't figure it out, let me help you figure it out. And, you know, it became, you know, I became a phenomenal financial success in the first several years I was there. I think our stock went from $14 a share to maybe $200 a share. Nice. The stock has changed. So you stepped away from pinball for a little bit, but what made you decide to come back and start doing Batman 66 and the Beatles? Well, I had done slots for 13, 14 years. took a hiatus when we had a third management change at the company and started with Larry DeMar and some other people, a company called Spooky Cool. And we sold a very – our first game was a disaster. It didn't do as well as we thought. Brian Eddy worked on that game. It was a big part of it. But a lot of learnings were had, and then we pivoted into social slots, which was something I knew a lot about at the time. And then, you know, I have a Batmobile. Some people know that or don't. And became good friends with George B. Farris and really good friends with Adam West and was able to secure the Batman 66 title and get Adam to agree to participate in it. and we ended up deciding the best method was to go back and modify the original game George did. There were some things that he and I thought we could do better together, change the ramps, change a lot of the rules. Lyman did all new rules. It was really one of the last projects Adam ever worked on. And the Beatles I pursued for a decade, I mean literally a decade before I got it. It may be the only, you know, million-dollar-plus license in the history of our business. I was able to secure the brand. Finally made a vision that they liked. They really liked the retro concept. And, you know, I really love the game. I mean, I don't know if you've played it or not. It's a bit of a throwback. It's not overly complex. It's for, you know, everybody kept saying to Gary, we were going to do an original play field and original ramps and everything else and we're like, you know, this is 60s, nobody ever made a Beatles game in the 60s and we looked at, everybody kept going give us a classic Meteor or a classic Sea Witch or a classic whatever and we went back and we said, you know what Sea Witch was a great playing game but there were some problems with the ball, it got stuck behind metal parts the orbit was a little clunky and we needed a magnet to stop the ball on top and we'll have more drop targets. So we used that as a starting point. Basically, George, we redid the play field. I mean, it's like saying, you know, here's the Volkswagen Beetle and then here's the new Beetle. Yeah, they're both Beetles, but they're different cars. Yeah. And we went back and redid the game, and we are very happy with the result. The game is sold out. We have orders waiting for the balance of the very final part of the run. getting the music was so hard and having it approved by Troy, Paul, Ringo, Olivia, and Yoko is no easy task. Let me tell you. And Franchi did an extraordinary job at both Georgia, the play field and, and, and Franchi with the, the art. I mean, he so nailed it perfectly. And then, you know, there's another project Gary's got that I helped bring to him that he's currently in design with, and then hopefully I'll get Harry Potter for the future at some point. Yeah. We'll secure that brand because I just finished doing a Harry Potter game for Zynga that I've been working on with Mark Tramiel and a few others for the past four years. Okay, so there's two questions I have. One, so you were saying that Beatles is sold out. Sold out. Or at least the orders are in, okay? I think we have maybe a final 200 to make. Okay. And they're all spoken for. I think there's probably a little bit left in the final 200 because we haven't announced 200, but we have orders backed up in the product. Gotcha. The Beatles store keeps taking orders that we keep promising we'll deliver. Gary's having, like anybody else, container and raw material part problems. you know if you know everything from foam to whatever unavailable I have three games pending but I thought Beatles was sold out so I may reach out and see if I can possibly secure one of those It is sold out I think we're going back and making a final run October, November. I think a good portion of them are spoken for at this point in time, but it's a great game, and people like John Taffer from Bar Rescue and a bunch of other good friends have gotten them, and they're just, they adore the game. I love the game. It's a great game. I love the game, and I actually bought the topper about a year ago with the anticipation of being able to buy it again. But there are no more. Yeah, there are no more. So that's why I bought the topper, because I was planning on buying it. So I'm going to have to reach out and see if I can scoop up one of those last ones. Yeah, the last available one that I know that was available in the States, I think John Taffer purchased from Bar Rescue. John's a good friend of mine and I help them find the game but there are none to be found so I've noticed since you've done two games with Stern you've kind of kept Gomez as your designer and Franchi as your artwork do you hopefully on your next project I helped him get Munsters I don't know if you know that or not he did Munsters yes I brought the license to Gary oh okay awesome do you think you'll kind of keep the band together for your next Kapow tile or your next project actor? The next one I'm doing, I think there's a different artist on it. I think Kevin's working on it, but I'm sure Chris and I will do a project or two again in the future. