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Episode 29 – American Pinball’s 2nd Game Leaked

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 2m·analyzed·Feb 4, 2018
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TL;DR

H2H exclusive: American Pinball second game is Oktoberfest; Pinball Circus working on Kingpin.

Summary

Head to Head to Head A Pinball Podcast 29 covers multiple industry topics including Stern's Lucy art revisions for AC/DC Premium Vault Edition, Batman code update 0.87 adding the Batusi multiball mode, American Pinball's Houdini machine reviewed by Straight Down the Middle, and exclusive reveals of American Pinball second game (Oktoberfest trademark) and Pinball Circus next title (Kingpin).

Key Claims

  • American Pinball has trademarked 'Oktoberfest' as their second pinball machine

    high confidence · Martin Robbins found the trademark on the US trademark website and confirmed it with Ryan C on the podcast; presented as an exclusive Head to Head discovery

  • Pinball Circus (makers of Pinball Circus) have the rights to Kingpin and will show it at Texas Pinball Festival

    high confidence · Martin Robbins found this via trademark website search; confirmed as Kingpin based on playfield insert imagery

  • Batman code version 0.87 adds the Batusi multiball mode based on the 1960s dance from the original Adam West Batman series

    high confidence · Stern pinball code release notes; hosts discuss the dance's origins in the 60s Watusi dance with African heritage

  • Stern made minor art adjustments to Lucy in the AC/DC Premium Vault Edition including modified legs, a D&D decal pattern, and removal of the drummer

    high confidence · Stern released promotional images showing actual vault edition art; hosts note the drummer was removed due to personal conduct issues

  • Houdini features a mysterious monkey with band-aids on its genitals referencing Houdini's planned testosterone grafting from a monkey

    high confidence · Ryan C watched Straight Down the Middle's Houdini review where Joe Balcer (designer) explained the artwork; Ryan researched the historical story

  • Straight Down the Middle released an unusually detailed Houdini review including designer interviews with Josh Kugler and Joe Balcer at American Pinball HQ

    high confidence · Ryan C watched the video; describes it as a unique format combining machine review with designer walkthrough of rules and theme integration

  • Lyman F. Sheats Jr. is the coder for Batman and is receiving disproportionate code development attention compared to Ghostbusters (coded by Dwight Sullivan)

    medium confidence · Martin expresses frustration on Facebook about Ghostbusters owners complaining while Batman receives continuous updates; acknowledges different coding philosophies

Notable Quotes

  • “We are exclusively revealing their second game.”

    Ryan C @ ~8:00 — Sets up the major exclusive reveal of American Pinball's second title (Oktoberfest)

  • “Her legs are different, bro. And her ass looks weird because of it.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~13:30 — Humorous opening to discussion of Stern's art revisions causing order cancellations in the community

  • “What shits me... is everyone's been talking about Batman Code... And now Batman Code is getting all the code it needs... But what about my ghost besties? Ghostbusters, I'm selling my game.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~35:00 — Expresses frustration about community complaints regarding code development priorities and different designer philosophies

  • “This is like the absolute perfect way to introduce a Pinball machine because you've got the designer who did the hardware talking you through the Pinball machine. And then you have the software guy pretty much walking through the entire journey.”

    Ryan C @ ~50:00 — Praises Straight Down the Middle's Houdini review format as a model for future machine reviews

  • “Who the fuck would buy a Pinball machine about Oktoberfest?... A lot of people, Marty.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~75:00 — Key exchange about the viability of Oktoberfest as a pinball theme; Ryan defends it, Martin initially skeptical

  • “I think it is a stupid theme. But I just do. But I can kind of understand how they could make it into kind of like... your Williams, sort of almost like even early 90s when they had very comical pinball machines.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~90:00 — Martin concedes Oktoberfest could work despite initial reservations, drawing parallels to comedic 90s pinball design

  • “Oktoberfest is so broad and wide that you can pretty much do anything related to partying, drinking and having a good time.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~95:00 — Rationalizes the theme's potential for varied gameplay modes and design possibilities

Entities

[name withheld pending review]personRyan CpersonJosh KuglerpersonJoe BalcerpersonZach SharpepersonLyman F. Sheats Jr.personDwight Sullivanperson

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Head to Head Podcast exclusively reveals American Pinball's second game is Oktoberfest via trademark database discovery

    high · Martin found US trademark for 'Oktoberfest' under American Pinball; hosts confirmed exclusive on-air discovery and revelation

  • ?

    announcement: Head to Head Podcast reveals Pinball Circus's next machine is Kingpin via trademark database and playfield imagery analysis

    high · Martin found trademark rights to Kingpin held by Pinball Circus; spotted matching playfield insert imagery; confirmed for Texas Pinball Festival debut

  • ?

    code_update: Stern Batman code version 0.87 adds Batusi multiball mode; tilt call-out feature added with Catwoman voice line

    high · Official code release notes; discussion of mode stacking with Villain Escape; 13 more versions expected before 1.0 release

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern AC/DC Premium Vault Edition Lucy artwork revisions causing community backlash and order cancellations

    high · Stern released updated art with modified Lucy legs, D&D decal pattern, drummer removal; hosts note people cancelling orders

  • ?

    design_innovation: Houdini features detailed historical theme integration including monkey testicle graft reference tied to Houdini's testosterone enhancement research

    high · Joe Belser explained artwork during Straight Down the Middle review; Ryan researched historical context of Houdini's planned synthetic testosterone procedure

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.368

0:00
Music You're listening to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. Find us on Facebook, email us at headpeople at gzr.com or go to our website at headtoheadpeople.com. Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast episode 29 and my name's Martin and with me...
0:37
It's Ryan C and we create this podcast with beautiful and intelligent people only. So thanks for listening you sexy motherfuckers.
0:45
Sorry I can't say that can I? You sexy bastards. Yes, I will definitely edit that out. Where did that come from? I don't know. I just wanted to start off, you know, with a bit of a bang.
1:04
Well, you certainly did. Gotta keep it fresh. You do. We've got a big episode. We're recording one day early, Marty. What's going on? Well, we're recording one day early, but we're releasing the same date. They don't need to know that. Yeah.
1:17
Because. Those are exclusive news, head-to-head exclusive. We do, and also because we just, when we go into our week in Pinball, we just come off playing a game that we played for the very first time, so we wanted to sort of capture our thoughts on the same game. Yeah, nice and fresh. So, big episode coming up. Get us started, Marty. What are we talking about first? Well, we've got this big article about the Lucy art for Stern Pinball. A massive piece of news there. Huge. Her legs are different, bro.

  • American Pinball intentionally avoids licensed IP to have creative freedom and avoid licensing fees

    medium confidence · Ryan C references American Pinball stated philosophy; fits with Oktoberfest being original theme without licensing constraints

  • “It's definitely Kingpin. So the company, is that the Illinois Illinois Pinball Company...”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~115:00 — Second exclusive reveal confirming Pinball Circus's next title as Kingpin; statement cuts off as episode ends

    • Keith Elwin
    person
    American Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Pinball Circuscompany
    Straight Down the Middle Pinballcompany
    Houdinigame
    Batmangame
    AC/DC (Premium Vault Edition)game
    Oktoberfestgame
    Kingpingame
    Ghostbustersgame
    Iron Maidengame
    Head to Head Pinball Podcastorganization
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    ?

    content_signal: Straight Down the Middle pioneered detailed machine review format combining gameplay stream with designer interviews and rule walkthroughs at manufacturer HQ

    high · Ryan C praises the format for Houdini review with Josh Kula and Joe Belser; calls it 'perfect way to introduce a pinball machine'; wants to see model applied to future releases

  • ?

    community_signal: Community backlash on Facebook against prioritizing Batman code development over Ghostbusters updates despite different designer philosophies and development stages

    medium · Martin expresses frustration about Facebook complaints from Ghostbusters owners; acknowledges Lyman Sheats builds rules iteratively while Dwight Sullivan completes full sets then balances

  • ?

    product_strategy: American Pinball's deliberate strategy to pursue original, unlicensed themes to avoid licensing fees and creative constraints

    medium · Ryan notes American Pinball's past statements about avoiding licensed IP; Oktoberfest fits this model as global original theme without licensing constraints

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Houdini features tight, difficult shots that slow game progression when missed; playfield design emphasizes shot recovery mechanics over rapid ball returns

    high · Steve Badham post quoted: 'shots are tight but findable'; milk can shot particularly difficult; game plays slower than modern Stern designs when missing shots

  • $

    market_signal: Martin's collection space constraint (four machines max) creating direct competition between upcoming titles; Iron Maiden vs. Houdini decision pending art/code quality

    medium · Martin discusses limited physical space; Houdini review elevated its appeal; Iron Maiden positioning must beat Houdini to secure slot; code quality by designer matters (Elwin vs. Belser)

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community speculation about Oktoberfest theme viability; hosts debate whether German beer festival theme appeals to broader market vs. niche audience

    medium · Martin initially skeptical ('stupid theme') but concedes broad appeal to bar/pub audiences and international Oktoberfest celebrants; Ryan defends theme as accessible to all

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: American Pinball still in early production phase for Houdini; second game (Oktoberfest) likely 12+ months from release based on timeline discussion

    medium · Ryan speculates Oktoberfest 'maybe next year' given American Pinball still ramping Houdini production; no official timeline confirmed

