Video killed the radio star. Video killed the radio star. In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind, we've gone too far. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and today I'm joined by photojournalist, Twitch broadcaster, my podcast partner and co-host, Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. That's a lot of hats to wear. We're going to go through the show chronologically, starting with Wednesday, your load-in day. Okay, on Wednesday, we loaded up 12 back glasses, some rotten dog displays and a bunch of other parts we got some Jerry bulbs from my friend Jerry and a couple of Godly Vampues, basically did some spring cleaning and had to get some stuff out of here so loaded up the car and what were the back glasses? well let's see, we got a couple of Gorgars we had a Speakeasy four player, a rare back glass we had And what else did I have? Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Yeah. So we've done these games. Were these extras or the cast-offs or? Yeah, this Speakeasy four-player, I've had it for, I don't know, 15 years. Okay, so the game that you did wasn't a four-player, was it? No, two-player. The four-player is rare. They only went to Hello, Grant in Australia. Australia got that game. Okay. So I could have shipped it to Grant, but I don't think I could find one. Okay. and a beautiful, pretty close to NOS hot dog and back glass that someone wanted, or a couple people wanted that, so I had that with me. I'm not going to ask you how much, but did that bring good money? It brought good money. Okay. You can't buy one. No. I had two of them, so. I wanted four. I didn't get four, but I got good money, so I'm not going to complain about it. What else did we, Carol Merrill over there, what else did we, for back glass, do you remember? Off the top of your head. It was a bunch. Oh, and a super, I had a bunch of ratty back glasses that I basically sold in a package deal. Seven of them for, I don't know, a little bit of dough. Not a lot of dough. Like 35 bucks a piece. So wall hangers. Wall hangers, yeah. Super sonic and just a bunch of other back glasses that just, they were taking up space. So I wanted to get rid of them. So Lone and I lit up and got their Wednesday. and unpack stuff and got ready for the show on Thursday. So getting there Thursday, we tried to get in to help Dave Mitrano set up. We told Dave we'll help him set up. We usually try to get in a little bit early to the show on a Thursday. We don't want to just poach in there and just kind of take advantage. We're going to help people set up. So we're going to do a little service, and we're going to get in free for Thursday because you can't buy your way in Thursday. Thursday is for vendors and set up. So no general public can go on Thursday. He said, well, if we're there to help people set up, we're helping the show, and we get to walk around a little bit and kind of fraternize. So what was missing? You didn't have an armband? Well, the problem was in previous years you could do that. This time around, not so much. You had Bruce Nightingale at the watchman at the door. Oh, he didn't let you in? No. He's in the back door. He already knows you. Yes, hold on right there, Dr. Dave. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. How? Oh, yeah. He's like, well, I just want to go over there and help. Nope, nope. Can't get in here. no you need to be a vendor you got a game it's like boy you're a hard ass so and i found out i talked to dave and his wife and you know dave materno's wife and uh they wouldn't let her in and you know they know her and they until until dave was there with the with the games or something until he could verify that she can get in or something it was like totally it was so locked down he had to register his games first then she can come in usually it was it wasn't this tight before this was tight this time oh i have a story but i'm not telling it okay um i just happened to walk in how's that maybe not the wrong door i just happened to walk in oh you waltzed in somewhere where no one was looking and then you go they were looking okay i'm very intrigued george well my my line always is act like you own the place yes that is true that so they were having the outdoor flea market yeah the garage door was wide open okay and i just walked in like i owned the place along with my friend jack that was a number of years ago well you know that would that might have worked this time but he has so much freaking rain at the show there was no outdoor flea market that wasn't going to happen so how i how we got in finally a friend uh dave and jerry jerry brings usually like four or five games with him so uh he likes to you know likes to get people and if he can kind of deal and i i sweetened the deal with him to get maureen and i in with two of his games by making some deals with uh a nice bag of uh a bag of led led bulbs that i didn't not my style that i cared for but jerry said bring them on these all out of games that you've redone oh yeah put them in a big bag i'll never use bag that's correct george a big bag of that jerry said bring them on and some godly vampus that were nice shape so jerry reuses them because they're cheap and puts them in games that he sells? When he wants to bring some games to the show, he will do that. Now, Jerry does some nice work. Are you sure his name's not Eric? No. He does nice work. Janice had a funny about Eric. But he likes to, you know, he just tries to, a lot of people don't give a crap when they buy a game at a show. It's