All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, Welcome back Pinball Nerds to episode 536 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert and on today's show we are going to be talking about all things Venom, including doing the same thing I do every time a new pinball machine comes out. I'm going to, of course, do the top five rad things about Venom and the one bad. At the end of that, though, because we've had some time, I usually like to be out right away with these things. And, of course, I would typically come out with this right after Jack Danger's live stream. However, I've been away on vacation for a week. Much needed. I haven't seen many of these family and friends in over four years. and then when I came back, unfortunately, the hazards of traveling, I ended up getting some type of stomach flu or cold or something like that. So my voice has been so bad the last two or three days, there's 0% chance I could have recorded for you. So I am so sorry, listeners. I'm sorry that today's episode might be a little less, lower energy than you're used to. I also am going to try to keep it shorter because I suspect my voice will not last for long and believe it or not, I actually have to go do a Cards, Collectibles, and Toys show in Moncton tomorrow. So if you are going to be in the Moncton area, make sure you check out the Moncton Toy Show Facebook page and see where you can come visit me. I will have Star Wars 1, that's right, the very first appearance in comics of Luke and Leia and Han and C-3PO and R2-D2. pretty much everybody if you're in Star Wars other than of course some of the later characters added but if you're in the original Star Wars movie or in the original Star Wars comic book which came out in 1977 I will have that back but I will talk more about that later because after I do 5 Rad and 1 Bad for Venom I'd also like to tell you guys a little bit about my trip and it won't just be me talking about my trip but I'll also be telling you about my first impressions of Guns and Roses that's right the very first the very last Guns N' Roses first impressions you'll ever hear. I will also be talking about my first impressions of Stranger Things and Mandalorian. Probably the last pinball podcaster or even content creator to talk about Stranger Things as well. But for right now, get your bathing suit on because we're about to jump in the pool with Orby about Venom. So top five rad and one bad. The first I just want to get the easy, the simple one, the one that everybody agrees on out of the way first. Let's start with the stuff that everybody can agree with. And I think the easiest way to start with is art. Some people are saying, oh, it's too saturated. Or other people are saying, you know, the color palette's too similar to other color palettes by Zombie Yeti. But what no one is saying is that it's bad. Like, you know, when Jurassic Park came out. And even though I still like the art package for Jurassic Park, I stand by that I like it. I don't love it. It's not the best on the planet, but in comparison to some other art package we've got in and around near that time, like Game of Thrones, which only came out a few years before that, which was basically a cut and paste, Photoshopped one. There was some okay parts to it, but in comparison to what we've seen for years, pinball art is incredible. And a large part of what makes pinball art so frickin' incredible right now is Zombie Yeti. So I think we can all agree, and some people say they like the... I actually do like the back glass, or I guess it would be the... I guess I like the back glass for the LE and the Premium better, but not by much. I think I like the Pro one almost as much, and the cabinet is incredible. and I was just listening to Buffalo Pinball this morning I'm just trying to catch up on my pinball podcast I wanted to be in the moment with family and friends that I haven't seen for a long time but I believe Nick Lane was saying he thinks zombie eddy artwork is too busy I like that, that's what makes it colorful for me that's the type of art style that I like, I love comic books I love comic book art, that's what I like I like to be able to look at a picture and just see all the different things interacting together I don't just like a plain thing with one thing on the side. You know what I mean? Too busy? Arguable? To me, no. I do think the cabinet is slightly better, even though, again, they're all... They're so... Maybe one's a 9.4 out of 10 for me, and the next one's a 9.5. You know what I mean? They're all so close. I think we can agree on that. The animations are absolutely stellar. It looks like these were done in-house, using, obviously, Zombie Yeti's art. So, of course, if the artwork is incredible, the animations are going to be incredible. So that's number one. I included art and animations together quite often. They're similar, not always, but in this particular case they were. And they're both rad as hell. So number two, playing as a different character each time. So this I really, really, really love. This probably could have been my favorite thing from it, but I haven't played it yet, so I don't, you know. When you played in Game of Thrones, it did make a difference, but it only made like... Like, it did make a difference. So I don't want to say it doesn't make a difference. It did make a difference. You probably just heard Elowen there getting down off the chaise lounge, off the chaise lounge, off the chaise lounge. Come on, Elowen. She just decided it was just too hot up there on the leather. I think it is real leather. I think a couple cows were probably injured to make this bad boy. Now, we did buy it used. So, you know, I didn't necessarily take it off the marketplace. But let's get back into this. So playing as different characters. So you can play as Gwen Stefani, which is Gwen Stefani. You can play as Gwen Stacy, which I think is B-A-N-A-N-A-S. This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. It is bananas that you can play as four different characters. I know the main character in the live stream with Jack Danger. Great job on the live stream, by the way, Jack. I know that... Oh, my God. What's his name? What's the designer's name? Eddie. Brian. Brian was playing with Eddie Brock very often because he can get into a multiball very quickly. And, of course, that helps you move towards so many other things. And so that's kind of like the default beginning venom. Or shimmy-out, so to speak, that you would want to choose. What I love is that, especially as someone who's getting back into live streaming. Now, thank you, Elon Musk. The one good thing he's done recently, other than changing Twitter into X. You already have Space X. You already have, like, ten other Xs. Do we need more Xs? Now it's getting confusing, because then everyone's going to confuse it with X-rated. I've gone off topic again. I'm tired. I've had no caffeine. All the coffee makers in my house are gone at one of three markets, which I was supposed to be at today. But due to being sick, and also, shout out, you know who you are. I'm not going to say your name, but they are a fairly well-known pinball person. Unfortunately, I did just recently hear that they got COVID. Hopefully they did not. I don't think I got it from them. I've done two COVID tests since I had this, but just with a wealth of precaution, the last thing you want to do, and you imagine yourself if you're at a nice cafe and you're going to go order some organic coffee, some high-grade, the good stuff, full of caffeine, and the guy up there, first of all, he's talking like me, like he's got a stuffed nose, because I do. Second of all, he's like sneezing or coughing on your food. You're like, no, dude, I just, why did you come to work today? That's like the one job where I think we can all agree, if you're going to be serving food to the public, let's make sure that you don't have a cold or a flu or the vids or something, okay? If it's not contagious, go for it, you know what I mean? If you just have like stupid disorder like me, or like ADHD, as I jokingly call it, or like, or sorry, you know, something like that, where you're like squirrel, and then you forget what you were saying. That's probably okay. You know, a little tricky when you've got five people in line ordering different coffees, but you'll get through it. So playing each different player in Venom is really interesting because now that I'm live streaming again and I've got the old Starlink going, not again, I haven't done it yet, but now that I plan on doing it again, and don't follow me on any Twitch channel yet, I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to try to figure out how to get back Pinball Nerds Podcast or if I might just Twitch under my Orbital Albert channel. Guys, I'm sorry. I'm normally so high energy for this, but I am tired. So you can play as all these different characters. And for me as a live streamer, the fact that I could say, hey, Friday nights I'm only going to work on my Gwen Stacy character and Saturdays I'm going to do Eddie Brock because it's more, think about Eddie Brock, it's more of like a, I think it's a guy from Creed that's in there or something. one of those bands. You know, it's a more heavy, it's not heavy metal, but it's definitely a heavier rock background. Gwen Stacy's is more of like a funkadelic kind of one. And I'm trying to think of who else you play with. One of the other ones, say it's more like, you know, it fits a different tonality. And the thing is, it's not just the music. If you listen, there's different call-outs. There's different sound effects. Some of the sound effects and some of the call-outs I'm sure are similar when you're doing similar things with both progress, but just the idea. I have forever and ever and ever backed up P3 Multimorphic because I said it's so cool that you only use one space and you can have several pins there. I have also backed up Fathom 2.0, Centaur 2.0, as well as Funhost 2.0, and now even Whirlwind 2.0 because I've said if you can have two games in one, it causes it to stay in your games room longer, which means that any type of dissipated cost from you buying it, from you paying taxes on it, from you shipping it, from you moving it, all of those costs are gone. You boom, you have a brand new game. And you can go back and forth and play both of these games. And so now with this, this is totally new. This seems to be, unlike like Ninja Turtles or Game of Thrones where it changes one advantage in the game, this seems to change not just one advantage, but it changes the callouts, the sound. and then in the premium LE it changes actually the ball path and it changes the mechs and the toys and it's just incredible like how much is this is so smart because the same way in that same uh pinball podcast listening this morning brody even talked pinball with buffalo pinball they were talking about how i think i believe it was kevin was