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think Chris is just a little bit of a wild man. He worked for me at Zynga for about a year and a half, too. I don't know if you know that. He did some work for me on the Willy Wonka game we did. but he's really a great talent. It's like anything. We try and find the right person whose skills and passion on the brand is just right. Chris was certainly just right for both Beatles and Munsters and Batman. I did like that you casually dropped in the little tidbit of, at some point you'd like to get Harry Potter. That was like flying by really quickly, But I think everybody's antennas went up because I know that's been on the top ten most requested, and it's usually been number one. Well, if everybody's going to get it, it's going to be me. Well, you've already done a Harry Potter slot machine, correct? No, Harry Potter Match 3 was Zynga. Okay. So you've already dealt with that license and the people that are involved with it. Oh, yeah. No, no. We have a great relationship with Warner Brothers. Yeah, because there's always been that. This is the longstanding rumor, and I don't know if there's any validity, but this is what they've said. is that J.K. Rowling doesn't like pinball because she thinks it's gambling. No, I think what happened early on in the license, either somebody said something or somebody did something or she wasn't ready. I mean, there's a Harry Potter license for practically everything under the sun. Right. I would suspect in the future there will be some softening around pinball for whatever the reason. Yeah. I think you would sell 15,000 of those. well and you know sure i i'd like you know keith to make the game or some of the other designers to do that so hopefully i'll be able to you know work with gary and collaborate on that if like i said if anybody's going to get the brand i'm i'm sure it'll be me awesome i'll almost bet on it so one of the other things we're kind of talking about with you beforehand that we would really like to talk with you now is with your expertise of starting a pinball company with Gary back in the 80s and all that capital and everything like that. How do you want to word this, Scott? I'm trying to think. Well, OK, I have I have pounded on deep root for over a year for the complete lack of professionalism. But I'm just going to say from someone who I have never manufactured a pinball machine. I have never produced anything. I don't know how the pinball industry works, but you do. And so, you know, I'll give you my take on it. First off, I really take my hat off to spooky pinball. I take my hat off to American pinball. I take my hat off to Andrew Highway. I take my hat off to Jersey Jack. It is a very difficult thing to start a pinball company, even with all the hobbyist things, the hobbyist hardware and other things, because it takes a lot of different disciplines, whether it be the discipline of creating a play field, programming, rules, lights, having inserts, figuring out how to put hard coat on or paint something or whatever. There's a whole second discipline of just creating a bill of material that drives an MRP system that drives, you know, the manufacturing side of getting all those different parts in it. Cause you're missing one part. It doesn't even, you can't even put it together. the discipline of material management, procurement, quality inspection of the parts that come in, because it's so easy to overbend a bracket or have brittle metal or not plate something properly or not to burr a side rail or whatever it is. It's really complex. There's a lot of wire. There's a lot of ESD testing. There's a lot of FCC testing and everything else you've got to do. and when I heard Bob Mueller talking smack about Gary he was going to show us all and I sat back and I go well let's see who is he surrounded himself with a lot of guys that have been around the pinball business but really haven't had great success and Barry hasn't made a game in 20 years Jon Norris hasn't made a game in 20 years I love Dennis and he's made some successful games and some not so successful games like Wheel of Fortune. I mean, like I said to Gary years ago, I was running IT team, like how do you make Wheel of Fortune not put a wheel on it, right? Yeah. Duh. And this guy is talking smack about Gary and Gary doesn't know what he's doing. I'm like, who is this ass clown is all I could think. And, you know, I went back and I did some research and I even had a few people call and talk to him about making an investment in the company. I