like, oh, they're going to have to work it anyway. So he sells the game at an appropriate price. He's not going to get a high dollar. Therefore, why put a high dollar LED in there? you know so it's that kind of thing um tell us what you did on thursday on thursday what do we do well let's see what we did you got in yeah so you had to have done something what did we do i don't know why did we do we walked around and we uh went up to uh the oxo that was waiting for you in a van that was unloading a bunch of games and looked at it and then you know i was i it was a tentative deal anyway i was kind of thinking about it. It's like, you know what, I'm going to probably pick that up Friday, but I need to do some more stuff and find a right home for it because I think I'm going to get another game here. But I didn't tell them that. But I was trying to make it happen. I didn't want to renege on the deal. It was sort of a handshake deal. But if I could only get one game home, I was going to have to renege on it. So I wanted to put that in the back burner, so to speak. Also, I found out on the OXO it had no backdoor, which is like, it's hard to source a backdoor for these games. What kind of manufacturer? Williams. Williams 4-player EM. So it's like... I think it's a cool game, but I got it. And then someone said, oh, you can make a wooden door for it. It's like, I don't want a wooden door. It's hacky. I just, you know... Nobody remanufactured that and made a new metal door? Not that I know of. Must not be enough of a demand. If they did, maybe five or ten years ago they might have, but not now. How much of a demand can there be? There's not much demand. Can you buy a crappy Williams game and just take it off the back of it? I have an answer for that. You will wait and hear about that in a little bit. Okay, okay. I'm jumping the gun. There's an answer for that one. We see we haven't talked about it. That's true. I've not talked about that, no. We haven't talked about a lot of this. No, we have not. So I had a deal, again, that I, on Thursday night, had to let this guy know. He's coming from New Jersey with his Close Encounters game. It was, you know, pretty well done up. Did a bunch of, you know, board work on it and so forth. and it was working nice. But I'm doing a trade with my brother-in-law. He really was jonesing for Close Encounters. He's going to trade me his game for me when I do a nice job on Close Encounters. I don't know why he likes this game, but he does. I think he likes the movie or something. Wolf. Yeah, people don't really care for this game too much. But, you know, it's like Flavors of Ice Cream again, I'll say. There's a flavor for everybody, and this is his flavor, and this is what he wants. I even try to talk him out of it and say, Like, you sure you want this game? You look at the reviews. Look at the reviews. Oh, no, I want the game. I don't care what they say. No, that's good. That's effective. Yeah, so now I fully warned. No backsies. Exactly right. So you're going to get what you get. So as I'm contemplating telling this guy he's going to bring the Close Encounters and buy it from him, I see this new vendor on Thursday, and I see a Close Encounters there with a really high price tag on it, like double what I was going to pay the other guy. and you know i'd rather buy from uh a restorer or a hobbyist restorer that has a little more let's say not used car salesman situation going on versus going for the used car salesman kind of thing so i went to mr going to be used car salesman guy at the vendor area and uh he said oh i totally restored this game up really nice look what i did i did some more he's like i was It's like, you have no idea who I am. You have no idea. I'm looking at the thing. It's like, no, you didn't. Step right up. Step right up. Look at this gorgeous thing. It's been fully restored. Of course it has. It's got beautiful LEDs. Oh, beautiful. Beautiful LEDs. Oh, gorgeous LEDs in the thing. Yeah, I looked at it and said, what are the boards? Oh, I did the whole. They showed me the board. It's a regular. It's all the regular crappy Gottlieb stuff with no ground mods done, no nothing. it had like a bunch of alkaline damage to the board that he scrubbed off there we call that a box of lights he cut off the connectors and put these jamma ones that aren't any good on there and so let me play the game a little bit the good thing about this game, the back glass was mint and the back glass was in all these close encounters that I've seen, they're trashed because they had lights in them that were on forever and it just flaked all the paint off yeah they were on forever and no one played the freaking game I think the Sterns more so than Bally games for some reason. Bally's are peelers, and those are like shedders. Yeah, the Williams and the Sterns are more like little flakers, and the Bally's are flakers and speckled flakers. Flakers versus peelers. Peelers, yes, flakers and peelers. That sounds like sunburn. It does, flakers and peelers. Yeah, it is kind of like sunburn. You know what? As a matter of fact, talking to my engineering friend, John Day, speaking of sunburn that's exactly what happens to these back glasses because the infrared like a sunburn you'd get from the sun on your skin that is what causes the back glass problems is not the heat from the light so much it's the infrared light is causes the issue with back glasses that's why he's a big fan of putting leds back there and i know i know i know i struggle with that too george so anyway we're