saying how he's had godfather in his arcade for like eight or nine months now or i don't know six months whatever it was and he still goes back to and plays it all the time and he loves Foo Fighters but it just doesn't have that he enjoys while he's playing Foo Fighters but when he's done it he doesn't seem to want to go back and play more now of course it probably took him several months of playing Foo Fighters to get to that point and I still haven't got to play it yet so I'm nowhere near that however it seems to me like Venom will have massive replayability and now when you add on to it the I would have to jump ahead here this is one of my ones for later but now when you add ahead that you can save your progress and you can level up that character, wow. It might take you two, three, for mere gods like me who are just mid at pinball, I'm not incredible at pinball. In fact, I was looking on Ifba the other day, I literally finish mid. I finish the very middle of the pack almost all the time. So my average is like if there's 20 players, I'll get like eighth, ninth, or tenth. You know what I mean? Like if there's eight players, I'll get third, fourth, or fifth. So that's how I've been for years and years and years. I arguably finish maybe slightly, slightly higher on the East Coast. There's less players in the top 500 out here, of course. But the opportunity to play through it, and imagine if you could have the self-control to tell yourself, nope, when I get it, I'm going to learn the whole game. I'm going to wait until I level up and beat the game on level. Because very few people can beat any pinball machine, and all these coders spend tons of time on mini wizard modes and wizard modes. I was playing Monster Bash recently, and I did get to the wizard mode several times. In fact, I think 80% of the time I played it. but that's a story for me telling you about my trip near the end. Imagine just saying to yourself, I'm not going to play as any of the other characters other than Eddie Brock until I get to level 50, I max everything out, then I beat the game. It seems to me at level 50, which I believe is the max so far, and they could change this in the future, but it seems to me at that point, even mid players like myself should be able to eventually beat the wizard mode, or at least get to the wizard mode. Well, the idea that I can get to the wizard mode not only once, but I can get to it four different times with four different players from leveling up and once I've done that I know me with tons of games that I absolutely love then I have to go back and so I would say that's almost like Super Mario 1 beating Super Mario 1 with the warps that's kind of like leveling up them beating it is it cheating no but can you get to the end way faster yes now of course what do we all do when we were kids and we could beat Mario 1 or Mario 2 or even Super Mario World once you beat it with the warps once you beat it with the warp whistle and going through the warp tubes and everything else, you go back and you beat it with no, again, I don't want to say cheating, but you beat it with no warps. So can you imagine owning Venom in your house and beating it with, say, you finally beat it with Gwen Stacy finally, because her power-ups are the least advantageous to your game, but you finally beat it with her, you get to level 50, it takes you a month or two after you get there, you beat it with her, now you can go back and you can try beating the game without leveling up at all, right? So you can just not put on your Insider Connected and say, hey, I know how to get to that wizard mode. I know the shots, I know the sequencing, I know how close I am. Let's see if I can challenge myself to at least get to the mini wizard, if not get to the mini wizard mode with each of these four characters without using my Insider Connected. And really fun news for a lot of people like myself who have very few games. Hopefully Guardians of the Galaxy is coming here soon. I've been told I'm getting it delivered either this weekend next weekend. Wouldn't that be great if it came tomorrow on my birthday? I don't think it will because I haven't heard back from the gentleman in Charlottetown yet. Shout out. Bringing me what is perhaps the nicest Guardians of the Galaxy Pro left on the planet. I suppose there's probably one or two Guardians of the Galaxy Pros unboxed that could turn out to be nicer than this one, but this one's had the magnet adjusted. It's got the shooter lane covered. It's, I don't know, they did something to Groot to make him I am Groot. Instead of saying I am Groot, he can say, I am Groot, or me, no, I don't know, I'm very excited to get that, hopefully, as well, but the fact that you can play with all these four different players is huge. Now, let's move on to number three, and I put these in the three F's, no, they're not bad words, they're not four-letter bad words, even though the first two are four letters, this thing is fast, this thing flows, and it's a friendly shooter. It's friendly, okay? So when you're taking a look at a game like this and it's a fan layout, if it's a fan layout, but at the same time of it being a fan layout, it's a slow shooter, who cares? Because if it's, that's the last thing you want is a fan layout that, you know, it doesn't shoot fast and isn't, you know, now no other pen is going to shoot this fast and come back to your flippers this fast. So that's part of what makes it incredible. is the fact that it's got these fast locks, and they were fast. If you were watching them, sometimes the ball had barely started to go up the ramp or into the thing, and pew, pew, pew, these fast locks are just, you know, guns a-blazin', coming out fast, coming out hot. I would say this thing does, and this is how I judge flow. Niagara Falls is the waterfall with more flow than any other waterfall in Canada, and it has perhaps more flow if you include the American side and the Canadian side. Don't worry, I love it when my American brothers and the Canadians all get along and we team up. If you include the water flow from both sides, I'm pretty sure that's got to be up there with the most flow of any waterfall in the world. Can you tell I'm also a waterfall nerd? That is a nice part of living out here in the good old Scosche, is that I can go visit so many different waterfalls and new ones I've never been to, almost not on a daily basis, but maybe a weekly basis. and I think for my birthday tomorrow that just might be something I do. So next on this list is fast, got lots of flow, and it's friendly. So what do I mean by friendly? None of the shots look super hard. All of them look, the two shots that are by far the most narrow, the one shot to that, the captive ball, that sends your, and I love that very target. It's basically like a throwback to old EMs. I know pro football I think has a very target. I can't think of too many others right now. I've maybe only played three or four games with varied targets. If you're not sure what they are, it's the Venom thing that every time you hit the captive ball, he goes back a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further. And I know that that shot is very tight and very small. In fact, it's only about the width of the pinball. Remember, whenever you're hitting that type of shot, you don't have to hit it clean like a ramp. It doesn't have to go up and in. You don't have to hit it even perfectly like a scoop. You just have to hit any part of that ball. So, yes, it's meant to be a hard shot, but it also looks like a fun and rewarding shot. Whenever you hit something and it uses kinetic energy to move something else on the playfield, especially if that something else is Carnage, and it causes him to physically move back, and of course, once he's all the way moved back, I'm assuming you get a multiball or something? No, then you get Carnage to team up with. And that's a great part about this as well in the code, is that you get all these team-ups. Very similar, you know, not very different than, say, Deadpool, even though I think this code is significantly different than Deadpool just that's the closest one I can think of right now so it's fast, it's friendly, it's got flow and number four is the leveling up now I'm not going to spend too much time talking about this because I've already done it before but especially for players like myself who don't have tons at home even though I do have a Guardians coming if I know that every time I go on location I can get this much closer because especially with, I would say what 90% of pinball nerds, if you even look at the competitive players, if we just look at the 100,000 competitive players, what percentage of those people even own a game? Maybe 10% of them, maybe 15. Let's say 15,000 of the 100,000 players that play around the world. Of those 15%, what percentage of them love the theme Venom, are going to go get the Venom game, have the money for Venom currently, or have the room or space in their arcade for Venom? And I'm saying maybe, maybe, maybe 10% of those people. I could be wrong here. I'm just throwing numbers out. So let's say 1.5%. So you're talking about, you know, 98.5% of all pinball nerds on the planet will have to go on location to have any chance at all of ever playing through Venom to get to the wizard mode. The fact that they can pick their favorite player and they can go with Stern Connected to any arcade and upload that account when they're traveling around. Obviously not during a tournament, and I don't know how they're going to figure that out and say, hey guys, make sure during a tournament no one logs in. I don't know. I'm sure they'll just put it in tournament mode or they'll have a way of figuring that out. But imagine that you can just go to, like for me, I travel a lot for pinball. I'm either playing pinball in Halifax at Chocolate Lake or one of the other, Propeller Arcade, one of the Pint, I think they're having a tournament and actually tomorrow down there in Halifax, shout out. I can make it to that because I got a show in Moncton but you know I playing between five or six main towns out here in probably 20 to 25 different arcades and a lot of them don have that many pins and you see a pin move around Like, it will start at one arcade, then it will go, like, Silver Ball Games in Halifax has pins in, I believe, like, four, if not five locations now. So you'll see that exact same pin move around. But even if it doesn't, if I go to a different town or I come back to Ontario and I go to visit family and friends there, I can always just continue to level up. And it causes me more often to want to seek out that pin. So I'm like almost 100% sure that every single solitary operator that buys a Venom is going to be happy with the results. First of all, not only is it known by a younger crowd, and let's be honest, most of the people that can afford 3, 4, 5 pinball machines in their house are on average older. There is some people