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Ep 15: Jurassic Park and Pinburgh with Martin Robbins!

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 21m·analyzed·Aug 9, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Martin Robbins discusses Keith Elwin's Jurassic Park release and its impact on pinball design standards.

Summary

Martin Robbins joins the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast to discuss Jurassic Park's release, Keith Elwin's meteoric rise as a designer, and implications for the broader pinball design landscape. The hosts praise Jurassic Park's innovative shot layout and theme integration approach, comparing it favorably to competitors and speculating on whether Keith's success will elevate design standards industry-wide.

Key Claims

  • Jurassic Park has received virtually universal acclaim with minimal substantive criticism, unlike nearly every other recent release

    high confidence · Scott and Martin both attest to widespread praise post-Pinburgh with only minor complaints about non-critical details

  • Keith Elwin has designed two consecutive games (Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park) that are both highly praised

    high confidence · Multiple references throughout episode; hosts agree both games are exceptional in layout and shot design

  • Jurassic Park eschews movie clip integration in favor of theme immersion, making it feel more like a video game experience

    high confidence · Martin and Scott explain this was a deliberate design choice by Keith that makes the game feel more interactive than linear movie-based games like Ghostbusters

  • Keith Elwin deliberately avoided scoops in both Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park because he prefers continuous ball movement

    high confidence · Keith directly responded to this question during Pinburgh, explaining his design philosophy

  • Jurassic Park LE versions sold out very quickly (within a week), with distributors requesting additional allocations

    high confidence · Martin cites conversations with distributors who reported rapid sellout; notes typical LE allocation is ~50 units

  • The Kinetic Newton ball feature in Jurassic Park is novel and hasn't been used on other games in the same way

    medium confidence · Scott claims this feature is unique; Martin hasn't heard of it being done elsewhere in pinball history

Notable Quotes

  • “Keith has reinvented the way that we play pinball in the fact that a lot of people have demanded that we relive the experiences of what we're playing... This is like transporting you into the game and making you a part of Jurassic Park.”

    Scott Larson @ mid-episode — Articulates the core differentiator of Jurassic Park vs. traditional movie-licensed games; Keith's design philosophy shift

  • “Yeah, I don't like things that slow the ball down. I like continuous movement in balls”

    Keith Elwin (quoted) @ mid-episode — Direct designer statement explaining absence of scoops; reveals design intent and philosophy

  • “I think it's because people, if they're not in a position to buy one, they want to feel comfortable with the fact that they can't buy it.”

    Martin Robbins @ late-episode — Psychological explanation for post-release criticism pattern in pinball community; suggests criticism as coping mechanism

  • “It's not like you could re-theme Jurassic Park and say, hey, this is now Golden Girls. There's just so many elements to that game, it feels like it was made and integrated with Jurassic Park.”

    Scott Larson @ mid-episode — Contrasts Jurassic Park with Iron Maiden (a re-theme of Archer), suggesting deeper theme integration and design-specific theming

  • “Keith has shown that you can do something different that is still familiar to people.”

    Josh Roop @ mid-episode — Synthesizes Keith's design contribution: novelty without alienation; suggests model for industry elevation

  • “I will take the sound over the video clips any day.”

    Josh Roop @ late-episode — Community prioritization of audio assets over video in modern pinball licensing; relevant to Star Wars LE features

Entities

Martin RobbinspersonKeith ElwinpersonJurassic ParkgameIron MaidengamePinburgheventStern PinballcompanyGhostbustersgame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Post-release criticism pattern explained as coping mechanism: players unable to purchase new releases manufacture critiques to justify non-purchase and achieve psychological closure.

    medium · Martin: 'I think it's because people, if they're not in a position to buy one, they want to feel comfortable with the fact that they can't buy it.' Discusses Willy Wonka criticism following manufacturer's 'perfect game' claims.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin's explicit design principle: avoid scoops to maintain continuous ball movement; reveals design intent behind both Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park shot layout decisions.

    high · Direct quote from Keith during Pinburgh: 'I don't like things that slow the ball down. I like continuous movement in balls.' Martin confirms this explains ramp-focused layout choices.

  • $

    market_signal: Keith Elwin positioning as potential successor to Steve Ritchie's 'king of flow' status; narrative of generational design leadership transition gaining traction in community.

    medium · Josh asks: 'I wonder if Keith's going to take over the king of flow when Steve Ritchie finally decides he's done designing pinball.' Frame suggests Keith as next standard-bearer for shot design quality.

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinburgh served as public proving ground for Jurassic Park with seven machines on display (6 Pro, 1 Premium); event enabled widespread playtesting and community validation pre-shipment.

    high · Martin attended Pinburgh and played machine; hosts note that post-Pinburgh, most community members have direct play experience, limiting ability to criticize from theoretical position.

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.245

0:00
Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. We've made it to episode 15. As always, I've got my co-captain with me. Scott Larson. And today, who do we have with us, Josh? You know, it's always a pleasure to have this man around. I've never heard a single bad thing about him. is the man, the myth, the legend, Martin Robbins. How are you doing, Martin? I'm really good. I'm very surprised you haven't heard anything negative about me. I think you probably need to search a little bit harder. We don't go that deep in pinball. We only talk to Mrs. Pin, so.
0:44
She only says nice things. I only follow Facebook, and Facebook has so much positivity, and Pinside, too. It's just everything. It's just like, how can we all do this pinball love fest where everybody's included? It's just amazing. It's amazing. Well, no, seriously, we were talking to Keith Elwin, and man, he's like, dude, I just love Martin. He's an awesome dude. I was like, man, I think Martin's made a little friend over there at Stern. So we know where all the leaks are coming from now. It is funny. Keith Elwin is obviously a great guy, and you got to speak to him, and it was an amazing interview. So well done for that. Thank you. It actually was. And so you would have known, like I did, he's actually really good to speak to. And what's good about Keith Elwyn is he gets it because he listens. He listens to a lot of podcasts and he gets it. So I think the reason why he sort of said he likes me is that he, from the outset, has really understood the head-to-head humor. It's why, you know, last year at Pimberg when I think he might have had a bad round, He sort of blamed the head-to-head t-shirt knowing that we would get a kick out of it. So that's what he does. He's a good guy. When they did the dead flip stream, I got about 50 texts immediately. It was like, dude, Keith's wearing your hat. He's doing it in the stream. And I was like, wow, really? That was amazing. It felt like one of those things where I was like, wow, I'm kind of cool but not really cool. If he decided to wear it, at least Josh made a really good hat there. it is a great hat. Yeah. So if only you were doing a competition so someone could win one. You know what? That, that would be such a great idea. We're not big enough to have enough followers to have a competition though. So, you know, we have to send it out to family members and pretend like we have a competition.
Medieval Madnessgame
Archergame
Brian Eddyperson
Steve Ritchieperson
Data East Jurassic Parkgame
Josh Roopperson
Scott Larsonperson
Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization
Head2Head Pinballorganization
Willy Wonkagame
Star Wars Pinballgame
Scarry Stiffgame
Deadpoolgame

market_signal: Jurassic Park LE editions sold out extremely rapidly (within approximately one week) with distributors requesting additional allocations, signaling strong collector demand and potential supply constraint.

high · Martin: 'distributors I've been talking to have all said that they're out and they're asking for more allotment because they sold so quick... I think I want to say maybe a week.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Keith Elwin's design process accelerated: Iron Maiden developed over 4-5 years (whitewood phase), Jurassic Park delivered within ~14-15 month standard development cycle at Stern, suggesting improved efficiency and process mastery.

    medium · Martin: 'he's had four or five years... to get Archer right... it's hard for him to now get us a second game when the clock's ticking and he's now got what I think is about a 14-15 minute development cycle from Stern and bang he did it.'

