It is the pre-stream bath. That's right. Uh what's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Dirty Pool podcast. Uh today, as with every guest, is a special day, but today we're diving into a different world. My guest is Manu from Mystery Pinball Theater 3000. both a a repair pinball enthusiast. You work at Free Gold Watch. You do pinball streaming with the most kind of like unique channel I've seen on Twitch. You do live movie watching. You do virtual pin. What's up? What's up? What's up, Jeff? I mean, dirty dirty pool. Don't want to out you. Don't want to make
No, that's okay. We can dox it. Says it right here anyways.
Dox you right now. Yeah.
Over there. Uh, thank you for joining me. Uh, I'm so excited to I I don't know a lot about virtual pins
and I'm hoping by the end of our chat before I have to go to the dentist, which is coming up. Uh, we that I can be fully educated on virtual pins, the kind of cabinets to get, how easy it is to load ROMs, your involvement with the VP community. I know that you're part of the a fairly well-known group of virtual pin developer people. Not really, but I we're working with them. So, it's a virtual pinball workshop you're talking about.
Okay.
Um I'm uh I'm part of uh Pink Credibles uh a group called Pinredibles. And so, right now the game that we're working on right now is in cahoots with Virtual Pinball Workshop. So, it's PCredibles/ Virtual Pinball Workshop um creation because we got a couple of guys from over there and then we got my guys from Pin. So for people who don't, what does the hierarchy like look like for the virtual pin world? So there's like clusters of people that are talented that group together to try to work on creating games.
The highest level is virtual pinball workshop right now. The most talented um just Okay, so back in the day people I don't want to go too far like back in the day the earth cooled dinosaurs roamed. Right. Right. back my
the paleolithic VPIN era.
Yeah, we're not going to go back that far. But I will say as of today, um I would say and this is not I didn't ask the Virtual Pinball Workshop guys if this is true, but I think this is true. Every game virtual pinball uh sorry vis it's virtual pinball workshop. Every game they work on now uh is kind of like a homebrew in digital form. meaning that uh what they create is made up of actual parts and can actually be built. So the the virtual pinball world has kind of at least the part that I'm in, the the community that you've seen me deal with with the the chat and the virtual pinball workshop and that those people um um can mostly make real games. I I usually don't say real games. I say physical games,
right? are they're real games even though they're digital.
Yes, it's it's still pinball, but to some people it's not.
Right.
Right.
What do you say to those people?
The people that say that it's not real pinball.
I don't try and defend it cuz that's a losing battle already. If you're like
that's not pinball, then I'm like, "All right, don't play it. Stay away from it. You don't need it. It's not for you." You know, I don't get into those fights anymore cuz it's kind of useless. you've already known like you already know where you're going. So, so Jeff, back in the day, um um this was like 10 10 years ago when I just first moved out to the Bay Area. I met a guy named TJ Byer. And TJ is infamous in the West Coast scene at least because TJ and Ken, they own like 400 pinball machines.
That's a lot of
Yeah. So, they were like the biggest most uh uh experienced people in the world. TJ was nice enough because I used to play in the Metrion, the Sony Metrion, and he had like four games there. He had like a Spider-Man there and a Family Guy and he would see me there because he would come to fix the games and he's like, "Hey, you like pinball?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I like pinball." He goes,
"Why don't you come over to my place sometime?" And uh he gives me his card or whatever. He's like, "I got I got a few games at my house." And this is when he lived
games. Oh,
bro, I'm not kidding you.
This is when he lived. He was living in like in Oakland or whatever. So, so my girlfriend and I at the time, my, you know, my wife now, but we go, we went over, there's like 13 games in his loft. And the reason I'm going back so far with this is cuz I I want to I want to just share a quick story about virtual pinball versus physical pinball.
Brian has a great question. We're going to get to that. Brian.
Oh, okay.
Hey, what's up?
Finish your story.
So, so we're in there. We're like, holy smokes, there's all these games he's had. And there was a there was like a Tales of Arabian Nights. He had a varcon.
I don't even know what a varcon is.
A varcon is the standup pinball game. It looks like this,
but it's pinball,
right? If anybody bonsai, but completely vertical,
completely vertical with like uh I think joysticks for flippers or something like that. And it's it's weird. Go look it up, you guys. It's insane. It's rare as as all get up. Um, and what's funny is a side story to that is I'm watching all these people play. It was like a party. He had a pinball party like every every month. And I see this guy on Simpsons with his arms crossed playing like this, right? And I'm like, look at this. Look at this freaking show off here, man. He's so good. He's showing off. It turned out it was Neil Shatz.
Oh [ __ ]
That's That's amazing. He had already gotten to the wizard mode and he
and he was just pulling around.
He No, it you actually there's a mode in Simpsons where it flips the switches the flippers. So he was switching to flippers and I'm like who is this guy? And TJ goes, "Oh, that's that's Neil."
And I find out later it's Neil Shhatz, the guy who they invented the shots.
Sure. So if you're not familiar with what shating is, it's when you fire the ball up the in lane with an extremely late flip uh or micro flip, I guess. But yeah, an absolute legend, right?
Absolut absolute legend. Um Um I So I So anyway, uh I got in kind of cahoots with that crowd, right? Because um um Karen and I we were interested in getting a pinball machine at in our loft, right? So we went to get one and TJ was offering he's like, "Hey, whatever item," cuz he was kind of using other people's places as storage, like free storage.
He's like, "Whatever game you want,
the overflow that," right? Cuz he had a lot of overflow. So, we were thinking about it and we were thinking and you know I this is me like I played pinball when I was a kid. My first game I would play was Nippit, the one with like the em like the the alligator head or whatever. It was super old. Look that up too, guys. Um and but still I didn't realize that there was like I wasn't playing pinball when like Adam's family came out and they sold what 20,000 of those. Um, and like I didn't know what the staples of hotness was, like Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, um, um, Adam's Family, right? Those games.
Sure.
The Eddie Lawler like time period,
the heyday of 90s, as many people would say.
So, so TJ's like, "Hey, what game do you want?" I was like, "How about an Adams fan?"
Well, that's a heavy ask right off the bat.
Yeah. like, "No, cuz if he had one, it would be on location." I'm like, "How about Medieval Mann?" He's like, "What? What are you smoking?" He's like, he goes, "Jeff, I swear to God." He goes,
he goes, "I got a diner." And I was like, "No, I don't want what Diner's awesome." I know. I didn't know I was going off top level like lowhanging fruit. So anyway, um long story short, I'm at another party of his. Yeah, he moved to a bigger house. I'm at another party and someone asks, "Hey, uh do you have any games?" I go, "Yeah." That's when I started. We decided I decided that I wanted to build a virtual pinball instead of having a physical pinball in the in the in the house. I wanted a project. My My first kid was just born and there was a lot of hanging out at the house.
Sure.
Right.
So I said, I'm going to build one. So, I this is when there was like no really plans on it. I had to go to like Australian websites to find out what they were doing. Fortunately, they're all in um in uh the metric system, which I love. I hate the imperial system.
Who doesn't like to be confused when they're trying to do math, right?
It's the best part about math is being incredibly confused.
Oh, what? Three. To this day, I I screw up my um my uh my socket wrenches and my Allen wrenches and stuff like that. To this day, like I don't know. I just find the right one.
M6 mm makes it real easy.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, so I decided to build one and I said, "Hey." And the guy said, "Hey, what do you what do you got?" I says, "Um, I built a virtual pinball at my house." And he goes, "Why'd you do that?"
Oh, no.
And I'm like, "I I don't know. Because I wanted to do it. you're dude, you're wasting your time. What What you should just get rid of that and just get a game, get an actual pinball machine. And I'm like, huh? I really like I'm like, wow, talk about taking the air out of like your tires immediately like like the disdain this dude had for a virtual pinball. Now, understandably back then it was pretty bad because the physics were just, you know, moon logic.
Yeah. It was like playing pinball effects, right? Oh,
I don't know what I don't know what's wrong with them. They seem to think a game is hard if you slope it at a nine. But, um,
and all the metal is actually rubber.
Is actually Yeah. All the metal is rubber. It's so so I was pretty taken back. I was like, "Wow, that's a mean."