in their 30s who can do that. Very rarely do you hear a pinball nerd who's like 25 and they own like 10 games. The closest to that would be my buddy Dylan up there in Fredericton, where I recently got to go play there with good old David Dennis, where he smoked me. And again, see that? That one, there was 16 players, and I think I got ninth, right? Like I always seem to... Maybe there was 18 players? I don't know. Anyways, I always seem to get right around mid. So I'm a very mid player. And for a mid player, the idea that you can continue any game, anywhere, anytime, for the rest of your life, so long as you know you're Stern Connected, and you take a screenshot of it and you just pull it up on your gallery any second. You know what I mean? You don't even have to have Wi-Fi access to freaking do this, for God's sake. Hell, you can go get it tattooed on your hand. You can go get it tattooed on your head, right? Like, that would be funny. That would be so funny. To see someone have it tattooed on the middle of their forehead, and, like, they're in the middle of playing their game, and they cradle up on both sides, and they go down with their forehead, and they do Insider Connected on their forehead. Ah, I've gone off track. I've gone off topic. I really wish I started with a drink because I'm getting churchy. So let's see what else we got here. So the next thing I have for number five, the leveling up. We talked a lot about that. That would be rad. And this I have talked about a little bit. But number five, I think you don't want to underestimate. It's how unique the code is. So the code is extremely unique. The code is extremely different. The code, you know, we were used to what for, I would say, the better part of 30 years. we primarily had linear code and then they started doing like semi-linear code like Steve Ritchie's masterpiece Star Trek where you could start anywhere in any mode you wanted but then you had to kind of still you had to progress to this like finish all the things and progress to the mini wizard than the wizard so on and such forth there were harder ways to get to you know a more difficult wizard mode and that sort of thing or more difficult multiball but what I'm saying is for the most part the code was done the same way. Until we saw the likes of Deadpool and I guess well, even with Turtles it is kind of linear. We are deviating from that linear code, which is great, and this is doing that again. That's not maybe what makes it perhaps the best. What makes it the best is that not only can you play it with four different players, you have two different other, I'll call them anti-villains that you can join up with. They used to be villains, or they kind of still are, but they also do good shit, I don't know. You can team up with two anti-villains and then you can actually become more powerful and play the game completely differently. And so you could argue that every time you play all four characters with the two different team-ups, it might be a brand new game as well. So the other thing that I really, really like is I love Raymond Davidson's sensibility that he's used in coding every single game he's worked with now. They're complicated, but also, like, I'm not going to say I've got a lot of time at Matt's house on AIQ over my week off shout out to Melvis Megaphone there and good old London Ontario, formerly part of the London Ontario Pinball League, which is now dissipated but I got to hang out with Matt a lot and therefore I got to play a lot of AIQ, in fact probably the room we hung out with the most was the arcade, and while we were just shooting the chats or hanging out, I was playing a lot of AIQ and I learned it a lot better, thank you so much Matt, and he was teaching me about the code, and I love that code. In fact, I have liked the code for every pin that Raymond Davidson has worked on. I have not necessarily loved the code for every pinball machine that Dwight Sullivan has worked on. Now, to be fair, I haven't played a lot more of his recent games, because I live in the frickin' sticks and the booties, and the old rubber-hebberts Nova Scotia. So, I think that the code is refreshing. I can't wait to see what Dwight does, obviously coding and doing rules teamed up with Ray Day. I think that could be a match made in heaven. I know that Dwight's more of like a you know, he's, I know that Ray Day's more into like video games and stuff like that. I think notably Banjo Kazooie is like his favorite or something. But I know he also loves like Donkey Kong Country, which was one of my favorite, if not my favorite, for probably three or four months when it first came out. Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo. Where's the N64? I can't remember. One of those two was like my favorite forever. So I can't wait to see what the code is. I think Ray Day and Dwight Sullivan together makes sense. I think that's going to be great. I think that sometimes the biggest, a lot of like tournament players will say that Dwight's code isn't balanced. And I hear where you're coming from. You could be playing like Star Wars and you have like 400 million. Then all of a sudden someone plays the exact same modes that you did in the exact same balls, but they kept their multiplier at like times 20 or something and all of a sudden they're at like 2 billion and you're like, huh? I played like a 15 minute ball, I did all the same things as you but just because they kept their... So I think that because Raymond Davidson is more of a tournament player and Dwight is not, that I think Ray Day is going to be able to harness in any imperfections in the code where there might be some type of way to exploit that in a tournament. So I'm really excited for it. Now, I'm not really excited to tell you guys about the thing that I think is really bad or really poor and that I can't stand. And this is the reason why I can't buy the premium or the LE. Not that I could ever afford it or would probably ever consider doing it. I'm a guy that can afford about $15,000 and his pool of all his pins. So I just probably bought the most expensive Guardians of the Galaxy Pro ever. I'm paying $9,500 Canadian for it. I think that would be like $6,500 to $7,000 US. I'm guessing the thing is that it has the mod that allows for all the extra songs on it. You guys know how much pins like Hot Wheels bother me, so I need to hear lots of good songs, lots of good call-outs. I think it also has extra animations. Or not animations, but more so video clips and stuff. So I have to check on that, and hopefully that isn't a negative for my streaming, because I want those extra songs. I love... That was the thing. I love Foo Fighters. In fact, my favorite band of all time is the Tragically Hip. But if I listen to more than one Tragically Hip album in a row, and even a song comes on after that, I'm like, no. You know how when you're listening to a CD in your car, even though probably most of you just listen to your Spotify or MP3 players? Does anyone have those anymore? I don't think so. Most of you just listen to probably off your phone. I still listen to CDs because all the time out here, we have no bars. So rather than me starting a playlist and having to look for a radio station and putting in a CD, I just usually play CDs out here, especially when we're going on nice road trips. And if for some reason I get all the way through a Tragically Hip album or even, say, a Foo Fighters album and it starts replaying, I have to turn it off right away. Somewhere between 30 minutes to 45 minutes is about the max I can hear of any one vocalist, of any one singer, no matter h ow much I like them. I just want to hear something different by the end of that. And that's why I was so tentative, because I do think that Foo Fighters is definitely a more unique shooter, and perhaps an even better shooter than Venom. But the reason I'm so interested in getting Venom is because it has those four different song choices that are totally different. It's not all rock, it's not all metal. I get sick of Iron Maiden about three or four songs into playing it. I get sick of Metallica about five to six songs into playing it. even though when you get to the mini wizard mode and you play like For Whom the Bell Tolls or one of those ones where it's kind of quieter I can handle that. I get sick of Aerosmith after about one song. The Beatles for some reason it takes longer. I would say maybe I'm playing the Beatles like 10 songs in, 12 songs in but I could never do a 3 or 4 hour live stream on a rock pin. I would get so it would just drive me nuts. First of all while I'm streaming I love to have my record player on and playing some massive bangers in the background for all the pinball nerds but if I am going to listen to the sound, I want to be able to hear different songs, not just different songs, but different genres of songs and musics, or I want to blend in the background. That's the thing. You notice that in my top five rad, I didn't include the songs. Because the music to me is very similar to AIQ, it kind of crunches in the background. I mean, Stern's done a good job doing that in the past. They've done a good job with this one. There's nothing in Venom that, or sorry, not Venom, AIQ, you know, the background, the drums and everything like that, there's nothing offensive in it, but there's nothing incredible. In Guardians of the Galaxy, when you get that ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb, or like any of those other... Like, the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is incredible. There's so many awesome songs from so many different decades that are included on there. There's some old school, there's some new school, there's some middle school, and everything in between. That's what makes it exciting for me as a live streamer, the people listening to the song, and the live stream won't get sick of it. I won't get sick of it. I haven't seen any live streams, but I would assume even when I'm watching Jack Danger, even if he loves the song and that pin, usually, typically if it's a new pin, he'll play it for longer, but usually an hour in or less, he'll just start playing his own background music as you guys know. And who else is missing Jack Danger live streaming day to day? I am. Because I just I could count on him. Now, he was taking more days off near the end, but I could count on him two, three days a week and just be like, oh, I'm bored. I want it. Maybe I don't even feel like conversing or being known as Orbital Albert. So I'll just sit there and creep in the background of one of my other accounts and just watch and listen and have it on the background while I'm whatever, chopping peppermint or like doing dishes or making, you know, and I can't do that anymore. So Jack, we miss you. We love you. Hope you're doing okay. And don't think Mr. Danger. This is everyone else. Tune this out for the next 30 seconds. Jack, I love you, bro. I want to have you on