  • $

    market_signal: Upgrade from Pro to Premium/LE prioritizes audio asset (licensed theme song) over video integration or cosmetic features; suggests licensing audio has higher perceived value than video in modern pinball.

    medium · Martin: 'the upgraded audio... And that was something that I did notice when I was playing it is that the the call outs and that the sound the game is making is really immersing you in the jurassic park world.' Josh: 'I will take the sound over the video clips any day.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jurassic Park deliberately diverges from movie-clip-heavy licensed game formula; theme integration prioritized over scene recreation, creating new design paradigm for licensed IP.

    high · Scott: 'It's not a bad thing... you're not locked into a linear path to describe what's going on in the movie.' Martin: 'theme integration, not movie integration.' Contrasted explicitly with Ghostbusters approach.

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Dramatic elevation of Keith Elwin's status from designer to industry standard-setter after two consecutive successful releases; community perception shifting from 'good designer' to 'generational talent.'

    high · Multiple hosts ask whether Keith will 'take over the crown' from Steve Ritchie; discussion of whether his success forces other designers to elevate their game; universal praise for both Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park with minimal criticism.

  • ?

    technology_signal: Kinetic Newton ball feature on Jurassic Park appears to be novel implementation; Scott claims uniqueness, suggesting potential mechanical innovation on Stern platform.

    medium · Scott: 'Has that kinetic Newton ball been done on any other game? Not that I can think of.' Later: 'I mean, this Keith shot is the whole play field, and it loops that.'