going down a different path here let's go back in the track Yeah, the track suit, Drew. Woo-hoo. All right, so Close Encounters. So Backglass, mint. Playfield, pretty darn mint, too. Cabinet, the other guy, Mr. Hobbyist guy, his cabinet was better. But overall, this guy had two out of three better than the other guy did. Well, except for the boards and so forth. It also had a new plastic set on it, too. The other one had broken plastics on it. This one had new plastic. So new plastic set. Do they make those? They do. Okay. They were $80 or so. So I had a new plastic set, nice back glass, nice play field. So you bought from a used car salesman. Used car salesman. And I basically, I said, I basically, I offered him, I offered him less than half what he wanted. And I said, take your boards out. Take your boards out. I'm going to give you this price, which is less than half what you want. Oh, I can't sell without loads. It's like, yeah, you can. Just take the boards out. It's like, well, maybe you have the halfway price. It's like, I don't know. It's like, all right. I kept trying to keep up, you know, 50 bucks, 50 bucks. And finally it's like, all right, fine, whatever. We'll do it half price. Fine. He just wanted to get rid of you. He did. He wanted to get rid of you. Well, as we're making the deal, I'm counting out the 20s for him and doing the thing. And he said, well, I want the soundboard too. It's like, you know, I didn't say the soundboard. I said the heads on the back. Well, that's a board too. I want all the boards like you said. It's like, okay, fine. You know what? Whatever, dude. Keep the soundboard. Now the PASCO board I'm going to put in this game has a soundboard incorporated. So this board replaces all those boards, so I really don't care. It's fine. Plus, I might even put chimes in this game, so I don't mean to. Now, do you think he had any idea that there was such a thing as a Pascal board? I don't think so. Oh, boy. I don't think he – no. So he was just moving along. He was just moving along. He was moving wood. Moving, yeah. Give her the box of lights. So then I'm opening the door up, and I'm hooking it, and he's taking the boards out. All of a sudden, I realize there is no ball and play credit. A little display board in it. I said, wait a minute. Where is the display board? Oh, you said all the board. No, no. I said the board, not the displays. I want a full set of displays in this. Where's the display? We don't really have it. So here he has my money. Right. I made a deal. So it's like, dude, dude, do the right thing. Right. Well, I lent it to a friend of mine. He has it. He's going to the floor. He put it somewhere else. He's like, well, find it. Right. Find it. So did he? So it also had no lock on the front door. And I think, you know. That's easily solved. Yeah. But still, if you're selling, I restored this game. Oh, no, no. No, no, no, no. I get it. But to you, it's like, big deal. Big deal. I'm just saying how you represent a game. We don't. You know, come on. So people have a sense of what happens on the floor. Yeah. You do. You need to be an informed consumer. You need to be an informed consumer. Exactly right. So what else did you do on, this is Thursday, right? This is still Thursday. So a lot of action on Thursday. So the show hasn't even started yet. No, this is all, this is the best day is Thursday because you can do all these things. And that's why they kept you out. That's why they kept me out. That's right. But damn it, I got in. But you can buy a booth for, what, $100, $150? Yeah, something like that. So he kept saying, even before we made the deal, he said, well, you know, I'm just setting up right now. I have a whole weekend. I can sell this thing. It's like, yeah. I said, you know what a Close Encounters is? I don't think so, dude. I think I'm your buyer. Enough of the Close Encounters. It was too much too close or too Encounterish. No, it's just nobody wants. Oh, one more thing. So Jerry, one more thing. so so we're starting that we haven't even gotten to the meat yet come on come on move this along well jerry i don't say jerry helped jerry helped jerry said here's your issue blah blah he was the he was the intermediary he kind of and he's really he's a wheeler dealer he's a weird wheeler dealer too long story short he talked to the guy later on in the show i said i came up to him and i was ready to go in front of the guy when it's like friday or saturday and be the guy that's going to say this guy is no don't buy from me i was going to be that guy i needed to well but you could also do it with the power of the microphone but oh yeah i could yeah so and i had all i could do i had all kinds of power but so basically jerry talked to my talk oh i got your board right here here's your display so great so that diffused that i got display got the game out of there went over and i asked my friend dave matrano can i wheel us over here and you can store it for a while for me in his we're gonna get dave because he's an integral part of saturday he's an was part of my pinball deals, I'll tell you that, because it was raining cats and dogs. So I had to put it somewhere, and I put it in his spot. He let me do it. No problem. And then I had to figure out the OXO thing. How am I going to do that? I can get it and put it in his spot, too. Now I have two games, and I only have room for one to come back. And that cues in. I got an email from Sandra and Mark, who run Pinnivators. They have a Pinnivator booth there. That's the guy with the vest when we