the show. I did ask a couple pinball nerds sorry craft beer nerds in good old London Ontario and about if they had heard of or knew of any type of pickle beer because there's lots of pickle beer in the US but I can't get it shipped to Canada so I can't include it in the six pack of Canadian craft beers that I have to send Jack as Emily Anderson friend of the show there she was on the show and she spoke to Jack and said he'd do the show if I gave him a six pack of beer, including one pickle beer. And I can't find a pickle beer, so just come on the damn show, Jack. Come on, I want to talk about the Foo. I've got to talk about the Foo. It's got to happen. But like I said, if you're just at home and you're playing Foo, you can turn the songs off. And at home, really, if you have a home arcade, are you going to play Foo Fighters longer than three or four games in a row and probably switch to a new one? Probably not. The only time that you'd be live streaming a modern pin for like, the only time you'd be playing the same modern pin by yourself for four, five, six, seven, Those of you who knew me know I did a 12-hour live stream once with a 50-pound pack on my back, practicing for hiking the Bruce Trail. I like to do really long live streams, and I enjoy doing those endurance live streams and having different music playing so I stay interested. Because when I get disinterested, then the viewer gets disinterested because I'm not enjoying what I'm doing as a live streamer. So, I think that Venom, for that one reason, will be a go-to game for not only live streamers, but also operators, and also anyone who wants to have pins in their... If you hate actually buying the pin, finding it, pricing it out, buying the pin, you hate moving the pin, getting it in your arcade, leveling it, setting it up, making sure everything's working. And if you can't stand doing all that crap like me, then you're absolutely going to love a pin like this because instead of having it for like three to six months and going, well, I'm sick of the code and I've done it all, you know, I've got as far as I think I'm going to get on the game, you're going to have this and you're going to play through it so many times. So let's talk a little bit about what I don't like. The thing that I would say is not rad at all. I've got to move this microphone so I can put my feet up, nerds. Sorry. There we go. Feet up. So, the thing that I absolutely can't stand, and I don't think it was a good choice, and I hope they never put it in another Stern game, again, it doesn't affect me, because I'll probably never be able to buy a, and I say probably, if there's like two or three dream themes on the planet, I would attempt to, and now that I've played more Godzilla, I do know that I would have attempted to try to somehow figure out how to get the, just because I would want the building, and I would want the bridge, and everything else, I do think I would try to get Godzilla Premium, if not LE. But the one thing I can't stand that's only on the Premium and the LE is the doppel earrings. You've seen the doppel earrings? They call it the doppelganger. And yes, my man Spidey does have a padunkadunk. He's got a little chunk in the, a little junk in the trunk. Let's not do body shaming, okay? All buddies are accepted here. I've got, literally, like, I ran into my buddies and they either call me, like literally they'll come up behind me and go hey fat albert and that's just like that's just what they call me and it's like i'll get over it like i'll cry later i'll cry when i'm dead or something about it um or or bubba gut or randy bow bandy i get called randy bow bandy a lot if you know the trailer boys randy's got that big cheeseburger gut like me but hey i was really sick last year and I was down to like 190 pounds and I looked like a guy who just got off chemo or something. So I'm a very, I'm not going to say healthier, but I'm a much happier Orby as being a little round. Maybe I just want to be closer to the shape of a pinball. Okay. Pinballs are kind of round like me. I like it. No, I do want to lose some weight and I do plan on losing some weight, but my weight got the best of me and my, you know, I'm a bigger fellow now. So I know what you're going through, Spider-Man. I'm sorry that everyone's making fun of your padonkadonk. Okay, but that's not the ugly part. Everyone thinks like, oh, he's got this big junk in the trunk, it's so ugly. That's not the ugly part. The ugly part of that particular pin is those earrings hanging down, the triple earrings. Oh my god. First of all, there's no kinetic energy, so it's not like bouncing into it like something else. So that makes it like to me like, meh. I mean, at least when you hit like a good spinner rip, there's like a sound that accompanies it and you can tell how hard you hit it by seeing it spin back and forth. Whereas even if you just barely hit those earrings, they're still going to wag back and forth identical. I'm guessing that's what it looked like in the live stream, that they're very similar. So not only are you missing out on most of the kinetic satisfaction, the shot just goes through there and it doesn't change the shot path. and then on top of that they just look ungodly I don't know I'm sure the people at Jersey Jack were not happy when I said that their CE their top edition which is equivalent to the Elliot Stern they had that weird, they called it like patina I don't know, it almost looked like ginger breading around like an old house which I think if you have an old gothic house and it has ginger breading that makes it beautiful, sure but like this particular pin I did not like that. It's almost like crown molding for your pin. I hope Jersey Jack and especially other places don't start doing that. I love a very well painted or color matched, you know, coin door or, you know, your legs or any of that, but, or a beautiful powder coating I can, I can love, but can we, can everyone just call it the doppel earrings? You don't even have to throw it back to Orby. You don't even have to, you guys can just steal it. I don't need any credit for coming up with that. I've been calling it that basically since I did a really fun live stream in Muskoka, but I'll talk about that in a second. So the one thing that I think is not rad is that doppelganger. Of course the price isn't rad, but we all know that. It would be great if the price were what it was two or three years ago. I don't think Stern's ever going to do that. I think they're okay making a bit higher margins on each pin and selling a little less, especially when you have at one point eight to ten thousands in the gun. You know, like like orders, I'm sure they've caught up on most of that by now. Maybe not all. I'm sure they're not caught up on all of it. But the thing is, too, though, with Stern, and we don't say this, this isn't really one of the top five rad. But when you're buying a Stern, unlike many of the other companies, in fact, probably almost all the other companies, maybe Jersey Jack could be put into there, possibly. Spooky, huh? But when you're buying from whether it's Pinball Brothers or Haggis Haggis, or especially Pinball Adventures, you have no freaking clue if you're ever going to get your pin for sure or not. You'd like to think you will. You know, so far in the past, everyone who ordered a kelts got their kelts from Haggis. So far, everybody's been the first half of the order for Fathom has got their Fathom, and it's been great. And so far, the one person who got their Punny Factory from Pinball Adventures absolutely hates it. The paint job is horrible. I guess it's coming up. You guys have already probably read about it by now. But Don, I love you of Don's Pinball Podcast. I will vote for you for the best new pinball podcast, whether that be in our own Nerdies, whether it be in Joe Chervino's Shout Out, Pinball D. Jenny's, whether that be in... Wait, Joe Chervino doesn't want to... He's sticking away from the podcasting stuff because that's, like, too hot of a topic. I get it. I get it, Joe. I get it. I'll throw it in mine. But, like, it'd be cool if the Twippies or whatever the other, the Industry Awards, whatever that one was, It'd be cool if one of the pinball award shows had a new pinball podcaster or even new, you know, whatever. Because I think Don would win. Don is out there, inside and out. I only saw like two minutes of his live stream last night. And Don, to be fair, you were talking about candies and cookies. Which a lot of people listen to this podcast and go, you don't talk about pinball the whole time. No, I don't. But I think Don is working hard, doing great. His podcasts seem to make sense. the only thing Don and I agree on in fact is Pinball Adventures so Don if you're still considering get it and I'm telling you even if you have like a $1000 non-refundable deposit down I would just sell that deposit to somebody so I would take a loss of probably $500 because it sounds like even if you're customer number one and you got the most expensive one for $7,000 the guy still hasn't got to play it apparently the owner is saying send it back and then we'll send you It's just been an absolute nightmare. At best, you might have to change out the playfield. It's like, unless you're Super Joe Fixit, how the frick are you going to be able to do, like, again, I could be wrong here, but I'm guessing less than 1% of people who enjoy playing pinball, I'm not even talking about collectors, maybe 2% or 3% of collectors know how to do a playfield swap, or they've done it once or twice in their life, maybe in an older pin. But, like, that's just not something you want to go through, am I right? so okay let's talk about the trip that took a little longer than I thought I do want to make sure I come in well under an hour here we're already at 40 minutes so I'm going to try to do this a little quicker for all you pinball nerds who don't give a shats about my trip and you don't want to hear about all the games I played there hang up now and thank you for eat sleeping and breathing pinball nerds podcast warning very little pinball content coming up hang up the phone now if you don't want to be part of it disconnect go could disconnect from the matrix and go do something else um alright so last Monday guess it would be two Mondays ago I flew in my flight was perfect I got a flight for super cheap, which was great. I had no one beside me. You know, if you have someone beside you, if it's either a kid kicking on the chair somewhere around you, or I'll say it myself, I'm an overweight person, so if I had two other overweight people beside me in that row, she'd be squished. like all of us would have like our guts would be bumping into each other you'd be hitting that tray that normally holds your little drink and you're knocking that off everywhere but I had no one beside me so if I had to go to the bathroom I didn't have to say excuse me it was great it was wonderful the only