    • 1:54
    And her ass looks weird because of it. Right. And people are cancelling their orders left, right and centre.
    2:00
    We're going to talk about the new Batman code. We're going to talk about Houdini because our good friends straight down the middle did a review of Houdini. And then there's a little bit of extra news about Houdini, in particular American Pinball, which we're going to talk about.
    2:19
    Just let them know, mate, it's their second game. We are exclusively revealing their second game. Are we though? Yes, we are. Okay, for sure. Come on, keep them hanging on listening. Don't make them tune out. We're doing exclusive stuff here, guys. Exclusive. We're also going to talk about TNA, so there's a bit of a challenge going on between a couple of, well, some major players in the pinball world that are trying to get to it. We are taking bets.
    2:52
    We're going to do a new segment, Slam the Top 100, which I have no idea what it is yet, but I'm going to be... Definitely not copied from any other podcast. Well, that'll be a first for us.
    3:04
    It is. Oh, buddy. So we've got our week in Pinball. We're going to go to the mailbag as well this week and there may just be some surprises. Who knows? What's the first piece of news? Let's talk about this massive difference in the art for the Lucy Vault edition of ACDC. Yeah, they released images of the actual Lucy because, you know, the first, the promo images they put up were just the old images. So they tweaked a couple of little tiny art things. One is they made a decal around the D&D, which apparently has got people in a dizzy vertigo frenzy.
    3:47
    It's too much. You can have that pattern everywhere else, but as soon as you put it around the D&D, it's too much.
    3:54
    And her legs are a little bit different. And that's it. And I guess the drum is missing as well, like the other premium. And the lower playfield, which no one goes to because it sucks, has the little screws instead of being a part of the entire playfield like it was before. So that's it. That's it. We're done. That's the news.
    4:17
    It's just funny though. So if you think about it, so the art is obviously different. Why would people be up in arms about that? Obviously they ditched the drummer, we knew they were going to do that because he was doing drugs or bashing people or, you know. It turned out to be not a great guy slash a true blue Aussie bloke.
    4:44
    Whichever way he's looking. His morals were as dry as a dead dickhead. He needed Eric Minier's compass, his moral compass was pointing in the wrong direction. He needed that little... He did. He didn't know which was the best way to go. I'm sorry, Marty. It was terrible. Speaking of triceps, how many people have spoken to you about your triceps? I can't crack any stupid jokes anymore on the podcast because then people just remind me of them like constantly like the, you know, the Doctor Who thing that still hasn't disappeared. The triceps on the stream today non-stop. I just, anything personal or a joke. I try and crack on other people's kind of expense or something. It just comes back to me. So thank you everyone for talking about my triceps or lack of triceps.
    5:41
    You've got great triceps. Anyway, I'm just stating facts. You and Eric together could have a tricep off. It's all I'm saying. So the next bit of news is, so Batman Code, even more Batman Code. So 0.87 has been released.
    6:04
    And we were talking about this for two minutes before, we just ran through the show notes and said, yeah, all they did is add the Batsui. And Mardin laughed like he's doing again. He said, it's Batusi. I'm dyslexic if anyone hasn't figured it out yet. Really? So I just, I can't read properly and it all gets jumbled up. And yeah, that's, you know, I think it is a, sorry, it's a minor villain mode, I think. It's a multiball. Yeah, it's a, sorry, it's a multiball which corresponds to the minor villains. So the minor villains kind of like coming together. It's not just for score. It's also progression towards a multiball. And do you know what the Bat-Toothie is? I definitely know what it is because he sent me something.
    6:52
    It's a type of dance. I think it was one of the first episodes. I think I've actually seen that episode where Adam West, Mr. Batman, goes into a club and Robin's outside. I don't know what he was trying to do, but he starts dancing. You've probably seen the GIF somewhere. Have you ever seen a gif or a meme of the original Batman? He's either holding the bomb in his hand and running down the pier or he's doing that flunky little dance. So that's what it is, right? Yeah, and so fun fact, it is based on the dance craze of the 60s called the Watusi, which has its heritage in African dance, just in case you didn't know.
    7:32
    You just Google it and just... This is completely off the top of my head, just so you know. But, I mean, what it really is, is that that dance theme right there encapsulates everything that was campy about the original Batman.
    7:54
    Yeah, and more and more little stuff keeps on going in there. I just got a message from my friend a couple of hours ago saying, New Batman Code is excellent. And there's a new tilt call out where when you tilt, Catwoman says in a forceful voice, Ooh, you're so strong and forceful, Batman.
    8:13
    So there you go. It's making people... Sorry, I just realised that's stupid. I'm also... What I also read in the release notes of this as well is that this can be stacked with, I think, Villain Escape. Is that right? Fill in escape mode.
    8:36
    I mean, this is like the Batman code thing is going to be like a weekly segment pretty much. I mean, every single code update is like .0. I know. We've got 13 to go, guys, until we get to 1.0. But, you know, I've got to tell you the thing that just, can we just have a moment where I just have a bit of a whinge? And I'm having a whinge at the whinges. So, it's great news, right? So, you know, everyone's been talking about Batman Code, you know, hashtag, where's the code, whatever, right? And now, Batman Code is getting all the code it needs, right? And it is turning it around to being a great machine. Yes. But what shits me, like, Ryan, this really fucking shits me. Is this Facebook? This is Facebook, right? So, you know, you know what I'm talking about. What about my ghost besties? Yeah, fucking Ghostbusters, yeah, I'm fucking selling my game, fucking, fucking. I mean, come on, guys.
    9:36
    They're different codas, so like. I know. Okay, I would almost understand if it was the same coder, if it was like a Star Wars update or a, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy, and you say, hey, you know, you also did Ghostbusters, you know. Fair enough. But if it's Lyman Sheats who really has finished every other game he's worked on, then yeah, it's only going to be Batman Go from here moving forward.
    9:58
    So I would like to say, as my talking point, what happens when Lyman, like, can you imagine if Lyman Sheats just said, okay, well, like, here's Batman, he's my last kind of masterpiece, and then he just quit. What would happen? So much knowledge. It would just be sad. It would be a very, very sad day for the industry if Lyman Sheats kind of hung up his boots because all of his last four machines, I think, are just absolutely a joy to play code-wise. Yeah, absolutely agreed. And I just, look, let Batman owners have their day. They waited.
    10:40
    And yes, sure, Ghostbusters probably needs a bit of a polish, but the game is all there, right? At least the game is all there. Batman hasn't had a whole game. It's needed all this stuff. It's not even at 1.0 code. Come on! This is the thing. Batman kind of like, there was nothing in there to begin with, like nothing much. And then it just, it kind of was like a solid kind of like rules, but then they added more and more and more. Whereas Ghostbusters was kind of pretty much all there. It was just a mess. And then they kind of fixed a couple of things and messed up a couple of others. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't like Lymansheats just has these shells of these rules and then he tweaks them and adds to it. Whereas the Dwight Sullivan stuff, it's almost like he is everything and then I'll kind of fix everything after that. I'll try and balance everything out. So two different types of coding techniques, I guess. Yeah, exactly. So you're going to get your code, guys. I know everyone wants to be a little bit, I want to say impatient, but I know you have to wait a while for these codes, right? Just wait a little bit longer. Just wait longer so Maud doesn't have to read your Facebook comments, pretty much what he's saying. Yeah, I know. Everything that gets released, particularly in the pinball world, and my parallel is the pinball arcade where, just as a side note, Sorcerer was released this week. Now, Sorcerer was actually digitised by Farsight years and years and years ago, right? And it's just been released. Everyone's winging, oh, why haven't you done this game? They'll get to it, but you can just never make people happy. And Facebook comments are becoming YouTube comments. Just really hard to watch when people are, you know, just really... If you just don't take it seriously, then it's fun, okay? Like, you just read it like you read the Batuta Advocate comments. You just laugh at every single comment. I do love Batuta. So all I'm going to say is this. If you are going to have a big old whingy Facebook post, just watch out because it might be turned into a rap song in the future. That's all I'm saying. All right? So there's that. And you should have a new segment. Yeah. Just whingy stuff. Okay. Next to the news. So just I think it was a couple of hours or a day after we released our last podcast, The guys down at Straight Down the Middle Pimble, Zach and Greg, released an insanely long and detailed, I can't remember what the review was, a premium review or I can't remember what it was called, deluxe review. And it was on their Houdini Pimble machine. So they not only reviewed the Pimble machine like they normally review Pimbles, they went down to American Pimble headquarters and talked to Josh Kula and Joe Belser, the Southwick guy and the designer. And it was a really refreshing video because I don't think I've ever seen it done before. You know, when a certain game gets released, it's kind of, you know, here's the game and then you have a certain amount of information drip there to you. And then you have the deadlift stream, but it's people playing, you know, with the glass on and you see what modes they get into at the code that it's in. And we've seen a lot about American Pinball, but if you haven't seen it yet, if you haven't seen any videos on Houdini, this is like the absolute perfect way to introduce a Pinball machine because you've got the designer who did the hardware talking you through the Pinball machine. And then you have the software guy pretty much walking through the entire journey of the Pinball machine, how to get to the end and what the purpose of the Pinball machine is. And if you're a bad player, shoot for this. And this is how modes work. And I would love to see that type of video for every new machine release because I think I have a greater understanding now of why things are done in certain ways.
    14:50
    Another thing to note is you can really see the passion behind Joe and Josh. It's the number one thing that gets me excited about Pinball is the people who make them talking about them in an exciting way. They're not like, yeah, here's our Pinball machine and go and find out the rules and it's up to you.
    15:09
    Josh and Joe both talked in detail about the theme integration and how they wanted to do certain bits in the catapult. And I don't know, how much have you watched it, Marnie? Oh, look, unfortunately I had a very busy week, as I've sort of mentioned, when I went over to America. I went and visited some people for work. They're now back in town, so I'm spending a lot of my nights looking after them and days. So I haven't really had that much of a chance to have a look at it. So what I saw was the stream that Zach did, just about an hour of gameplay, but I haven't seen their review. How could you summarise it?
    15:49
    Well, I want to ask you a question, Marty. Did you know about the story behind the monkey with the bandage around his nether regions? No. Okay, there's a little piece of artwork with a monkey and he has like two band-aids around his winky target. Right. And they kind of asked Joe to explain that and he said, oh, there's a bit of a story behind that, you know, we'll let you kind of figure that out. So I Googled it and I did figure it out. So do you know the story with Fidini and testosterone and what he was trying to do? No. Okay, so testosterone is obviously very important in life, especially for males and females, but Houdini was doing crazy escapes and testosterone is extremely important to make him stronger and last longer during all his performances. So synthetic testosterone was discovered and made in a lab after he died. So Houdini's on the cutting edge of trying to make his body perform to the extreme. So what he did, well, okay, what he was planning to do, and there's actually apparently no proof of him doing it, is that he wanted to remove a monkey's testicle. Okay. And get an operation to kind of like wire it into his, I can't remember where his testosterone can get injected into his kidneys or something to get an extra, and it would slowly secrete testosterone into his system because he couldn't get an injection or anything into his bloodstream, giving him the extra kind of testosterone boost he needed. and nobody knows if he ever got it done but he was talking about it around the same time that he died so some people theorise that's maybe what kind of took him over the edge. Right, okay. So that's on the play field, how's that for theme integration?
    17:51
    That's going to some serious detail. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, this whole video is just full of these absolute nuggets and yeah, there's a really cool mystery award thing. You know, like the Mystery Awards of like Theatre of Magic, how you shoot the hat, they shoot the hat mode and you shoot it a certain amount of times and one of the times you answer the phone, move your car.
    18:14
    There's a mystery thing like that where the mystery things are coming out of the hat and every once in a while he'll pick up something wrong. Like instead of picking up the extra ball out of the hat, he'll pick up something from TNA. A great pinball machine, back for the future. Or he'll pick up a ghost sort of thing and says, who's going to call? Not that thing. So I think there's about three or four arcs to different pinball machines that kind of were in development while Houdini was.
    18:43
    Have you heard enough about Houdini, Marty? No. Look, I have and I haven't. And I'll tell you why I haven't, because after watching the stream of Houdini, I just loved the look of it. And it kind of looked like a game that would really suit me. So I do want to know more because I would be keen to have this in my collection, but it would go up against Iron Man. Iron Maiden. So, Iron Maiden's gone from being an instant buy no matter what to it's got to be better than Houdini? Correct. That's exactly right. And I was talking about Iron Maiden today. If they fuck up the art, then... They can't. But that's what I'm saying. If they do, there is something really wrong in the world, right? So this machine is going to look amazing. It is just going to look amazing.
    19:47
    It's just going to be whether the layout looks inspiring because rules will come. Rules will come, I mean. Does that matter, though? Doesn't it matter, like, probably who's coding it versus, I don't know, who have you got? You've got one Dwight pen, one Lonnie pen, and two Keith Johnson pens. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm obviously not going to get another Keith Johnson Pin until Pirates of the Caribbean, but you know, I have got Star Trek, which is always going to stay in my collection.