was curious. And I told several people, and this is very, very early on, this guy's going to end up scamming people. If you remember, there was a thing called, remember All Me? Do you guys remember All Me? I don't. So like in 1987 or 88, pre-Michael Gottlieb trying to start a pinball company, it was that again. Some lady that used to work for Alvin Gottlieb, you can ask Rob Burke about it. Some lady who was like a secretary, and she's like a church lady. It was really weird. And some other guy, they showed up at the pinball expo. They were starting a pinball company called All Me, and Claude Fernandez quit Stern to go work at All Me as their head designer. Now, does the word All Me, it's all about me? Yeah. All like A-L-L-M-E. A-L-L-M-E. All me. Wow. Okay. And the guy, whatever money he got invested, several hundred thousand dollars. Wow. Scammed them all. And I'm looking at this guy, you know, talking about, you know, look, we know John Pompadou is a nice person. And good intentions are one thing, one thing, but taking people's money and not ever producing anything for it is another. And, like I said, good intentions are great, but implementation is another thing. And you go, okay, you know, for whatever reason, there's this, let's not forget Capcom Pinball, who blew $100 million trying to go in the pinball business. Yeah. This concept of, oh, my God, I want Cactus Canyon. You know, Cactus Canyon wasn't any good when Williams made it the first time. and it wasn't collectible then and it was basically the last gasp of a dying company then why somebody thinks just because it's bad it's collectible is beyond me you know where do you have kingpin you maybe have one of them but it still is fun to play when you try it right so um when i saw this guy talking smack and talking about what he was going to do and i saw a couple you know like look it's one thing to take money and be trying to pay us i'm glad barry got a salary and i hope John Papadiuk got a salary during this period of time this guy when i read the did you guys read the complaint yeah we actually read it over last last week or last episode where he funded two marriages one divorce a place in kawaii and that was where i i lost it because i said that's not someone who's trying to run a business. That's someone who's trying to fund his extravagant lifestyle. Right. He ran a pyramid scam and he paid first investors back with second investors money while at that time enriching himself personally. And I hope he goes to jail. I feel badly for people that sold their insurance policies or retirees that, you know, I had faith in this guy, but anytime somebody tells you they're going to give you 7% guaranteed money, because I'll tell you, Fidelity high net worth will not do that for me, you should run. And this guy was scamming, and maybe he thought, and I guess as most scammers do, that, oh, well, maybe pinball really isn't that hard, and there's $1,000 or $2,000 margin, and I'll come up with Raza and I'll sell 1,000 and I'll make 20 million on it. So I'll be able to either keep my investors going and eventually, maybe somehow I'll even out the books or whatever. But starting a pinball company is really hard. I can go to Wicco or whoever is the supplier of parts and buy flippers. I can buy bumpers. I can buy most parts for the hobbyist. But to go build 1,000 games down a production line in Texas where nobody's ever built a gamer or put one of these little metal things on a switch and twisted it just an eighth of an inch so that contact is just right as the ball goes over it, you've never done that. Or if you've never realized you've got to put those little metal things on the bottom of the flipper and set your flipper and then knock them into the play field. Or if you've never gone through and figured out how to make DuPont Imran actually work, as a hard coat, yeah, good luck. And anybody with a fraction of a brain could sniff this out. You know, Gary and I laughed about it for the past two and a half, three years because, you know, Gary's got tough. He's a tough old bird. And, you know, probably his Robert Hurl insults bothered me more than they probably bothered Gary because I'm protective of Gary. but uh you know you just knew this guy was gonna there was no possible outcome where it would be good or they would make something competitive yeah period i mean just i saw that piece of crap they tried to show a year ago and i just laughed what about food truck i mean that is a license that i think will sell thousands you know i think all me one of their games was wall street if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Food Truck is great. It was a wonderful Jon Favreau movie, and I thought it was delightful. Let's just do something that's as inane as we possibly can come up with. Day Trader, that'll be perfect. I heard C-SPAN's really good, too. I heard that's a great game. Look, I think. Root Canal. Root Canal's the next one. You know, I feel bad for, you know, Barry and Pompidou probably got two years of salary out of it and thought they were