thing I didn't like is I was listening to Eclectic Gamers I was I think one show behind so now this would be two shows ago for them because I have listened to the most recent one but I was listening to Eclectic Gamers and I believe Dennis was talking about an airplane or traveling on the world, like the Concorde or something like that. And he kept talking about traveling on airplanes and I was like, no! I don't want to hear anything about planes or trains or automobiles or train crashes or anything like that while I'm up in the air. But no, it's all good. The plane was only a two hour ride. It was awesome. Monday I hung out with Melvis. We did, I'm trying to remember if we played that night or in the morning, we did play some AIQ. man I've played AIQ like probably 20 games but having someone who owns the game standing beside you talking you through it like he's looking at me like did you not know you shoot this now to do this and I was like no he's like that's been lit for a while and just him explaining everything I think I got like my second highest score ever on it which is still not much like Matt was getting like 200 to 400 mil milli all the time on it I think I got like 150 which is my second highest score. I was consistently getting between like 50 to 100 mil, but that right out lane, wow, it is, it can be nasty. Everyone talks about John Borg's pins having a rough left out lane. Well, this had the roughest right out lane I've ever seen in my life. Now, just maybe Matt had it set up a bit steeper, or it could just be bad luck that, you know, it was maybe for Mike Dimas' shout out, sold him it. He tuned up all the pop bumpers or I don't know, like all the, I don't know. I have no clue. But the point is it was playing very, very well, but I was getting at least one right out lane, like per game, where I usually only got a couple flips. So that was frustrating, but at the same time, it could still be a long player. So I get, you got to make it a little bit harder. I think that the one thing is higher than the out lane posts. The, I can't remember the name of them, the Bumpers or whatever. So anyways, Tuesday I took off and I got to go hang out with my sister. Or wait, no, Tuesday I went and had lunch with my dad and didn't play any pinball, but we talked about playing some pinball. And then Tuesday night I actually did go stay over at my sister Janelle's house, got to shout out to Liam and Riker and JP. Thanks for hosting. They had a shat's ton of craft beer when I got there. We had a fire in the backyard. It was so nice sitting around a fire at nighttime without a bazillion mosquitoes and no-see-ums and black flies. So that was just like, honestly, if you go four years without being able to sit outside around a fire, like I'm sure in December or January here we could do it, but who wants to have a fire in the middle of like minus 20 snowstorm, right? So basically by the time it's nice enough in the springtime to have a fire outside here, there's just too many freaking bugs. so that's why you'll hardly ever see, if you're out on the east coast, you'll hardly ever see people maybe more so in the city, like maybe David Dennis here, because he's a city slicker or like Doug Parsons, who's out traveling right now, shout out Doug he's down in Halifax, I'm sure those guys can go, they're in such a big town they're so many miles away from, you know, like big forests with millions of bugs, or wetlands, or all that kind of stuff, but yeah, that was just incredible, mostly I got to catch up with my nephews, Liam and Riker that was awesome. Liam I haven't seen since he was two weeks old and he's now four so he barely recognized me. They kind of recognized me from Zoom and talking on the phone but not much. So that was incredible. I found out they love bouncy balls so the next time I saw them later on in the week I gave them like ten bouncy balls each. On the Wednesday I got to play quite a few new pinball machines I hadn't played. So Wednesday I went back to my buddy Matt's house. We went out to see Sean Russell because Sean Russell, shout out, and Mike Dimas and all the other local pinball nerds, including, I know, Jeff Teolis, Nick Greenan. Shout out to Nick. Sorry I came down. Nick was kind of annoyed I came down to London the one week of Yagpin. But there was nothing I could do. I had to, had to, had to see my dad and my sisters. They were the three people I had to see the most. I mean, if you go four years without seeing your sisters or your nieces or nephews or your dad, you'll know where I'm coming from. That's a long time. So I had to make sure I spent a couple days with my dad, a couple days with each of my sisters. and the only week that all three of them were going to be around and available was this particular week of the entire summer. So I'm sorry I came down during Eggpin, but I did what I had to do. I love pinball. I eat, sleep, breathe pinball. The only thing that I value higher than pinball is probably family. And the opportunity to get to see some family like that was just incredible. And I got to go see Sean Russell. I only had about half an hour there before I had to rush back to London. but we did get in one game of guns and roses and i will say this it is the light show on it and i knew this would be true but seeing the light show on guns and roses all jersey jack light shows are incredible they always have been even since the wizard of oz but wow the light show on that one is just another tier the band the stage like all that kind of stuff is just next level now did i enjoy the gameplay tons. I don't know. I felt the flippers were not as good as Stern's flippers, but I felt the flippers were good. They were adequate. You could get up all the ramps. What I said on Facebook, and Matt was jabbing me later, he goes, ah, I saw how you worded that. What I wrote on Facebook, if any of you saw the picture with Sean Russell and Melvis and myself, I said, it's better than I thought. I thought the game would be like a 7 out of 10 or a 6 out of 10. I think it was a solid 7. So would it be great to play in competition? Probably not because it was a long shooter. Like the entire half an hour we were there, I think we played two games maybe. And like I've never played it before. Matt's hardly played it. So like we didn't know the pin at all. It was literally my first and second game on it. And still now Sean's an incredible player. So it made sense he was having some longer balls. But would I say that there's Any chance I would ever buy it? Probably not. I mean, it looks cool. I like the idea of trying to build up enough to get your modes and your multiballs, but probably wouldn't go for it. Now, that same day after I got to wish Sean good luck for Yagpin, and it looks like he did pretty good. I think they finished 8th and 9th in the one tournament, so I'll have to go look at the results. Like I said, I've been only home for three days now, and I've been sick for almost all of them, unfortunately. But I'm getting better now. My fever's gone away. My throat still hurts. My sinuses are still effed up, but I'm getting better. And I got to go see Mike Dimas. So Mike Dimas said, you know, if there's any way you could pop by. Well, he was leaving the next morning and we had originally planned to hang out later in the week, but plans change. so I said I'll pop by but my sister was already messaging me like where are you I got pizza and wings for dinner I got your favorite pizza and wings like let's you know where the boy my boys haven't seen you in four years and I'm like I'm on my way I'm coming but I have to make one last stop and if there's one pinball nerd from London I had to go I joked around on on Facebook and I called him my mentor but uh really Mike Dynas was the very first person I ever met at call the office at the Kiss Launch, I think. They also had an ACDC side tournament there, but I think it was like the Kiss Launch Party. And I went out back, and at the time, I had been trying to cut back on smoking good old Siggy's for a while, so I hadn't had one for a long time. But I had had a couple beers, and I was in between games, and I went out back to smoke a Dubes. And when I got out there, or maybe hit the vape. I can't remember if I was vaping by then or still doing the Dubies. and when I got out there, I started chatting with this guy about pinball forever. I'm like, wow, this guy knows so much about pinball. And I'm telling him how my whole life I always knew where the pinball machines in London were and always sought them out and always played them and my family would go play the kiddie arcade games while I would always be the person playing pinball. And I ended up asking for a smoke and he gave me a smoke and everything. Cheers, thanks Mike. And we talked for quite a while and he said, well, you should start coming out to this Monday Night Pinball thing. he said he doesn't play it that often and if I liked that then I could eventually come out to a larger one for more hardcore pinball nerds called the London Ontario Pinball League which at one point I believe was the largest league like I think the one league we got 70 or 80 players out so that was quite big but anyways it was so good to see Mike Mike bought and sold I think bought sold or rented like 12 of my first 15 games so I almost exclusively went through him he would come set it up he would level it up he would 100% sure make sure it was working and I don't want to say this because I know there's people that have bought pens from him before and maybe they didn't have the same relationship with him but honestly for me if anything went wrong in the first month or two pretty much if Mike could fix it without having to spend much on parts he would fix it for me and either just charge me parts or nothing and come over and fix it he also did that every time I ever rented a machine but of course that's kind of expected it was nice that he lived four blocks away what I'm saying is without running into Mike out there having a smoke on the patio at good old Call the Office in London on Terrible, I may not have ever got hardcore into pinball. So the next time that you are bored and you want to check out a rad pinball video, go check out Pinball Shenanigans on YouTube and definitely check out, like I don't watch, I don't fix a lot of pinball machines, so I don't watch too many of his videos about fixing them up. I was looking for a video to show my family about the game Comet, and he had done that. So I do watch a lot of times, I'll watch videos, but my favorite ones he does are the ones where he goes on a trip. So go watch his Yagpin video, it was very fun, it was entertaining. My old friend there, Julie Dorsers, is hilarious at the end of the video with some artwork. But go watch it, it's a really good recap. I think, like, did Carl D'Angelo win it? Who won it? I think Jason Zoller got second. There was like three tournaments at it, so it's confusing to me. but I know that