    • 2:38
    So, but we'll do one at the end of this, this podcast anyway. So it all works out for the, for the three people that listen, you know, well, I'm one of them. And then there's YouTube. Yeah. There's yeah. so anyway martin you just made it back to pinberg so that is correct have you have you had any time to decompress and actually think about everything that you saw there um well i mean i i kind of had to in the the day after pinberg in fact the night that pinberg and replay fx finished uh joe and i actually recorded an episode so in a way we had to try and remember everything that that happened at pinberg so since then i'm i'm in you know utah with you guys at the moment i'm still here and so it's all been work so i really actually haven't had that time to to really sort of soak it in but there was obviously the tournament really the two things that happened was the tournament which was amazing meeting all the people which was amazing and jurassic park was there so has anybody in pinball history had a better week than keith elwynn had this last week Wow. Like the best week.
    3:52
    Yeah, that is... You are not only the best pinball player in the world, but you also release an amazing game that is right on the heels of your last amazing game that people are still buying and playing.
    4:09
    And I don't... You just have to sit back and say, yeah, that's right, that's me. We're part to blame for that. head-to-head and loser kid because you know when he was releasing he was wearing the loser kid hat and during first day of pinberg he had his head-to-head shirt on and his loser kid hat man right he was destined to win that's what made him qualify first because every time i play with my loser kid hat on it i just get grand champion scores every time but here's the thing that's really cool about keith right he he just is obviously so good at making pinball machines and obviously good at playing you know here we go another win but what's actually really good about keith is just so humble so you know people are going up to him i i you know it's been a bit of time with him and people going up and saying oh mate it's great to meet you and he's just kind of like oh yeah okay it's nice to meet you too like i'm not really anything important but more so i i was standing at the um stern booth um where they had seven Jurassic Park machines, there was six pros and a premium. And he was there and so many people kept coming up to him saying, oh my God, you have absolutely knocked it out of the park with this game. And he was just like, oh, thank you. That's so good to hear. Just, you know, like just not getting to his head at all. Just a good guy.
    5:34
    Yeah, he seems to be very comfortable in his skin. He seems to be very comfortable in being Keith Elwin. He knows he's great. that that doesn't shock anybody he's also i he's also reliving this hey i am trying a next phase of pinball in designing and it's going spectacularly well i i just think he's very comfortable being keith elwynn which is why i believe he's approachable like people come up and say he's like hey thanks i really appreciate that i'm i'm enjoying what i'm doing so it's a great option I think so too I think that I don't know I just Keith's a great guy and I think it's something special he's doing in the hobby no one else can do what Keith is doing right now so obviously what do you guys think of Jurassic Park having had a look at it I think it looks a lot of fun there are people who are disappointed that there's not as much movie clips or a lot more actors involved. I actually think it's better this way because you're not locked into a linear path to describe what's going on in the movie. I think it would get stale, a little bit like Ghostbusters, where it seems like you have to go through the movie to win. It's very smart to say, yes, this is Jurassic Park, and it's a story that you're experiencing simultaneously with the movie in that it does. I think it feels more like a video game, which is not an insult. I think that's a compliment because that allows people to say, okay, we're in Jurassic Park at the same time as all this action is going on. And so you're still wrapped up in the storyline, but you also still have that freedom to do different things. that Tyrannosaurus looks amazing and hands down I would at least get the premium if not the LE if you're going to get this just because of how cool that mech is it may actually rival the castle in Medieval Madness for a coolest mech I just think that Keith has reinvented the way that we play pinball in the fact that a lot of people have demanded that we relive the experiences of what we're playing. So like with Ghostbusters per se, you're reliving the scenes from the movie. This is like transporting you into the game and making you a part of Jurassic Park. And we've always talked about some of the best games you feel like you're a part of. And I think he's accomplishing that, not only with this, but with Iron Maiden as well. So from my perspective, I'm always going to say play it first, then make a decision. I'm having a hard time waiting. I would buy one right now, but I want to keep to my golden rule and say, hey, I want to play it first.
    8:43
    Okay. From someone that has played it, just get it. I'm serious. It's as good as everybody's saying. Of course, I say that flippantly, but you do obviously need to flip it because I think that's part of the experience. as I've said on our show, of feeling connected to a machine. I would love you to have the full experience of getting a new machine.
    9:11
    But layout-wise, it feels good. The shots feel satisfying. They're not as easy as you'd like, so that means that there's a challenge there.
    9:21
    You know, I don't like games to be too easy and the shots just to feel repeatable. So it does all that. And going back to what Scott was saying, and we sort of said this on our show, is that there aren't any video assets from the movie. And whilst originally I thought that would disappoint me because Jurassic Park is one of my all-time favourite films, what this does really well is it makes you feel like you're actually in Jurassic Park, not that you're in the movie. So like what Scott was saying, it almost feels like you're actually creating your own story and you're interacting with the storylines as you're playing the machine. And I think that that right there is theme integration, not movie integration. And I think they've done a great job of it. Do you guys care that they did not get the classic Jurassic Park Ford Explorer license in the game? Could not care less.
    10:20
    Yeah, I couldn't care less either. That was my feeling. Yeah, my feeling was I didn't even notice that that wasn't in the game until George Gomez posted, hey, I know you're disappointed that I couldn't get it in. We couldn't secure it. However, it's going to get trashed during the game, so you'll at least get your way that way. I must admit, I looked at it and thought, that doesn't look like the Jeep from the movie because I had seen the movie that many times. But I didn't then. I know. I know what I'm saying here. I then didn't go on Facebook to voice my displeasure and try to bring down Stern as a result of it.
    11:03
    Well, here's my thing. I was so shocked at the features. Has that kinetic Newton ball been done on any other game? Not that I can think of.
    11:15
    And so not only that, but also as we were watching the stream, if you shoot that right orbit and you hold up the flipper, you can continue that loop again. It comes all the way across the field, up the flipper, back up through the orbit. The only other thing I can think of would be the Wizard of Oz Munchkin shot, where if you could hold the flipper up, but it's such a tiny loop. I mean, this Keith shot is the whole play field, and it loops that. And it's insane, some of these shots.
    11:43
    I don't know. I haven't played it yet. You have, Martin. It looks like it plays as smooth as butter.
    11:49
    How does it feel? it feels as smooth as it needs to be on certain shots but it doesn't feel familiar okay so um you know this is we sort of copped i me personally copped a bit of criticism someone said that i like to have cookie cutter fan layouts which i don't i actually like really unusual layouts But when you do unusual layouts and you place things in positions where we're not used to, you're kind of playing a bit of a risky game there because you could put something into a location where we just feel is really awkward and uncomfortable and it doesn't feel right. So what's actually happened here with this game is the shots aren't, the ramps in particular aren't necessarily in really weird locations, but they're not where you're expecting them to be. but then when you've got the orbit shots and then the side ramp shot um they they don't feel like other shots but they feel right and i think that's the the sign of somebody like keith whom and and i didn't realize at the time when he was talking about the original drastic park which i owned and i really liked he actually said it's one of the worst shooting games now when I think about Keith, when I just think he's a competition player he knows about rules, he knows the shots he doesn't care whether it flows well or all that, he's just caring about getting the big score he obviously cares about how a game feels and how the shots are and that's why you've now got two games in a row where the shots feel really good and they're quite unique there is a difference between having something that's familiar versus something that is clunky. I look at something that's clunky as something that it's not familiar, but it seems more than challenging. Like a challenging layout still feels satisfying to flip, but you still can find the shots. So we talk about it in rules where, hey, Star Wars comes out and people complain, oh, the rules are too complex. This is ridiculous. This is way more than we need. And then Monsters comes out and people are saying, oh, well, this is way less than what we need. This is too light. So I guess that's the artistry of finding that in between where you want something that's not every shot's easy. You want them to have easy shots, challenging shots, but you never want to have that shot where it just doesn't work and you just hate shooting it because it's so clunky. You can never find it.
    14:51
    I did you notice one of the questions people posed is, hey, you haven't put any scoops in your two games. Is there a reason for that? and he replied, Keith replied, yeah, I don't like things that slow the ball down. I like continuous movement in balls, and I thought that was very smart because I kept thinking the games that I really like are games that don't have scoops.
    15:19
    Because I didn't really think about that. Well, except that he's put posts that slow the game down. They actually do the same thing. In fact, they would hold the ball sometimes longer than a scoop would. So that's interesting. Yeah.
    15:38
    I do like the reverse-y ramps. I'll take a reverse-y ramp over a scoop any day. They feel really good.
    15:45
    Jurassic Park, I would say that all of us agree, it's a smash hit, and the first one just got delivered yesterday.
    15:54