    20:25
    Game of Thrones will have to go at some stage because you and I both own it. I am looking to sell my Hobbit, mainly because I do want to get another machine in there, and it's probably the machine I play the least.
    20:44
    What if they just totally abandoned the Pirates of the Caribbean code and finished what they started with the Hobbit? Would that make you keep it? Yeah, it probably would, you know. It probably would. Again, I was talking about Hobbit today. I love the Hobbit. And, you know, it was sort of like I felt really uncomfortable saying that I'm thinking about selling my Hobbit. And it doesn't mean that I think it's a bad game. I just think that in my collection of, which I'll only ever have four games whilst I'm living in the current premises that I am,
    21:15
    if I want that really long, deep rule set and a really, you know, unconventional layout, I'll play Wizard of Oz. So those two side by side, I feel like I need to have something completely different. So I don't want another Steve Ritchie because I've got enough Steve Ritchies. I've never owned a John Borg.
    21:40
    You know, if Ion Maiden's going to be a Keith Elwin, I don't think anyone's got a Keith Elwin machine in this direction.
    21:47
    Who's got Archer? Someone's got it. So, you know what? I don't know. I really, really like the look of Houdini. Obviously people were talking about the fact that some of the shots are tight and so Josh reached out to us and said they're not really that tight. I think that the tight shots are probably being overstated but I like games that have got difficult shots because I don't want to master a game otherwise I get bored of it. Do you have that post from Steve Badham when he said about the tightness of the shots? Yeah, well he said, you know, just how tight are these shots? The answer is yes, they're tight, but they're findable. The game will play slow as you miss the shots, so stay determined and patient as you brick shots on the way to finding them. This game tests your ability to recover, but also gives you a chance to do so after most misses. He said good luck with the milk can shot though. So the milk-cancel is hard. Yeah, it is hard. But, you know, all games have that one shot, really. That's not all that easy.
    23:01
    There's some famously difficult shots, like, obviously, the Death Star shot on Star Wars, people have said, is very difficult. Yeah. I'm not afraid of difficult shots. I ain't afraid of those. The interesting part that he said was prepare to wait for your shots to come back when you miss them. So it is strange that, not strange, but I guess it's a talking point that a lot of the new Stern games, when you miss a shot now, because they have those targets, and I'm not sure what else it is, but their games play so fast because when you miss a shot it's coming straight back because you're hitting a target. But Houdini has those targets, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't also come back. Maybe they're not facing the flippers like all the stern ones are, and maybe they're bouncing off to the sides. I haven't paid enough attention to that. So now that you've had a good look and view of this review, what do you think about Houdini? Would you want it in your collection? Are you looking at it going, that is a great machine, I want it? Yeah, I mean, I've got three Joe Balser pins in my collection. I mean, I guess Hobbit is not in my house, but I've got Simpsons Pinball Party and Wizard of Oz. And like you, I know I have a lot more kind of pins, so I can have a bit of overlap, but, you know, that long playing game isn't something that I'm kind of seeking out at the moment. But I really want to play it. I mean, there's got to be something crazy that's got to happen for me to buy a brand new embossing one machine. But, yeah, maybe I'll own it further down the track. The review made me want to play it more than it did, you know, made me not want to play it. So, yeah, it's interesting. I've seen a lot of strings of new machines, like, for the first time. And obviously like most people it's done by a dead flip when he does his streams and obviously Buffalo Pinball when they do the Jesse Jack ones as well now.
    25:04
    This was probably the first time I really looked at a stream and thought there's something about this machine that I'm really connected to and I want this in my life.
    25:15
    It's Joe Balser man, you love Joe Balser's designs. I don't know why you don't like Simpsons single party. I really, really don't like Simpsons single party. As hard as I might. And you know what? It's the duo, right? It's the Balthier and Johnson connection.
    25:36
    I don't know. I know people love it, and I know it's just me. We'll talk about that a little bit later on because I've got a story about Simpsons. But can we head to our exclusive, exclusive, exclusive news?
    25:51
    We're racking up the production value here. Really? It's all ours next year. It's me too. It was funny. I linked you to a, it was a deep-rooted American Pinball having a little argument on Pinside. I can't be bothered talking about it, you know, about Houdini and the possibility of a remake. So I linked you to the trademark of that American Pinball had on Houdini. Yes. What did you find, Marty, on this website? Right. So this is a trademark website in the US and, you know, let's say you caught me at a slow time during the week and I just looked at it and I thought, oh, I'm a bit of a curious person. I like to search things. So when I looked up American pinball and what other trademarks they have in the pinball sort of world, a really interesting name came back.
    26:50
    Yes, Marnie. Well, you found it, so I'm not going to say it. You can say it, Marnie. Go for it. Oktoberfest.
    26:57
    Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest, oh my God. Oktoberfest, oh my God. Put your money down now. Oktoberfest. So, I mean, they said in the past that they're not, I believe it was them, that they're not kind of actively going after, you know, licensed things. They want to find things that everyone knows but they're original in the sense that they don't have to pay any licensing fees and they have more freedom to do whatever they want. So Octoberfest matches that bill and they've trademarked it as a pinball machine so to speak so no one else can possibly release a pinball machine under Octoberfest. And yeah, this is American Pinball and American company possibly doing a pinball machine about a German beer festival. Just, just, Kevin, can I just ask you the question that's on my mind? Yes. If you don't mind, can I, can, will you allow me to ask this question? Go for it.
    27:52
    Who the fuck would buy a Pinball machine about Oktoberfest? A lot of people, Marty. Really? Who would buy a Pinball machine? You're right. As soon as I, as soon as I said it, it's just in my name. It's like everybody that's in a freaking pub, right? No. Or the Germans? Beer? Anyone that likes to wear their Liederhausen? Everyone, think about, you know, Lucy.
    28:18
    Ah, sexy Lucy, the devil, yo. It's a devil in a bikini. This is like, you know, beautiful German women wearing the little outfit. What's the outfit called? The Liederhausen? Liederhausen. And what's the guys one calls? Oh, I don't know. Give me time to Google it. The Boysenhausen? The Boysenhausen.
    28:40
    The Boys in Housen. That is terrible. Do you all be the Housen Boys in Housen? I don't know. It's a cool thing because... Is it? Ok, whoever goes to Oktoberfest and says, Oh yeah, we had a really shit time.
    28:57
    Lucas's story about Oktoberfest, like the smile on his face about how much fun he had at Oktoberfest, and even all those years ago, he still has that original smile on his face when he talks about it, right? So a pinball machine based off just having fun and drinking. I don't know. What do you do in Noctoberfest besides drink beer? I'm trying to make it sound cool. You drink lots of beer and you eat German sausage.
    29:27
    You eat that boys in the home. That's what you tell me. It's German sausage. And you sing along, you sway with your giant beer glass and you basically just get drunk and then start abusing everybody. That's pretty much what happens, isn't it?
    29:57
    Yeah, I don't know. I think it's cool. I mean, original themes are just, you know, so much more fun. You're not constricted by the world that you're trying to, you know. How much fun can you get? Guardians of the Galaxy is a really fun movie. How fun is the Pimble Machine? There's not one funny bit in there really, except for the bobbly bobo thing, which is not intentionally funny. No, that's right. So, you know what I mean? Like, Darlene is funnier. Lexi Lightbeat is funnier. All these things that are fun. That's what Pimble was in the 90s. So, bring it on, I reckon. I'm excited about it. I mean who knows when it come out maybe next year or something because they still just getting started with the production of Hujini Okay well can everybody please please write in to us and tell us whether you think Oktoberfest is a good theme or is it Krappenhausen Krappenhausen. It's American Pimball, I mean they could have done like 4th of July or some big celebration there, but then no one in Australia or Europe is going to buy a 4th of July Pimball machine. And Oktoberfest is so big and so fun that people, like I go to an Oktoberfest party almost every year.
    31:10
    And, you know, a bunch of, some German friends that I have, they make everyone dress up and we have a good time and drink beer and eat sausage.
    31:18
    That's all it is, just drinking beer and eating sausage. It lasts a month. They do it for an entire month. So, yeah, look, I, as I've been talking about it, and I'm just going to say on record that I really do think, I think it is a stupid theme. But I just do. But I can kind of understand how they could make it into kind of like, you know, your Bally Williams, sort of almost like even early 90s when they had very comical pinball machines. I mean, let's face it, there was a machine that was released called Game Show. Do you remember Bally Game Show? No. Is it before the Dean's Year? Yeah, I think it was alphanumeric and, you know, it was the welcome to game show, I'm your host, Keith McTeeth.
    32:11
    So, I can, and it was, it was based on a game show and it was a very, I actually quite enjoyed it. It was a very simple, simple game rules and really probably hasn't stood the test of time. But that kind of humour, I could probably understand they could make this quite funny. Like, almost all 90s Pinball machines are based off a stupid kind of thing. Like, the thing about junkyards, you're stuck in a junkyard with a crazy guy and he's trying to kill you and you have to, you know, shoot toast at the bulldog and, do you know what I mean? Like, the first of these is stupid. So, Oktoberfest is so broad and wide that you can pretty much, you know, do anything related to partying, drinking and having a good time and, you know, make modes based off that and away you go. Well, again, right into us. Tell us whether you think Oktoberfest would make good people. Are you starting with Marty or Ryan? It's basically what it is.
    33:06
    It really is. I don't get it. I could get it. I would need to see it. But right now, when I first saw that, I just thought, is that a mistake?
    33:19
    You found it. I found it. You found it first, Marty, exclusive, head-to-head exclusive. Yeah, absolutely. And what was also really funny was that as soon as I found that, that was when I sort of started, I kept looking. And I was looking for some crazy things and you were linking me back to some crazy things. But the other thing that I... Rainbow Glow. Rainbow Glow, right? That's like Soul Glow, but with rainbows. I know. And I think there was also somebody in the pinball sort of category had patented something that sounded like Pinn Stadium lighting, but 10 years ago they let the patent expire. Ooh, big mistake. That guy's a billionaire. Right? So, good friend of the show, Scott. He has just come on in at the right time and got that. But that was very interesting. But the other one that I just found as I just happened to be sort of searching around, and it's no big news, but obviously the people that made Pimble Circus, or they're currently making Pimble Circus, and they are going to be showing a title at the Texas Pimble Festival.
    34:34
    They've got the rights to Kingpin. So it's definitely Kingpin is their new machine, is all I'm saying. Kingpin. Like, we've all seen the pictures, like we saw the pictures under the playfield that had that insert that looked exactly like the insert on the playfield, but having a look at this trademark website, they've got the rights to Kingpin, it's happening, just letting you know. Spoiler alert! Sorry guys, if you were sort of really hanging out to find it, it's definitely Kingpin.
    35:06
    So the company, is that the Illinois Pinball Company? Illinois? Oh, yes. So I went to their website and it's, is this Gene Cunningham or something? It says, if you go to illinoispinball.com, it says thanks to all our customers, we're not selling past directly. In the meantime, please contact Planetary Pinball Supply. So I guess these are the guys that own all of the licenses to these games, but they're not going to make them all like, Just like Dutch Pinball was going to make PimBot 3.0, yeah, the mega super mega collector edition, yep. Please get us out of debt edition.
    35:53
    Yeah, so just like them, I mean, they didn't have the rights to do it, so they just were going to license the rights of somebody else. Just like the Circus Maximus are going to do Kingpin and Circus, what's the other one called? Pinball Circus as well. Yeah, the Pinball Circus, yeah. Yeah, anyway.
    36:15
    What are we going to do next, mate? The new segment? No, what I was going to say was that Illinois Pinball Corp, you can, so this is the Justia Trade Marks website, so J-U-S-T-I-A, just look it up. But it's interesting when you look at Illinois Pinball Corp, they had or do have, like, what is it just, all I'm saying is go there. So if you have a look at Illinois Pinball Corp there, they had the rights to these machines, but it looks like they've sort of all been abandoned and so now they're open for other people. So it's interesting. I remember when Dialed In was on the eve of getting released, everyone kind of went on the website and found stuff like Killer App and Dialed In. They're like, well, you know, which one is it? Is it going to be called Killer App or Dialed In? So I guess it's just for original things. If someone's bringing out like a Star Wars Pinball machine, it's not going to be in there because they don't own the trademark. But for everything that's kind of original, so to speak, they have to trademark that. So everyone's just keep on that website. Whenever Stern does their original Steve Ritchie theme, if that's actually happening, I guess that has to be on there before the announcement. So if people press F5 enough as a collective, we can all find out information quicker than we need to so that we can just have podcast content. I guess I don't know why we need to find out before. It's just a talking point, right? Well, and because we're very curious and, you know, we're all sick of waiting, right? So we just want to know what's next. It's human nature, right? It is. We are curious by nature. So you can either tell us or we are going to track you down and find you.
    38:05
    Creepy, Marty. Original themes. Total Nuka Annihilation. It's just cleared customs. I don't think I'm going to get it this week because of the whole pick-up thing. It's the world's longest, you know, customs clearest kind of process. But people have been getting deep into the game.