Carl D'Angelo was there, I believe, which I thought was awesome. Quite a few other pinball nerds that are just incredible were there, like Robert Gagnon was there from Canada. T. Olis was there. I saw, actually, Julie, Julie Dorster's friend of the show that's been on like five times, she actually did commentary with T. Olis there at the finals. So I want to go back and watch that. What is it on? I can't remember what it's on, But if you go to the Yagpin Facebook group, you'll see a link to their Twitch channel. I do plan on trying to go back and watch some of that, or at least the last few games in each tournament, because I didn't get to do it. I do plan on also going to Yagpin next year. It's Canada's only Stern circuit event. It's ran very well. The pins are extremely tough but fair. The nudges are almost unfair. And from what I've heard, half the pinball machines are like, they put 20s. We call them 20s here in Canada. but they put coins underneath the back legs just to make it extra high and they have the front ones as low as they can go. So I got to go play Mando at his house and I enjoyed, and exactly what I was saying, what's missing in the doppel earrings on Venom, they do have, at least on the ship or whatever, the thing that you, the star crest, that you hit in Mando, that freaking thing has tons of gravity, it has tons of pull, it has tons of weight. I find that more exciting than hitting a spinner whereas I find the doppel earrings far less exciting than a spinner and I only got one, this is kind of sad, you're like how many games did you get on it Orby? I played one ball, I had time for one ball on Mando with Mike and I and one ball on Stranger Things and then I left because I was that late and honestly you know me, I like to chat so Mike and I took up a lot of our time from just catching up quickly but it was so good to see Mike and I'm really glad that Mike got to go to Yagpin Mike, I hope you get to go next year. It would be great to catch up with you and Sean and just, and everybody. There was so many people from Toronto. I can't list them all that I got to see there. It would be like me going to like a high school reunion and catching up with all my old friends. And by then it will have been over five years. So like it literally will be similar to that for me. From there, I deked and hung out with my sisters for the night. I probably went in the wrong order of one of these things. The next day I took off and I hung out with my dad for the day. I went and played the worst Star Wars I've ever played in my life. I will say this. I got to hang out with my dad and my sibling Powder, formerly known as Marcus, and their new partner. And I got to meet my dad's new partner, fiancé-to-be, Kawan. She was really nice and outgoing. I couldn't get her to play pinball. She doesn't like strobe lights and stuff like that. She's not a big fan of that. But we were able to go across. We had Beer Town. I had the most delicious frickin' burger I've ever had in my life. It was probably the best thing I had the entire time I was down there. And not only was it like, you know, local, organic, grass-fed beef, yada, yada, yada. Okay, that's your table steaks, but what are you putting on this burger? they used fresh brie thick thick sliced fresh brie two giant slices across it and the brie was just smothered in truffle oil now maybe not enough people are ordering truffle oil there and they had a little extra but as many of you know truffles cost more than gold per pound like uh okay i don't know if it's that bad but it's like it's really they're very expensive they're right up there with being some of the most expensive things on the planet. And so truffle oil is not cheap, but they had just smothered it. And oh my God, if you've never had truffle oil, it's kind of rank. Like, I don't know how to explain it right. It's kind of like, I don't know, like, I guess a little mushroomy. It's hard to explain. It's very savory, but it's just incredible. And if you mix together a really good burger, really high quality beef, perfectly cooked burger and you add brie cheese to it and then you add uh truffle oil and then on top of that you have applewood smoked bacon it's freaking incredible it was incredible i'm not even i'm not even you guys probably think i'm lying um but i honestly a tear kept welling up in my eye don't see my dad for five years don't tear up don't see my sister for four years don't tear up, don't take my effort, you know, but oh my god, I'm sorry East Coast, I love the East Coast of Canada, nowhere on the East Coast of Canada has a burger that good, I'm sorry, they just don't, you can go get a Five Guys burger and it's deece, you can go up to the Tide and Boar and even get like a pretty wicked boar burger there, you can go to Old A and Dubs and get the Vladimir Guerrero ring burger with onion rings on it and barbecue sauce and whatever, and it's, they're all good, they're good, but this is like, this is a, you take your time, you savor every little bite, my whole family was done all their food and had their stuff in doggy bags and I was still just taking little bites I was explaining to my dad that I liked the flavor so much that I like to have a bite and wait for a while then have a little sip of my water or a sip of my awesome craft beer and then go back to having that I've probably gone way too long on this trip and we're probably oh geez we're getting close to an hour um the next night oh so sorry the there was a Deadpool there and a Star Wars. Not only were both of them very close to level, they were the opposite of a egg pin pin. They were very close to level, so they were very floaty. Well, the last thing you want on Star Wars is a floaty ball, because you keep going out the outlanes. And the playfields were just dirty and grimy, and it was causing it, like, the ball spin was weird, and tons of things were broken on the Star Wars. The Deadpool's in slightly better condition. I still had a great time, and everybody there that I was playing with, whether it was my dad or Powder or his partner, I can't remember her name, she was really nice. She really got into pinball. And even in fact, after we finished, they really got into it. They didn't like the Star Wars one, but they loved the Deadpool one. They could figure that out. The Katana ramp was actually shootable, which on a lot of these poorly maintained pins, I think partially because of how level it was, you were getting a lot more outlanes, you were getting a lot more side-to-side action. Even shooting for Orbits was a bit more, you know. But I still had a great time. I dig it on the leaderboard for both. I got the TIE Fighter Champion and I think second highest score ever and I only got like 300 million. For me, 300 million on Star Wars is not that good just because I know it fairly well and I quite often get 800 million to probably 1.2 billion is probably like a good game for me. a middle of the road game is probably half a half a bill so it wasn't a great game but i got the second highest score outside of the gc and i think the gc was just the standard one at like a billion or something so probably the highest score ever scored on a start a star wars that crappy but i won a whole bunch of these uh tickets and everything after that it was neat seeing that all of my family was over playing pinball even after we left there to go play all the other games they have there uh and i went and got danielle's probably her favorite gift i've ever got her even more so than the jewelry I got her while I was gone. I got her, uh, uh, I was going to say a nerdy award, but I got her at, uh, what is it called in the office? That award that they do. Oh my God. Anyways, I got her one of those cute little, uh, like a cute little replica of, uh, the Dundies, the Dundie awards. I was going to call it the nerdies, but that's of course, right here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network. So I basically ended up deking from there, and the next day I went up to Muskoka. I have no pinball news about Muskoka, but I had an awesome time. For any of you guys, if you're curious to see what a half-million-dollar boathouse looks like, I do a live stream from my Uncle Hans's boathouse up there. He did wink, wink, nudge, nudge, mention to me how much it costs, because, of course, I wasn't going to ask, but the boathouse was the main thing that was new since the last time I had been up there. I'd seen, you know, the new cottage and everything, at least in pictures and video, but I had seen nothing about the new boathouse. So in case you were wanting to get a boathouse installed, an expensive property like Muskoka and Lake St. Joe, or wait, I think it's just Lake Joe, it's about half a million. Now, mind you, the boats inside there are probably worth even more. I don't know. He's got a Chris Craft, and then he's got a wakeboarding boat, then he's got a sailboat and some other boat. basically I'm the poorest person in my family is what I'm telling you I am not rich like my uncle Hans who sold like 1200 cars or something in the the his big year during COVID when used cars got huge so um but he basically just buys cars off from enterprise and other car dealerships and sells them to smaller dealerships he buys big lots off auction and then basically transports them so I think he would tell you he's more of a transporter than a car seller because he never sells to the end user but he's figured out his own little niche market um basically during all covid they were up there in Muskoka uh it was absolutely beautiful cottage we went for a nice boat ride we went to uh we went by Jim Treliving any you Canadian pinball nerds who know Jim Treliving from Boston Pizza the owner of Boston Pizza we went by his house Hans was going to invite him to his birthday party if he was out on the dock but he wasn't um we also went by quite a you other like uh we went by it all we went by all the rich people's cottages and stuff up there that was fine but there was no pinball up there it was like honzy if you listening which you probably not but if you are please go get a pinball arcade for your cottage that the only way your cottage would be slightly more awesome Then on the Saturday I went up to we did like our 12 bars I came back the Friday morning. I had a really nice, this was probably the nicest part. I never took a picture because there was always like one person smoking a ciggy or there was kids in the background. Lots of parents don't want their kids in the background. I never took a picture, but like 18 people came out to my barbecue on the Friday night. tons of people who wanted to see me just at someone's house and hang out we had a big potluck barbecue and got to see good old Peter John Chapman many of you know him from burnout Pete episode which ironically the next day Brad Hopkins who's also a tribe member here on the poor man's pinball network uh he's a tribe member and uh Brad Hopkins is now a