You're showing that you're really excited about something and the response is to kind of deflate that like that's that sucks. Like even with an opinion like that, you should not, you know, do that.
It was. So, so that's the elite. That was Now, I will say this, that person was the edge case, it turns out,
but I just hit got hit with the edge case first, right? Most people I talk to are very respectful of at least a person who has spent 6 months building a cabinet and building this thing right here. You guys can barely see. All of it was built by me. Like I struggled through this build. I had to figure I didn't even know. I was like how
can you angle the camera over a little bit because I do want to dive into the hardware aspect of it.
It's like there it is. That's
Is that a BSD? No. What What body is that? That is a wide body.
Oh, it is a wide body. Okay.
I built it. I built it's a wide body that I built because I thought the bigger the better. And I would suggest to anybody who wants to build a cab themselves, do not build a wide body.
Hey, that way if you ever want to do virtual widebody, you don't have to squish it in, right?
Oh god. No. It's a nightmare. Yeah, exactly. Do not build a super pin. It was It was considered Well, it was called a super pin, right? Williams had the super pin, which was indie and uh TNG. And
I have I have TNG right next to me. The real thing, cuz I'm no VP schlub. No, I'm kidding.
Exactly. If it's a if it's a physical game, super pins rock. If it's a if it's a cab, you'll never find a screen to fit in there. That's a It's It's cuz it's a non-standard size. And I like don't And you can't use standard. Fortunately, I built mine to William spec, William Super Pittin spec, which happens happens to be Jersey Jack spec, too, until before Elton John and you know and and when they stopped doing the wide bodies,
right? For now. Um wide body in the future.
Oh, please don't. Um
why you don't like wide bodies? You don't think the Matrix is going to be a wide body?
I don't know. I don't
I don't know. Well, so let me reel it back real quick cuz I want to Brian Brian asked a really good question and I don't want to I don't want to forget it. So he asked where can you actually play a VPIN on location because he wants to build one and he wants to understand kind of what it feels like and I think that's a really valid question.
You're not.
Yeah, you're the problem.
Well, okay, here's the thing. There There are some VPins on location. The one the only place I've ever seen a V pen on location was in Vegas at I no not Vegas in Reno at some I can't remember what the AR the the arcade was but it was it was an old style like uh a Vpin that was meant for routing made by some company TJ used to have one he sold it and
so it was it was manufactured to be a location game.
It was manufactured to be a location game. It was the worst experience you'll ever come across. This is why virtual pinball has a bad name because generally speaking, unless you build it yourself and you handpick the components, it's probably going to be a hot mess. Um, if you're an actual physical pinball player person, cuz it it comes down to two things. The physics and the response of the of the uh the flippers. Right.
So So I'm going to make a comparison here. Tell me if I'm right. I feel like I'm I used to do a lot of sim racing and I feel like building a sim racing rig is very similar to this VPIN scenario. You know, the difference between attaching a plastic steering wheel to your desk versus building an aluminum frame cockpit that has, you know, multiple monitors or whatever. Would you say that's that's a fair comparison for people that may be into sim racing?
Yeah. If you're into sim racing, don't go out and get like a cheap Logitech wheel.
Right.
Right. go to Fanitech or go to any of the big other sim actual sim spend the money because you're just going to frustrate yourself.
But so where do you even begin to go to get VPIN hardware?
Um I'm not the authority on that, but I do know there are uh there are there are virtual if you jump into my Discord and you start asking around, they'll they'll tell you where exactly to go to get the cabinets built. I wouldn't suggest you build your own cabinet. Cabinets are easy. Just buy a cabinet pack, right? I think Marco maybe sells them or like doesn't doesn't your your new company Well, could I
That's right. They just post they just posted that. I was about to say that Barrels is selling uh like kind of like scratch cabinets or whatever. So, if you want to they're trying to promote the home pin kind of community. So, if you have a need for a cabinet, you can get it at a fairly discounted rate right now at uh through barrels.
Oh, 100%. And I would just get a barrels cab because they're standard standard builds, right?
Yeah. They're all they're WPC95 or whatever. They're Williams. They're everything in there is a Williams component, even the flippers,
right? Unless you're Borg Dog, in which case go ahead and build your own cuz you're awesome.
Yeah, he built that Star Wars pin, which looks amazing. Shout out Borg Dog. What's going on, my dude?
Yeah. Yeah, I see Borg in there giving me giving me the look.
You getting the side eye from Borg Dog? Come on.
Nah. Nah. I can't wait to meet Board Dog cuz they're awesome. Okay, so the other thing is um um you know, you can get the cab easy. It's getting the components, getting the screen. You got to get the fastest screen you possibly can, 120 hertz or better. Um best response ever because the issue is flipper response,
right?
Right. You hit those flippers and that you hit the buttons and that flipper better fire. If you have frames, you know, if you have like a 100 millisecond lag, you're gonna have a terrible game of pinball.
That sounds
terrible game of pinball. Um, so what I ended up doing is I with some help from my Discord, too. It was a it was a a buddy of mine named uh Marty, who uh runs a channel called Game Club Central. He's like, "Get rid of the screen you have. Buy this screen." screen. It was like one of those 120 hertz, very low latency um expensive. I got it on sale like 600 bucks. Um and I use Nvidia G-Sync, right? And um um just to have a good experience in VPEN, it has to be like curated. Now, there are some companies that will do that, but I don't know exactly which ones, but there's the the lowest latency the better. And And one other thing I will say is if you don't want a full cab, you can get those little BPIN stubby stubby things that use VR, right?
So it's like a it's like you're standing at a like a kiosk kind of, right? But you since you've got a headset on, you don't know
exactly like like they build just the front part where the lock bar and like flippers um and has weighted down like you put it up against a wall if you want and you wear your you know your MetaQuest 3 or whatever. And um the nice thing about using virtual pinball in VR is that there's like virtually no flipper lag, right? Because you can't really in VR, right? The whole
Right. It's It's low latency by design.
Low latency by design. So it's not like a display that has a latency of like 100. It's a it's a display here that has a latency of like 20 milliseconds.
So and you can also look around and stuff. So there are a lot of options. There a lot of options.
I think the you mentioned Game Club Central. I know the first thing I noticed when I went into his channel too is like he's one of the only streamers I know that uses a a 120 Hz top down camera as well to film it cuz the the table itself you can see how buttery smooth and you of course but I'm talking the first time that I went into a stream and saw that I was I was I was the first person to
you pioneered it so he stole it from you.
Marty steals everything that [ __ ] Um, no. I love him that that he's my buddy, so I can say stuff like that. No, the reason that I did that was the reason that I even got into streaming virtual pinball. It wasn't intentional. I was at Frele Watch. I wasn't working there yet. I was at Freelatch and I was talking to the owner. I was like, "Why don't we stream some of these games?" Now, the San Francisco pinball department actually actually uh meets at Frele Watch, SFPD. They kind of had a streaming thing, but it was terrible. Like, it was not working. It was terrible. It was a nightmare to set up.
It's hard to stream good, especially in a portable like scenario.
Yeah. So, we basically uh um stole an idea from Carl D'Python Anghelo and Carl made what's uh called well, we went into in the in the in the film industry called a gold post rig, which is basically a door frame, right? It's a top down. So, if you're thinking of your old school like um your cooking shows, right? A cooking show will generally have a camera up here looking down at a plate of food and they be well that's generally speaking a goalpost right which is like two two here and a top and the camera's rigged from the top. So So what Carl did was he out of I guess PVC pipe or whatever like the really expensive stuff. Um he made a door frame and he linked his cameras to it and Carl was kind of the first that I ever saw that figured out you know outside of Jack Danger too. Although Jack may have gotten away with tripods and stuff because he would move the game. Jack Danger dead flip if you guys don't know. Um he would move the game to the rig which is good if you're at home. You don't need to move the rig but Carl needed to move the rig cuz he was you know doing tournament streaming. And I think Papa also did it.
I was just about to say that. So, my interview with Bowen, you know, he talked about what 12 years ago, the first two people that were the ones that helped Papa set up their streaming rig. You know who it was?
No.
Keith Owen and his brother.
Oh, Keith Ellen and um I forget his other Elwin. Yeah. Yeah.