were at Sturbridge last fall. The guy with the Godzilla, with all the with all the stuff correct okay right so on friday morning i got an email just out of the blue from sandra because the last year i was talking about um if she could bring a game back to me last year and she couldn't because she was full so she saw my thing from last year for some reason it queued her up and she happened to just say hey uh we have room for to have you uh we bring a game back for you if you want this is like where are they they're up in haverhill oh they're in massachusetts yeah they're about an hour i had no idea yeah oh okay yeah so uh i said wow talk about coincidence so right back to her there are no coincidences this is just i just this is just what i needed just the spot i needed thank you sandra so so they did that for me i got that also i got both things i got a ride for him now so that was all set um and let's see so so then i i really the next day this is on friday so let's go to friday now um friday i was thinking about going to still OXL. I wasn't totally excited about it. They could tell that they were losing the fish on the hook. I was kind of wiggling a little bit. I wasn't really getting back to them a lot. Finally, I said, listen, the game has no back. I'm a little bit... I need a backbox for that. I need a door. We can find you a door. No problem. About an hour later, he took a picture. This guy has doors. It's the Mr. Junkman, the junk guy. Oh, who, Jeff? Yeah, the Junkie Jeff. Yeah, yeah. Junkie Jeff. Don't call him that. I like Jeff. I have a soft spot for Jeff. He's a hard ass, though. I wanted to get a win. He did me so many good deals back in the day. Okay. I used to help him unload the truck. And I would say, Jeff, I know you're breaking your, to get all this stuff out. And you, if you haven't been to Allentown or you haven't seen the pictures, he brings like a 20 foot box truck and he unloads it and loads most of it back every time but 15 years ago he used to have tons of playfields decent ones i helped him unload 20 bucks 10 bucks you know now you look at some of that stuff and it right it's insane but that was a long time ago so it was worth it i looked at his playfields they basically someone took a uh hedge clipper to the wiring harness and the sad part is we see the same inventory every time it's like if i put a sticker on it i could almost guarantee i'm gonna see it at the next show he was at he was in ohio oh yeah he gets around well he's in pennsylvania somewhere that makes sense so he so it's like a whole pile of them i said well tell you what we'll just get one there and come back and say, no, I want you to bring the backbox to Jeff, and we're going to go one by one and find one that fits. And them saying, Rebush and Alliance, if we don't find a love connection, then we ain't going to have it. Oh, so he had a pile. You weren't even sure. No. I don't know. He's got a pile. You're a lot smarter than me. What would you have done? Just pick one up and go? The playfield glass I bought, and I trusted somebody from the last show. Oh, yeah, no. I learned from you, George. I learned from your mistakes. to make me feel better. So, so it over, he brought the bag, so he wheeled over in a little cart the whole backbox over to Jeff's spot where the doors are and one by one, it looked like, hey, this is going to fit. Put it in there, didn't fit. One by one. How many did it have to go through? Like 10 of them. And there was probably just one, right? There was one. Of course there was. There was one. It fit, but, and so I said, okay, we got a deal, we'll do it, but here's the thing, here's the thing, I go back to put the whole thing in Dave's spot there and I need a lock so I went back to Jeff and I saw some of his back doors had a lock and key on it one had the lock and key but it's an old rusty lock and key but that's all I need I said hey can you sell me the lock and key you know what the answer was no he wants the whole piece sold or nothing I cannot take that lock it was on a different door Why didn't you just go to one of the vendors? Oh, because they weren't set up. No, no, I keep not... Was this Friday? I'm confused. No, it's Friday. So why didn't you just go to the vendor? Well, I can, but I want to... $2.50 or $3.00? No, it's $7.00 for a lock. That's how much they are now? Yeah. Wow. I want to give him a dollar for a used lock. I don't want to spend $7.00. Okay. You do too. No, it's an EM. It's a clunker. You know? So he wouldn't do it. It's like, really? I was like, fine. So put it back in Dave's spot there. now I bought a couple locks from Mayfair and then I look at it and it's like you know what I think these back glass locks with a little cam on it, it's a little long, little lever it's too long, usually fits a coin door so then I found, this is the great about having these vendors here, that's why I like this show, it's so nice I went to Marco and he has a bunch of little markdown bins with like a bag of five for a buck pick five, so there was a whole box of cams with little levers all different sizes pick five, pay a buck so it's like okay i'm gonna take all the ones that could possibly be short long you know all these short ones and i picked five it's like okay one of these and i go over i put a lock in there i try one at a time it wouldn't it wouldn't lock the freaking door it's like what finally if i won it's like okay this one almost works and say i put in there it's like trying to turn it that's like all right hey dave somebody here do you have a um this