Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is episode 13. It is Sunday, July 17th. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're a podcast about pinball and video games and tabletop gaming. So we'll start out like we always do with what we've been up to lately. What have you been up to, Dennis? Oh, gosh, I've been up to an awful lot, and almost all of it related to the topics at hand for once. So I can't say I've really done much in the way of movies, though I did see that ultimate edition of the Batman v. Superman. I've heard that it completely changes everything, and it's actually good. Well, I didn't see the theatrical release, so I cannot confirm nor can I deny that it does that. It was okay. The movie was okay. I was still confused for the first 45 minutes, which I didn't like. There were a lot of parts to it that were pretty dumb and were frustrating. But overall, it was definitely competent, and at least in that director's cut style ultimate version, it isn't nearly as bad as Green Lantern was or anything like that. So I would just say it was a mediocre, acceptable movie, and I would recommend going ahead and watching that version. just to sort of, if you want to stay up with what's going to go in the DC universe, you're not going to go away from that and be like, whoa, that totally wasted my time. You'll probably go, meh, Marvel would have done it better, which is fair. Well, yeah, I mean, it's Marvel. That's what they do is do it better. Marvel loses in TV and DC loses in the movies. That seems to be how it's been for the last couple of years. Yeah, it's sad. I feel bad because I have a more attachment just childhood-wise. I wasn't a comic book reader, but I have more attachment to the DC characters. So I always wanted them to just sort of had success because those are the characters I know best. But on the plus side with the Marvel stuff, I tend to learn about new characters because I usually have no idea about any of them. So that aside, let's see. So in the realm of pinball, we both were at the 403 Club tournament last week. And for me, I got destroyed, went to and out. Yeah, I lost it as well. It was not a good showing for me at 403. Actually, and I had Pizza West yesterday. I went to and out there as well. So I haven't had a good showing for the month of July. But I will note that at 403, I actually set my two highest scores ever back to back on Walking Dead. They have the Walking Dead LE there. And I got my highest score. And then on the extra credit, I got my second highest score, which I was really pleased with. I had that game on both of my tournament draws and I did awful. They were really poor scores. Instead of burning your bad games out first, you burned your good games out first and then you were stuck with the bad ones. I should have. I should quit playing Walking Dead because it makes me always want to own one because I really like it. Which is interesting because a lot of other games that use that style of mechanic, I don't like. I don't like Metallica very much. See, I like Metallica and I like Walking Dead both. I mean, they're both fun games to me. I'm not sure what exactly draws me to those games as strongly as they do, but they're both big enjoyments for me. I'm not very good. I'm not as good as I should be at them. Yeah, no, and I'm pretty bad on both of the tables. It's just for me, they both, I group them together because they both, to me, have this, their strategy is what I call the chopping wood strategy of hit a shot over and over and over, and then that gets you into a mode, versus what we see with something like Kiss, Star Trek, Game of Thrones, where you have the – well, Game of Thrones is its own sort of unique beast, but Kiss and Star Trek where you have the glowing lit shots and you kind of pick your mode. Mustang is the same way, that sort of approach. And generally I prefer that ladder style to the chopping wood style. But for me, Metallica feels like I'm just chop, chop, chopping, whereas with Walking Dead I get into it. I feel more like I'm in the theme, I guess. And part of it's probably that I watch The Walking Dead, so I appreciate the theme more than I do the band Metallica, which I never was a huge fan of. But, okay, so that was that for what I'll call primary pinball. But I do have some update stuff in terms of the world of virtual pinball. As I noted at last week's episode, we talked briefly about Summer Games Done Quick, which is that charity speed running. I did not know at the time whether or not Pinball Done Quick was going to happen, and it did. So I did watch some Pinball Done Quick as well. one of the things they did in conjunction with it was they had announced a pinball arcade tournament which i had never participated in before but it was it was the steam version 10 tables and you would you had access to them whether you owned the packs or not and it was the highest score you recorded and you could do it over and over throughout the entire duration of that tournament which i think was about 10 days the trick though because it was in the done quick theme was you only had five minutes to do the scoring so it you know that made it a very interesting challenge because you had games and as you as you know because i contacted you because for example one of the tables was attack from mars my strategy when i actually play attack from mars did not lend itself to scoring high scores or at least i wasn't getting very high up on the list which is why i was like what can i do i only have five minutes what what because i i was like i was going into the multi ball i was trying to get total annihilation and it was just taking way too long i was one getting enough points for the effort so it was that and then nine other tables and so i it was fat i mean it sucked me on in and i will admit they did have some prizes which they're actually at the time of this recording they have not done the drawings yet they were supposed to but they've been pushed back to later that later today but was i think anyone in the top 100 was is in a drawing for some sign trans lights and anyone in the top 50 was in a drawing for for some sort of laptop. So, you know, they kind of had a little incentive there to try and get you going. And based off of my placement, I knew that keeping in the top 100 was going to be pretty easy. But staying in the top 50 did require effort. So I actually had to keep going in every single day and bumping up at least some of my scores. I did end up