going on this magical mystery ride with this guy that was going to, you know, save them. I mean, I worked with Barry in 84 and he's a delightful, wonderful person. And I wish him nothing but happiness and health in his life. I'm the same thing with Pompidou. You know, he's John's just, you know, he's an artist. You know, John made neon. Right. He made pretty things. Pretty things. Right. He did Circus Voltaire. Larry helped him do the World Cup game, kind of sold in Europe. But, you know, he's had a lot of great success. But he's a nice person. But Robert Mueller, he's going to get what he deserves. and any of these people that were foolish and parted with their hard-earned money to buy this unproven crap without a factory, well, you know, you kind of get what you deserve sometimes. You don't do your homework. And it hurts the pimbo echoes. It hurts the law business. But, oh, well, by a stern, you'll – No one's going to lose money buying a Stern pinball. No one's going to have a game that's not going to work, that's not going to be supported, that's not going to have parts, that's not going to have resale value. But you want to go speculate on Atomic Girl, Big Bang, Lost Railroad, well, I guess buy one. I don't care. It's not really valuable. I think some people were thinking, and some people reached out to us when we were questioning why you would do it. And some people said, I know it was a risk. I said I invested in it saying that maybe I would get something. But I do feel bad for the people who aren't going to get their money. I think it was a risky investment. It was a stupid investment. Even I think some of these guys that invest in some of these other companies are still risky. Am I going to get my Hot Wheels car or whatever else it's going to be? At the end of the day, why do you want that gain? because it's probably not going to work. It's going to be unsupported. It's not going to have hardware that's going to be around when, you know, when a chip goes bad or something and there's no parts for it, I guess. You know, if you want to own a brick you can put in your backyard, I guess that's okay. Or you want to say you own something really special, but there's nothing special about it. That's the funny thing. I mean, I want a game that's fun and works. You know, it doesn't work and it's not fun. But, you know, there's that, oh, let's do it without a license. Well, you know, there have been plenty of games made without licenses. Nobody bought Oktoberfest, right? Nobody bought, really, Black Knight. Oh, they want Black Knight again. Maybe you'll do High Speed 5 next. Oh, great. Right? Who cares? Well, they could do Fast and Furious, though. Go ahead. Yeah. But, I mean, that's my point is. Yeah. Well, you're buying a pinball. I'd rather buy a car. You know, I look at it like a Fisker. You know, Fisker. Oh, I love the Fiskers. They look so pretty. And it's going to be a fantastic flower pot one day. Yeah. Okay. It looked pretty, though. Right. But it's going to brick. Yeah. They call an electric car that won't drive anymore is a brick. Yep. You know, some of these pinballs are just going to be bricks. Yeah. So my recommendation to anybody that's really looking to buy a game, stick with Stern. It'll work. You'll have parts for it when it stops working. And it'll have more value when you want to trade it and sell it and get your next game. Or you get tired of it and you want something new. So, Joe, the other question I have, too, because pinball right now is at an interesting place because of, like you've been saying, the hard, it's hard to get materials, especially raw material. I mean, you, you can't get foam for, for sofas right now. You can't get containers and containers were $3,000 to ship something. If I told you $10,000 for a container, you go, that's outrageous. You could get a container for $10,000 right now. You'd be a hero. Containers are costing 25 to $30,000 a container. Wow. You know, it's really brutal. And some of these things you can't get except from manufacturers overseas today because of OSHA requirements or requirements around plating of things and, you know, air and water and other quality standards. I mean, when I worked at Williams in 1984, we had a plating room. I mean, the biggest rats you've ever seen in the world in that plating room, but it was a plating room. You know, they'd stamp their own big parts and plated them. Yeah. So do you think that this is something temporary, though, or do you think this is something that not only all companies are going to have to adjust for, but do you think pinball is going to have to adjust for for the future of pinball? There are a variety of things happening. Petroleum exports are more expensive because we went through a period of time where we didn't use petroleum. And then we had the problem with the Keystone Pipeline or where the colony oil had a cyber attack or Texas shut down for a month because of snow. So petroleum-based things, which are rubbers and plastics, are more expensive. There is a dramatic chip shortage for a couple