john was his friend was there too another vendor another guy uh you know uh hobbyist and i said do you have hair pliers oh yeah you can borrow So did you bend it? I took a pair of pliers I put it on the key and I slowly turned the key like and I be like to open with the marco extra short cam thing so i made it work george a buck long story for a buck for a buck that's the buck i wanted to spend on the guys come on everybody wants to hear about saturday uh oh yeah i'm with ben with jeff i wanted to buy a harness a gottlieb system one harness for this stupid close encounter because the guy cut off the real harness and put on this stupid jam of crap that's not reliable and you can't buy this you can't buy these connectors anymore they are no longer available so I'm saying okay, so just as I go back to Jeff and look for harness, I see this guy has a harness in his hand he bought it right in front of me if I was only there about a minute earlier 40 bucks for a harness and I said hey, can I get a couple of those can I interject for a second Go ahead, George. People are probably wondering. I'm not even at the show yet, folks. It's Friday. This is the Dave show. I come Saturday morning. So we're almost there. We're almost there. We're getting there. We're getting there. We have a lot of things going on. There's so much stuff going on at this show. Well, people want to hear about it. But it makes my head spin because I'm saying, what do I do next? What do I do first? It's like, do I go play a game, networking, buy parts, look for parts, do deals? there's like so much to do and so little time to do it and and you feel like if you don't act quick like the freaking harness i was there at the harness a minute earlier where i go to the show and i'm like how am i going to occupy my time not me well no that's always how it's been because i've been to the show so many times right isn't this the old show it is the yeah pinball wizards 10th annual convention yeah 2003 wow i think i have that shirt that's what it's where's it say Right there, 2003. Yeah. Oh, Janice found this in the closet. Wow. So, okay. That's cool. I have that shirt. Okay, well, I have it too. Right? Yeah, I have that one. Okay. I should have worn it today, George. I did for a reason. We could have been twins. But I didn't see the date on it. Okay, cool. Oh, yeah. Continue. All right. Are we almost done with Friday? Is there more? As we last left our hero. Because I teased everybody with the beginning, and they're probably wondering why you're photojournalist and why you are a podcast not a pod, a Twitch broadcaster, pardon me. We're getting there. The day's long. We're getting there. We are getting there. We're getting there. John has some harnesses. Oh, yeah. I have an option. I have it out for some harnesses. We're okay with that. We'll get that covered. Let's see here. Let me look at my little notes here. First, George, before we go to Saturday, we should go over a word from our sponsor. We have a new sponsorship, by the way. Do you know that? I'm so excited. I can hardly contain myself. Okay. Well, I worked long and hard to get this sponsorship, so this is our new sponsor. Let's see. This is Evil Knievel and the Evil Knievel Shock Absorbing Stunt Cycle. You can make them do wheelies, backstands, even mid-air somersaults. And for that Big jump. Here's Evil. Up and over that four-foot ditch. Evil Knievel sold separately or with the Evil Knievel stunt cycle from Ideal. And that's our new sponsor. What do you think, George? I love the reference. It can jump a four-foot ditch. That appeals to every young person. Wow! Four feet! oh god right oh no he made a lot of money we talked about that in the last show so does that conclude that concludes Friday I think so George ok good so folks I actually I should conclude with Friday my wife when I were on vacation I believe I said that in our last podcast that we were going away for a week and that we would ultimately end up in Allentown. Well, Friday we drove from Asheville, North Carolina to Allentown. When we got to the Maryland line, the skies opened up and for the next three and a half hours, it was white knuckle mania. Janice did a great job, got us there, but we were so, it was like five o'clock. The last thing I wanted to hear was bing, bang, boom. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I just went into the isolation tent for a while. Saturday morning came and we went to the show. Wife's all excited because of the farmer's market. You've heard about that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. I get there at the crack of nine o'clock when they open up, go into the show, start walking around, see a lot of people, start talking to certain people. We'll come to Scott in a couple minutes. But I get a text from Dave. Basically, am I there? Yes, I'm there. Where are you? Oh, I'm 15 minutes out. Do you want to interview Eric Stone? Sure. Dave gets there and I left the show to go find my wife to make sure that she was okay across the street at the farmer's market. I come back in and go back to the tournament area. And what do I see? I see Dave behind the microphone with Eric. And who were you sitting with then? Was that Cliff? I don't remember who you were. Yeah, it was Cliff. The rock and roll dude. Oh, yeah. Cliff. Yeah. The rock and roll dude. Yeah. Yep. I'm like, what the hell is going on here? and Dave got his taste of being a Twitch broadcaster and it was pretty cool waiting for him to be done and we hung out for a little bit and I think that's when we