    38:25
    Reactor 9 is the last reactor you have to blow up in TNA. And I watched a little, kind of the end of the stream, I caught it at the best time where Bolin was on, like, he was playing on site at a place called Pinkadia, I think. And he was on Reactor 9 and he managed to unfortunately drain Reactor 9 so he didn't get to the end. He really only had a couple of shots to go. Yeah. It was exciting. I was getting excited for him. And now Carl D'Angelo has his TNA at home and he set up a stream. The coolest thing about the new code is that you can instantly look at any part of the stream and as long as you have the score display you can tell what reacted the person is on. Just look at the last digit and that's it. So he had like a two hour video and I didn't manage to catch it live and I just kind of skipped through five minutes at a time and just looked at that last value. And within two minutes I can tell that he got to react to C, just as a talking point. I will go back and watch more of it, but he hasn't gone all the way to React turn 9 yet. So there's a bit of a challenge at the moment. Who's going to get there first? Is it going to be Bowen playing it on site? Is it going to be Carl D'Andre playing it at home? I'm sure Carl probably has it set up a bit tighter than it is on site because Carl doesn't set up games easy. So who do you have your money on, Marty?
    39:50
    Look, I watched Bowen doing it live. So I was watching that live Twitch stream of it. And what was really interesting is that Bowen had this really, really simple strategy, which was always be in multiball. Always. Regardless. Doesn't matter what you're doing. If you're out of multiball, get back in multiball and then start progressing your reactors. So when he was, you know, on about to destroy Reactor 9, he only had a couple of shots to go and instead of going back into multiball, he went, you know what, I'm just going to try for a couple of shots and get it. No. He should not have done that. He should have just gone back into multiball. The game punishes you. Like, it pretty much, if you don't play the perfect game, it's going to, you know, it's going to make you hit the pin. So, yeah, you have to keep your concentration, like, 100% of the time because if you, you know, if you defer from that strategy, you're gone. Absolutely. So that's too fast. It's not just that. And, you know, I don't want to come across as a major, like, Bowen fanboy or anything, right? But this guy's freaking amazing. And obviously I know there's others as well, but it just reminds you how amazing he is when you see his flipper skills on a game like that. And I don't want to pull out the whole, I've played it, therefore I'm better than you. We know that's the case. But what I'm saying is... What? What I'm saying, I've played TNA. Okay, so I know how fast it is. I know how your reaction times are going to be. Okay, I thought you were saying you're better than Bo and Kieran's. No, seriously. Not when it comes to pinball.
    41:45
    Just everything else. Okay. But having now played that game and know how quickly you need to react, watching him play and watching his flipper skills is incredible. It just reminds me how good these elite players are. He almost made it look not too easy for me, but you just think, you know, when he makes a kind of little mistake, you're like, oh, why could you do that for? But it's because he's so good, because he had it under control, you know, and the whole multi-ball thing. I'm guessing I'm going to struggle to bop, like, you know, Reactor 2 or something, right? So I'm reporting soon on that. Who do you have your money on? So let's just say Bowen, Carl D'Angelo or other. Some dark horse. Steve Baden on site. Someone. They're getting out there. More and more good players are going to be able to play him on site. You choose someone, I'll choose someone else. Okay. I'll pick Carl only because I met him recently and, you know, I reckon. Okay, I'll choose Bowen then simply out of being the opposite to you and yeah, one point for me if he wins all over you because we're definitely still keeping track of head to head points. Yeah, we are and I am going to be sending a note to Carl straight after this saying I don't care what time of night it is there, whether you're asleep and whether you've got kids or I don't care. He's busy, man. Get up now, you've got a machine right there, you can stream it, get on, get us to Rector 9, my reputation is at stake here.
    43:19
    So we want to introduce a new segment and we can call this anything we want. I just wrote a little note saying Slam the Top 100. And the reason why it's called that is we're going to try and have opposing views on different Pinball machines in the Pinside Top 100. And the slam part comes from partially stealing this from one, Nate Shivers, and two, the Slam Silt podcast. So the Slam Tilt Podcast have this section every time they have someone on where they're trying to compete on who can convince their guests which manufacturer has the better Timball machines from a certain year, like 1997 or 19...
    44:02
    Unfortunately, I don't know anything about the Timball machines made before 1990, so we're safe to say that almost all the Timball machines in the Pinside Top 100 are from the 90s onwards. And there's a couple in there that are snuck in from the 80s. So what we're going to do, and Mike Shivers used to have a session where he used to just type in a random number in random.org and then go to the, you know, from 1 to 100, go to Pinside Top 100 and just talk about the machine just in detail. Talk about the shots, the art, this and that. So what we're going to do is we're both going to generate a random number. It could be anywhere from the best Pinball machine according to Pinside to the 100th, which is still possibly a decent machine. And we're going to spend, see I haven't fleshed out the rules right, but you know, we just talk about it on the fly and you can give me your opinion. So maybe I talk about my machine for 30 seconds, you talk about your machine for 30 seconds, and then I've got 30 more seconds, you've got 30 more seconds, and I can either rebut what you said in your first 30 seconds or continue talking about how cool my demo machine is. Okay, go for it. And then after, it's literally just a two-minute debate, right? Yep. And then after that, we'll put up a poll on Facebook and people can, after the episodes, people can vote for who wins and who loses. Okay. Based off the arguments, not based, you know. Well, it's going to be very hard because I think people will already know whether it's a good or a bad machine. Okay, but okay, we'll just keep it in mind. If someone makes a valid point. 100, so there's nothing going to be really crappy, right?
    45:37
    Okay, let's go to 100. What's 100? Junkyards. Okay, I don't think I'm going to beat Junkyards and Medieval Madness. That'd be quite hard. So I'm not sure how we're going to do this to make sure we don't get duplicates further down the track, but let's go to random.org. Okay.
    45:53
    A bit of editing might be required. So I already know which one mine is. Do you want me to generate a number for you? Sure. Okay. Yours is number 37.
    46:08
    Okay, and yours is number? 83. Oh, yeah, baby. Okay, 37 is current. Ah, X-Men. I know very little about X-Men.
    46:20
    Okay. And yours is what, sorry? Mine is Pinbot. Ah, easy. Yep. Before 1990, easy. Okay. I am ready. Okay, so I'm going to get a timer for 30 seconds because we're not going to allow us to kind of drag on about this.
    46:37
    Since you have the higher number and the worst Pinball machine, I'll go first so you have the last words. Okay, that sounds good. We're just making up this format as we go. Just kiss and giggle, let's go. Okay, ready, set, go. X-Men Pinball Machine, John Borg design, a beautiful, massive Wolverine, excuse me, in the middle of the price of the holiday, totally doesn't block any of his shots. Unlimited flow, shots that lead into other shots, just a multi-ball start that spins the balls around. It definitely wasn't done before by John Borg a couple of years ago in that Pinball Machine that nobody bought, and then it just spits the balls everywhere in your face. That's my 30 seconds, mate. Go. Okay, what can I say? Ready? Go. What can I say about Pinball, right? I can say a couple of things. First of all, Python Angelo. There you go, bitches. He was the man and he put this crazy art on it, right? And our main man, Barry Ailsler, did the layout, right? Those two together have made magic. It had, you know, remember the visor that came up locking the ball underneath it? That was great. The grid shots in the middle. Oh my God. But 1986 was changed forever once Pinbot was released. Done. That's 30 seconds. Okay, my turn. Go. Just to rebut what you said, basically Pinbot is the worst of the bots because Jack Bot and the brighter Pinbot hold a higher value because people think they're better games. and Jack Bot is pretty much Pin Bot and with all the mistakes taken out that they couldn't do because of technology. X-Men has never been redone or re-themed or anything because it is so damn good. It's so good that Rota Dave lists it in his top five Pinball machines ever and I just made that fact up. Bam.
    48:37
    You got 30 seconds. Three, two, one, go. Okay, I'll tell you my problem with X-Men. The problem is I find, well up until the recent code update, there's the code, I didn't find the rules very intuitive and I know you tried to gloss over it and made it funny but that Wolverine toy is just an absolute joke. But the worst thing about X-Men, and here's my mic drop moment, is the Ellie with that stupid ramp that goes from the left to the right and drops the ball right down the middle. Thank you, I'm done.
    49:10
    Okay. We're done. Where have you been playing X-Men for it to drop the ball? Is that when you shoot the ramp in the middle of it moving? Yes. Okay. That doesn't happen very often. It happens all the time. Okay. That does. So, you know. That was fun. Come on. No research. That was fun to just try and sell a pinball machine that I don't actually like that much. That's right. So you, Matt, we'll probably put a poll up on the Facebook page, but write in to us and tell us whether you think X-Men, the stern X-Men is the better game or Pinball Royalty, which is Pinbot, is the better game and therefore I am the better person. Doesn't have a sexy sex robot chick on it, so it just doesn't hold its value.
    50:06
    There we go. That was good fun. Both obviously very different games. So let me just talk about X-Men because, you know, it's meant to be a two minute X-Men. It doesn't have to be.
    50:21
    It's just one of these games, I have mentioned this before, it's one of these games where it really hasn't been around in the public for all that long. So even when it first came out, it wasn't necessarily at the heyday of Pimball, so you didn't really see them in the wild that often. And most of them are now just in people's collections and they've sort of gone underground. And obviously since then they had that code update which apparently has just reinvented the game as code can do. But I've never played the game since they've put the new code in. Ah, okay. That's why you don't like it. Well, I actually do like it. The reason why I don't like it was because I was arguing against you this day. Okay, I'll point it. You meant maybe you should have done that next week when the results come in and at least you can be truthful then. People aren't going to vote for Pimball now. You have to keep the lie for at least seven days.
    51:15
    No, people are going to be voting for Pimball because, you know, Parson Angelo, rest in peace. Peace out, man.
    51:22
    This week in Pimball, bitches. Well, so let's talk about this week in Pinball but being probably a major piece of news for this week. So today, it is a piece of news. You can get George to carry on to us as much as you want, right?
    51:45
    It's a piece of news. So we got today, our week in Pinball, today we got invited over to a very, very nice person from, From Aussie Arcade who happens to have owned since I think November last year the Multimorphic P3 Pinball.
    52:06
    Yeah, you can listen to this fine gentleman talk to Kaneda about it for about an hour but we got to play it today and yeah, I think I've mentioned before I had a couple of flips on it but I was so busy and so tired when I did it that I didn't really pay attention. But once you have someone next to you that is passionate about it, that has played it and can explain all the rules and how things change over, it's a totally different kind of experience because, you know, you kind of, like I said before, with American Pinball and you can see the passion behind it and it just makes you like things more than you previously did. So we got to see a lot. We got to see the internals. We got to play almost every game there was. Yes, we saw his name was Nick and we actually even saw him do a playfield swap. Now, the playfield swap actually did take probably 15 minutes. I went off and played another game only because he was showing everybody all the components of everything. And it was actually really fascinating. And you'll see we've actually got a picture of the slipper assembly, I guess. The flipper and bumper, the slings assembly that slides over the playfield. We actually got to see that taken out. Yeah, so the swap took 15 minutes and 14 of those minutes was him talking about it. So it literally takes a minute or less or a tiny bit more to swap the entire thing, Which is just mind-bogglingly easy. And the engineering behind this thing... It's insane! It's insane because everything has to be rethought. And you've probably heard that before, but unless you see it in person, you know, the kind of floating mechanisms with the flippers and the slings.
    53:58
    For some reason, I mean, when people talk about things, and I know it's stupid because people listen to us now and I want them to listen and understand. And when people have been talking about how this thing works, I kind of zone out a little bit because I'm the kind of person, what's it called, a kinesthetic learner, I have to see it and touch it in person to learn how it works. I thought for some reason that it was a big touchscreen over the entire LCD, but it's not. It's an array of optos, I guess, in a zigzag grid kind of fashion. So it knows where the ball is because of which opto is kind of being interrupted. And because of that, he just knows where the ball is at any one time. So those targets that you see on the side, kind of an upper half of the generic part of the playfield, they're not actually targets. They look like targets, but they're just pieces of plastic. And he just knows that you hit it because of where it is on the grid, which I didn't know.
    54:57