comedian so if you don't see uh Brad talking about pinballs often that's because his new life his new love of his life is comedy and when I wrote the show Burnout Pete talking about how my best friend Pete would get really into poker and then a month later wasn't into it anymore and then got really into like mountain bike riding and then a month later he wasn't really into it anymore and then he got crazy into marathons he qualified for the Boston Marathon and was the the second highest qualifier in all Ontario and then he just basically stopped you know running after that mind you had an IT band issue but Pete would always get really into something and I just stay into things forever like still to this day, I still hacky sack. I love doing hacky sack. I do it with my sons. It's one of the very few sports I'm better than them at. It's obviously a big stoner sport, so you know, it's got that going for it. But tetherball, I love playing that in high school. I still have a tetherball court at my house. Basketball, every single day growing up in grade four, five, and six, Pete and I would go to his house. He had a mini half, like beautiful concrete indoor half half basketball court, and we would play 21 all day long. We would play horse. We would play all these games. I love playing all those games. I have a basketball court here. I still do it. I still play poker. In fact, I played when I was down in Ontario. I still love sports. Like, I still love all the sports I loved. I was just watching the most recent X Games out in California on YouTube, and even though I can barely skateboard anymore, other than just taking Luna Elwyn for, like, a little walk down the hill and back, which I love doing that man she uh she this girl pulls so hard she will pull me right up the hill outside my house it's great I don't even barely have to pump at all of course I don't get much exercise but it's just fun going for a rip and I'll go to skateboard parks but I won't do much other than just really safe small tricks and even then I have to have on knee pads elbow pads helmet uh wrist guards like I won't do shit all now on a skate park unless I'm like fully suited up but that's not the point the point is he used to be so into skateboarding and was way better than me and could skate every skate park in London, St. Thomas, Niagara even go to Toronto and rip it up but now he doesn't skateboard at all and that was my whole point in episode 109 is with pinball you see a lot of these guys come in real hot like Brad sorry Brad if you're listening I don't think he listens anymore but Brad Hopkins came in and within a year he was playing like five or six tournaments per week and going to Toronto and showing up with tons of notes and then within two years he had bought like 15 pins and I think he maxed it like 20 or 25 and he had filled up every room in his house in the basement in the lobby in the bathroom in the bedroom in the attic in the okay he didn't have any in the attic or the bedroom bathroom but um and then and then what will happen is inevitably your wife or your partner or your friend or your parent will say hey like uh your whole house kind of seems cluttered with these pins and then eventually you'll get down to like five or ten or whatever number makes sense for your arcade and Brad was sort of like that. And I thought, I told Brad, I said, Brad, you're getting too much into it. You better give yourself a little pinball breaks once in a while. You're going to get burnt out from it. And sure enough, Brad got burnt out. He even got all his live streaming equipment and Brad, come back to pinball. You don't have to leave comedy, but look at Jeff Teolis. Jeff Teolis is a standup comedian and he's in pinball. See, and you can even use your comedic energy and creative juices to make a pinball podcast. Brad Hopkins, I'd love to have you on. Mike Dimas, I want to have you on. Sean Russell, I want to have you on. The latter two, I'd love to pick their brain about Yagpin. Of course, my guest I was supposed to have on this week, which I already pushed back due to my vacation. You know who you are. You're an awesome dude in pinball. I wasn't able to have you on this week. I'm hoping to have you on in a couple days when my voice is back. But directly after that, I'd love to speak with either Brad about burning out in pinball. and I don't think he's leaving the tribe anytime soon. We only had one person do that. They got in a stink because they didn't like one of the people on here. And I'll say that for the record. You're never going to like every single person on every single pinball podcast or any non-pinball podcast. Just don't listen to that episode. If you don't like that episode and what it's about, just don't listen to it. Or you find that person irritating, just don't listen to it. It's that simple. So I've gone on and on way too much. On the Saturday, I did meet up with Burnout Pete, and Burnout Pete came out for breakfast and had a beer at Stormstade with Brad. So it was like, Brad, meet Pete. Pete, meet Brad. Just that morning or the night before, I had told Pete the story about my podcast because I don't even think he knew I had one or he hardly ever goes on social media, that sort of thing. So I told him, I said, you know, 400 episodes, I did an episode about you. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah. And then I said, I did it mostly for my buddy Brad who was afraid was going to get burnt out with playing pinball. and I've directed Brad to that episode a couple times since then. Well, Brad meets Pete, shakes his hand, and he's like, oh my God, are you Pete from episode 109? And pinball nerds can look back. I don't know if it was episode 109. I'm totally just making this up off the top of my head. But Pete's like, yeah, Albert just told me about that last night. So they hit it off. They were both like very talkative, and they both loved comedy, so they were doing that. Even though we pressured Brad, he did give us a little mini stand-up routine. And Brad, if you do come on the pod, it would be cool if you had even just, I know he only has typically five minutes, but can stretch it to ten. It would be really rad if at the very end of it all, or even at the start, when everything would be better, and then we can interview you after that. If you did a whole set of jokes about pinballers and pinball nerds and pinball games, that would just be incredible, Brad. But if you're in the London area, make sure you go see Brad. He's doing tons of shows per week. I think he's even going up to Kitchener, Waterloo, Chatham, Guelph, all that whole area. So if you're in town, make sure you go visit him. But on that Saturday after Stormstade, we went up and hit Tilt, a place that was one of my favorite places in all of Toronto to play that had expanded to London. Unfortunately, I was a little drunk. I was a little hangover. I had done a lot of edibles. And that didn't mix well with Saturday afternoon at Tilt London because there was, count them up not one not two not three but four kids birthday parties at once each party had between like eight to twelve maybe even fifteen kids you're in a place with like twenty or thirty free play arcade machines and twenty or thirty free play pinball machines the kids were literally just running by the machines pulling the plunger and kept running hitting a budding and keep going I had one kid while I was playing Godzilla ran between my legs and the pin like or crawled and I was just like, what the, this is not enjoyable. Now, Godzilla had been played and beaten down to crap, but was still playing okay, except for one single solitary switch was not working, which you need to do the primary Mechagodzilla multiball, so playing that wasn't that fun. Tales of the Raven Knights, completely broken. Monster Bash, the right flipper was sticking up. The one soccer game played okay, but please do me a favor. if you love TNA and you love Scott Denisey don't ever play a game of that you will hate TNA forever Matt played actually a pretty long game and got up on the GC which I was shocked about I played three games of it and every time was more disappointed than the other every time I noticed more things weren't working right it was also set up really floaty like that pin is meant to play fast that's not supposed to be a like oh you hit the inline drop target or Denisey lock and then you wait five minutes for it to slowly get it's supposed to shoot out fast now that one scoop that shot down would still shoot out fast but everything else was slow because they just hadn't set it up right and i guess this is my beef about all you can play pinball arcades the expectations in my head of when tilt first opened in in toronto it was primarily only known by pinball nerds and when i went there it was like 90 pinball machines 10 arcade machines so everyone or most and it was mostly for adults and stuff like that. Well, expectations are everything. I had expected for years and years and years that Tilt would be so fun and be the best place there to go play, and I found myself playing mostly ice-cold beer. I played ice-cold beer more than most of the pinball games, which arguably it is pinball, but I played Super Sprint. I went off and played Mortal Kombat. I played Street Fighter. I went and played all those games because they were working great, but the pinball machines were in rough, rough shape. They seemed to have crud on them. I don't think any of them had had their playfields wiped down or washed. There was stickiness on almost all the pinball buttons. I don't know from kids playing with like ice cream or cake on their hands or whatever, but I'll say it for the record. I'd rather go to a pinball place that I guess, I don't know, like I guess the pinball places out here, there's none of that you can pay all you can play. But I think in the future, and I love kids too. I mean, I have my own kids. I don't expect every kid to go up and play all three games on any pin, but it just ruined the experience for me. Now, did it have to do with the fact that I was on, like, way too many edibles, and I was partying like a rock star, and I was hungover from the night before, and I had partied and drank, like, I haven't drank for, like, I haven't done a seven day bender like that, where I drank every day. Most nights it was just three or four tall cans of craft beer before I went to bed, but I hadn't drank like that for seven days in a long time, So probably my, you know, how annoyed or irritated I got probably was like up through the roof. And I could say for sure that was the case. I do want to give a huge big shout out. And I'm going to be firing this off. I've already set them aside with your Pindigo shirt. Dan the man. Thank you so much, Dan. I really appreciate it. Of course, you guys would have heard Dan on the last Tribe Multiball with Rachel Resto, of course. Shout out. and Tim, it'd be nice to hear from Tim it's been a while since we've heard from Tim I don't know if we'll get a new Tribe Multiball anytime soon, but it would be nice to hear from Tim maybe I'll just have to invite Tim on the show, Glenn's been on the show Glenn the Skateboarder was on a couple months ago after TPF, and we haven't heard from Tim in a while so if we don't hear from Tim on one of his other two podcasts on there I might even have to bring him over here and argue with him about how good or bad Munsters is or something, I was trying to think of something we disagree on I love you, Tim. I love you, Glenn. Pimple Nerds, I love you. I will say this. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Dan the Man, who I put out a call and said if you wanted to help support my birthday. Wow, Dan's order was so big, it paid for everything I bought that day. and honestly when you go out for your birthday it's a little bit difficult to buy stuff my one buddy Pete bought my brekkie for me uh wow that was an incredible breakfast my other buddy bought Matt bought me a beer at the first place and like actually no he bought both my beers at Tilt uh I think I paid to get into Tilt myself now I did run up a pretty big bill uh also another pinball nerd back there in London who used to be part of Loppel uh Ray of course a lot of you know Ray he has the most beautiful, most gorgeous, best monster madness you've ever played, and what a stark difference to Tilt. We went over to Poacher's. We were only, we had all you can play for five bucks at Tilt. We only stayed there for an hour and a half, and we were all sick of it. We went over to Poacher's. Now, mind you, two or three times people had said, oh yeah, we're going to be coming any minute, and they didn't come. Travis, I came, I traveled 3,600 kilometers. You couldn't travel three come on man come on that's like 3,000 miles I think or close to that I traveled a lot you couldn't have came to come visit me once in one week anyways love you Travis he was one of my best men at my wedding he is in our fortnight group even though he doesn't play with us often he chats with us in there and I don't know if he just got tired or whatever got afraid of the there downtown London's a lot more sketchy now but wow once we were down at poachers the fire and ice wings there were incredible that's of course honey garlic mixed with medium the beers were awesome so many good craft beer selections if you love good food good craft beer and pinball i highly recommend going to poacher's arms in london because it's pretty mellow you're not gonna have well the kids aren't allowed there because it's a bar first of all also not especially in the summertime there's hardly any university or college students there so like i almost felt like i was the youngest guy at this irish pub right or scottish pub what what is poachers i don't know some type of pub um but no i had a great time there we stayed there for most of the night end up having a couple more beers after that playing a little more pinball back at matt's house joe selvaggi was there joe took a really cool video which i should try to share of us all playing disc golf pete the most competitive person on the planet who played disc golf with us shot a minus four i managed to get a minus three but i think it's because i had no stress and they were all very short holes but yeah for me to have not played a hole nine holes in two or three years and just to have shot a minus three I was very happy with that Joe came and shot with his 180 camera which was cool Joe also was our DD so thank you so so much for that Joe ironically of all the pinball nerds uh that I haven't got to see since I moved out here to the coast I've seen Joe twice who's came out here for road trips and he ends up being the one that I got to see the most on the Saturday when I was there Ray also uh Ray owns that machine and came down and played with us and he put in free credits there several times so and even when left, I think he would, like, pull to Santa Claus and left some free credits on there. He probably didn't want to put too many, so I'm sure the bar or the place might be like, hey, you know, these guys were playing for pinball. And we weren't playing either, because usually two, if not three of the four of us would end up getting a free game, because we would get to whatever, the wizard mode on Monster Bash. And, uh, anyways, I had a great time on my trip. On the next day, I got to go see my sister, Melinda, meet my new niece, Mila, who is so cute and so fun and is so neat. Like they taught her sign language before she could even speak. So for certain things, she still uses like, for certain things, she still uses like sign language. And if you're ever going to go to a town and you want to have really good Chinese food, you ask someone who's Chinese. So thank God, my brother-in-law, Thane, who's married to my sister, of course. His dad is from the UK, but his mother's from Hong Kong, I believe, somewhere over there or outside of Hong Kong, but somewhere in China. And he was like, no, straight up, if you want really, really good authentic Asian food, you order from this particular place. So my sister went to town and she ordered seven or eight dishes. I said, Melinda, just one or two is fine, but every dish I had, whether it was the cashew chicken or like the more authentic types of stuff that I had. Incredible. Just the flavors were there. There was bitter, there was sweet, there was sour, there was everything. And it was just, it was incredible. Um, the only thing that was missing is the Toronto airport. The Toronto airport has got like, like, I don't know if it's Versace, but like it had Gucci and a couple other like really expensive stuff in it. It's got all these jewelry stores. It's got all this other stuff, but what it doesn't have is any pinball. My three hours of waiting at the airport would have been much more fun if there was just one pinball machine. So are you listening, Toronto Pearson Airport? Get yourself at least one pinball machine because my experience home would have been much more enjoyable. Since then, I've been sick. As you guys know, I'm going to try to be back in a couple days with another episode. If you guys, I do apologize Venom was up so late, I assume not many people will listen to this. It was also a little bit of ranting and raving, and I'll be honest, like my ADHD or whatever the hell it is that I suffer from slash enjoy from, it allows me to watch every episode of The Office 20 times and not remember it. Whatever it is that I have also causes me to, you know, when I'm taking like daytime medication for a really bad cold, it also makes me go off topic more. So blame it on the medication. Don't blame it on me. My birthday is tomorrow. It would be super rad. I did get that one order came in, which was awesome. You don't have to feel obligated and spend over $100 like Dan did on buying tons of coffee and tea, but if you go under our website, you can either just type into Google, Angry Alpaca Coffee and Tea. One of the top links for that will be our Facebook, and then a little bit further down will be our Squarespace store. You can just click onto it. The easiest way to do it is just go onto our, if you're on Facebook, even if you're not on Facebook, if your mom has it, your dad, your brother, your sister, your mother, you can just type Angry Alpaca in and you can hit the shop now button. We have, because we have so many big shows in the next two weeks, we have tons of inventory. We usually don't have tons of inventory. Don't feel obligated to spend any amount of money, but it would just, it would make my day. It would brighten my day, especially being sick the last three or four days, and I have to go tomorrow, because the only person who can really talk comics properly, as well as Pokemon, as well as sports cards, is myself, so I do have to go to the show tomorrow, but what would brighten my day is if just one of you kind listeners, if you need to stock up on, I know it's hot as hell, especially down through the states, many of our fruit teas, so like our raspberry oro grey is incredible, our peach black tea is incredible for iced tea, like just bursting with flavor. There's so much natural flavor in there, you barely need to add any sugar or stevia or any honey or sweetener whatsoever. So they're extremely low calorie. Don't get me wrong, I will drink a Nes Tea if I have to, or an Arizona iced tea, but those things are more loaded with sugar than even pop. And for a lot of us, if you're trying to like prevent your dad bod from getting any worse, or your big bubba gut from getting any worse. And, you know, if you're going to get calories, get it from like a delicious burger or from wings or from pizza. But you don't get calories from every time you drink a drink. If you have five, six, seven drinks in a day, you don't want to be like knocking down like 40, 50 grams of carbs and sugar every time you're having a pop or an iced tea. So go get yourself some awesome iced tea. We also make great iced coffees. The Force, which is fully stocked again, which has cute little Grogu on it. It's a medium roast on the dark side. That's by far my favorite to use for iced coffee. Danielle likes the light roast by City Lights. If you're going to be doing an espresso, that's definitely the one you want for that. And if you're someone who really likes to taste the chocolate and the dark stone fruit flavors, you can go grab our East Coast Dark Roast, which is called Some Good. That also works well for iced coffee. But whether it be iced coffee, iced tea, or even hot coffee, because you've got to have it in the morning, Go on there. Treat yourself while you're giving me Orby a little birthday gift. You'll not only get a shout-out on the next show, but I'm going to throw a Tim Pinball t-shirt in there. I have two pinball shirts that I bought from Cabin Fever in Toronto. Neither of them quite fit me nice. And as you know, I'm trying to, like, minimize and get rid of some stuff that doesn't fit me. I will toss you in there. And, in fact, if you want to know which sizes I have, you can even message me after you put in your order. But if not, I will just pick one, and you can either have it for yourself if it fits. if it, I believe it's large, but I think I have, actually I think I have one large and one medium, so message me or don't, if you just wanted to do it as a gift, I will still, I don't even care what the purchase size order in, if you even buy one large bag or equivalency, so three small bags, so two teas, one coffee of the small ones, or one large bag, I will be easily able to throw in a free t-shirt, so that would be probably the most rad way to wake up tomorrow morning, would be to see that I had one, two, maybe even three orders from Pinball Nerds. I always throw some fun freebies in there and you're just thanking me a little bit for the show. So Pinball Nerds, until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Gwen Stacy Pinball.