They were the ones who set up the streaming setup for Papa back then. And then Bowen was just kind of the face of it since he got kind of dragged into it. So yeah, the OG streamers
because the Elwin brothers, they were they were Dude, have you seen Pinball 101?
Yeah, if you can find it on DVD, I don't think it's online anymore, right?
Oh, no. I can get you like
it's still the shout out to Abe Flips for making amazing YouTube tutorial videos. And I think he's got a thing coming out soon that's going to be like the new comprehensive one. But Pinball 101, that's like, you know, that's the gold standard right there.
I'm pretty sure Keith is like, I don't want to watch that ever. But it
Randy, that's right. War Dog's telling us that Randy is the bro's name.
Randy. Yeah, thank you, Bard. Uh, it danced between really cool pinball flip flipper tricks to don't fart while you're playing pinball.
Yeah,
it was so good. Pro tip, by the way, don't fart unless you're really trying to like,
you know, smoke out the competition. Like, literally hot hot box the entire arcade and your and your foul pinball, you know, butts butts stank.
Just Just be careful, guys. Bring a fan with you. So,
okay. So, bringing it back to the VP. So, you're you've got a you got a cabinet. You got a high free rate, low latency monitor.
Yeah. So, I was building a I wanted to build a rig for free go watch. And so, myself and Matt Henry, who's the owner, we we were looking at Carl's builds and I says, "Yeah, but that looks really expensive. I got to figure out a way to do it cheap." And so, I found like a I finally literally found a coat rack um off of Amazon. Um if you guys look at this, you can
That's an amazing low budget solution.
Is that 8020? No, that's a coat rack or No,
that's a coat rack.
Nice.
That's like a coat rack. An adjustable height coat rack. Um, now here's the thing. You would not put expensive gear on there. You know, uh uh Carl is not going to put his, you know, uh 2,000 or $4,000 A600 or whatever on that thing. This is basically, you know, Canon uh uh no Sony CX 405s, you know, cheap cameras um that run at 1080, whatever. But But the whole point was I wanted to build it, but I wasn't at the shop. And since I have a pinball machine, that's a super pin. It's the right profile. It's the right talent to test all the stuff I'm building, right? So, I just use this as a test body, right? Oh, I have a pinball body at home so I can build a rig and figure it out. So, one day I just decided, oh, let me start a channel and and test this. That's why I use physical cameras and not screen capture.
Right.
Right. Because then you can't get the test of what you would be setting up as a mobile rig anywhere.
Exactly. Like I can't screen capture and I can't screen capture, you know, Attack from Mars at the shop,
right?
You know, outside of the DMD.
I mean, I have it. By the way, it messes up with the CGC one. If you do an HDMI out for it, it knocks it off center by about a half inch. Thankfully, it goes back when you pull out the HDMI split. Anyways, I digress. a digital output that you did that
for for stuff that has HDMI output. There's all sorts of quirks like my Dune, you have to reboot twice in order for it to start up. I think it's because the power draw from the USB for the HDMI splitter is like making the five or 12 volts [ __ ] up.
I'll tell you what, Jeeoff, pro tip. Um, cuz this happens with Jersey Jack Pinball machines, too. You have to you have to um you have to do like a man-in-the-middle attack after the game is booted because the HDMI handshake has to be there for all the so the PC has to see all the resolutions it wants to see.
Okay.
Right. It may be it may be you know since Labyrinth I guess has I mean uh Dune has two screens. One of them may not be 19 one of them may not be HD, right? 1920 x 1080. It needs to see all the resolutions it wants to see otherwise it's going to go crazy. So, what I would do with um like I used to have a Wonka in the garage and the little screen is a really funky thing. So, I would power it up, right? And then I would disconnect, put in my splitter, reconnect cuz by that time the PC has gotten
seeing what the approved resolution is. Got it.
It's seeing what the And then you then you put in your little man in the middle. Then you put in your little splitter connect and go. I have to do that with the um the P3 downstairs also. you have to just boot it up and you know you're not going to break anything by plugging in HDMI so you have to worry about that.
But um instead of booting and booting, try that next time. Try like starting it up and then going swap boom boom while it's live.
Okay, that sounds great. I'm definitely going to do that. Uh Brian's asking if you have any experience with atame systems. I don't know what an atame system is.
At game is at games is a company that makes like uh the little arcades like the Pac-Man arcade. Got
I think I've seen some like Mortal Kombats or something that are like mini Mortal Kombats. Yeah. Um the here's the thing that I I don't personally, but the ones I flipped at like an expo or whatever, they have issues with lag. Um once again, you're you're in that kind of area where, you know, these guys figure, oh, it's just pinball. We can throw a screen on it and and it's still laggy. Like when you go flip, it's like flip pop. In fact, I did a video, a high-speed video.
That would drive me nuts. it it would if you've never been used to that and you just come in on this level of like virtual it's normal so you can adjust but if you have played any pinball in your life where you hit the button and electricity is the speed of light and the flim fire
that solenoid doesn't happen right away.
Okay. So
that's where it's at. Do you plug in a regular gaming PC into it? Do you run it outboard and then put it in? Is it a system that you put just inside the cab? Are there subwoofers? Where do you get the flipper mechanics? Like I have so many Give me the crash course in filling up the cabinet with stuff to get it going. Like how strong a video card do you need?
It's It's actually quite it's simpler than you think. Um Um just to give virtual pinball flipping with no haptics, right? With no feedback. Uh it's a PC uh and two screens and then somehow you connect your you can use an old school like IPAC or you can use any any one of these boards that will convert uh the leaf switches to keyboard input.
Okay,
that's it. You're basically hitting the shift.
How do you how are you connecting the leaf switches so that you have like authentic pinball flippers to this whatever gaming translation,
right? That's That's a different story. So that I mean there are multiple ways and I'm sure a Borg knows a ton of ways. There are multiple ways. Um you can buy I don't think they make Pinskate boards anymore. There are boards online you can buy that are basically like uh just convert keyboard input. Um right you can hook up a switch hook put the just you know screw the wire of the leaf switch in and it'll be like the letter A, right? Right. When every time you
Right. And then you just bind A to be left flip or whatever or right flip.
You bind A to be right. right. Now, there are different levels of those boards. Some boards are super low latency. Right. And there's some really crappy boards that are super high latency. You want the super low latency. There are different companies. I don't think Pinscape makes their board anymore. I bought one a long time ago called the Zebboard, Zeb. He doesn't make them anymore. Um Um but there are uh gosh I'm I'm pretty sure Borg can can like mention a bunch of them. But yeah, if you just go online and you look up, you know, uh like IAC controller cuz arcades do it too, right? This right here is a is a mister
um that happens to have like an iPack in it. So I can control the mister from there. They're just keyboard commands at that point, right?
And that's why what is the cost someone's looking at to build a kind of like barebones? We're not no haptics, no like subwoofer, whatever other whatever we call it like accessories
that I mean you can calculate that just from your bare minimum, right? Your cabinet, right? So what barrels of fun sense sells cabinets for what 300 bucks?
I I forget what the cost was, but it it's pretty reasonable for a substantial amount of of you know treated
of stuff wood. Yeah.
Yeah. So, like there's the cost of the cabinet, there's a cost of the two screens. One One of the screens should be if you whatever your playfield screen is should be low latency, high uh refresh rate. That's going to be around $6 to $1,200. Really, that's going to be kind of expensive. A high-end PC, not even a really high-end PC. My PC is a like a i7 6700 K with a uh Nvidia 20 2080 Ti.
Okay. So, wow. So, the the fairly older generation cards have no problem handling the 120 Hz everything.
Not mine. I mean, if you go above a 20, I think you're good,
right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Um, a pretty good processor. The The CPU should be pretty beefy. That's the only thing about mine is not that super beefy because um the physics have to be calculated and right now I don't know of any virtual pinball system that calculates physics on the GPU.
Is the lighting ray traced as well? Does it use the 2080s rate tracing for it or does it uh is CPU?
No, Future Pinball does insane lighting. Um, Virtual Pinball is still, sorry, Visual Pinball for PC is still like um baked like so
that's very specific. How many different platforms are there for streaming? Cuz I know the ones that I've watched of your stream, right? you have ROM folders where you get to load authentic versions of games uh like and not to mention the ones that are being created by the homebrew and VPIN community. So, and then there's other people that just load pinball effects on there, right? So, like if what are the different platforms that people and what experiences can they expect from different types of VPIN platforms?