    So can I just go back just a second? Because we are very excited about this. So, Ryan, for those people that are listening that have absolutely no idea what we're talking about, what is the multimorphic P3 pinball machine? Please explain. You'd be better at explaining this than me, but basically it's a modular system, and I know you've heard this before with PIN2000 and possibly with the highway pinball machine, But the difference with those is it's an entire playfield and you take the playfield out and you put a new one in and that's the modular fashion that it's in. This is different in that the top kind of two-thirds, so the bottom two-thirds of the Pinball machine is generic at the moment across all the playfields. So that's the part you don't have to change. Yeah, but also there's one major part of that bottom two-thirds of the playfield, and that is the entire thing is... Yeah, it's an LCD screen. It's an LCD screen. And you've got a piece of Perspex over it, so the ball is gliding along, and the entire playfield changes. There's no artwork, it's not wood. You're playing on Perspex and an LCD screen underneath it. Like a virtual Pinball machine, except it's not virtual, it's a real Pinball machine, right? And then the upper one-third of the Pinball machine is that that's what you buy as well as the software. And developers, I guess, can make software to tie into these play fields that people already have or they can invent or bring out their own hardware as well. And I think it's one and a half grand for one of them and two and a half grand for the other, including the software. And when you think about it, I guess that's pretty cheap, but you do need to buy the system, the base system, which is, I believe it's about $10,000 at the moment with a couple of the playfields. And it's extremely, it looks extremely well made. I like the look of it. I like that industrial, I'm not sure what it is. It's like really sleek, like brushed metal. Yeah, it is. It looks premium. Everything, nothing on this Dillard Machine for me looks cheap.
    57:10
    It looks like an engineering kind of masterpiece for me. Yeah. So here was my preconceived ideas going into this.
    57:19
    And this is from a friend of mine, Shane. Hi, Shane. He played this at Texas Pinball Festival many, many, many years ago. And I've heard this spoken about from a number of people since saying that the flippers just don't feel like normal flippers. And then the other comment people made was that, you know what, it's probably too far removed from what we expect from pinball and it's not pinball enough.
    57:51
    What are your thoughts on that and then I'll tell you my thoughts. Well, just before I answer that question, I think, I'm not sure if I told you or if it was someone else because we were hanging out the night before. Actually, it's been a really big week in Pinball, three days in a row for me of Pinball events. I was so tired last night and I said, oh my gosh, I probably have to go to this place. I can't wait to play this thing. But I'm actually afraid of playing it because I want to like it so much, but I just don't think I'm going to like it at all. And then I'm going to have to talk about it on the podcast. Do you know what I mean? When someone invites you over to their house, then I want to be truthful, and I have to. I'm not here to chill anything. And I was blown away with how much fun I had today. I might not have said it on my face. I'm on my three-hour sleep. You and I never expressed whether we liked something or not until we get on the podcast, so I didn't know whether you liked it or not. Bullshit. I messaged you. I'm like, this thing is actually really good. It's like I'm not lying. You know, this thing is really interesting, I think is what you said. Yeah.
    58:55
    The flippers for me, they do feel different, but they don't feel different in the way that I'm like, well, this isn't pinball. Like, that's what virtual pinball is for me is when you have that, like, lag and stuff. Like, that's why I can't play virtual pinball anymore unless it's actually perfect. So, to me, the flippers felt fine. They seem to be a little bit stronger on the backhand than they are with shots that you're aiming beforehand. Yes. And I don't know why that is, or I'm sure someone who's really good at repairing Pinball machines will know why that happens, but backhand thing could be really nice and strong and accurate, whereas the other ones have to go a little bit slower. And I'm not sure if you can adjust the flip-a-call power. I mean, we're going to be talking about it, but we didn't kind of dive into the technical side of it. We didn't actually even look at the menu system and with all the settings you can change, so I'm not sure about that one. Yeah, so one thing I noted about the flippers is that it's not that they don't feel like pinball flippers, right? They do, the game feels like a pinball machine. It plays like a pinball machine, like a pinball machine. But it's not trying to, it's not trying to be a regular pinball machine. It knows what it is. I know that sounds so pretentious to say it knows itself, but it does. It just knows what it wants to be, and what it wants to be is it wants to take the pinball experience further.
    60:25
    The flippers feel different. They're very strong, but they're not snappy. So you don't necessarily get very fast shots, but you get strong shots. And because the playfield at the back, and in particular the ramps, even though the playfield at the back starts at about two thirds of the way up, the ramps themselves probably start at about three quarters of the way up. So that's a long distance the ball's got to travel to be able to get up a ramp, and it does get up the ramp just. Just, as I say, we didn't look through the menu, so I'm not sure how, you know, if that can be adjusted, but it wasn't a problem really. I mean, like, we were able to hit all our shots, we just had to be really accurate with those long ramp shots, right? You had to completely relearn your shots It does not feel like a Stern doesn feel like a Jersey Jack doesn feel like a Bally Williams it doesn feel like any other Pinball machine that I played But, you know, when Wizard of Oz first came out, it didn't feel like any other, for me, any other Pinball machine or company that I'd played before. It was just new. Yeah. And that's what this is like. So let's go through the games you played. We had a quick game of barnyards. That's for kids, that's not for adults, that's just for a two or a three year old or a four year old. It's a bit of an offensive game.
    62:00
    Why is that, Marty? Because when you... Don't make me say it, I'm making you say it. Because when you actually have to hit the ball at these animals that are going from left to right on the screen, and they are barnyard animals, they're pigs and cows, but when you actually kill them they go into a puzzle mode. What kill them? You're actually killing them. Well they go... What do you kill them? Don't you kill them? Is this like an avatar, just like a slaughterhouse? Yeah, I think that's what it is. But they disappear in a puff of smoke and it says, poof. So, you know what, if you can get all up in your arms about Buddy Lucy, this is the most offensive pinball machine right here.
    62:48
    Controversy, Controversy. Hilarious, hilarious. So, Ryan wanted to see Barnyard, didn't get through a full game. I knew what it was after the first flip. I know. I didn't think it was going to be that simple. It's pretty simple. Cannon Lagoon, fairly simple. I mean, the Cannon Lagoon playfields is a grand and a half if you don't buy it with your playfields, with your base Pinball machine. It's pretty basic. It's just five shots and that's it and the ball just kind of returns back to you. So the middle shot, the two sides and the ones in between. And they're not ramps or anything, so they just kind of get into a saucer and then a solenoid kicks it back up. But there is a screen on that one, so I guess that's what you're paying a bulk of the money for. Kale Lagoon was okay, it seems pretty simple. I never got to play it, but it's fun and simple.
    63:49
    I think it was fun. I think that one is a little bit too simple for me. Apparently there's a bit of a wizard mode where you get some octopus and you can play, but the graphics are too cartoony for me to be able to be engaged and get into it.
    64:04
    One game that I seem to like, which someone messaged me and said, are you pretending to like this? No, I actually did like it, is the Asteroids one. Rocks. Yeah, Rocks. I'm sure people have been playing this and not thinking anything about it, but it was kind of fun. You know, you play a similar game on your mobile phone or in arcades.
    64:23
    You're just smashing kind of flying asteroids and you've got a shield. And the cool thing was, you didn't get to experience it, I guess, because you lost all your balls before your power went down. But after your shield goes down and the rocks hit your flippers, it reduces the power so much that I had, I think, a flipper at about 30% and I had my right flipper at like 80%. So that left flipper was pretty much only used to post-pass, not post-pass, what's that, alley-pass or shafts? Tap-pass. Tap-pass to the other flipper because 30% was not enough to get it to do anything.
    64:59
    So I was kind of surviving on one flipper and that was fun. I'm not sure how often that would last. I'll tell you what it is. That right there was a fantastic party game. And because remember we played it there was a four player game and you were the top score out of those four players and then it was up to me to beat your score and everyone was around me egging me on to beat you and you were sort of like trashing me so I wouldn't beat you. And right then and there, that was the perfect party moment for pinball. It was a simple game. Everybody sort of was relatively, the skills were pretty even because it's just, there's no ramps, there's no nothing. It's just asteroids that you're trying to hit. So it's pretty simple, but it was incredibly competitive. So I really, really liked rocks. The cool thing about that is that that one doesn't rely at all, I believe, on the upper playfields. No, it doesn't. Box of Us. Yeah, Box of Us. That one just costs a couple hundred dollars, like $150 or whatever the software costs. So that one's good. And then, of course, we played Lexi Lightspeed, which is their main title. And, you know, we talk a lot about Pimball Machines and new people playing and, you know, Pimball Machines not being intuitive. This isn't, I'm not going to pretend this is like this super deep game, but within a couple of minutes and just playing like two games, it's so intuitive because everything's on the screen and that's the power of this LCD screen is that, you know, something's on there. It says shoot this and it's there on the screen. You don't have to look up. You don't have to look down, left, right. It's right there. Once you kind of have the basics, the machine explains itself. And it calls it out. I remember the very first game, I actually had Mick, whose place it was, and his machine, he was telling me what to do, and that was confusing me a bit. But by the time I'd finished my second game, only because it was just bombarded with all this information. Yeah, yeah. Right? But by the second game, I really understood it well. And by the third game, well, we all know what happened on my third game. Well, you've been his grand champion by 100%. You almost got into the wizard mode, which is the Earth bit, but to get into that, you have to finish all five modes. It won't let you fake your way in. You can't just attempt the modes. So some of the modes are easy, like the fart swamp one.
    67:37
    Some are a bit more challenging, but they're all completely different, which is good. I didn't know this. I hardly watched any Lexi videos, but there's an eight ball multiple that you can work towards. So there's a UFO carousel spinning vertically and you can lock balls into that. And yeah, you can lock two balls inside a two ball multiple or you can keep on going into eight balls, which is pretty cool. It's, I don't know, this is the thing I wasn't expecting to like it and I did. I'm not saying that I'm going to go out and buy this thing because it's quite expensive. There aren't many games on it yet. But the potential for me is there. And, you know, all it needs is, I guess, a really kick-ass theme or something to invite more people to buy. And the ball will start rolling. And there was also another, I thought, quite innovative sort of mini-game as well. So the main game that we played was called, the full name of it is Lexi Lightspeed Escape from Earth. But there's also another mini game called Lexi Lightspeed Secret Agent Showdown. You remember this? Yes, I do. So this was... No, I'm not actually saying that because I beat you. Spoiler alert.
    68:57
    But what I really liked about this, so this was an eight ball game. So how it works is, so start a four player game and each player doesn't necessarily play a ball at a time. They play their full game before it goes to the next player. And you have a total of eight balls and your objective is to lock eight balls in the UFO mechanism that will capture all eight balls. To start an 8-ball multi-ball to then have the maximum multiplier that you can get the jackpots, right? That's it. That's it in its simplicity. But if you drain a ball, you lose that. Even the game still goes. You lose the ball, it means you only have a maximum of 7 balls that you can lock. And how do you lose a ball? You can either lose a ball straight down the middle or down the sides, or if you accidentally hit 2 of the... A scoop, yeah. Yeah, the scoop, or if you shoot into the pop-humpers by accident, it's probably going to go in there. So you really have to be kind of quite accurate with your shooting during this first period, this first stage of the game. And then when you get the last ball in, or if you drain your last ball, it'll then start that multi-ball and you... With as many balls that you've locked. Yes. So if you only lock one ball, then it's... Or two balls. I think you have to get at least two, right? I think we all got like five or six, I think you got seven possibly.
    70:28
    And yeah, it was fun because then it's just like you do all this hard work, you know, which maybe takes one, two or three minutes. And then it's the payoff of how long you can kind of keep that going for. And that was another fun part of the game that I can play. I can play that for ages with Mace, you know. Yeah, absolutely agreed. And what was really interesting is that that is all absolute quintessential risk reward. You've got to lock as many balls without losing them, obviously, but then when you start multiball, and in fact somebody actually got six balls locked but still only managed to get, I think, 300,000. I think the highest score was 1.9 million because it's not just starting multiball with six balls. You've then got to hit the jackpot shots which of this particular game of Lexi Lightspeed, that back mod that goes in, the two hardest shots were the jackpot shots.
    71:25
    So it really is not easy, it's complete risk reward and that again in a party environment with your friends was just so much fun to watch. Yeah, there is another game coming out, Cosmic Kart Racing I believe and I'm not sure what that's going to have but one interesting conversation is what machines that are out now could they replicate? I know they're probably not allowed to replicate it but Attack from Mars, highly regarded as an amazing Pinball machine, that doesn't have anything really, I wasn't mistaken, doesn't have anything of really importance on the bottom two thirds of the play field. Except for the Martians. And you couldn't have the Martians slapping up and down, but those targets on the side, you can emulate that because you know where the ball is.
    72:15
    So it would be cool if there was some way for them to kind of like release a $2,000 Attack from Mars clone kind of thing because, you know, that'd be cool if they could do something like that, you know, buy a $2,000 Attack from Mars as long as you have a multimorphic system. But where do you think the future of this system lies? Do you think it will become a thing?
    72:41