saw Zach Frey and Bruce Nightingale inside a volley now the first time you did the twitch broadcast you actually were broadcasting volley weren't you yes and the game was messing messing up yep people were getting 10 000 more points than they should have i went back and re-watched it we actually did the good thing about this twitch thing is they actually had slow motion replays almost like in football let's see them replay and see the slow motion see what they do a judge call on it so they could do that and they went back in time to see okay we got to deduct I spent a lot of time going and reviewing video to see exactly what was going on. So we saw the hood open. Yeah, hood open. So it kept getting 10,000 points too much sometimes. Sometimes it was supposed to score 5,000, but it would score 6,000 sometimes instead of 5,000. Maybe we should back up a little bit. Yeah, sure. Let's back up. The tournament consisted, this was a very cool idea, I thought. You had 114 players at $100 a piece playing a bank of 20 games in which you needed to complete on Friday 12 games. That's right. And I remember I was in the hotel room watching, and Eric Stone almost didn't complete game 12. He was trying to play Avengers, and I guess he finally got on it. But one guy, and he was ranked like 1,000-something. He was on there for almost a half an hour. Oh, yeah, it takes a long time. So I think Eric was bouncing around more so than normal. Oh, yeah, he was. More so than normal. Jones and Jones and Ford. Oh, yeah. Yep. Where were we? With the volley thing. We'll come back to it. Go ahead. Okay, so when I was watching, we'll go back a little more. When I was watching Eric and Cliff doing the little thing, there's three chairs back that do the commentary. The commentary. and uh well we should give mark a plug because people oh yeah yeah true mark i'm sorry i don't know your name i know it starts with a p i went on your on your twitch site you didn't list it but it's backhand pinball check them out yeah that's where you can watch the feed but as of this morning he had already 3 000 watches so a lot of people have watched this broadcast already yeah and i and actually i helped him choose i actually i posted as well on pin side so more people could see it there too as well you know backhand pinball so uh i'm watching them and then uh eric's ways you know it's like hey come on over and say what me me yeah come over here sit down grab a grab some headphones okay sure so it's kind of like i just all of a sudden he's got got drafted in it's like it was so cool because like uh it was great i felt like uh i don't know i i think for a day or something i could tell and i i'll be honest i'm like man i wish i was sitting there. But we'll come to that later. And I saw George looking in the window like the doggy in the window like, pick me, pick me. And he was whimpering. Let's get back to Bolly. How much is that doggy in the window? The one with the waggly tail. How much is that doggy in the window. Hike, hike! I do hope that doggy is for sale. So we see the hood open on Bali with Bruce Nightingale and Zach Frey. They're two individuals that are part of the Rochester Pinball Collective, also Slam Tilt Podcast, and they're trying to figure out what's wrong with this game. So I went up to them, and I figured I could give a little professional advice to them. Well, let's talk about Zach, too. You didn't really know who he was until I told you again. This is the guy that beat Dave at Pentastic. By picking TNA. So Dave finally got to meet the guy who beat him because he really didn't know him at the time. Right. But got to know him a little bit better. And I did as well. Good guy. Good guy. And he knows his stuff. He knows how to play. He also knows how to fix. He's, as they say, wicked smart. Wicked smart. So I said, hey, so what's going on? He told me this and that. and he kept doing, I said, well, did you check the, you checked the score reel for the, you know, the nine carryover, and he goes, oh, yeah, I checked all that, I rebuilt all that, I even swapped a couple reels over from the lower one that's not being used that much, so he's like going, it's like, okay, so all the steps I'm thinking in my head, he's done, done, done, done all of them, I say, okay, and he said, well, I even have so-and-so, another EM guy who's an expert, he gave me some advice, I tried that, didn't work either, so he's kind of getting, he's exhausting all his resources on what to do and why this thing isn't working, and he knows, you know, I gave him my piece, he knew his piece and say you know what i know a guy that can figure this out dave matrando it's like i'll be right back i went over to see dave said dave here's the situation dave knew exactly right away it is the a1 a1 stepper a1 uh switch stack on the score motor it is making uh too much contact it has to be super super clean and make just a little bit of contact too good is bad you want to make it just enough. It's like a clock. A clock, yeah. So there are pieces on the clock or contacts on the clock and it hits it and it's supposed to move to the next one. And this was double-hitting, correct? Is that how I understood it? Real quick. Real quick and if it's not springing back enough time to spring back enough, it's going to count too many times. So it has to have time. So that was the problem with the game. But also the big part of the story is they didn't pull the game. They played that through. all four people. Well, you know why? Because that game is a great game. It's a great