So, the platforms um if you're going to use it in a cabinet format, the platform should at some level support cabinet, right? which means it should allow the ro the the playfield to be rotated to a um a portrait. Uh right, because that's what we're dealing with. That's it's basically a regular widescreen portrait. Um but the ones I use are uh Pinball Effects, Pinball Effects 3, um um Time Shock, which was a very obscure kind of um it's a whole different story. It's that's a whole PC system of its own. uh visual pinball primarily. It's called Visual Pinball on the PC primarily, which which which, you know, a lot of people don't know is like um Jack Danger actually uses as like his uh is a David Hankin drawing, right? He'll render something. He'll He'll build a playfield in Visual Pinball and then move over to Solid Works and then move over to, you know, all the other like professional stuff. But it's it's a wonderful uh um platform. Visual Pinball is a wonderful platform for Now coming back around to what I was going to say in the beginning of the stream. um the fact that virtual pinball workshop works mostly in visual pinball and the library of of um parts that they use are actual Stern Williams um parts meaning that they can go into Blender and pull up a post from WPC and stick it in the playfield and then they render that. It's not they're not making up stuff anymore. There's actual
this is this is all their stuff can be built. In fact, this is another aside. There was a game by Astro um this guy Jason. He called goes by Astro Nasty. Um Um
jumped on my stream a few times. He did the artwork for Lord of the Rings uh the whatever edition or whatever.
The dude is nuts when it comes to um artwork. He actually did the artwork for the game that we're doing right now. Oh, cool. Um, but he did his own game called Die Hard Trilogy and it was 100% built in digital to be built. In fact, there's a guy who has built a dieh hard in Europe somewhere that actually flips. It's 100% everything that he got like all the measurements, all the stuff he pulled from the virtual pinball game. So now we've got virtual pinball. The VPW group can actually make a homebrew digital do all the code. In fact, that's what we're doing. Pink credibles, the game we're making right now. This is the digital version of it. There will be a homebrew built.
So you will see someday a TPF.
So let's let's roll back to this person that made the commentary about virtual pin this. It seems more than ever with the home maker kind of philosophy and like kind of where home, you know, you're talking about like virtual 3D printing and stuff and 3D printing and whatnot that is there going to be more real homebrew systems made as the accessibility for getting components from like actual Williams games like purchased through Pinball Life and getting playfields printed, you know, on materials cuz now there's more printing places than ever that can do direct to wood prints. like are we are we in like what's going to be like a for the people movement of pinball production?
I think we're already there. Um the number there there's another So going through lists of of pinball simulators, right, that you can use. There's another one called I think Pin Maker or something like that. It's on Steam. Um and and it probably be nice for you to actually grab that guy and interview them because Sure. They are they they built a system that you can build a whole game once again in their system and then um it'll actually write you like
a bist
yeah it'll make you bas like it'll tell you what your um your what is it called the um the the I forget what the the ROI or whatever it is not ROI but um
yeah not the return on investment whatever the
bomb
a bomb right
um so yeah so I think we're already there because the accessibility of doing it in digital and then moving it over to and I was I was talking to my buddy Matt. We were driving back from picking up this old Chicago today. We're in the car, right? And he goes, "Yeah, you sent me a picture of that, man. That place looked like absolute pinball em heaven, man. Holy crap." Did you grab my argosi or no?
I didn't even know what that game was. And I went, "Matt, what's an argos?" He goes, "Oh man, that's a deep cut." Whoa.
That's a great game, man.
This guy knows his [ __ ] I was like, "Yeah, okay.
That's fun. A big spinner on the right." Yeah, it's good stuff. I now I want to now I want to go check it out. I'm sure they have one there. Um Um No, we He said he said, "Why don't they just Why doesn't Stern like create the whole game digitally and then make the physical?" I was like, "They probably could, but they can't because they need to put out they need to be doing things at the same time." And the one thing you can push to the consumer is the code. They can always make the code better, but the the hardware has to get out of there. They got to get three games done a year, right? Well, St did have that virtual platform that they ended up dumping. Remember, they had hired some 30 third party developer or whatever and they had whatever it was like Ghostbusters was on there. There's a few games from the like early mid 2000s or whatever.
Yeah, that was the people who did the pinball arcade. Um, yeah,
I don't
to answer your question, I think we're already there, right? The home brewers are in really good shape, especially with fast being existing fast pinball
existing. In fact,
and that's what barrels use for their control boards.
Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, in fact, the the lead programmer and PinCreds has already like made the attract mode and a bunch of stuff for our game in Mission Pinball Framework. And it's it's so much nicer than working in uh visual pinball v uh vis visual basic because that's what visual pinball is built on. It's like VBA visual basic applications, whatever.
Yeah. Not a
I guess cumbersome language would you call it or
Yeah, it is a Yeah, it's a hot mess. But
so what can you talk about the theme of your game? Do you want to do you want to talk about your game a little bit?
No.
Okay, fair enough. Is Is this going to be like a big reveal?
Yeah, it'll be revealed in August and like mid August. So, we're going to reveal then we're going to probably try and launch for Christmas. But um it's a Yeah.
Yeah. Do we still want to keep it under wraps because we Yeah.
Okay. Fair enough. Can we set up another another uh podcast hang in August then when you got some stuff to show?
Hell yes. Oh, it's going to be exciting. We're going to be really excited. Borg dog said, "Who is the lead pin?" That is uh Defishbowl. He goes by the name of Defishbowl. So, uh just a little uh history of pin credibles. The first uh game we came out was was a recreation of Guardians of the Galaxy. Um that uh you know it was like a learning experience for everyone including myself. I had to dive deep and figure out the code. I had a Guardians in my garage during the pandemic and so we were able to throw the ball around. We were able to uh recreate a lot of the um the DMDs. So the thing we were going for was the Stern experience but in visual pinball. Right. The next thing we did was Batman 66, which was
great game. Lyman Lyman code, man.
LFS.
You go into a Batman 66, you go into the DMD settings and you go backwards one and you're at like 168.
Yeah, there's a lot. That is not a simple game.
At least you chose something simple to try to like be your second recreation, right?
Sure. Sure. It was It was simple. It took took a couple years. It was during the pandemic though when we like I guess had time and um the fishbowl really it I got to say the fishbowl is one of the greatest programmers I've ever met on the planet and I used to I used to uh uh I used to have like three programmers underneath me and when I used to do uh uh software engineering and the fishbowl is insane is his his credo was just like ah it's just code how did you do that it's just code
code man it's just code he's like he's like the matrix programmer hammer, right? He just like sees through it.
Yeah. Yeah. Just see through it. But um um what what were we talking about? I forget.
Uh we were finalizing what it's like for building a pinball VC cabinet, but we did a little side tangent to talk about your top secret pinball project.
Yep. So that happened. So So, so we did Batman 66. So we did Guardians of the Galaxy remake. We did a Batman 66 remake. And then the fishbowl was also involved in this was more a virtual pinball workshop project, but it was um Iron Maiden.
Okay.
Um Elwin's Iron Maiden, right? Not that old.
Sure. Which was originally a Archer homebrew.
That's right. That's right. Um, and I I was I'm not a big Iron Maiden fan, but I was incredibly impressed with, you know, once again, they had access to an Iron Maiden premium and worked through all the This is This is a complete 100% rebuild, you guys. These are not there's there's zero help from Stern. I mean, why would they help us do any of this stuff? But no, they're not really consumer friendly, especially not virtual pin friendly, it seems.
Not really. Not they're not really. I mean, I I'm I'm 100% sure that everyone everyone at Stern knows about ver visual pinball, including Jack Danger, and uh but a either don't feel it's a threat or b just are indifferent about it. Like not like not like they hate it. Like we're I don't think anybody's scared of Stern turning on the virt visual virtual pinball community and saying don't do that
unless they fly a little too close to the sun, right? Cuz what we did do when we did Guardians and Batman, we made sure it was not in production. Um but it's there's zero spike code in it. So it's all blackbox like figuring out there's zero. It's It's as if Stern wrote Batman 66 in Visual Basic,
right?