    And so – or no, they went out today. I apologize. Just went out. We're recording on – yeah, they just went out. Today's Thursday. Um, and people are just giddy as little school girls getting their first crushes, pulling these things out. And so I, I, I, it's safe to say at this point, Keith is a force to be reckoned with, which brings me to my next question for you guys. I thought of this today. They've confirmed they've got Brian Eddy. We know that Brian Eddy has three fantastic games. Keith has now created two and they both are just amazing. Do you think the quality of designers that have went up with these two now forces the other designers to not make such cookie-cutter designs as what people keep claiming?
    16:42
    Or raise the level of their game? Okay. Let me just, if I can, just clarify something when it comes to Brian E. so the three games that we're talking about are uh attack from mars medieval madness and what's his third shadow the shadow so the reason why i bring those up is that um attack from mars is one of my favorite games um medieval madness isn't necessarily one of my favorite games but people have sort of said that those layouts are fairly similar and you would actually say they're actually i think they set the standard for what a traditional fan layout is they feel great but it's a fan layout so i it really comes into the question that you're asking is um you know is now keith elwyn the one that's setting the standard for everything else does that put pressure on the likes of brian eddie who has done those two games which everybody loves, he's somehow got to meet the expectations of those two games.
    17:51
    But if he brought out another game that's another fan layout, is he going to be criticized for bringing out another game that's a fan layout?
    18:00
    With Brian Eddy, anytime you add a new element into a design system, it certainly will move things or change things. If you think about bands that have come out with an album that have really changed the course of the sound of music, so to speak, if you think about it, Motley Crue, well, Van Halen comes out. And they come out, and everyone looks at them and says, wow, that is how rock is supposed to be played. And so they have a good run. And then they kind of fall apart. 1984, you have the rise of Motley Crue, and Motley Crue has a good run. And then Bon Jovi comes on, and then Def Leppard. And each of them put their own spin on a genre that's very similar. But once they put their mark on it, you can feel the landscape change a little bit. And then Nirvana comes on the scene, and everybody says, oh, well, we need to crank up the distortion, and we need to start playing really loud, distorted music. I think it's similar in pinball in, well, in anything really. So Keith is bringing something new to the table and it will allow these designers to say, that's different than what we've been doing. How can we incorporate what the successful elements that he's done into pinball, it will add to their creativity. I don't believe it will radically change what they do, but I think it will push them in a direction that they wouldn't have found otherwise if they still had the same rotation of Borg, Richie, Gomez, Eddie. I think they would have put up very similar things to what they've done in the past because guess what? It's been successful. They sold lots of games doing that.
    20:06
    Keith has shown that you can do something different that is still familiar to people. Martin, what are you always saying? We want different but not that. Yeah. Okay. Well Keith has given us something different that we have said huh that great We should get more of that Yep I agree with you And really it is it about what we want
    20:36
    And it's also the fact that at the moment releasing a game, it's very hard to get universal praise. So I think that's why it's, you know, with the first Elwynn game, really the only criticism i got was that people didn't like the theme well that's out of his control and from what i heard he didn't necessarily love the design process because he didn't love iron maiden and you know this is like a dream theme for him so he has actually as i said before you know being able to give us a relatively new take on a traditional play field um and and knows how to make a shot feel good and it's the second time that you've had you know a game that's been effectively universally praised um all other releases pretty much get some sort of criticism whether it's art whether it's layout whether it's rules they there's always been some element that's been a bit of a miss so um what i think is really important here is that this was his follow-up and people were sort of saying you know he's had four or five years or whatever long it was to get Archer right because it was a white wood for so long it's hard for him to now get us a second game when the clock's ticking and he's now got what I think is about a 14-15 minute development cycle from Stern and bang he did it so what does that mean for his third one well it just goes to show too if you're passionate about a project it translates into that because I was thinking also about that too like Iron Maiden yeah it's just pretty much a re-theme of Archer, I know he talked about he had to slim it down to get it into a stern cabinet, but you look at Jurassic Park and the elements on the play field match the game. It's not like you could re-theme Jurassic Park and say, hey, this is now Golden Girls. There's just so many elements to that game, it feels like it was made and integrated with Jurassic Park, and so it just, it translates into a fantastic game. And like you said, Martin, it's just, there's always been a complaint about something for every game i i swear since i've gotten to this hobby that's released there's always some kind of criticism there's it gets harped on and harped on i've heard a little spouts here and there i've heard one person complain about the artwork and then it died out and you had one person complain about the there's not gonna be scenes but once it got unveiled and they showed everything that kind of died out and so i think people are trying to find something to harp on this but we can't because everyone played it at pinberg and and now it's just like there's so many people have played it, you can't disagree with them because you haven't played it yet if you didn't go to Pinnberg, you know?
    23:24
    I think, and this is probably in defense of a lot of people that are quite critical, if you think about why people are criticizing them, I think it's because people, if they're not in a position to buy one, they want to feel comfortable with the fact that they can't buy it. but you know it's very rare that people will then go out to an arcade put money in it and then go oh yeah shit no people actually really still like playing the games i think people get critical because they just want to feel okay with whether they're going to own one or not that's just people like to resolve that in their mind well and i agree with that but i think also it comes down to when we were on your episode and Willy Wonka came out and we were scrambling trying to give our opinion on it and we were still watching the stream as we were recording. It had only been out for not even an hour. And it's just like, the problem was, is JJP and other parties that were involved with that release had said, it's a perfect game. I can't find any fault with it. So flags went off and it was like, people in the community thought, challenge accepted. I'm going to find what's wrong with Willy Wonka It really was And that's what it comes down to People want to be the first person to Maybe be known as the person that found something wrong With the new pinball machine I don't know, maybe not I'm waiting for the person to Take this play field and superimpose it On ACDC and say See it's exactly the same Well Somebody did say That it reminded them of Iron Maiden sure is that a bad thing?
    25:10
    it's not a bad thing I just didn't make any sort of reference to I didn't see I didn't see it at all until someone said oh well you know it's kind of it's got the loop like Iron Maiden okay it does but the loop's been around for how long though loop is not a one thing no I know But this is the whole thing, right? When something that's new that comes out, we all want to somehow resolve it in our mind. We want to resolve, is it like the movie? Like, is it meeting my expectations? We all knew Jurassic Park was coming.
    25:49
    And therefore, people form a view of what success would look like in their mind for a people machine. So when it comes out, it's absolutely never going to be exactly what people think in their head. because they don't know and there's so many different variables. So what people do is they go, okay, well, I was expecting something. What is now meeting my expectations and what's not? Okay, well, the play field actually looks really interesting. Okay, tick. The art. Hmm. I don't know about the art. You know what I mean? So people just go through each of those things and determine in their mind, do I like, don't I like? are there more likes than don't likes okay i'm going to put my money down oh i don't have my money so therefore i'm going to be happy with the things that i don't like and now i can sleep at night not owning this machine yeah well do you think here's the other thought i had too do you think people were using the data east jurassic park because no one's even talking about lost world but you think that was no one ever does um do you think that's a standard that people were trying to use to equate this to? It's at least got to be better than the Data East one.
    27:07
    It is. Definitely much better than the Data East one, but we're talking about art-wise? Well, art-wise, dude, the art on Data East... Okay, let's talk about this just for a second, because I own the game and the art drives me nuts.
    27:22
    I really like the art. Well, the play-filled art to me, like Nedry, has no neck. He's got a triple chin and his ears go directly into his shoulders. Have you seen the show?
    27:36
    Here's the other thing too. I didn't realize it was the boy from the movie above the right flipper. I thought it was Peter Dinklage.
    27:44
    I'm like, what is he doing on this game? Then I realized, oh, that's supposed to be a drawing of the boy. I'm just like, some of the art's really great for the dinosaurs, but the people on that play field are horrendous. Yeah, I never even noticed. I couldn't even tell you, and I owned Jurassic Park for a good couple of years. I couldn't have even told you that there was even a Peter Dinklage version or the actual boy version from the movie in it, because I don't go that much into the detail. I look at it from when I'm standing up at an overall play field and I think, is it trying to convey what the theme is? I don't need to start getting a magnifying glass out and looking closer. And I know a lot of people do. I'm not saying don't do it. But for me, I just want to see does overall, does the layout and the light show and the colors palette that they've used and the style of art that they've used, does that satisfy me? because I'll go back to one of the criticisms that remember when Kiss came out. Now, Kiss, I think, had amazing art and everyone then started calling out the fact that Paul Stanley's arm looked weird.