of reasons A the factories were shut down because people were sick One of the larger factories in Malaysia got shut down because they had a water shortage And they didn properly prepare to filter, clean, and reuse their water. A couple did, but one of the larger ones did not. And then people became ill with COVID, both in shipping product and working at the ports and get things out of the ports. So, I mean, and it's affecting not just pinball, it's affecting, I mean, you're reading about Toyota cutting their production by 40% because they can't get chips or they can't get TFT displays or, you know, factory is sick or, you know, COVID, unfortunately, we have not gotten rid of because half of the idiots in the world won't take the vaccine or wash their hands or wear a mask. You know, somehow we went from public health to political virtue. But internationally, it's a problem. The other problem that's happened, too, and, you know, fortunately, I was in London last weekend. But, you know, the EU is closing down all travel to U.S. citizens again. So where I used to go on a Antonio Cruz once or twice a year, I've not been on a Antonio Cruz. I used to fly a million miles a year. I've been on four airplanes this year. I used to go to Broadway and see shows. I used to go to concerts. I'm not doing any of this. So what's happened now, we are home with some of us still working, working from home or whatever, or PPE money or whatever, with disposable income, sitting in our houses going, you know, gosh, this couch I've been sitting on for years, have been working at home for a year. It's not as comfortable. Or I need, or all the people, if you can think about the hundreds of millions of people that all of a sudden needed a laptop at home because the desktop is still at the desk at their office, but they need to be working remotely. Or the television is in high definition, but now we're home. And by the way, we're not going to movie theaters. You know, our habits changed. You know, Gary's business, you know, you would have thought, gosh, maybe because Gary's not selling to the arcade space, that maybe his business would have gone south like it did more for Eugene at Raw Thrills, where people aren't buying giant Jurassic Park gun games, but a pinball machine you can kind of fit at home. Or even you buy one and it's kind of fun. Let's build a wall. Let's have two of them or three of them or four of them. I'm on the board of a company called Arcade One Up. Are you familiar with them? Yes. Yes. Yes. However, there's a couple of things I I did want to point out. They have some we were just talking about this earlier because they reached out to us and about their little pinball emulator. And they talked about coming on and we we haven't heard we've reached out a few times. So we would love to talk to them about the the emulator and the board of directors. Yeah, we'd love to. We'd love to talk about it because I was just looking at their site today because I saw some images on Tron. and I saw some images on Simpsons and there's a few of those that I'd like to get a hold of. Oh, there's a beautiful product coming to them. They built, Scott Backrack and his team, they're building some great, great things for your collection. You're going to be very, very pleased. And, you know, the pinball product's been very successful for them. Well, we would love to talk to someone about the pinball product because I'm serious. I think there's, yeah, my friend who just barely bought a Mandalorian, he's a huge Star Wars fan. And I just, it was his first machine. I helped him get downstairs. And I was even telling him, I'm like, actually, Arcade 1-Up has a, they have a Star Wars emulator that would be fun. And it's reasonably priced and you can throw the next to your Mandalorian. Yep. They're perfect. So, yeah. Yeah, it's a good product. Yeah. How did you get associated with Arcade1Up? I met their founder at the CES show a couple years ago. I was in their booth, and I was looking at one of their products. One of their sales guys or something came over and, oh, this Joe and Mac game. Have you seen it before? I said, well, I'm the Joe of Joe and Mac. No, you're not. He's like, yes, I am. So I met their founder, Scott Bacharach, and he and I chatted and continued to chat and started to build a relationship. And, you know, there are not that many guys that have a memory or a history of the game business of the past 40 years that probably, you know, probably Eugene and a few others do. But, you know, that can talk reasonably about what was made when and what was successful. And I think with some of my success in the business world, licensing world, game world, and maybe my perspective on how to make a company successful, there were some things that I felt like it added some value to their board, and they felt so too. So it ended up being a good opportunity for both of us. Fantastic. I think it's great. And there's some people who talk about it's not the same as having a classic one. And I was actually – There was a classic one. I mean, I look