Why? Maybe it would play better than now that it's not on a spike system.
Um
uh but Spike 3 is going to save us all, so it won't matter. Yeah. No, I don't think that Stern sees they're in their own bubble, right? And I think that if they see something that's going to, you know, sniff into Stern's pockets, then they're gonna stick their lawyer dogs on it and then we can deal with the are they gonna be the new Disney of of pinball. You know,
here's the weird thing about this whole thing, whether virtual pinball eats into actual pinball sales. I don't know a single person who's gone from physical pinball machines to exclusively virtual pinball machines and has gotten rid of a physical pinball machine. But every member of Pinredles, there were four members originally. Every member now owns at least one game
because of the love that they got from the ver the the you know the the gateway drug.
Yeah, I was just about to I was literally just about to say gateway drug. It's they got them they got a taste of it. I think um our main 3D guy bought a Deadpool. Um the Fishbowl bought um a Mandalorian and Harlon must have bought three or four games. Like we are now filling our garages with physical pinball machines because of of the desire to and we've gotten rid of our B pins. We still This thing is bolted to the ground cuz I built it.
Yeah. It's a it's a part of you, right? It's It's not just a project. It's It's an it's a memory,
but but it's a gateway drug. And I don't think enough manufacturers know that. I think maybe Stern knows that. But it literally is like, wow, this is great. Wouldn't it be great to own a physical game? Yeah, let's let's see if we can get that budget together.
It's I mean, and the people that don't have the money to buy a real pinball machine and still want to play pinball, like that there should be a way for them to experience pinball. it it the fact that it's prohibitively expensive more so than ever right now is not something to be proud of. Like I think that it Stern should be doing and is trying to do stuff to get new blood into pinball, right? You can see it with their recent acquisitions of pushing into the video game IP territory. And uh and then I guess also with the uh what are they gifted some Stranger Things, right, to one of the one of the cast members or something that you know they're trying to like they're trying to put pinball on the map outside of the pinball bubble cuz everyone that loves pinball already knows about pinball.
Um so I don't know. I'm curious to see what the future looks like for that,
but I wouldn't count on Stern being a staple of virtual pins.
Yeah. I mean, but that I mean, that's fine. I I I'm not mad at them. That's it's fine. I mean, I'm I'm actually like, you know, I'm a big, you know, Stern fan. I mean, we all to some level. We all, you know, they they kept it going. I mean, Gary Stern, come on. Like, where would we be without
them uh pulling all this stuff together? By the way, uh GU mentioned Arnaz. Yes, Arno is a place where you can go and buy these controller boards for your your cabinets. Highly recommended, really cool guy, really smart, and um really good quality stuff. Not a sponsor, but arnaz, I think it's arnaz.com or something like that. If you go there, you can find some stuff. Um there
um and the fact that we have virtual pinball, right? So, the one the one thing that still holds true is that if you want to learn the rule set of a game, um I once won uh uh a team I helped win a team tournament because I played a little bit of Avengers the 2012 Gomez Avengers on my VIN before going to this arcade. I had never touched an Avengers pinball machine in my life. And then I ended up owning one for like a year. But
I went in and I knew exactly how to start the multiball, Jeff. I knew how to do the stuff and I kicked everyone's asses because I got some
I got the rule set like and I got to flip it.
Sure.
It shows that how useful and it's not like that's impeding on, you know, the Avengers pinball market or whatever. You get to use a digital version to learn some code, learn some rules. I think what is it the pinball effects has got new William stables galore coming out for for that period of like 80s to mid 90s and I wish everyone would understand like if I fall in love with Funhouse on my iPad and I see a Funhouse at an arcade I'm beling to that Funhouse and if I somehow figure out oh I can get a fun house for $4,500
getting a fun house in your house then do you have a do you have a collection have real pins.
I have a multimmorphic P3.
I I guess I still don't. No, I I guess I still don't. I have a multimmorphic P3, which is purported to be not pinball.
Yeah, I don't I'm not sure why that's reported as that either. What's your What's your favorite game on there? I have never played Multimorphic. I've heard from people that there are two games that are really amazing on there, and I'm curious if they're if they're going to sync with yours.
Uh my favorite is Weird Owl. I bought I bought it as
I bought it as a weird owl. Number one, I'm I'm a huge Weird Alowl fan, right? I bought it as a Weird Owl. It's a weird Ellie.
It's got the topper and the whole thing. Um I absolutely love that stupid game. It's supposed to be stupid. I mean, it has, you know, dare to be stupid multiball.
Sure.
You know,
if you're getting a weirdo game, you should you should know exactly what you're getting into here. You'll appreciate this story. So, the guy who basically taught me how to repair pinball machines, who works at Disney, his uh his college roommate was Weird Al Yanovic. So, and and he proved it to me by showing the Christmas cards that he gets every year from Weird Al and his family, which is pretty funny. They're as you would expect and very bizarre.
Oh my god. I Yeah. So, so I love I love that dude. I love that game. Um uh the games I've owned on the P3 were uh I used to have a heist. I ended up selling it to Erica, Erica's Pinball Journeys. Um, she has a pin, she has a P3 also. So, we have like
You just yank the center, you know, playfield module out and then give it to somebody else and say, "Have fun."
That was it basically.
There you go. Done.
Um, and I have the Princess Bride. Um, which is which is fine. It's not my It's not my favorite really anymore. It's fine. And I'm wait I I bought Portal but it's not here yet. So
So that's you and Borg Dog are both waiting for that. So the game I heard that is referred to as kind of Multimorphics like top is Final Resistance. And I'm curious. I've never play Resistance.
Final Resistance kicks ass. And I I the only reason I don't own it right now is because I know when it comes in it's going to be bolted to the floor, which is impossible because it's a module,
right? But then you have to get another multimmorphic cabinet to have any of the other ones, right? Unless you want to hurt your back every two seconds swapping them out. Right.
I didn't get that for a minute and I was like, "Oh, yeah, you're right." Um, no, but Final Resistance is like TNA 2.0. Um,
okay.
And we could have a whole different discussion about multimmorphic, but part of the reason I went I went multimmorphic is because a I know I'm not going to see it on route like or that's not true. There is one TJ Buyer has one, but it's far from me, right? Number two, I I absolutely love Sorry. I absolutely love what Multimorphic is doing. They their their games are like engineering porn. It's so
Jeff, you have to take their games are built to be pulled apart and put back together again daily.
That's nuts. Um and also since I work at Freleal Watch, I have access to like, you know, 57 other games. Um, so if I'm going to have one at home, I wanted to have one that was unique that
So you you took the words right out of my mouth. I feel like that there's there's kind of two categories of collectors or or more, I guess. But there's people that buy the games that are just like amazing and they want to have a really great collection. And there's people that collect games cuz they they want something that's really unique and interesting and kind of like a little bit of a pinball historical like moment, right? And I feel like Multimorphic really is that. It's a snapshot of like weird technology and pinball mashup. And you know, it'd be curious to see how that platform evolves, especially since it is so technologydriven. You look at like a lot of the games that are being made now are being made with the same components that were made from 80s and '90s games. I mean, they're all Williams parts that are exactly the same as they were in old games.
Don't Don't get them wrong, though. The stuff that they didn't need to reinvent, they didn't reinvent,
right?
It's a mashup.
It's a mashup. Like the other day, I went to hit my upper flippers and they didn't. And I it's a it's a it's a 4 amp fuse I blew, right? That happens with every pinball machine. Their coils are straight up standard coils. They're They're standups are straight up standard. But um yes, the rest of the cab is kind of
um um
super simple like simpler than you think. Now when you say simple like right okay you're talking about node boards now where
you know if you're an actual
if you're an engineer and you can do everything you get frustrated at a node board because well I can't just
I got to order this now right I can't fix it on location
it's great it's great for their business model because they can just have stacks of node boards that they send out to replace but you can no longer like cut off bad MOSFETs and like you know resolder on for someone like you know you and me that's used to like older games and it's just like it's kind of fun to dive into the board and figure it out and fix it and feel somewhat gratified if you haven't cut your hands up too much. But anyway, uh yeah, so that's what I have at home. Um yeah, it's a but it's a gateway drug. Like I said, the virtual is just a gateway. It's got they got to they got to see this like that. You know, Jersey Jack has a reputation. I don't know if this is true because I've never heard this come out of Jersey Jack at all that um you know they that they hate uh virtual pinball. I don't know if that's true. Like I said, it's allegedly I've I've heard it, but I never heard it from them. But I'm really like, you know, guys, realize that this is this is how you reach this is how you reach the masses that you're trying to reach. You know, the kid that has it on their iPhone and they're just touching the sides of the screen, the flip,
right? I've seen so many kids playing pinball effects and then, you know, they come over to my place, you know, for their friends with my daughters and they get to see a real pinball machine and their minds freaking explode. They're just like because the thing's like, you know, three times, four times as big as they are, right? And they're so used to being the the bigger thing than the pinball machine on the iPad and now suddenly it's bigger than they are. Like, yeah, take that kid, you know?