    28:56
    And that became a thing. Like, it's great art, but all people could focus on was this weird arm. Yeah. I actually thought on Iron Maiden, I actually liked the pro decals as opposed to the sculpts um just because it reminded me more of what the iron maiden art was when i grew up so uh i mean that was just a preference but yeah you're right i think that we're setting up hey what would we want in this game and when it doesn't live exactly up if you get out a magnifying glass that they keep talking about with uh with aerosmith that you know what man they he put he put everything you know dirty dine did a great job and he put cigarettes buds under the ramps and i thought that that's great i i'm i'm impressed by the detail i'm not sure it adds much to my enjoyment of the game major may be worth something to someone else but not to me i think my point being is is back to my original question do you think that data i guess i guess the day that east jurassic park isn't coveted is one of the best games that's ever been made um but do you think it was a standard for it's at least got to be better than this because i guess the game that i'm thinking of that's going to have a tough time in my opinion is the new elvira game because scared stiff is such a coveted game um just gameplay wise artwork wise i think it has a high standard to meet where this jurassic park i don't feel like it did so i guess i'm answering my own question. I don't think Jurassic Park, the day East Jurassic Park was a standard that Keith had to meet. You know what I'm saying?
    30:46
    Yeah, absolutely. I do like that he did have a lot of references to the Jurassic Park, the original one. I mean, obviously, art-wise, there's some familiarity there, and, you know, even down to Nedry being in exactly the same location.
    31:01
    I like the fact that, you know, they call it Tribal, right? And they've also got the Chaos letters to spell. I like that they've done that and I like that it's a throwback but I also like that it's advanced from the original Is there anything special that's not attached to the game? Like with Deadpool you got the album I'm just wondering is there anything with the LE that the premium doesn't have? Besides obviously the mirrored back glass and the shaker motor and all that stuff well for me it's the upgraded audio i think for the hearing that theme song which was obviously the asset that they purchased um you know boom it out because and that was something that i did notice when i was playing it is that the the call outs and that the sound the game is making is really immersing you in the jurassic park world so if that's even louder and boomier well i i completely agree my friend had an le uh star wars and he um he even put like a sub in it and when you start it and that star wars music comes over you're you're immediately thinking yes this is what i'm looking for that sound integration is so important in pinball i i completely agree that being able to get that sound asset is probably more important than getting any video clips. I will take the sound over the video clips any day.
    32:37
    So I guess I'll have to wait and find an LE on the secondary market because I heard they're all sold out. Yeah, the distributors I've been talking to have all said that they're out and they're asking for more allotment because they sold so quick they weren't able to hold on to them. I mean obviously we only get you know 50 and they normally sell out within the day I believe they sold out within I think I want to say maybe a week still I mean if Iron Man sold out and it was even based off a theme it was essentially the gameplay it doesn't shock me if Jurassic Park LE's already sold out well I think the LE I think the LEs on Iron Man were the theme.
    33:25
    I think people did want the theme. The enthusiasts for Iron Maiden wanted that theme. So, Marty, did you buy it because it was Keith Elwin's first name, or did you buy it because it was Iron Maiden? I bought it because it was Iron Maiden. And I mean, it was ultimately its downfall because I did enjoy the music when I was much younger. but what I thought to myself at the time was I just remembered the art style of Iron Maiden and thinking to myself, this will make a beautiful booking game and I knew it was going to be Archer and I had played Archer, just the white wood at Indisc probably, I don't know, 18 months, two years before Iron Maiden come out. So I knew it flipped really, really well. That was one thing that I noticed when I played it was it was really smooth and it was really interesting. So I just thought arch layout, iron maiden artwork, you've got a winner. I wonder if Keith's going to take over the king of flow when Steve Ritchie finally decides he's done designing pinball.
    34:33
    I don't know. That's a lot of games you've got to catch up with. Yeah. How many has Steve done? How many? 50, 60, 90, 900? 42. Okay. 42. Yeah. A lot. I think 43 with Black Knight. Okay.
    34:47
    Let's move on. We got on the notes here. We've got American Pinball has confirmed that no poker run. I know you're very sad about this, Scott, and the excitement of potential around Sherlock Holmes. Yeah.
    35:02
    With American Pinball, I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to buy things that are recognizable, that you don't need to have a PR machine behind. And so it's familiar enough that people will say, hey, I recognize that. I can go. And that's what Oktoberfest is. Oktoberfest, while it may not be a licensed theme, people know what Oktoberfest is because it's a – I know they say it's not a beer party. Well, it kind of is. It's a beer and festival party everywhere, and so people will recognize it. And I'm betting that they figured they would put enough in bars because it's a semi-bar theme, and it would fit well on location.
    35:56
    With Sherlock Holmes, it's the same as King Arthur. How many times are they going to reboot that theme for people to care? There was a kid King Arthur movie that came out last year, and I remember seeing some ads for it and thinking, I have zero desire to see this, and I have young kids.
    36:18
    I feel like I've done that. I've seen it. I've moved on. I hope that they find success with this. I hope that they are able to sell 1,000 of them. In his seminar, he said, hey, if we can get 15% of the market, we'll be good. So if we can sell 1,500, so they're estimating the market's 10,000 pins. So if they can do something like that, then I think it'll be a great success. I don't know of any of these themes that I was excited for.
    36:51
    And themes sell pinball. That's what Stern has proven over and over again. I don't know. I would be excited to see a Sherlock Holmes pinball machine. The Robert Downey Jr. movies are one of my favorites. I think they did a great job with those. But it's not to say that they would do that. They might just go with a generic Sherlock Holmes and slap the theme onto a pinball machine, and hopefully the gameplay is good enough. We just don't know enough detail behind this. Sherlock Holmes has been around since 1892. there's been Sherlock Holmes is the most franchised that has been made into movies and so there's hundreds of Sherlock Holmes movies across different genres and different styles and so it's hard to pin down exactly what they would do with it so I'm always open to see what they're doing I can't see myself buying one just on theme alone, I guess.
    37:51
    I don't know about the theme. I'm a bit cool on it. But I'll tell you the one thing that I will say about American pinball. And I'm a supporter of American pinball because I like the underdog, right? We all just want a good news story. I've met these people. I actually played against Joe Shoba at Pimberg. He was in my group, and I'd never met him before, and he's just the loveliest, loveliest guy. He's such a nice guy. So I want them to be successful, and you can tell there's a but coming. But here it is. When you speak to people about American pinball's machine so far, so we're talking Houdini. I mean, obviously, people talk about the awesome call-outs in that game, But when you talk about Houdini and then you talk about Oktoberfest, besides the theme, right, take that out of the picture,
    38:48
    the feedback that I get from people about both those games is the layout. I don't know whether you've had that as well, but people just are sort of a bit cool on how the games shoot. Now, I think both those games shoot really, really well. Now, I would never say I am a top player, but I play pinball quite a lot and I compete a lot and I can play relatively well. So I can find the shots and I'm okay with that. But a lot of casual players do really struggle, I think, with the two layouts that have been presented so far. So the reason why I'm bringing that up is that Sherlock Holmes, great. go for the theme that's awesome but i think the main thing i think we need now is a layout that's more accessible and that's what bring people in yeah i i played october fest and i know it was at a festival and everybody was trying to hit that left ramp and they had they have one of the coolest wire forms and the only thing I was trying to do was get the roller coaster started because I wanted to see that roll that wire form go and we just had a dog of a time trying to get it up that left ramp because it's so steep I wish them luck and as we said before when I went to Denver and I went to Joe Balser's presentation he said they are hiring so if you want to get into pinball and you want to send a resume, hey, that's a good place to go. It's a startup and you can certainly find something.
    40:36
    Hopefully they find some sort of mojo that works for them. I wish them the best and I hope that I am wrong and I hope that these themes really do wow me and say yeah maybe I get one of these Hey did you guys see that P3 is now officially in Dave Buster in Austin Texas Yeah I think it good because what I think the highest praise for Jurassic Park is it feels very similar to a video game It feels like something that you would see in a video game, which is exactly what kids are drawn to it. They're not going to see pinball as this relic, this EM from the 70s. They're actually going to say, hey, this is a new version of pinball. Maybe this is something I can get into. And if it's spitting out tickets at those kiddie gambling place, I say it'll be a hit. I was thinking of this today and I know of Dave and Buster's. I've never been to one.
    41:47
    But I think it's actually quite significant to have pinball in these venues and hopefully it's the start of it because it really does take it to the mainstream. But here's my thought on it. I thought that's great. You're going to get kids hopefully to play this. And I think people are going to probably shoot me down for saying this, But I think if you are putting yourselves in the position of how do we now get this to the younger audience and get them into pinball, I would say you've got to just make a couple of changes. That is, when you swipe your card or put your money in, the machine needs to start straight away. The ball needs to just start. And so, you know, kids don't have to push the start button. and also make it a timed game because if people just go flip, flip and it's over, then the kids will shake their head and go, well, that really wasn't a lot of fun because I was expecting three to four minutes of play and I got one minute. There you go. You're exactly right.