at a classic Tron, and it smells like 30 years of sour beer. And it's bigger in smoke, and it's disgusting, and it's too big. And this is a really nice product. You described exactly the interaction I had today on the forum because someone posted it, and I was going back and forth. And I said, actually, I would prefer the arcade one up because people at home have limited space and there's not much you can do. And you can buy this thing for, I think, the suggested price is 800 bucks. And you can put it. Oh, there's one of them right there. Yeah. I can't fit a full size arcade in my lobby. Yeah, it might be Chels. But, you know, I can fit one very nicely right here. And I put it together. They're actually if you've built one, they're very fun to put together. It's a really nice sense of accomplishment that you can do this. And, you know, when I go back and look at the roadmap of the next 36 months of, you know, really classic arcade games or, you know, maybe we'll go back and do, you know, a Robotron that's in the pre-production colors and make a thousand of them. I think what you'll find the arcade one business could evolve a little bit into the collectible space, sort of like a like a Supreme or a sneaker company where we'll come out with some limited edition versions of things that are special or, you know, maybe signed by Eugene Jarvis or George Gomez or some of these other guys. And, you know, who doesn't want a nice, clean spy hunter? Oh, yeah. I don't want to smelly, gummed up, dirty product. Yeah. And if you played the OutRun that they made last year, the OutRun's a great little version of OutRun. Yeah, actually, OutRun would be great. Yeah, it's good to have a racing game. I have a shooter game. It's good to have a racing game. I saw there was a Terminator coming out. Yeah, George D. Cho's gone back and modified the original Terminator gun game. Yeah, we did Big Buck Hunter a year ago, and the Terminator game looks great. It runs at a pretty good frame rate. You know, if you've seen the touch table we have, it's got, you know, like 50 built-in games and board games and word games. And, I mean, it's what a Surface table should have been. It's one of the best consumer products of this year. So I think you'll really like a lot of the things that are coming out. I'm really pleased. Definitely. I'm excited. Yeah, that's awesome. But it's fun to be a big part of these things still. Yeah. Well, Joe, we're running up on about an hour, and we appreciate you on. Josh, anything else that you can think of that – last question for Mr. Joe Camico? You know, you've been awesome, and you've answered a lot of our questions. I feel like there's questions I have, but I don't want to ask out of professional courtesy because I'm like, we're always curious of what's coming in the future. Yeah. But we don't want to be giving away trade secrets here either. We're looking forward to things. Yes. Well, the future's not yet been invented, but I'm sure it'll be a good one, as my friend Bob Kale always says. I think Gary continues to build great product. I really have enjoyed a couple of games I've played from Spooky. You know, they're really terrifically nice people up there. I'm really happy for their success. And there's room for lots of people. And, you know, it's nice to see people embrace the hobby. And, you know, it's kind of fun to watch people soup their game up or go to Toys R Us and buy a Mandalorian and screw it to the top of their game or whatever it is. and fun to see Brian Eddy back making games again. That is fun, definitely. It's nice and we'll see how the other guys that have recently made some changes do and fare in a new environment. It'll be entertaining to see. I do have actually one final question for you. Are you going to be going to Pinball Expo this year? I don't think so. You know, I told Rob, you know, I'm thinking about it, but with the current Delta variant, even though I've had my third vaccine shot, I've had my booster, I think I can probably wait a year. You know, I may venture to a Raiders game or two. Yes. But, you know, we are still, my wife and I are still being very careful with our protocols. You know, we still eat outside. Definitely. We still wash our hands abundantly and bring hand sanitizer and wear appropriate masks when we're around groups of people we don't know. we don't get together with unvaccinated people at this point in time. Because I know nine people that died from COVID of various ages, you know, from, you know, 30s to their, you know, octogenarians. So we take it really seriously what has occurred here. And I think, you know, right now, you know, it's even hard for me to go to, I think I've been into two casinos in a year. casino business is really robust and aristocrat. We're doing, if you saw the Nevada numbers for the month of July, the gain intake was, I think, maybe the highest ever. I think, personally, we'll continue. We participated in the virtual pinball expo last year. We'll probably choose to be a little more cautious until it looks like the Delta variant