Take that kid.
Uh, but so let's reel it back though cuz I want let's talk about Mr. Pinball Theater cuz your channel uh if you are watching this and you don't know who Man Who is, what's wrong with you? But if you don't know, you stream and you stream in a really unique entertaining way than pretty much any pinball streamer that I know, right? Your Your channel is a hybrid of of both movie watching and and technology interests and chat and and virtual pin. What What started that and what kind of shaped what you're doing with your channel? It's interesting because, you know, my channel name is Mystery Pinball Theater 3000. And that's based on the fact that I have a love for Mystery Science Theater 3000, which back in the day, if you guys don't know, you're too young. It's the three robots that sit and and the human that sit in front of a bad movies and they make fun of them
for two hours. Two hours.
OG.
The Well, yeah. The Wow. Wow. That's It's weird to hear it that to say like, but it is the original Rift Track, right? Um Um cinematic Titanic and Rift Tracks both came out of mystery the mystery science theater um um crew. Um so in order to la
it's it's part of the song. It's part of the go la at one point of the song.
Got it. So, So, um, I adopted that and I actually my cabinet art and everything, a good buddy of my m, a buddy of mine, Paul Marino, he, uh, made my cabinet art and everything, um, mystery pinball theater. And, uh, the reason that we even do the movie riffing now is because I I was kind of forced into it because people were kind of like, "Come on, man. This is
right. You're mystery pinball theater. You should watch the movies." we and and people like, "Can we riff you playing pinball?" I go, "Yeah, you can riff me playing pinball." And at one point, I was going to write a some code that lets people pop pop bubbles up as I play and make fun of me as I play. And I thought maybe I should just So on a Friday night one night, I think I was playing Tron, right? And I said, "Oh, let's watch a little bit of Tron." So, we put a little bit of Tron on and people in chat were having fun and I just it just snowballed into this gamification of what we call riffing. And riffing is just making fun. This is not coined by me. It's coined by the Mystery Science Theater people. When you riff, it's not like jazz. When you riff on a movie, you make fun of it. you say something that's funny about them. And so what I did was I made it so that people can get tickets and they can join the theater and there's four players and whatever they type in chat during the screening of the movie shows up as a pop little bubble and they compete. Actually other people vote for those people and they get scores. It looks like a little DMD. Each person has a little DMD. You can get jackpots. You can get bonuses at the end of the end of the the round. And it's turned into a regular Friday night thing that I've kind of buried. It's East Coast time, 8:00 p.m. Pacific, which is really buried for everybody else because I was always nervous about showing movies.
Why? Because of monetization or whatever, like DMC strikes or whatever.
Yeah, a little bit. Um
I mean that makes sense. I'm not It's not a criticism. I just it is a weird landscape to try to be an entertainer and in order to do that use media that is theoretically owned by somebody else. Like I get strikes on my Lord of the Rings all the time because I run the original soundtrack, you know, the the pin sound kit and they're just like, you know, you can't do that. I'm like I don't don't Okay, then demonetize it. I don't give a [ __ ] Like
I didn't either. Yeah. I And I try to What we try to do is when I say we, it's now me and uh my buddy Surreal uh Brendan who actually helps a lot with the stream. What we try and do, we try and ob obuscate the movie so much that we we say this. We say, "Look, if you're coming here to watch this movie, you're in the wrong place,
right?
Because during it's 20-minute segments, it's broken up. It's talk bubbles over the screen. It's sound effects playing. It's our own little every time there's a montage, we do like a dance montage video over the top. If you came to watch the movie, it's going to be the most distracting thing you've ever tried to watch movie because we want to make it a little more transformative. So, it's not just here, watch the movie,
and anybody can just
stream a movie on Twitch and be like, "Yay, I'm awesome." No, we want to we want to be the most disruptive crowd for this particular terrible movie ever and have fun while we're doing it.
Like, you're going to a theater with just like the worst possible audience to like experience it with.
Yes. everybody trying to be funny in front of their date or something.
Um, so would you for streamers that are like struggling to come up with something to be unique, right? That are trying to find an identity for their channel, right? I feel like yours obviously because you had a passion with, you know, Mystery Science Theater, it kind of came not automatically, but that it was clear what kind of like vision to pursue for yours. What would you say to somebody who's trying to develop a channel and and is new to streaming?
Um, that's a really good question because people chase this idea that they have to do something specific to be successful as a as a streamer in general, period. Right? Whether it's pinball or whatever. And it's this sounds counterintuitive and people hear it, but they don't they they hear it, but they don't usually do it. Just really be yourself. Be honest. Be authentic. Don't be boring. Be entertaining, but be in the most entertaining version of yourself that you can be. Um, what's up, Wolf Man?
Um, our our LA our Eagle Rock troll is here.
What's up, Wolf Man?
Wolf Wolf Man and I have a we have a history.
Oh, really? Oh, I can't wait to talk to you about that later. Not you, Wolf Man. We're gonna talk about
I mean I mean I've never I've never met them in real life, but we have we're we're buds. Um just just it sounds stupid. Be yourself, but also remember you are the entertainer now. Um when I used to stream to two people, okay? Um which everyone starts off with. You're always streaming to two people. Hopefully you're not one of them is not you watching your stream back,
right? It's It's your bots, right? to manage chat bots.
Um Um I when I before I came to streaming I was doing a a YouTube channel called Pull My Focus which was teaching um it was teaching production and post-production in um you know film and video. Um, so we ended up we did about 168 episodes teaching about everything about rule of you know uh uh rule of um you know not crossing like eyelines and and lights and cameras and you know drones and all this other stuff. So we had a whole channel. So I thought okay since I'm streaming to two people I'm going to stream as if I'm recording it later to show it on YouTube. So, I'm going to be the most entertaining person to one person thinking about later it will be watched by many people.
And that's that's a little thing that got me through like the streams where it was like two people for an hour. Um but but my advice is don't search. Just find just be comfortable being you. Be authentic. Try not to be gratuitous like because you might you might throw some people off if you're just like, you know, f this, f that, whatever. But um and you'll you'll eventually find where you want. You'll eventually find yourself, right? If you if and I I say this I used to say this to I used to teach dance. So I would tell my students, look, if you need to find someone to emulate, go for it. like find your favorite dancer and try and do what they do because if you succeed you will eventually become yourself out of that right you need a starting point right I'm not telling you to emulate them and then be them to emulate them
not emulation
exactly iterate off of them and you will find what your style is and that's the same thing for streaming right they don't come for look at Jack Danger like Jack okay He's I would sit at a bar and talk to Jack forever cuz he's he's an a wonderful personality to hang out with. But did I ever give a crap about what pinball game he was playing after a while?
Not really.
You go to watch the stream for its entertainment value, not for the pinball table.
I didn't. After a while, I didn't care if he wanted to sit there and play the stupidest if he wanted to play freaking Pap's Blue Ribbon or whatever it was called. What is that Paps Blue Ribbon game? That was um was it terrible? There's like the terrible remake of Wo Nelly.
My god. But Wo Nelly was already terrible. I didn't It wouldn't Yeah.
Yes. Yeah, that was a worse Wo Nelly. Can Crusher. Thank you. If he wants to play Can Crusher, I could watch him for two hours playing Crusher because he's that's that's my biggest advice. Yeah.