    42:49
    When kids play a video game, even if they suck at it, that they'll get hit many times, but unless you're playing a game from the 80s, you're not going to die in three seconds. you're still going to get your 90 seconds worth of fun or whatever it's set up for. I think if you set it up for, hey, you swipe your card, you get three minutes, and then play as long as your last ball is, I think that would be the big hit.
    43:17
    The challenge with pinball on location is pinball takes more of a beating than other games. Video games pretty much don't require much maintenance, which is why arcades have typically gone toward that. When I find a pinball in the wild, it's actually hard for me to play it. I will play it because I want to support the local operator, but half the time it's dirty. There's maybe a rubber missing or the flipper barely moves. And it's really hard to do that when I have 10 great machines downstairs that work perfectly.
    44:05
    So unless you're willing to invest in having a tech that maintains those machines, I don't see how, especially in a Dave and Buster's environment, how they'll be able to maintain them. I hope I'm wrong.
    44:19
    It's all just speculation at this point, and it's hard to decide. I mean, I know these P3s have been made to be maintenance-friendly and whatnot, and so I just say get it out there. What would it hurt? I don't know how much coding it would take to do what you were talking about, Martin, but I think it's a good idea. I think something, especially with the younger audience, has to change, or they're just going to go with what they know, the Fruit Ninjas and the Ticket Redemptions, and they're not going to give Pinball Chance if it's just viewed as a quarter-eating machine. I think there are Game of Thrones has got a casual mode and there are other I think Sega were the ones that released, you put your money in and you can hit the left flipper for a normal game or right flipper for a timed casual game I think inverse, I think the default needs to be a casual but for the adults that are going to these locations to seek them out, give people the opportunity to select a normal mode as well. And then you've got anybody covered. I was actually discussing this with Charlie Emery last year. I was telling him, really on the startup menu, when you press start, a lot of people know this, is when you actually start a pinball machine or when you go in the codes, the rule set can either be set to easy, medium, or hard.
    45:43
    Why aren't those options available the second you press the start button or the second you swipe your card?
    45:49
    Your easy mode could be your timed mode or whatever it is. And then those that, you know, the medium and the hard could be more geared towards players like us. I just, I think it's something that would be easily coded in. And there's nothing that changes physically with the game. It's just all software. And it's already programmed in there because you can select it. So why not just make it available at the beginning? Yeah, that's fair. I think with LCD screens, it's certainly kids are used to interacting that way. Or even adults are used to interacting that way. and if it says you know hit this for this direction um 720 is an old game that i have and when you start that it's a video game from the 80s and it says training mode and expert mode so you you would and after after 10 seconds it defaulted to training mode but if you wanted to do expert mode you could go up and do that yeah and it's like you know the the car racing games Like even Daytona or I think F50 might have been one of the Ferrari games that came out where you can pick a particular vehicle and that will determine whether it's easy, medium or hard. What do you guys think about Stern putting out on their YouTube channel having a tech section where they have videos of, hey, this is how you rebuild our flippers. These are common issues that you can deal with at home. I wonder if that would be something that would gain people into the pinball because how many people buy a pinball machine and then one little thing breaks on it and they're like, I don't know how to fix it. And they play around with it for five or six months. They probably do more damage than they do help. And then they either sell it on or they finally hire someone to come. I wonder if they actually had their own tech home interactive section, if that would actually help people to want to buy these machines and put them in their house.
    48:00
    I think there's too much liability there. I think that first off, you're telling people what to do, and if they screw it up, then they come back after you. It could become very messy. I think the second thing too, if you do those tech savvy things, it might bypass your distributors. And the whole point of one of the reasons to have distributors is then to have repairmen that are readily available. So that way, if I buy my new Jurassic Park and something breaks, I can call up my distributor and say, hey, this broke. And he can either say, hey, I'll send you the new part or I'll come out and fix it myself. so I just I don't I guess you could but where people do homemade fix it yourself videos there's no liability for Stern on that because then if the person screws it up then they go well I watched it off of YouTube yeah I know what you mean if it becomes official and yeah then they've got to support that on the back of those videos so it's dangerous territory I just have a couple more things I want to cover before I feel like I keep on talking we've been already talking before we started this for like an hour and I'm like I could go all night but we usually keep our episodes around an hour an hour and a half and there's a couple more topics I for sure want to hit the next topic we've all kind of discussed it already and we said that we're going to keep it kind of to a minimum and be as respectful as possible there was an incident at Pindenburg with some commentating I don't want to go really in depth with it. Um, but for some odd reason on Facebook, it's kind of blown up into some, another problem, which has blown up into another problem. Um, I just want to go first really quickly and just say, you know, I got into pinball to kind of get away from this stuff, to get away from the drama. We really don't cover this just because we like to focus on the positive, not the negative in pinball, but which is how crazy out of hand this is getting for those that have followed. My thing is, is I come to pinball because as soon as I walk through that door at pinball tournament night or the night that we get through to get together with everybody, every background, every problem, every mistake drops and we all become friends almost to the point it's family. We've had people with very personal issues come into our group, tell us their problems because they felt like we were family and we all helped them together to get through it um i would just i would ask those that are out there that are doing all this uh this stuff that uh just just to consider that uh i i agree with you and i'll touch on that you know i the belonging that you feel when you meet up with pimple people and you know as i said like two nights ago I I'm you know I'm here in Salt Lake and you know good friend now Lee and I don't know you know Lee very well you know he was like come along to you know pinball night and I did and he was the only person I knew and yet all these people I just started talking to and they didn't know who I was but it was like I was meeting people back in Australia just really good people talking about pinball everyone was talking about jurassic park some people have been to pinberg um and it was just you know what i mean like when you just come together it doesn't matter what's happened in your life and whether you've had a terrible day whether you've got problems at home whether you've got problems at work you know whether you're good at pinball whether you're terrible at pinball whether you've got depression you know what i mean it doesn't matter when you're with pinball people, life is better.
    51:51
    It is. But social media can exaggerate the good and the bad. And my take on what's happened over the last couple of days is, first of all, we've just had one of the best pinball events, you know, of the year, and all everybody's talking about is the drama after. and B, I just want to say that if you are respectful to people face-to-face, then show that same respect online. That's all I'm saying.
    52:30
    I've been really conflicted because just like you, Josh, there's so much drama and extra things that go on outside of pinball. It is my escape. So there's a quote in the movie Gattaca, which I think about over and over again. And it goes – this is the quote.
    52:53
    They've got you looking so hard for any flaw that after a while, that's all you see. And that seems to be what Pinnberg is for me. I watched the whole – I watched the entire streaming finals. There were some amazing catch – there's one move where I would love to know how Keith Elwin did it. He was playing Metallica. He had a ball cradled. He had a multi-ball going. And then the right flipper, he did a live catch, shot the ball, and kept the ball cradled on the right flipper. Okay? I want to talk about that.
    53:31
    I want to talk about the amazing live catches that Daniele was doing. And I want to talk about NFL football and how crazy that game is. I also want people to realize that if there's a way of resolving something that bothers you in a private matter, one-on-one, that's always the first move.
    54:02
    And if it's a one incident, that's also different than a repeat offender. also at what point does it become a big enough deal that we need to go out on a social media blast and really drag some people in who would have preferred something to be kept private or within a within a contained group so that's my thought also when you're in a group you're going to have diverse opinions on everything. You can build a wall on literally anything. And ultimately, you're going to find a way of isolating yourself from society because you're not going to agree with everybody on everything. So if you want to be a light in pinball and try to be that common ground, search for the common ground and drive toward that. Let's not focus on the things that divide us. Let's focus on the things that unify us. And the best unification is, hey, you like pinball. I like pinball. Let's play. Let's also give people some breaks. If they slip up or they say something or they do something unintentional or just a mistake, let's leave it at that. I would never want to be judged on my worst day, and so I would like to try to remember that when I'm extending it to others.
    55:39