game in heaven than the tournament. In any other tournament, that game would have been pulled right away. It should have been. I guess. But the problem is, when you pull out an old school classic like that, now you're going to be all ramp game. We're going to come to that in a couple minutes. And the problem is, we're at his ugly head here again. Hold that thought that it becomes ramp-a-rama. I'm going to call somebody out. Okay. Well, I'm going to keep going a little bit here. The problem is, as Eric found out, or as he knows, games go on way too long, and you bump into the time stop of the whole thing. That's why you want to play the shorter games, or at least have a mix of shorter games in it. So if you pull a shorter game out, like an EM... Well, they didn't have your favorite game in the bank. Which one is that, George? That would be Guardians of the Galaxy. Thank God. They had Avengers, but it's just as bad, so... People really like that game. So, So finally he said, you know, good idea. So he adjusted it, and it got like 90% better. It fixed it 90% of the way. So it didn't fix it entirely, but pretty close. It got close. So basically that switch is the problem. It required so – you have to get that thing just right. So he had to go in there and monkey with it more and more to get it just right. But that was the fix. So Dave came up with the fix. I gave – And he wanted the credit, and we gave him. Dave Matrano gets credit. Yes, very good. You fixed a volley. Good job. Do you want me to pump you up before we continue with – do we have to talk about the first time with Eric and you doing the podcast – The Twitch. I keep wanting to say podcast. Forgive me, folks. Yeah. Do you want to continue with the first time you did your Twitch broadcast debut? Is there anything else notable? Because I think the second time was even better. The second time was better. So I basically, I felt guilty seeing George, the little puppy dog, behind the glass. And I wanted to bring George in, but there was no spot for me. But while you were doing that, right, you were doing the first time with Twitch, I got to talk to Raymond Davidson. Okay. I'm going to pump you for a second. Okay, sure. I said, you see that guy over there? I said, he has your game. And we've done a podcast on it. He goes, I've listened to it. Wow. I was like, no, he asked me, he goes, what is your podcast? I said, the classic pinball podcast. He goes, oh, I listen to that. I was like, wow, okay, cool. He goes, actually, I look forward to hearing Dave, once he's got the game all done, and playing it and knows a lot more about it, to hear his review of the game. Wow. So you're on the, he's got the eyes on you. I guess I'm going to play it some more and read the rules. I was really happy to hear that. That was pretty cool. That's pretty cool. I like that. Let's see. Who else did I see? Let me look at my notes here. Give me a second. I'll wait on him. I got a couple of things that you said. Something on Eric. Okay, I think I can work some of this stuff in. You know, speaking of Ray Day, that goes to show. Well, he didn't even make it to the finals. I know. I mean a couple people did yeah well it goes when he and the young kid won yeah 17 year old from Jersey I don't even remember his name Justin no doesn't matter no he's from no he's from Manhattan he's from New York him and his father his father's there too that was him and his father okay he was actually I talked to his father sorry I don't have his name I talked to his father and I can find it somewhere here yeah we could it doesn't matter okay people know I talked to his father and he said he's been bringing up with pinball since he was two and a half years old He's been teaching him how to play pinball. He was really good. We got another youngster. One more thing. Stop. Stop, stop. The thing about Ray Day, and you saying that about he wants to hear my review of the game once I'm done, you never know who's listening to the show. We know that now. And when we say certain things, it's like, you know, sometimes you might step on some toes. I'll forget if I don't mention this. driving through Virginia, I come across a billboard that said Cooters Place. They had all the cars from the Dukes of Hazzard. Oh, right. But the reason I'm telling you is Danzig, the gentleman who did the re-theme of Paragon to Dukes of Hazzard. Remember we talked about him. Kind of called me out, but that's cool. We're all cool. He won for best in show at that show in Arizona that Bruce went to. God, I can't remember. I didn't write it down. But he won best in show for that game. All right. Well done. So you got your mention because you deserve it. You're going to come on the show. This guy must work nine billion hours a week. He's like, I don't have any time to do your show. So maybe eventually he'll come on. But I digress. Sorry. the Dukes of Hazzard thing Dave's got to go to Cooter's place and the guy who's that guy that's sending the picture of a beautiful oh gee the beautiful Dukes of Hazzard had the cop car, Dukes of Hazzard car and then I see this I don't know what it was a guy in Daisy Dukes Wector, what's his first name Glenn Wector Glenn Wector, he's one of the tribe with the poor man's pinball podcast Okay. And yet I'm going to – He's basically tweaking me. I have to get back. A little tease. Oh, God. Brain dump. The host of that show has agreed to come on. I'm sorry. I can't even remember. Drew. So he's going to come on with us at some point. All right. Nice. I don't know when. He's busy. I'm