All right. Awesome. Well, there you go. There's excellent advice for anybody who's just diving in. I'm seeing more new streamers than ever in the last kind of like month or so. It seems like there's a lot of I don't know whether it's just the accessibility of of the 8020 aluminum or just like something is in the wind and there's a lot of of new streamers and that's amazing. I think that pinball needs to be up there to let's take over Twitch. Twitch clearly doesn't respect it. Uh Dustin, that does remind me of a very important question that I should ask Manu as we're getting closer to my to my uh uh dentist appointment. Uh, Manu, since you do work heavily in the virtual pinball uh, hub, right? I'm just curious out of these three like main pinball titles, which one would really would do with a great remake, a great virtual representation of it? Uh, Raven.
where you going? Why are you laughing? Raven.
And yes, I know Raven's already kind of virtually made, but still. Which one of those do you think?
I agree with Jay Biscety. Number two. That was the better Raven of the three.
Yeah.
What do you think is the worst pinball machine ever made?
Thunder. Thunder.
Thunderbolts.
Is it
Thunderats? Thunder. I forget.
Is it? No, it's Thunder. Thunderbirds. Thunderbirds.
Thunderbirds. Yeah, that's the one where you have to spell like a 30let like word in order to get into any the mode,
followed quickly by Spinal Tap, which is their second game. Um,
uh, Bowen Bowen said that the there's a mode in, uh, Rick and Morty, which is an homage to that where you have to spell like this ridiculously long word,
Pirates of the Pancreas,
right? So, that's apparently that's apparently a reference to Thunderbolts, Birds, whatever. Thunder whatever thunder who no one
car something
which is the problem with that game is I actually played it a I played it at the pinball museum.
The problem with Thunderbirds and the problem with Rick and Morty.
No, Rick and Morty is fun but Thunder Thunderbirds I played at the the Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame which is a whole other hot mess.
Was it working? Um,
it was unfortunately it was on the very slim side of working. Uh,
interesting.
So, um, yeah, it was really, really, really bad. Like, and it's the kind of the kind of bad where you go, you watch a really bad movie and you go, "Wow, somebody greenlighted this and and it got through made and it went to theaters."
Yeah. The wor the worst thing a bad movie can be is boring, right? Because there's bad movies that are just like amazingly entertaining. I mean, I think for a really long time, what was it that the the best worst movie was? Manos: Hands of Fate, right? Wasn't that like referred to as like the worst film for a really long time?
Yes. And I think it's still true. You can't really watch it unless you watch Joel and the Robots making fun of it.
Nice. Um, but what are they going to say?
Yeah, I guess Home Penin is kind of taking it to town now with new terrible games.
Wait, didn't Homepin make Blues
Brother Blues Brothers? Yes.
How is this possible?
Like, did they made a game or that it's not good or that it that they made a Blues Brothers IP?
That it's so bad. It's just
so many questions and and Stars is an incredible game, too, which is even weirder that you could screw up a game that is so legendary,
but here we are.
I I got to admit, I'm not really familiar with Raven. I mean, I know the the back glass, but I haven't you know, Raven is one of those games where I have to get uh some plays on.
It's got like a narrow set of like drop targets. The sound effects are really bad. It's just like the back glass is probably the best part of it, I would say. It's a pretty iconic like just you know it looks like somebody made a a be movie ripoff of Commando or any other like you know
uh thing.
Um all right so I got we got like 50 more minutes. I wanted to speak a little bit about Free Gold Watch. Uh you mentioned your time there. You told me that you you show up at like 8:00 in the morning till 12 helping them repair pins. What
what is Free Gold Watch for people that don't know and why they should go check it out and uh Yeah. Yeah. And what is it like working like repairing games like professionally?
Regold Watch is a uh is 16767 Waller Street in the hate beautiful San Francisco. We have 57 I'm going to my spill right now. I didn't notice that. Right. We have uh like 57 pinball machines
plus old Chicago. Now you just got old Chicago which is bolted to the ground. Um, Freelo Watch is a t-shirt printing a Marc Silk screening um, company kind of, right? U, that's where it used to be a retail store and then um, the story goes one of Matt, who's the owner, one of Matt's friends brought in a pinball machine, put it in, one became two, two became four, and then most of the shop is now filled with pinball machines. But its primary um, business is t-shirt Marc Silk screening. Interesting. How does how does having pinball on location help sells t-shirts or at least designs? Okay.
They are like they are like Oscar and
god damn you Mike move.
You're like the odd couple. But um um it is now the location where the San Francisco pinball department um they do their uh league games out of. Um, and I've been going there for a long time since I moved into this neighborhood. And um, like I said, like I mentioned earlier earlier, I helped start the streaming from there. And then from then on, Matt and I kind of developed a friendship where he trusts me and um, he lets me like run around the place. I also do like the IT stuff there, right? Since I
So I reinstalled all the routers and stuff and I made one since I connected Cayman. So, you showed up and started playing pins and basically was like, "Hey, I want to help make this place like really pop."
Yeah. Yeah. Because before I played the pin, I would clean it and I would just check it and make sure I I wasn't going to be doing a tech stream for an hour.
I just make sure. And then eventually Matt kind of just said, "Hey, how about I pay you for your time and you if you want to come in and clean games, um, you know, just, you know, fill out a time sheet." And I said, "All right, cool." you know, I was I was like, I don't want to really do it at first cuz I want my hobby to turn into my job.
Um,
yeah, right.
I think that's anybody's fear for something that they're passionate about. I mean, I've talked to that's a question that I frequently ask people that are on the podcast is like, at what point, you know, for people that are like really like, yeah, like pinball CEOs and stuff like that, it's like, dude, if you love pinball and you start a pinball company, that sounds like the fast track to like not liking pinball anymore, right? You know, it's just the fear of losing what you care about is like a legit fear. But it turns out I don't I I don't hate pinball, right? I'm still I still love it 100%. I love being able to be helpful. And when I fix some games in the morning and kids come in and they play those games, I feel like I help them and I help the community move forward because the worst thing you want is to go up to a game that looks pretty and it breaks. That is the worst experience ever, right? I I got lots of stories, but I got to I also got to um give a lot big shout out to a lot of people who helped me get to where I am, like Matt Henry, who runs Free Go Watch. Um David Valanski who is who works for the Pacific PI helps help help out the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alamita. Also everybody at the Pacific Pim Museum in Alama. Um Michael Sheis and Evan Phipe and um um Kyle Sperryi. Who knows who Kyle is? I don't know. Some dude that works at Stern. But he's coming on the podcast soon. I've actually been talking to him pretty regularly. Kyle's a super nice guy. Well, Kyle helped me Kyle helped me fix my King Kong, which immediately broke within a week of me playing it. And uh he was the service technician that was assigned to my case and he was just like, "Hey, I watched your channel. I love your content." And I was just like, "Dude, get on my podcast. Are you kidding?" Having a stern customer support person. And he's so much more than that. I mean, he does the tours of the factory. I mean, like Kyle is uh Yeah. I want
You know, Kyle, you know, Kyle used to work at Marco, right? I didn't know that, but I did see a screenshot of you with a Marco shirt on sounding like maybe you worked at Marco, too. I'm I'm a moto slave.
I know that sounded weird. I I thought about that before I said it, and I'm okay with
Okay, fair. fair.
But um
Kale worked at Marco as well,
apparently.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Um, no, but Kyle uh used to work in the Bay Area. Kyle's from the Bay Area. Used to work with uh Chris Coons, who's known as Pinball Pirate out here, who is the technician's technician. Like,
gotcha.
Chris knows everything about pinball. Um, Kyle worked underneath Chris and then Kyle went to um and he worked at the Pacific Pinball Museum. Then he moved then he got hired at at Marco and then Stern hired him. So, Kyle Kyle's the greatest. Kyle is awesome.
He seems really cool. I'm very excited.
Yeah.
So, a lot of these people I owe a lot to. Um, you know, I'm still considered an intermediate fixer. Like this morning I I did the most fun job ever is fixing a pop bumper uh ring and rod, which madness, right? Medieval madness, right? Pop bumper. Where is it? Where is it, Jeff? Underneath the ramp.