    What do you think it needs to bring out to become a thing? First of all, I genuinely hope that this becomes a thing. And for a couple of reasons. One, because I want somebody who has put his life on the line to make this work. I want it to work, right? Right? And everyone has spoken to Jerry that's from P3 and I remember seeing interviews with him five years ago, like even earlier when it was just this bare bones game. This guy just wanted it to work and he has thrown everything at it to work. So I want it to work because I want him to succeed. Right? There you go. Second thing, I do really want Pinball to evolve. I really do want it to evolve. And this might not be how everybody wants it to evolve, but I like that it represents an evolution, right? But in order for it, I think, to succeed, it's got to do one of two things. And, well, the first one I was going to say was it needs to have a killer theme. But the second, and maybe the way around it, is to somehow replicate the pinball experiences of old. And you said something like Attack from Mars or even we talked about Pinbot where you could make that sort of assembly with the visor coming up and some ramps around it. You could make that quite easily. Yeah.
    74:08
    Yeah, I don't think they're going to go down that path. It was just kind of an interesting conversation. But one thing to note before I forget is the sound system on this thing is absolutely killer. Yeah. Lexi Live Speed, it does actually have good sound. It has good call-out. The bass is insane. Everything was coming through the speakers crystal clear. It really puts some other systems that I won't mention to shame in the sound department.
    74:36
    I wanted to see it as well. I'm not a business analyst that was going to give you tips on how to get there, but in a perfect world, it does work. And then, you know, the young developers that are making these Dimmel machines, you know, don't sit there and carve out whitewoods. They have these things and they make kits or they have Lexi Lightspeed and they just sit there and they program a game on its own. I know there's a big barrier to entry with that because you don't only have to know the rules, you need to code that LCD screen, which is quite massive, right? Yeah. Right.
    75:16
    So I'm not sure. I mean, do they try and get people that make mobile phone games and say, hey, just kind of adapt this for a pinball machine, you know, and just use that kind of like that asteroid that, you know, bottom two-thirds of the play field? Because that would be quite easy, right, but quite limiting in, don't you think, like there's so many simple mobile phone games, right? Yeah. And that could possibly be ported over to that lower two-thirds? I know what you're saying. To actually have minigames type thing, you could, so many of them that require interaction with something that is over the screen. You could do that. But I think for this to really grab, I think, the greater public's attention, they need to have something that makes everybody stand up and take notice. And for me I think it's either a killer theme or something that people are familiar with. The bridge is the gap between this which is quite revolutionary. I've got it. What have you got? Observerfest.
    76:29
    Won't customers stand. Everyone knows it. It's on the rise. Observerfest. It's done. Houdini. The third company that's going to make a Houdini pinball machine. Well, yeah, they could do. Although, just taking a step back, when we were looking at all that trademark sort of thing, it is American pinball that have the rights to Houdini pinball. Yeah, that's what the argument over the whole on Pinside was.
    76:59
    The Dipper guys are saying that it's not illegal, but you can't trademark. You can't have a trademark for Houdini, Advertise the Tumor Machine because you don't own the Houdini name.
    77:13
    Something like that, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to pretend to know what that's all about. It was interesting. I like seeing people argue sometimes.
    77:21
    Anyway. I guess also on the future of pinball as well. So another thing that, and it's also, get this, it's also in fitting with This Week in Pinball. Um, because I've noticed there's been a thread on Aussie Arcade, it's been around for a while, um, and it's talking about a VR machine that's being made, or a, like a, almost like a, a game controller that is almost like the size of the end of a pinball machine that you can plug into either your PC or your, um, you know, your PS4, and it simulates the flippers. And the plunger on a pinball machine that you then watch on your TV screen. And so these two guys, and we met them over the weekend. So this is Phil and Fab. They've actually now put together this device. And the purpose of it really is to actually use with VR pinball machines. So if you're playing Pinball FX2, I think it is, on PS4, Or you can actually have your goggles on watching in 3D or, you know, virtual reality obviously, but actually have this device in front of you that feels like a pinball machine that you're playing. Yeah, I don't think this is a new thing. Like, they're not the first able to do it. I think I saw a video like two or three years ago of someone doing the same thing and building it so that it feels like you're at a real pinball machine while you're in the virtual reality world. And yeah, they're the ones that started the Wonder Woman rumors because they actually printed out that Wonder Woman picture and put it on their little virtual cab. Yes, from the DeviantArt. Very funny, guys. I know. So apparently Plunger works. It's also got full sort of nudging abilities. So it registers how you move the machine around. I think that's very cool. And I just thought I'd bring that up because, you know, we're talking about the future of pinball and where it's heading. And, you know, people are saying, oh, well, there'll be no real pinball machine. It's all going to be virtual reality. I don't know about that. Virtual reality may come and go.
    79:39
    It'll probably stay, but I think there's always going to be people that want the life experience. It's probably going to play pinball, right? Why aren't we sitting there playing video games? Why aren't you still playing World of Warcraft money? There's got to be a reason why, right? How dare you shame me? Funny. People do not know I played World of Warcraft for 10 years.
    79:58
    Just a couple of years ago. Yep. So that happened. The spell is broken. It took many, many years. And now you're in the spell of Pimball. Yeah, exactly. And you've got a podcast and a stream.
    80:11
    I don't have an obsessive personality. No, not at all, Mark. Funny. What else did we do this weekend? Oh, jeez, we went to a pinball meet. We did. Yeah, there was a pinball meet. So this is not a competition. This is just a friendly meet that pretty much we've got a schedule in Melbourne now where all of us have got together and said that one person has to do it every month. So the Aussie arcade community or anyone can come down to people's houses and just have a good time, talk, play pinball. And yeah, there's some new faces there. You came, this is one of your, you've been to a couple of meets, but you first met at Dave's house? Yeah, I have, I had met Dave before, but this is the first time there.
    80:58
    Great, great collection of machines in fantastic condition too. Yeah, I keep on forgetting every time I go there, I'm like, oh wow, like almost all your machines have brand new play fields and play pretty much flawlessly now. The difference between last time and this time is that last time, you know, they weren't set up shallow or anything, but I noticed that the games they're playing, well, most of the ones that I play, I don't play every game, lightning fast. And I'm like, gee, how, like this Doctor Who, like, how's it playing so fast? Mine feels, you know, slow and slow compared to this. And David's like, I put them up on blocks for you because I heard, you know, I heard you complaining about, you know, Star Wars and Creature being slow and slow. So there you go, he had it masked up at the back on a wooden block and I love it, I love fast games. The other thing that he changed is the tilt. The tilt setting. Wow. Well there was actually one more thing besides the tilt setting but let's talk about how tight was it? It was not loose. It was as tight as it can be. As I said on R.J.R.K., it was tighter than a... You can censor this bit. Just do a little beep, okay? It was tighter than a duck's arsehole on ice. I'm not editing that out. You're not censoring that? Okay. No way. I said it today to Michael, and he was like, why is a duck's arsehole tight? I'm like, because it's in the water all the time. That's right. Tight, so the water doesn't go in. Exactly. But why does it have to be tight on ice? Because when it's on ice, it doesn't have its ass on the ice. I'm like, I don't fucking know. Nah. Come on. Anyway. Just saying, right? So the point is, on every single machine, it was, the tilts were set up so tight. Do you know why they were set up so tight? I do. Do you want me to say? Well, I won't mention names, but there was someone that was coming along that was known to throw a pinball machine around when they get a little bit overzealous. Yeah, well there's a guy who's an extremely good player and when he wants to beat a pinball machine he will sit there and play until he does and he will destroy a champion score. He's in the RPA panel 100, that'll limit down to one person. And he'll get there if he can get there. And, you know, I've never, he's at my house, I don't think you've ever seen him throw my Pinball machines around, but these machines are extremely tight together. This guy is running low on space, so the back boxes are pretty much touching, so he can't, you know, and they're all restored Pinball machines, so he can't afford to have these Pinball machines thrown around or tilted. So what he did was he, and he didn't do this before, this is why it was so surprising, he got the tilt bob and put it all the way up until it was touching, right? And then he put it on and he lowered it down a tiny bit. So I didn't know this, so I walked up to my first game and the ball was going down the outlay and gave it a little bit of a nudge. Tilt. I'm like, what? Oh, there was no warning. I must have, oh, okay. No, tilt. Just tilt. Tilt. And okay, this might be like, oh, that's just what it's like in IFBA professional competitions. Nope.
    84:18
    Apparently not. I mean, this was, I can't imagine a tournament being this crazy. I'm sure some Pimble machines. Oh, there has been, I have heard before that there's been maybe one machine that's been very notoriously tilty, but all of these were really tilty. And you could just barely even touch it. And I know that sounds like an exaggeration. The example I give you, Batman and Dark Knight, the good Batman.
    84:49
    Well, the one with full code. So what you're really trying to do in Batman is to sack your multiball, right? Whatever the crane one is, that might be Scarecrow multiball and Joker multiball, right? So twice I made that happen and every time as soon as multiple started and the ball started going around, tilt.
    85:13
    Without you thinking anything. There's lots of solenoids going on. No nudging of the machine at all. Yeah. It just tilted. We actually have to get him to lower the tilt on some of them. It's up to him, it's his two more machines, but on Transformers it was just like if a sling goes off and then it hits a captive ball or something, It would just go off. This is how sensitive the tilt-ray. It's hilarious. And the funny thing is that, like, you know, hey, there were some competition players there, but, you know, 90% of the people weren't competition players, so they'd never experienced anything remotely close to this. Everyone's like, what the hell is going on? Like, I can't do anything. And the other thing that he did, which I only kind of found out later, I'm not sure how many machines he did this to, is I'm pretty sure he went through on the machine and every setting that was adjusted to TV, D, difficult, hard, extreme, whatever. He just went in full, hard. You can do that on Stern, extreme. It's very, very difficult. For example, I was playing Doctor Who and this Doctor Who is beautiful. Brand new player feel. Just plays, as I said, it put my... It plays so well. And I could hit the loops better than normal. Got the multiplier up to four, started multiball. I was like, awesome. I look up in the middle, the middle, Dalek, Dalek, Dalek, sorry.
    86:37
    I'm never going to get it. The middle Dalek, 40 million. I'm like, oh, 40 million. That's like, it's usually like, what is it? Like 50 and 40 or something before the multiplier. I'm like, what's going on? The balls come down and two balls go down the middle and there's no ball save. There's no ball save in Multiball. And people were back at me because I was like, there's no ball save in Multiball. What the hell? There's no ball save in Multiball. The base value was $10 million up the middle and $5 million down the side for your little guys that you're trying to kill. And video mode doesn't carry over to the next ball of your drain. The multipliers are expiring really quickly. It was the hardest, you know. I'm sure people have changed one setting to hard because it's unbalanced, but Pimball machines are generally balanced enough that you don't need to change too much from the default settings. These were all changed, but everything was just super duper hard. It was crazy. And I remember things like on Star Trek when you get, what is it, like Ventures multiball? and in order to get a three ball multiball you need to shoot a ball up to the vengeance to where the ball is on the magnet. 15 seconds or something. Yeah, you've usually got 15, 20 seconds. This was five seconds.
    87:55
    So you didn't get it as a two ball multiball? No, you couldn't get it. It was just very, very funny. By the time the ball went around. Yep.
    88:02
    Yeah, it was hard. I mean, it was funny because everyone was kind of complaining about it because, you know, So, you know, you're pretty good and the other guy we won't mention was pretty good. But, yeah, it was, you know, I put up some good games but the purpose of these meets is more to just interact with everyone. And the fact that someone opens up their house for everyone to play is amazing because it's that there's people there that he didn't know and that's how you get introduced to the community and that's how people get the bug and get interested in Pinball. Well, like I said, one of the games that I was, when I walked in, because I didn't know what was there in the collection, but, you know, I remember the Slam Tilt guys talking about Airborne from Capcom saying, and I think the comment they mentioned was that the ramps on it were so steep, but only the strong Capcom flippers would make those ramps. And so I saw Airborne and I played it many, many years ago and I thought, oh, I've got to play this game. And true to point, they're absolutely right. The flippers on that machine are extraordinarily strong and the ramps are very, very long and high. So you're doing a lot of power.
    89:13
    And probably one of those underrated games. I actually did have a good game. In fact, I managed to get GC. So there you go. That was the end of my story. All the settings didn't work for Mardy. Just that one game. Everything else, they just scored. Scored reset. Yeah, that's not going to last for more than a day now. No, absolutely.
    89:34
    But it was good fun. So thank you, Dave, for doing that. What about Norway? Did you get us anything this week, Mardy? No. All my people a week was with you. Okay. So yeah, that was Saturday and Sunday. So Friday I had Jay Mendoza of Facebook fame come over to tell me. Well, he came over because we're going to talk about Vegas because I have actually booked my trip. I said I was going to the Texas Pinball Festival. It's now confirmed. I've booked the trip. And Vegas, Texas, New York, and then Toronto in that order. So could be pretty busy in Texas and New York. But if you want to hit me up if you're in Toronto or Texas, you want to hang out, shoot the shit, play some pinballs, whatever you want, yeah, contact me.
    90:22
    Yeah, me and Jared had fun playing. That's why I'm so tired now and why I'm probably a bit tired. I have a bit of a lower Jeff Yola's voice because, yeah, three nights in a row of just pinball action.