burned itself out in London. But we'll see. I won't say never, but the likelihood of me making the travel, getting on a plane, going to Chicago, touching a bunch of pinball machines that other people have touched, probably isn't in the cards right now. I'll play at home and wish Gary well at that one. What game are you playing at home right now? Let's see. At home right now I have Beatles, Munsters, Stranger Things, Avengers, and these are all the LEs, and the Led Zeppelin. I think my personal favorite right now is, I think, the play field for the LE Avengers. It's maybe one of the best playfields I've ever played ever, ever. Oh, yeah. It's just the flow, the shots, the upshot. You know, it's just a really fun game to play. I mean, I just find I lose an hour every time I step in front of it. Led Zeppelin I've enjoyed with the music. The game is really a tight – for me it's a bit tight, and I feel like I'm always banging post on it. Yeah. But that's not my favorite. I have one, and that upper flipper shot is really hard. Yeah. I mean, it's just – but I just feel like I'm always bust in post, and the ball's always in my face. But, I mean, I've had fun. I mean, it's a hard game to play. I mean, I love playing my Beatles game. Munsters is really fun, though maybe a little too much Paul Lynn speech for me. I've always bitched about that. And I've really enjoyed Stranger Things. people that come to the house and then have the thing fold down and the little projector and everything i mean it's a really pretty game i think the game um doesn't get the uh the credit it deserves and i just it's grown though it's it's actually become very popular i i tell people about it because i think it's a great thing and i tell them definitely get the black um the black light mod yep yep it's a really fun game and um and then i just took delivery of a mandalorian but it's not out of the box yet oh so we'll come help you and i think i may have i may have ordered an ultra man just because i thought such a wacky theme so it's that is a total wacky theme i'd never heard of it before so yeah well we've both been vaccinated so we'd be more than happy to come help you set up and and i work at a hospital so i know how to uh mask up so yeah you know it's like you know i think i'm i i pray for our country right now and hope we can steer through it i mean i i just find it kind of mind-blowing that people will readily put horse deworming medicine in their mouth but won't take the vaccine so i i i it kind of astounds me to be honest with you the um yeah I don't get it either. You know, okay. But, you know, you could keep reading about these conservative talk show guys and keep dying and keep going, like, you know, what are you all thinking? But that's, you know, we'll stick with pinball tonight. But any other questions or anything, guys? Well, we want to tell you to stick around a little bit because the video is recording on your end and it will upload. So when we stop, just stick around a little bit and we'll make sure we get that. and we definitely want to send you a big box of that so we'll find out exactly where you want us to send that okay and we'll make sure that uh you're all hooked up with your loser kid gear okay well thanks for supporting pinball and talking about it and you know the enthusiasts hey guys that are out there that play games i don't care if they're old games new games you know i hope you get a chance to come out and see the the facility that got built in vegas it looks really nice on the strip. It's very iconic. There's pinball, big and bright. I give Tim credit for that. Needs a couple newer games in his place. But at least it's good to see people like pinball still. There's very much more to do these days, so enjoy it. Definitely. Well, if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. You can also get a hold of us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch, all at Loser Kid Pinball. Before we wrap this up, though, we've got to hurry and announce our winner from doing the Pin Quest Challenge. If you remember, you could set a high score either on World Cup Soccer or on Avengers. And we had over 85 participants to that. And they said that there was 11 completions on World Cup and 13 on Avengers. So about 10%. Well, no, sorry, that's about 20%. we want to congratulate Clint Reeves. Yeah, Clint. So congratulations. We'll be sending you a hat soon. And we want to thank, again, Joe for being on. Scott, what else you got for us before we leave? I think it's great. Stay safe, and I want everybody to get out there when you're comfortable to play pinball. If you do, mask up and definitely use the hand sanitizer. We can all get through this with our mental health in check as long as we are taking safe precautions. and even if that's playing at home, that it certainly keeps the juice running. And I'm going to end it on this. Zach Mennie, you're wrong about Star Wars and about Goonies. Absolutely. See you in two weeks. Oh, he says it's a good theme and I say it's trash. Shut up and sit down. Thank you.