out of 345 players, I placed 37th at the end of it. My best table was an old EM called Big Shot, which I got the 13th highest score on and my worst table was theater of magic which i got 77th on and uh so anyway it was it definitely occupied me uh in between the last podcast and this one because my steam copy of pinball arcade i mostly play the xbox copy but my steam copy of pinball arcade went up from 12 hours played to 47 that's a slight increase and it was all tournament other than a couple times where i I had to go in and just load up the rules on the scoring stuff because I couldn't access the rules through the tournament. And other than that, like the rest of the world, apparently, I've started up playing Pokemon Go, which we'll hit on more later on. I've never actually played a Pokemon game before. So since it was free and everyone else I knew was doing it, I've downloaded it. I've loaded it up some. I've not been going out and really diving a whole lot into it. But I can load it up at work because we're a pokey stop because we're a historic building and get all that sort of stuff. So anyway, so what have you been up to? Well, I already talked about how I got smashed at 403 just like you did. I didn't get to go to Pizza West tournament this month because I've been doing some family stuff and getting ready. And seeing as I'm going to be gone all next weekend, I figured I'd spend some quality family time. And I've done the impossible, and I have completely caught up on my podcast list. and maintained being caught up on my podcast list. I'm sitting at a point right now that except for on Tuesdays, I'm only having maybe two hours of podcast a day to listen to. So I'm burning through them like instantly in the mornings before I even get to work normally. And I've been listening to some audio books. I've started listening to audio books since I'm on a podcast. I started playing Pokemon Go. We'll talk about that more later. Oh, I found out that Amazon has The Newsroom on Amazon Prime for free. So I've been watching that because I'm a real big Aaron Sorkin fan, and I'd never seen The Newsroom before as opposed to The West Wing, which I've seen multiple times and owned the box DVD set of the entire series, and Sports Night, which I've seen before, and this and that. And I've been enjoying the show. It's pretty good. It's only like three seasons, so there's not a whole lot of show to it. But it's been enjoyable what I've seen. I'm a little over halfway through the entire series at this time. Oh, okay. That'll have to be one I'll check out then. Because, yeah, I'm a big fan of Aaron Sorkin's writing. Yeah, no, he just, his dialogue and the way his shows and everything, it's just amazing. I love them. Go walk and talk, man. Go walk and talk. And since this is a new show, there's walk and talk, and there's sit and stare directly into the camera and talk now also. Yes, the George Lucas method. Camera A, Camera B. Exactly. Jeff Daniels is the main character, and he does an amazing job. The entire cast is really good, but Jeff Daniels does an amazing job. I really have been enjoying it. Awesome. And that's about all I've been doing otherwise. I mean, playing more Overwatch that nobody wants to listen to anymore, and I've been reading them up to book four a wheel of time. But that's about it. I haven't done anything really interesting in the last couple of weeks. Well, we'll be taking care of that next weekend. Yes, we will. All right. I guess we'll go ahead and transition into the first main topic then, which would be pinball. This is a big way. It is, yes. I tried to make it as smooth as a chainsaw. And so we're going to start with what we've been starting with, which is the 1980s Pinball Machine Mania Tournament. We've got round five to go over. it was to say oh to sum it up in a word decisive the results the results in no way surprised me uh there were two matchups pinbot which is a williams game and a number five seed in our ranking system beat haunted house which is got leaves game and it was a number one seed and it won with 80 of the vote yep i was very pleased as my one vote indicated to pinbot and then eight 8-Ball Deluxe, which was a Bally title, came in as a four seed, beat Sea Witch, Stern title, came in as a one seed with 76.7% of the vote. And I supported 8-Ball Deluxe in that. So they were not only, I felt no surprise, Williams and Bally were, I think, are easily seen as the better manufacturers from the decade overall. So if you didn't know anything else, I think this is what people would have guessed from the get-go. Yeah, these are the obvious ones. I voted for these two as well. So it's what was expected. I mean, we actually had, I think, more challenging matchups early. You know, things like Elvira not being one of the finalists, for example. That's probably more surprising than that eight ball ends up beating a stern title that not many people have even been able to play. Yeah, that's my biggest idea. or idea that's my biggest surprise yeah so we're at the final round final matchup so there's just be one vote and we'll have the link in the show notes and we'll get it announced as we normally do but it's going to be the williams game pin bot is going to face off against the bally's eight ball deluxe for all the marbles and we'll we'll see who reigns supreme neither of these titles is the at least as of when we built the brackets is the highest rated uh 1980s game on the pin side ranking system that was elvira which is why i noted it earlier so we've already sort of and you can tell by the seating i mean uh bally uh bally's eight ball deluxe being the four seed it was the fourth highest bally game from the 80s i could find in the list and pinbot was the fifth highest williams so basically the results already show that the pin side rankings are grossly inaccurate and that's no way surprising yes yes it's it's the pin side ratings that that have the bad stats. They've been corrupted by an oft-maligned and appropriately so system that is skewed and weighted in weird ways, and there's a lot of troll voting, and it's just not like ours. Ours has remained pure and innocent as it should. I'll probably just send the bracket over to the pin side and just have their moderators just replace the scores with the results of this, because they might as well clean up the system. Well, yeah, it makes sense. I mean, that's what I would do. I don't see why you wouldn't. Anyway, next episode, we will have those final announcements.