    That's my take. I agree, and I think we all wrapped it up pretty perfectly. And I'm going to leave it right at that because I want everyone to know we're not – I understand there's people that have went through situations from both sides of the argument. We're not trying to belittle what you've been through. We're just asking for commonality, I guess. Just kind of put aside differences. All right, let's move on. I want to do two more things. I don't think I talked to Scott about this. Martin and I was talking about this before.
    56:14
    But Scott, did you know we're going to start a new segment? I'm very intrigued. What is the new segment?
    56:21
    So the new segment is appropriately called a segment still. we're going to highlight another podcast by stealing their game that they play on their show and put it on ours that way it kind of promotes them and we don't have to come up with our own game so if we're stealing head to head does that mean we're stealing head to head but promoting Slam Tilt okay alright yes okay so I'm going to spin my wheel here my fake imaginary Okay, it landed on head-to-head. Look at that. We are slamming the top 100. What are the odds? Wow. Yes. Wow.
    57:05
    So let's do this, Scott. I know we talked to Martin, and this is what I wanted to do last time we were on head-to-head, but we ran out of time. We did. And so we're doing this now.
    57:18
    I really have no idea where this is going, so go ahead. Okay. Have you ever – do you know how Slam the Top 100 goes, Scott?
    57:27
    Yes, yes. I've listened to every head-to-head. So you get a game, I get a game, or Martin gets a game, and each of us take 30 seconds and praise the game and then 15 seconds to trash the other game or to repraise our game. Perfect. You've got it. So what should we do? Should we – Scott and I on team versus Martin. Do we want Martin as a middleman being the referee? What do we want? I reckon you two go head-to-head, and I'll be the referee. I'll keep the timing clean, and I'll manage our good friend Google lady.
    58:02
    Awesome. By the way, Google in Australia is way cooler than Google here because we don't get the do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Oh, really? Oh, it's disappointing. No, we don't. It is. All right, Marty, if you'll do the honors, let's pick our two games we're battling with. Okay, so whose machine am I picking first?
    58:19
    Go with me. Hey Google, pick a number between 1 and 100. Coming right up. 5. Twilight Zone. Okay, so. Nice, yes, I can do this. This is doable, yes. I actually have a Twilight Zone in my garage that I need to move downstairs after I sell a game. So this will be good. I will love to trash this thing. Okay, next one. Go ahead.
    58:57
    Hey, Google, pick a number between 1 and 100. All right. 77. oh time machine by data east you're so going down you know it man you know yeah yeah you're so going down okay so i think the higher seats has to go first though that's correct all right yeah i can definitely do that so i've got three minutes to talk up twilight zone correct or not 30 minutes three minutes no no no no no 30 seconds you have got 30 seconds and i've got my stopwatch you ready to go i am bring it on all right let's go start twilight zone no one thought it could get better than the adams family but then pat lawler brought out his master design twilight zone it redefined what we do when we play pinball between uh magnets as flippers and the piano shot, this game has it all. It's been touted as one of the best games because it's so challenging, yet gives so much diversity of what you can do. It was really ahead for its time between all the toys, all the gameplay.
    60:18
    Hey, your 30 seconds are up. You're done. All right, I'm done. All right. So Time Machine. Hold on. Time Machine is not only... Okay. I thought Martin was supposed to tell you to go. I had started. All right. Okay, you ready? Go. Ready. Okay, Time Machine is not only vastly superior than Twilight Zone, it also has a cooler car. There is a Corvette with John Travolta riding around with two girls, and he's driving away with another guy flying outside. It also has the classic solid state, awesome scoring, and so you get this linear rule set. This is also a Joe Kamikow game, And so if you can't buy the Beatles, you can totally buy this one. Also, a cooler theme. Who wants to go into the Twilight Zone?
    61:08
    Oh, my goodness. I don know what I going to do Well so you got a choice now You can either continue talking about how great Twilight Zone is or you can now start rubbishing Time Machine
    61:26
    I'm going to keep with Twilight Zone because I've honestly never played Time Machine. I just played it at Pimberg anyway. Okay, your time starts now. You've got 30 seconds.
    61:35
    I mean, really, is this a discussion we're having? Twilight versus Time Machine? Twilight Zone is just... Have you ever heard a bad thing about Twilight Zone? I know Marty just loves the game.
    61:50
    But it... I mean, really, we've reinvented pinball with this game. We really have. It's just... I don't know what else to tell you. It stands for itself. It's Twilight freaking Zone. Do I have to say anything else? Three more seconds.
    62:04
    Twilight Zone. I don't know. Okay. You ready, Scott? Your time starts now. Okay. Not only is Time Machine vastly superior, it has amazing wire forms. It has this amazing deep coding package by Lonnie Ropp. Twilight Zone is such a dog that I've had it in my garage for about a year and haven't been able to dust it off.
    62:32
    The skill shot really stinks because the rocket goes into the bumpers, which is death. in tournaments all it is is left ramp light ramp and shoot the scoop there's no reason to ever play this and actually try to get into the zone because you're never going to be able to win it it's also a wide body which sucks you know what I'm not going to lie that's harder than it sounds I thought it would be just a piece of cake obviously I do not know what I'm doing Oh, well, and now we'll turn it over to, uh, go ahead. So Marty gets to tell us who, who has the better argument. I think I thought we throw it to Facebook. No, that's right. So Josh will tell us how to do it. Okay. So, uh, we're going to throw it to you guys out there in Facebook land. We're going to put a poll up, uh, twilight zone versus time.
    63:29
    It's going to be very close. I'm going to tell you this go based off an argument not necessarily the game I better have a great gif on this one well this is the whole thing the better gif always wins there has to be a cat driving a corvette and I will win how about this Scott since I got Twilight Zone and you had Time Machine you throw the poll up and you get to pick the gifs okay you realize that I am horrible at this social media stuff so I don't even know how to do polls. All right. I will figure it out. You can help me. Yeah, sounds good. I will find the cat gif, the laser cat gif.
    64:11
    Thanks, Marty, for letting us steal your segment for our show tonight. So did you find it easy to have to think of those things on the spot? No, not at all. I thought it would be a lot easier because these games everyone talks about. But, I mean, Twilight Zone is one of the reasons I got into pinball, just because between that and a couple of other games, it just seemed like it was ones I gravitated towards. You put me on the spot, I can't think of a single thing besides magnetic flippers and a gumball machine. It's a lot harder than it looks. No, I know, but if you were at a venue and you were playing pinball and someone came up to you and asked you, you'd be able to rattle it off. But in that situation where it's like, okay, it's now an argument, it's a competition, it really does put you on the spot. So people sort of thought that we just did all this editing. And no, we actually just had to do that stuff on the fly. It's fun.
    65:04
    Well, we'll leave that all. There's mistakes and all. All right. Well, I am going to sell my Twilight Zone and buy a time machine. So that should be convincing enough.
    65:15
    Yeah. Oh, my goodness. No, it was fantastic. When we originally talked about this, we were going to pit Black Knight versus Willy Wonka since they both came out the exact same time. But I'm glad we did not do that because that's a lot rougher than – yeah. All righty. Yeah, and I don't know. I think right now, like right now tonight, I would take a Black Knight. But we're going to go up to Jeff Rivera's house at some point when he invites us, and we will play Willy Wonka and figure out the awesomeness that is the – Wonka's better.
    65:48
    Okay. The music in Black Knight is awesome. Okay, not too much. All right. I love it. Well, everyone's been waiting. It's that magical time where we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks. We're finally here. We're giving away one of those sweet hats. You've seen them everywhere. You've seen Jack Danger wear one. You've seen Keith Elwin wear one. And may I add, he won Pinberg while wearing – well, he didn't do it while he won. but what I'm saying is the first day he qualified and it's probably the best qualifying anyone's ever had and it was the combination of loser kid hat and a head-to-head pinball t-shirt. And I've got one of these caps now as well and I'm telling you, I've just had to beat people away from me as I'm walking down the street with this hat on. Everyone wants a piece of this. That's the power of the loser kid cap.
    66:46
    Yeah. I totally believe that, especially, you know, walking the mean streets of Ogden. but yeah but on a serious note what we keep touting the quality of this hat and we're not asking you to shill our hat like seriously what do you think of the quality of the hat okay this is this is absolutely the truth because i you know we put the the head-to-head merch store up and i had caps as part of that and they looked really good and when i actually got the caps the quality was so poor i took them off the the store i said no i'm not going to sell caps don't worry about it so the quality of your caps is exceptional i'm not actually just that actually does sound like i'm shilling i'm not like the actual like the it's actually like a really thick material and the the way they put the logos on is just really sort of just it's just done so well So I think you guys have spared no expense getting this cap. You've obviously gone with someone well.
    67:48
    We spared no expense. That was the Jurassic Park reference. Love it. All right, cool. So I've asked Martin to do the honors for us. What we've done is if you've liked our Facebook page, you got one entry into the contest. And then if you left us a recommendation or a review, we also gave you two more entries into the thing. So there are a couple people that will have three entries into this. The way I've done it is I just printed off of Facebook the list of likes, went through the reviews, and added extra tallies next to those names. And so everyone's been assigned a number. and so I've asked Martin to do Google for us again and we will, whatever number it comes out, unless if you're a celebrity, or not, sorry. Whatever number it comes out, you get a hat.
    68:43
    So, Marty, if you would do us the honors. How many entries do we have? We have, let me hurry and get to the back page.
    68:55