Underneath the ramp. You got to You got to Yeah, I'm guessing you cannot take enough of the assembly off from underneath in order to get there. You got to you got to start removing plastics. Yay. You You got to Okay, so you know that you love a game where clearly the people that designed it were like, "Hey, we're going to be friendly to the technician who may have to go in and service this." And then you see a game where you're just like, "What? What? Who hurt you as a child that you needed to do this to somebody?" Right. Like
it's it Yeah. I I will say Medieval Madness wasn't the worst. Like getting that ramp up wasn't bad. Um, I also got to shout out to Jersey Jack because generally speaking, here's the thing, like Eric Minier gets like [ __ ] about some of some of the code in his games, but um those games generally speaking, as far as I know, are easy to get to pretty much everything,
right? Um because Eric was an operator and Eric will build the game so that you don't have to do nightmare stuff to get to things that are hard to
I still remember trying to replace that long rubber on highspeed in the back which is like you have to take the original highspeed and you have to take the entire goddamn ramp assembly off just to do this one stupid rubber. It's so dumb. It's so dumb.
Where did you get the Where did you get the replacement though? Did you have to special order that
the replacement rubber? It was probably from Marco. I don't even think pinball life existed at that point. It was that or Bayside Amusements or something like that. I forget there was a a place that I used to order. This was like 15 12 years ago. So, I don't I don't really remember what internet sites were around for it, but it was big. It's a big ass saggy rubber, man. You heard I said
number one.
Number one. If that was on location, that would be a zip tie right now. Number two. So, good on you for getting a replacement rubber. Thank you. We love you. Um, number two, Whitewater is not that bad. Whitewater the upper playfield is not that bad, but you know, it's also, how much have you worked on games, right? If it's the only game you've ever worked on, Whitewater is a nightmare. If it's if if you're doing it every day like I am, um, you know, your your time goes from 15 minutes to to 30, maybe 45 to get through
for a complicated game. Well, shout out. So, it's funny. I want to personally thank you right now because the people that make the games work at arcades so that they are completely enjoyable experiences are like the most important people for being like an ambassador to pinball, right? Uh when I talked to Kale and Rachel from Electric Bat Arcade, they talked about how they're the tech they are and they work really hard to make sure those games work and we talked about the Las Vegas Pinball Museum because that is a lot of people this is Rachel's words almost directly. I think it's it's a lot of people's experience or first experience to pinball and it's frequently not a good experience because the state of those games is just not in the condition that it should be. So people think that that's pinball and that super sucks cuz if anybody's played a game that's tuned versus a game that's just seen some [ __ ] It's not the same. You're just silently retros. Are you thinking about being in Vegas and having a bad time? No, I I had a great time because I hung out with my buddy Tony who's also the the living arcade on Twitch. Um and he was volunteer I don't know if he volunteers there anymore, but he was volunteering there. It's just depressing. Um he can't he couldn't possibly keep up with the amount of work that was
I mean there's so many there's so many games there,
right? It's like 200 or something. And how can you expect to keep those many games working without a team of technicians?
It's more like 400. It's not really like two. It's like there's more like
Oh, I was just counting the ones that worked
and 75.
14 games. The first four Sterns that you see when you walk in the door. What's interesting about the Sterns is Stern did that. Stern came in and brought those games because Stern is smart. They're like, "Look, if there's a spot in Vegas, we need to be there."
Yeah.
So, Stern basically put two of everything in in a museum and did this whole display with the ball and the the Stern. They're not Stern is like First time I played Godzilla with Godzilla Pro was at Las Vegas pinball whatever arcade museum and uh I could it the ball could barely get to the to the [ __ ] building shot because the flipper was so [ __ ] I mean, it was probably seized coil or something. Whatever it was, it was just like, why did I just pay a$125 or whatever for this? It's so It was just really frustrating. Yeah. Sorry, Vegas.
Anyways, the positive aspect of this is to you and every other operator who bust ass to make sure that these games are fun to play on location, like I salute you because that [ __ ] is It's not fun to open the games and get your hands cut up and dirty every day. Obviously, when you love it, you love it. But like it really is gratifying and and you rock, man. Seriously.
Thank you. That's That's awesome, man. Appreciate it.
Um, so I I do need to wrap this up, like I said, because I do have a Dennis appointment. Um, is there anything that you'd like to plug? I mean, you're already so well known on Twitch, but if there's anything super interesting coming in, you know, you mentioned August that your uh your VPIN is coming out with a potential physical release in December. Uh, take it away. And if there's any questions from chat, fire. This is this is your opportunity to ask Mano all those secret secret questions you wanted to.
Um, no. I don't really have anything to plug. I mean, I I will be going to Are you going to pinball expo?
I am, man. Let's hang out.
Yes.
Let's go.
I got to say,
it's my first time in Chicago. I need you to give me the tour because I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm doing. I'm going just because I I love pinball now more than ever.
Chicago is, you know what's cool about Expo? Chicago Expo now is like is like the joint like for a while like uh TPF was my like let's go and then last year Rob Burke was like hold my beer and Rob Burke Rob freaking Burke was like let's go. He brought in like 150 of his pristine games from uh pastimes arcade into a whole new room and Rob is just insane and his games are like new in box. They feel like wow.
I have never played a really good version of what is that one that Emoto loves. I think it's I think it's called Hotbot or BOD something or
you got all
Hot.
It's got another one. Standups all over the place. She's like, "That's the greatest game ever." I was like, "No, it's not." Sorry, not hot bodies. Hard Bodies.
Hard Bodies. Yeah,
that's the one.
I play Robs and I was like,
"This is pretty good."
Um, yeah. So, so I can show youall some awesome. Oh, okay. Yeah, Johnny's got you covered, man. Yeah. So, Expo Expo is gonna be a party, so I can't wait to see you there.
Um, outside of that, uh, you're going to CS, so I'll see you at CS. Well,
depends on what what day you're there. I'm I'm only on there on on Sunday with my boys.
Uh, I'm going I'll be up there Friday night and then staying Saturday and then leaving Sunday. So, if you're if you're around early Sunday, we should
Yeah, we're okay.
I would love to connect. It'd be really cool just to even just to say hey and thanks for being on the cast.
Outside of that, just shout out to my Twitch channel and shout out to Free Go Watch. That's about it. Um, if uh yeah, I mean
that's
if if you're watching this on video on demand and you do not know who Manu is, please head over to Mystery Pinball Theater on Twitch and hit that follow button. You will not be uh uh sad at all. Probably some of my favorite favorite rewards of any any Twitch stream uh which you program yourself. I think my favorite one is the the like be right back where it like pauses the video and does the like little audio stinger like like that's that's a classic for me. I love that one. that there was an arms race back in like the 2020s like the pandemic of myself, Don't Panic Flip, uh, Flipstream, uh, and a couple others where we all were trying to oneup each other
with crazy Well, George has got that like wild level up system where it's just like the entire layout changes every time there's activity.
Yeah, don't panic Flip has that. and Death Lab, which you should check out George, too, cuz uh uh one other shout out is Don't Panic Flip is the first Twitch streamer I've ever seen. It wasn't Death Flip, it was George. And I basically copy everything that George did for the first year. Uh Don't Panic Flip. Amazing like like high tier like Chef's Kiss is
I love his engagement and yeah,
his spreadsheet breakdowns of how to like play a game and score. Like he's definitely one of the most like informative like rule set ones.
Yeah.
Uh oh no. Sign out here. Is he going to make a goddamn dad joke? I know it. This is like he's like we call him the pun daddy over on on our channel.
And uh Yeah. Go on. Sign out. What? Send a send a pun. We'll send off the stream with a pun. Pun it up. Pun on.
And pixelated is here. Look at this man. We got the whole Twitch posi in here. All right. Well, while that's going on, again, thank you so much, Manu, for taking time out of your day here. I know it was last minute, especially with your uh grabbing that old Chicago in the middle of your workday. I really appreciate it.
Uh thank you everybody for uh being here and listening to us. If you're watching this later, or if you're watching on the podcast, uh thanks. Check out the other ones. There's some there. There's stuff on YouTube. We do things on Instagram, all sorts of stuff. If you're going to be at CAS, swing by, say hi. I will be there. Uh thank you for the follows and resubs. And uh yeah, have a great day. Bye. Oh, praise the great pyramid. Let's go find someone to raid. That's the other thing we do. Bye, everybody.