    90:35
    Earlier on in the week, I was playing Simpsons, right? And this is what I want to talk about. I was playing Simpsons and I love Simpsons. I love that when you get it going. I know it takes a while to get finished. It really does. Right. When it starts going off, this machine just, I fucking love it, right? I don't know how to explain my passion besides things.
    90:59
    So I get into Alien Invasion and I'm not even excited that much anymore when I get into Alien Invasion because I've never completed it. And this time I just kind of went in with a clear head and I managed to do it, right? And for those that aren't familiar what Alien Invasion is, I'll explain it really quickly.
    91:17
    It's a mini wizard mode and basically you get a two ball, multi ball and you have to lock those two balls in like saucers and scoops and on the couch. And somewhere where the pinball machine can hold and stage the ball. And it's unique to this game. There's no other game, I believe, you can correct me if I'm wrong, that does this. And there probably aren't many that can do it because the way Simpsons is set up, there's multiple switches in certain locations, so it knows if there's another ball waiting so it can kick it out in that auto shot. So when you lock two balls, it then splits those two balls out and has another. You've got three balls, it's locked three balls. And then if you do that, it goes to four. If you do that, it goes to five. If at any stage you lose a ball it drop it back down So if you got five balls out and you try and lock them all and you lose one it go back down to the whole four ball multiple ball thing So that always happens to me and I been to five so many times and I never been able to recover when I lose a ball because I get disheartened, and I lose another ball. And then there's a timer, this whole mode is timed.
    92:19
    This time I dropped down to four when I was on five, and I managed to bring it all the way back up, and I did it. And I screamed like I was so excited. I was like, yeah, baby! And I freaking did it. And I was like so excited to take a picture. I was fumbling my phone and there was no proof that I ever did it.
    92:36
    I was just super excited. I was like, wow. A day later, I was like, I'm going to play Simpsons again. That was so much fun. I might try and get into, you know, do the five Super Jackpots now because I've never done it before. That's the only thing now besides Any Invasion to get into the super-duper wizard modes.
    92:51
    And I managed to get into Any Invasion again. And this time I kind of like I was a bit more relaxed about it because it's such an exciting mode. It raises the volume of the Pinball machine. Without you doing it, it'll put it up a couple of notches to get you excited. The music is amazing. You know, aliens are invading Springfield.
    93:12
    I did it without, like I did it with 22 seconds left. It was so easy the second time around. And it got me thinking like, is that, I know a lot of people haven't done it, But is that mode actually hard or are there just like pinball psychological barriers that you get so excited, you get caught up in the pinball machine and the moment and the hardness of what you think a mode is? Like people talk about Valenor and people talk about SuperDuperMegaRestreamWizardMode. Is it just like a psychological barrier?
    93:44
    Yeah, I've done it twice now. I'm not saying I've done it like I can do it 100% of the time. I haven't tried again after that. But is there ever a moment, Marty, that you've been in a Pinnball machine that you've struggled to do something, you've struggled to do the last modes, like a rule the universe thing in ASM, but once you've done it, it's just easier to say. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, and it's not even as, I don't think it's probably not as big as Alien Invasion, but there's two and they're both Jersey Jack machines. One of them is Killing the Witch. The witch, yes. You know, killing the witch. Now, it is not that difficult. You've got to hit maybe four or five shots depending on whether you get a white or a red one. Then you've got to get it into the castle hole, then up the right ramp, and then you've got to kill the witch. It's so simple, isn't it? And you've got a ball save as well. I've failed that many times. But why do you fail it? I mean, it's a simple... It's the music. It's the... You're going to fuck up that shot. And also it's because what you know particularly with that one is if you don't kill the witch it is a massive grind to get back there again. Yes, that's the other thing. So because of that, because you've just got to get through, you don't want to fail. Like failure is pain. I mean, it still is pain the second and third time you do it, but it's just like knowing how it ends. It's like watching the end of a movie and the second time, you know, you're not going to maybe cry. I try that every time with that movie Up by Pixar, but I cry. I've never seen it. Okay. Me and my wife have a running joke, like, we're not going to cry this time, and within 10 minutes we're crying.
    95:35
    But that's what I'm trying to get at. It's just like, you know, once you know what's happening, you can kind of pay yourself mentally for it. And, yeah, I'll try it again. I'll see how far, you know. I feel like Super Dupert Mega Extreme Wizard Mode, you know, I still think I'm pretty far away from it. But, you know, maybe it's all psychological. Maybe you just need to... That's what I'm thinking. I'm going to just go through them one by one and do them all individually, those six required things. They're pretty damn hard. And then try and do it all together. You know, try and have a more balanced, structured game. Fair enough. The other thing I want to talk about is that that game, that second game, and I put up a little post on Instagram about it when I did it.
    96:21
    I left. My wife was like, you have to take your kid out, blah, blah, blah. I had like 30 minutes to play this game. When I finished Alien Invasion, all the balls drain and it puts a ball in the trough. I had five minutes left. I'm like, I don't want to continue to play this game because I don't want to get up to another part and have to go. So I left my game on and three hours later I was back home to finish the game. And I used to do that a lot because I used to play Wizard of Oz a lot in Lord of the Rings. It doesn't seem to happen that much anymore because I'm playing Demo Man and it's over in like two minutes.
    96:55
    I want people to write in, I'm not sure if you have a story like this, mate. What's the longest time you've left a pinball machine on to finish a game? Do you always finish it or do you ever start a game knowing you have like half an hour to do something, you know, to finish the game, you're really deep into the game after half an hour, you have to go to work or you have to go do something, you leave the machine on and then you try and continue on that game. I will turn the machine off. Wow. Okay. I've left my machine on for a complete day once.
    97:26
    Yeah, we're going away for a day somewhere. I left my machine on and I finished it. The thing is, you don't care about it when you come back. Even if you have this big score, you're really deep into the game, you're totally snapped out of that world. But I'm sure someone has done that longer. I'm sure someone has gone away for a whole weekend or a week and left their C, K, M, O, Machine on just to finish a day. So if you've done it for longer than a day, please write in and let me know. Yeah, please let us know. What's the longest you've left a machine on just so you can complete the game? That's crazy. No, you're right, I sort of, I know exactly how much time. So, tonight, prime example, I had half an hour between ordering my dinner via Uber Eats and it was arriving. So what game did you use? Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, okay. And I was one mode away from Iron Throne.
    98:29
    And you turned the machine off? Not Hand of the King, Ion's Rhyne. Yeah, I know, I'm throwing his ditch.
    98:35
    So, I just want to go away. And so, the thing beeped at me saying that my food's arrived. I went, okay, food's arrived, turned the machine off and went and had dinner. Oh my God, Marty. Are you a Pinball fan or are you a food fan?
    98:51
    Both. I think you know the answer to that. Food always comes first. But no, because I know I'll be able to at some other stage get back to it. I just, you know, for me I have an amount of time and if Pinball runs over that I've just got to cut it, cut it. You know, that's just a habit I'm into. Okay. The last thing I'll mention has been, as I said, sorry, a long week in Pinball is Galleons. So I mentioned last week, I said I'm going to go down to the Pixel Alley Arcade and play my first tournament for a young second. I know. You said you were going to come first this time. How'd you go? Yeah, I came first. I won. You came first of the last.
    99:39
    This is so... It was embarrassing. I don't know where to put it. It was embarrassing. I came last because it was a two-strikes tournament and everyone won at least one game and I got knocked out in straight sets. That guy just blitz-wise, I couldn't beat him. He's got like, you know, Pixel Alley is not a super serious tournament because extra balls are turned on. They're not in tournament settings. So he got like, you know, three or four extra balls and deservedly so because Wizard of Oz doesn't give you extra balls unless you kind of progress through the game. But I just got smashed on that and the second game was on Star Wars and it's that Star Wars, the lean left, the lean right one. And I hit Star Wars and I was out and everyone else won a game so I came dead last. The cool thing about it was that Guardians of the Galaxy was there. Now I rocked up a little bit early to play Guardians of the Galaxy and I couldn't play it. None of my two games in the tournament were on it. But I sat there and while I was out of the comp I just sat there and I just watched the machine. And the cool story was my mate Nimmo, who is ranked 20,000th in the world, was up against Daniel Luth, who is ranked in the top 500 or so, I believe.
    100:51
    He was player two, ball three. Daniel was on 160 million. Nimmo, my mate, was on about 3 million. And I pretty much said, like, you're not going to win because I'm that encouragement kind of guy. Yeah. And I said, you know, I've been watching everyone just shoot Groot, start multi-ball and just keep on shooting him. And then when you're in multi-ball, keep on shooting him again. And then keep on shooting him again and again and again and again and again until you've got all the balls in there except one and then just start shooting jackpots.
    101:18
    And he knew that already, but he executed the plan. And at one stage he managed to get a 6X Super, I think it was a double, yeah, or a 6X Double Super, I can't remember. And his score shot up by like, you know, close to 100 million and he managed to beat Daniel and he didn't know he was beating him because he played I think multiple twice in that ball. And everyone in his round had finished by then and it was his first moment where he had this massive game and he turned around after the ball drained And everyone clapped for him. And they had this huge smile on his face. And it was an awesome moment because that's the kind of moments that, I guess, get you really addicted to Pinball machines. He each had bought his first Pinball machine. I bought the TNA. But I was so happy for him. That's exactly right. And not that I want to bring it back to you and me, but, you know, we did the Around the Playfield with, um, with, uh, Dispicking Pinball. Yeah. And that was kind of my story that really got me in pinball was when I just had this absolute ripper of a game, stopped and looked around and there was a group of people that were cheering me on. So I'm so excited. It's a weird moment because at some stage you get sucked into the world of the pinball and you're trying to concentrate and you're hitting the jackpots, you're in multiball.
    102:38
    And then you turn around and it's that moment that you realise you're playing a game and people are watching you and you have a really good ball. It was great. I think that's an important moment for Nimiz Pinball's story. Talking about Guardians, I did stay around long enough to play it. It's because I don't want to play it. I saw enough. I don't want to sound like a hater here, but I realise that Guardians is for, who's Pinball Machine for? It's for bars to put them on site because people are going to play it because it's a cool theme and it looks beautiful. and all that kind of stuff.
    103:17
    If the people that, you know, don't like, you know, people that want to buy the newest machine and just experience the codes, pick for them, right? They'll buy anything as long as it looks nice and isn't total crap, right? It's not that machine.
    103:32
    And the other people is people that are decent at pinball but not amazing. You know, the average kind of player don't need super complex rules and risk-reward. Playing multiple all the time is fine. But I'm not any of those people. So this Pinball machine in its current code state is 100% not for me. And I just couldn't give a chance. It's not exciting. I had more fun playing Lexi Lightspeed because it's something new and my brain is triggering.
    104:04
    New stuff's happening, Ryan. You're experiencing something new. This is just, like you said, Aerosmith and all those other Pinball machines mashed in one. And I know it plays different. I'm not saying it plays the same, but the rules, you know, I used to be a software programmer. My brain is wired for, you know, Pimball rules. It's just not anything interesting. Just playing multiple all the time and just playing it again and seeing how it's just not interesting to me. And the cool thing is, is the layout is not, you know, a bad thing. So all it needs is interesting code. Whether or not that will come is anyone's guess. Of course, new code will come, but will it ever be an amazing pinball machine that everyone wants every machine to be? I don't think so. I think it's just going to be one of those middle-of-the-road pinball machines. Prove us wrong, and I'll buy a pinball machine because the layout's good, but playing multiple all day is boring. After dulled in, it's boring. Do you have time for one more story, Marnie? Yeah, all I just want to say is that even though I didn't use sort of pleasant words that you used to describe Guardians of the Galaxy, I think the same as you, Ryan. But you've almost said what I said and that is, you know, it's just, it's a game, it's there. It's a stern game. It's a stern by numbers. There's nothing that's really memorable about it. Besides the artwork and the layout's pretty memorable, I think. It's not memorable. But you're not having any special moments that make you feel really good about the game. Yes, it looks great. It looks really, really great. The sounds are right, but because of the lack of rules, you just don't feel any sense of satisfaction playing it. Yeah, I mean, even when you get that, you know, in Nimic and made that shot, This is what I hate about multipliers. The machine knows what score it's giving you, but the fanfare doesn't match the multiplier, right? So when I'm playing Simpsons in multiple and I get the super jackpot, triple super jackpot, it's so freaking good, right? It just revs you up and you know that the triple super jackpot is worth more than anything else. When you're playing Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy and you hit that million point jackpot, what happens? It flashes up on the screen with a score for a quick second and the call out is exactly the same as any other call out and the game goes on. It doesn't have any moment at all. It doesn't ramp up. I said maybe that'll come with code but that's why games like The Simpsons really get my blood pumping when the game gets started because those stupid jackpots on the couch, They make my whole body tense up and that's what I like about pinball.