    163 entries. 163, here we go Hey Google, pick a number between 1 and 163 Coming right up 127 Ooh, that's a pretty high number 127, Angela Sanders Fish you have won yourself a hat so we will reach out to you on Facebook and congratulations so awesome congratulations yeah cool if you did not win a hat and you want a hat contact us we will hook you up other than that it's been fun I don't know what else to say I'm not going to lie. It's probably been a long week for you between Pemburg, Marty, and being here in Utah. I know on the last episode you said, I'm kind of burned out on the whole pinball thing. And then Tuesday night, you're like, let's play pinball.
    70:08
    Yeah, and look, you also said to me, oh, look, I just heard your podcast. And if you don't want to do pinball, that's fine.
    70:14
    And it kind of comes back to what I was saying earlier about the whole social media stuff. is that it wasn't the pinball that I went for. I did get into the finals. You know, I heard you ask.
    70:27
    But it was actually more... Humble brag. It was... But do you know what it was? I know he loves a good shout-out, but it was because our good mate Lee and I knew Scott was going to be there as well. And I thought, do you know what? I can't come all this way out here and not catch up with you guys and just go to Keto's and just talk to people. I just thought that that would be a good, fun thing to do, and I wasn't disappointed. And now I'm doing a podcast, so there you go. That was actually a crazy big crowd. Also, I will say to Naomi Shedd, she sent me a lot of messages during Pinberg, and I'm going to send you a bonus hat because you were able to keep me appraised of the situation until we can come next year to Pinnberg. So, Naomi, go ahead and send me your address, and I will get you out a hat. We lived vicariously through her for Pinnberg this year. It's awesome. And she's contacted us. She's given us, like, T-shirt ideas.
    71:30
    It's just been nuts. Like, Naomi's been really cool, fantastic lady to meet. If you're not friends with her on Facebook or whatever social media else she's on, join up with her because she's fantastic. She's a very nice lady. yeah she even uh uh there's a one of her friends that's out here and uh his name is tim and we ran into him at keto so now we have enough now you too have a friend in the pinball business yeah i met her at pinberg and she is amazing has just got so much energy she had enough energy for the thousand people that were competing i can tell you now okay did she have a dog in a stroller i'm just wondering no okay because the because oh you'll have to this for a second who's Tommy and Taylor's this okay the reason why I asked about her dog is because this flipping podcast kept talking about someone who had a dog there and it freaked him out because they thought they were pulling out a baby and it was a dog so i i wondered if it was naomi because i thought that she had a dog there she might have i didn't see it she did because by i guess the final day of pinberg she was showing videos of her dog already knew the way back to the hotel room so as soon as the elevator doors would open it would guide her right to the hotel door so yeah yeah so that was that was pinberg um and obviously i need to mention that you know i also got to catch up with um jeff Rivera as well from the pinball podcast so we hang out at uh Pemberg as well so it was good to see him you probably met half of Utah there anyway when you were there it seemed like all of our friends went this year too we were the duds that did not go yeah you're gonna make it next year I'm planning on depending on where I'm at so I haven't told I don't know if I've announced this on the podcast yet, but I sold my house.
    73:37
    We're building because I'm very picky. I don't like any of the houses around in this area, so I'm going to build myself a nice house so that I can have plenty of pinball machines in the bottom. If I'm done building by next year, Pinberg, I'll probably come. If I'm not, then we'll see.
    73:54
    Awesome. Before we get going, Marty, tell us, honestly, if you're listening to us and you haven't listened to Head to Head, you're lying. I don't know what to say. You know, just go and delete our podcast and immediately go and listen to the 100 episodes of Head to Head.
    74:14
    Starting with number one, because the quality on that first one I heard is... It's amazing. It was obviously for our 100th episode. And I know you'll say this because I know I've spoken to you about this, But, you know, on our 100th episode, I did a little montage of, you know, our first six months, just some clips from that.
    74:36
    And it wasn't even just like the audio quality was really bad because it was, you know, there was just this evolution. It was we got better mics, we had better recording technology, then we had better editing. It all just improved over time. And then obviously we went to Zencastr. But it's not even that. The very first episode is just so flat, just from us, our energy level. I think at the time we thought we were going to be this really sort of serious, you know, hard hitting, full of news. And then it just became, you know, every opportunity to make me laugh. And that's what we did. That's what we continue to do. Well, I know our our first episode was it's by far the worst episode.
    75:18
    Is that because you went on it? Well, of course. Well, I don't want to point that out, but I think I elevate things, you know, just by bringing my awesome voice and my deep takes.
    75:31
    Well, you guys are definitely on my go-to podcast, so keep it going because I think it's great. I love what you guys do. Well, as soon as we can get Zencaster to record for, or we also want to get Joe on sometime. I know it's one in the morning right now where Joe is, so he probably would have given us the Boston bird.
    75:53
    But yeah, Joe's been a great addition to your podcast since Ryan's on his sabbatical. He's been great.
    76:03
    Well, in all seriousness, we really do appreciate it. Honestly, Martin, you were one of the first people I reached out to. It was you and Zach, and I sent out the clip and said, hey, what do you think? And when you said, hey, this is actually good, I was like, oh, well, if it's coming from Marty – like I still think – I'm going to go out right now. I'm going to say this right now. I think that Head to Head is the podcast to beat for quality and for content in our community. and so when it comes back from someone like that that you're actually doing something right you you actually take it to heart and so if it wasn't for you i don't think we'd be doing this so well well thank you that's great to hear um but but sort of back at you is that there is so much choice that we have there's a lot of podcasts out there and we obviously can't get to everything but when i heard your podcast i thought for some reason that just fills a gap and I'm glad it exists for that.
    77:07
    Awesome. Well, thank you. I think it's because we know nothing about tournament pinball. Yeah, probably. But I think it's important to have your own lane and swim in it and I think you guys, right out the gate, great quality and great banter and great chemistry and that's all we want. Yeah. Well, we certainly appreciate everybody who listens. I appreciate Josh for actually spearheading this because this is really Josh's baby, and I'm just along for the ride.
    77:39
    I appreciate everybody who actually commits any time to downloading our podcast and listening, and especially those who give us feedback. It really does mean a lot to us just because we're doing this for fun. But when you get that feedback or at least the downloads, then it actually makes you feel like you're being connected to a larger world. And I've loved this. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's because we gave away a hat or whatever, but the last month has just been – I mean, it's been the Keith Elwin interview. We've had people emailing us and talking to us through Facebook and whatnot. It's just awesome to feel more involved with the community because people actually want to talk to us now. Yeah. Well, we certainly appreciate everybody who comes on. Keith has been great. We certainly – I'm still surprised that he agreed to come on, and it was a lot of fun talking to him. Eric from JJP was great coming on, and Bowen, too, coming and talking about Pinberg. It really does mean a lot to us, and hopefully it means a lot to people who are listening to get access and to hear from behind the scenes of what pinball is versus what they see on pin side.
    78:48
    Dude, I'm just glad that Marty said he wanted to come on because, let's face it, let's not lie, Joe said he didn't want to be on here. He didn't.
    78:55
    Yeah, that's true. Joe gave me the bird and he said, you suck pretty much. There can be room for only one sidekick and it's me.
    79:08
    Hilarious. I think you got, what you guys know is that, because I think sometimes people think that, you know, the podcasters are doing it because we've got big egos and we just like to, you know, talk crap for a couple of hours or whatever it's going to be. but genuinely you are doing it because it's interesting to you, you want to entertain people and there's actually nothing better than people just reaching out for you the first time just saying, hey guys, I love what you do, keep doing it, that's what it's for yep and go ahead and hit us up on Facebook, I swear half of my friends are pinball related well and also, I don't know if we've told you this yet or not Marty but you are an honorary loser kid I know that. So you got your hat now? Yep. So I got the title. Jeez, that was quite a while now. And now I've got the hat to prove it. So even better. Yep. So you can claim our podcast as your own now too.
    80:05
    Awesome. When you're going for those Twippy Awards this year, you just lump ours in with yours. It's like multi-level marketing. The more podcasts you recruit to be under there, the higher percentage of income you get. That's true. what are you going to do with all your twippy bucks once you get them I hear they're accepting Dave and Buster's now he's going to Star Wars land yeah for sure alright Marty where can we find you if you want someone to reach out to you and talk to you where do you want to be contacted at two main places obviously if you just type head to head pinball into Google it would take you everywhere if you go to head to head pinball.com, that's our website. Email us head to head pinball at gmail.com or, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff.
    81:01
    Facebook's probably the best one. Yeah. And Josh, how can they get ahold of us? You can find us at loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com or honestly, the best way to get ahold of us is through Facebook at loser kid pinball podcast slash Facebook or vice versa on that one. I can't remember. but if you want to just chit chat hit us up compliment us complain whatever you want to do hit us up there so I better go guys because honestly my lightning and thundering is going off and my lights have dimmed more than once while I've been on here so I've been lucky to even keep you guys on going on my computer so alright sounds good well we'll see you guys later thanks guys see ya