    106:52
    So one last little thing that I forgot to mention and I have to mention it because I haven't mentioned it in a while. After the party on Saturday, even though I was super duper tired, I hadn't played Daldin in a while so I went to the after party. There was a little impromptu, unorganised after party at someone's house. A guy who was an hour away, three hours of driving for pinball on that day. So this was dialed in and I played it again and all those feelings that I forgot about came flooding back and I managed to get his second highest score was about 5 million. I got I think 6 sim cards, I think the most I ever got and just so people haven't forgotten, dialed in is an absolutely amazing game that has pretty much the best layout of all time. There, I said it. Okay, big call but I can understand why you're saying it. Why don't I have it? Why don't I have it? Why don't I buy this sim machine? I don't know. No. I'll blame it on Hobbit code. I still have a Pimball machine. I think we are still holding out for Hobbit code, aren't we? I just feel like I can't buy another Pimball machine new after how much I hyped up the Hobbit and it not being what I thought it was going to be, which was the greatest game of all time.
    108:01
    It can be. That's my long-ass weekend. It can be. Once they get Pires of the Caribbean into a good state, they'll work on Hobbit again. Oh, that's so far away. The good news is that it's out on site and it's kicking ass and making money so if you want to play The Hobbit, go and play The Pinball Paranors. Yeah, well done. Okay, so shall we head to the mailbag? Let's do it Marty, I just talked for like 30 minutes about my work in pinball so this is all you again Marty, I'm giving you the honour. Well, we're going to read an email that now talks about you so it's pretty much the same thing. Now, this is actually an email that we got after last night. So we actually did bump into somebody that had travelled all the way from Wagga Wagga. Now, for those people listening overseas, Wagga Wagga is a few hours away from Sydney and a few hours away from Melbourne. It's kind of in the middle of the two and it's country, really, country New South Wales. Yeah, and it's spelt Wagga Wagga. Yeah, W-A-G-G-A times two, Wagga Wagga. Yeah, just in case you used it the first time. Yeah, that's right. So he says, hi guys, long time listener, first time caller.
    109:15
    Our meeting at a good old fashioned Pinball meet prompted me to contact you via a medium other than Facebook. My mum is helping me write this letter, but I've got to lick the stamp. You know how much we hate hearing about how great we are. Let me read this bit out.
    109:35
    The Head to Head Pinball Podcast has gone from strength to strength and is a credit to you both. Funny, engaging and all those other words that go along with them. It's also inspiring. Oh, that's nice.
    109:46
    Martin's drinking has been a great role model for me. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah, Monday night. This guy gets wet, so I'm very disappointed he had to drive, you know, because it would have been nice to see him drink it up with Barney. He said, Monday night is now the new Saturday night and I might just go out and purchase my first bottle of gin. It could take over VB Wednesday night. If you're going to go out and get your first bottle of gin, I recommend Four Pillars. We are not being sponsored by Four Pillars, but if they do want to sponsor our show by providing us gin, we would absolutely welcome it.
    110:27
    What happened to Archie Rose? I love Archie Rose. Four Pillars. Four Pillars is the shiznit of these. Yeah, for sure. Well, there's so many. Anyway.
    110:37
    He said, I was also chuffed to meet my long-time pen pal, Ryan, in person. Unfortunately I left my glasses in the car and got excited that Dave Franco was waving at me.
    110:53
    After the initial disappointment started my excitement in return when the co-host of Australia's second favorite pinball podcast was talking to me. I noted that he was a lot shorter than he peed in the podcast but he had fantastic dress sense with that Zombie Yeti Stern Pinball t-shirt. Thank you for both being great ambassadors.
    111:14
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Martin's better than Ryan. Literally laughed out loud on traffic on many occasions. Look forward to more drunken Pinball adventures in the future, your friend.
    111:24
    And it was really funny because he was another person that came and said, Oh, I love your podcast. Love that episode where you're drunk. I'm like, oh my God. Everyone, it's your number one company. I'm sure I am known for other things as well, but that's the only thing that people are remembering me for. So, I'll take it. Adam, thank you Adam for messaging in. He's not joking about the long time pen friends thing. I mean I've been emailing him to this guy off RZRK for I think over two years. Right. And he's always in Melbourne. We've never been able to meet up because he's always in Melbourne for business or this and that and we just, our schedules don't align. So he drove down five hours to come to this meet, the super tight, you know, tilt Pinball meet and it was awesome to meet him in person. Yeah, it was great. And that's the power of the internet and forums in RZRK bringing Pinball people together. So thank you, Adam. And he has an absolutely amazing collection. I'm not sure if you've seen a picture of him, but he almost made it into the Stern.
    112:16
    Remember that competition we had to post up a fanboy picture? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's the guy who's holding his pet dog in front of, you know, he's got all Sterns now except for one JGP, you know, 12 Sterns and Darderys Pinball machines. Wow. He's a big Pinball fan. Yeah, awesome. The other email was from Adam Schwartz and we actually missed this last week and it was just a discussion on, we were talking about ACDC Lucy and long and behold there was a thread on Pinside from someone called Lucy I believe. It was basically that thread where she said, hey, I'm a new female player, I need advice. And in typical Pinside fashion, it kind of turned to shit pretty quickly with people saying, you're not really a girl, and then she had to prove that she was a female. And then, you know, people were saying, well, you know, okay, you're a female and you're very good looking, but why did you need to say you're a female when you're asking for advice? And back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and he's basically asking our opinion on it.
    113:18
    I don't, with this stuff that happens on Pinside now, I don't have an opinion. Ian, I just, I like reading him to make myself laugh to say I'm glad I kind of, you know, I'm reading it after the dust so I can just sit back and laugh at someone saying I'll eat my hat if you're a girl and you're like Gwyneth Paltrow, there's no way that's you. I can just get the popcorn out. So I'm sorry, Adam, I don't have an opinion, but it was a good laugh for me. Yeah, in a similar vein, I expect every thread on Pinsight, and I know this sounds like I'm being negative towards Pinsight, I'm not, I actually really like Pinsight a lot. We do like Pinsight.
    113:58
    But I've just seen so many, and I mean so many threads get derailed, I was not surprised that this got derailed. And not actually even really joking. I was reading this and I was just thinking... Why would a female want to get into Pinball after that? But I've just... You know what? I've seen normal people come into Pinside and say something slightly wrong and get absolutely chased out of town. So I, you know, this was kind of like moth to a flame really. Call out that you're a female and people are just going to get suspicious and all that kind of stuff. It's just the craziness that is Pinside.
    114:46
    Well, it's just any forum, right? You know what? It's why I avoid a lot of forums because... They used to be you on World of Warcraft forums, right? No, it wasn't. No, not really. They were the same. But it was even years before that. I think I mentioned it before. What was the whole PlayStation versus Sega versus Nintendo Wars years ago, like 20 years ago? It's like teenagers that can't afford all three times. Well, that's right. So, you know, it's when people have to spend all their money on one particular thing, they have to feel like they defend it. Well, it's okay to own all three or to actually think that somebody else is happy because they've got something you don't have. And Pinsides like that, it just gets very territorial.
    115:36
    You know, it didn't surprise me. It was a shame. The good thing was she had a great sense of humour. So she kind of just laughed it off and she made a bit of a joke of it and moved on. So good on her. Good on her. I mean, I'm not trying to give advice to people writing on forums or something, but you've got to remember that some of these things stick to certain people and that's what causes people to be lurkers and not get involved in the community. I don't hate, but it's always weird for me to see people that have pinballs but they're not part of the pinball community. Kind of like the awesome gentleman, Michael, that we visited today and one of the other guys that was there. And I was kind of like, how come I haven't seen you around at any meet any organization? Like, why haven't you gone to any meets or any comps? Like, comps, I understand it, you know. Yeah, it's extremely intimidating, yeah. It's intimidating and if you're not in Pinball for that reason, you don't want to be competitive, then fair enough. But Pinball Meets with Aussie, I tell you, they're open to everyone. It's literally just like, do you like Pinball? Do you like to be around people that have the same hobbies as you? Yes, that pretty much should satisfy 99% of people. But, you know, the question was like, I've never been to one and people are shy. And the shyness, I guess, comes from being a boys club and everyone being such tight-knit friends that it's hard for someone to feel like they can fit in, even though they do. Anyone can rock up and start talking and playing pinball, but you need that kind of introduction. So I hope those two people end up being more a part of the Australian community because maybe they don't want to. As I said, it's fair enough if you don't want to, but I think it'll lead to a more fulfilling pinball life if you get involved.
    117:23
    Because people do nice things, you play more pinballs, you get exposed to more of them. Absolutely. And I will tell you this, start with pinball meets. Pinball meets are such an easier entry into the pinball community because you are there just to have some fun and play some machines and talk pinball without the pressure of having to do well in a competition. Yeah, you can be the worst pinball player ever, but no one's kicking you off the machine, you don't have to wait. You walk up to a machine, you play, and then you go and have some pizza. One of, and we've talked about this before, one of the best experiences I've seen was a couple at a pinball night that played Split Slipper the entire night. You remember? Yes. They had the best night. Split Slipper between Cowboys is quite good. I didn't tell this story one of the other days, but when I was at Pinball Paradise that night that I was fixing machines until 1am, I put a free credit in one of the machines that I fixed. I was just one credit, and they said, well, who's going to play? And I said, just both play. And they said, oh, what, one ball each? They're like, no, you go on the left, you go on the right. And these were kind of Pinball noobs. I was watching them before and they were kind of playing two player. From that game onwards they played every single game split footer. It's such a good way for people that are on different skill levels to play because that person is learning off you and you're achieving things together.
    118:53
    Split footers is quite fun and you can do that at Pimball, mate. Bring your wife or your girlfriend or your husband or your boyfriend along. Absolutely.
    119:03
    Last email was from Jerry Mendoza of Facebook fame and he just came back from Vegas and he was talking about the Pinball Hall of Fame and how machines have increasing quality since UN. Yeah, that's right. I did go probably about, I want to say maybe three years ago I went to the Pinball Hall of Fame and I was quite disappointed I must admit because I thought that I was going to be going into a place that had a couple of pinball machines and they were all going to be in immaculate condition. And they weren't. And they weren't because I think at the time it was for charity, so they didn't necessarily have a lot of people on the books to fix machines. They do get a lot of play because a lot of people go through the Pimball Hall of Fame.
    119:47
    It's just open to the public, right? You just walk straight in and you just pay for the games, right? Correct.
    119:52
    But I had heard that in the last couple of years they had put more techs on and the quality of the machines had gone up. So I did reach out to Jared and say I'd be keen to know what it's like because I'd heard that it improved significantly and that's what he said.
    120:10
    Yeah, and because he just went to Vegas, he said I've got to come over and I'll tell you about all the things to do in Vegas. And because he's telling me in person, I thought this is like he'd need to tell me something like the part of Vegas you want me to talk about, what happens in Vegas, days in Vegas. No, he just said like yeah, go visit the crank.
    120:28
    That's all the stuff I did. Yeah, yeah, it gave me some really good tips and we played Pimball until like past midnight and it was a good night. It's the three days in a row of non-stop Pimball action and I couldn't be happier.
    120:42
    Every event I went to this week for Pimball was amazing. Awesome. There you go. Are we done? We are done. That is the end of the podcast. Guys, if you want to contact us, please go to our website, facebook.com slash headtoheadpinball. You can email us at headtoheadpinball at gmail.com. Twitter is at h2hpinball. And Instagram is headtoheadpinball. We can just go to our website, headtoheadpinball.com, and all the links are there. Please, I mean, we mention all these things, and I'm sure people just kind of ignore them, but we do post different things on, you know, I'm in charge of Instagram, I post different things and everything ties in together more if you're following us on all the medians. It's a more complete story. It really is.
    121:32
    And also, please email us because we do respond to emails and we actually have long conversations with people via email. So reach out to us and you'll be at least guaranteed a reply.
    121:45
    Yeah, and I forgot to respond to that guy who wanted a rusek. Like, I'm serious, if you do want a Roo Sack, email me so I can just organize. I'm not going to, you know, I'm going to organize it before I go. I'm not going to be running around like I had this truck at the airport when I'm leaving in the morning. So if you want a Roo Sack, let me know, guys.
    122:07
    Awesome. Sing us out, Marty. No, I've got nothing to sing us out with. No, nothing either. All right. I can sing a Scott Denise song. Can you? Dig it, dig it, dig it, dig it. Oh, my gosh. Amis, I think, which is the song number for Reactor 8, if they're in order. That is a great song. I told you I'm going to listen to it more and more until I just absolutely love the music.
    122:31
    Yeah, listen to it. It's great. Scott Dinesi. He's the man. Yeah. Bye, guys. See you later. See ya. Bye.