busy. You're busy. But eventually. How did Glenn get a Dukes of Hazzard car that is next to it? You know what? Maybe we should have him on for a few minutes. And he's posing, kind of giving me a wink, like, you know. Glenn, if you're listening, obviously you listen to this. So if you hear this, send us a text or an email. That was just wrong. That was wrong on so many levels, George. The Classic Pinball Podcast, numeral one at gmail.com. Send us a gmail so we can hear about it. In fact, I threw my mouth a little bit on that one. Okay, so let's get to the puppy dog, me. Yes, the puppy dog. So I felt bad, George. So after we came back from Matrando, we're standing there. And then all of a sudden, the seas part, and there's just one guy sitting in the booth. But there's nothing else going on. So Dave grabs me and goes, come on. And put on the headsets, and we're hanging with this guy, Gabe. Who looks like Michael McDonald. Yeah, he does kind of, now that you mention it. And a great guy, because he carried the show with Black Knight Swords of Rage. Exactly. I knew absolutely zero. It's all you gave on that one. And we'll publish the website or the Twitch channel and the places where we are if you want to see us in action. But it was so much fun. After I was done, I was like, pinch me. This is pretty cool. and now I know Dave is going to pester me and say, hey, we've got to do this again. Yeah, exactly. And Grant's saying, hey, guys, see what you did there? You need to do a Twitch channel. I don't know. But the one thing that was messing me up is, and now I understand why, is the chat. You're so focused on the game that you disregard the chat. But I picked up one thing, and I want to talk about it. let's first talk about the games and then you'll understand what I'm going to say. The first game was, as you just heard, Black Knight Swords of Rage. Gabe carried the show. We were commenting and we really didn't know anything about it. The next game, I had to go. My wife was good enough. I was there for a total of four hours. So it was like a whirlwind. It was like, here we go, done. I get in the car and I'm watching on my iPad and what game do I see? Dave commenting on Viking I'm like, aw man I'm like, I left too early but that was only part of it I keep watching and then it's Mata Hari the game that I just repaired and played a hundred bazillion times hey, pick me, I can answer that question where, you know, I look like the puzzled dog for Swords of Rage. Here I am. I'm just kicking myself. I'm like, but hey, I was at the show. It was a lot of fun. But one of the comments in the chat was Escher's dad. Yeah, I kept seeing that. What was that? Well, did you know what he said? No. He said something to the effect of Mata Hari and Viking shouldn't have been in the same bank. hey just because your kid is one of the best players in the world and king of the rampsters i get the comment but man you were kind of taking taking some of the wind out of dave and i i'm just saying this is this couldn't line up better the stars the moon and everything it was great i mean can you tell am i excited yeah those two games aren't the same they play different it's two different games. Way two different games. I was just... I wish I was there for Mata Hari. But anyway, I gotta ask you, what are the comments you made? They're both red. One of your little comments. Did you come up with this or steal it? Fly in the Family Stone? Thank you. Did you come up with that? I did. That's one of my favorite... I loved that band as a kid. It's supposed to be Sly, but I said... I had all the cassette tapes. I really liked the band. You on the land of the music Get up and dance to the music Dance to the music! Dance to the music! So that. I came up with a name, too, and he's a hell of a player. They were calling him the T-Rex, Walt Wood. Yeah, I like him. I like watching him. They were calling him the T-Rex, but I was calling him Walt Hazard, and I didn't know the reference. Yeah. He was a basketball player back in the 60s. How the hell did I remember? Right. Right. Yeah, makes you wonder. I think you're the only one that got that reference, George. You also did. We're doing lots of shout-outs here. This is, God, this is shameless. Dalton, you were broadcasting with him. The young guy with the jean jacket, Dalton Ely. Did he have a, is that the guy with the accent? He's from Georgia, so yeah. Okay, okay, I remember him. He's from Georgia. Yeah, that makes sense. Really good player, too. Okay. He was number two in the qualifying. Sorry, Dalton. three goose eggs. Oh, boy. What did he play on? What did he lose on? Do you remember? I don't remember, but whatever. He was dejected because he's a really good player. Yeah. He was just, he goes, I went to the snack bar or I went to the farmer's market and bought a bag of food. I'm just so impressed. He was funny. He was funny. I met his dad too, Steven. Nice man. What else? Oh, here's one I heard. I'm going to steal this one and then you had another one Orbit grinder Oh orbit grinder Yes That's a great phrase Did I say that? No no somebody else did but I like that one No you had the other one Do you know what your other one was for the out lane Trampoline Well that was a good one too Oh yes the lovely parting gifts Yes lovely parting gifts So yeah you were picking up steam there Once I get more comfortable It's like, I'm just going to start to, and I could tell Mark and Gabe, I saw them both chuckling when I was saying this. They were kind of laughing, so it was cool, you know. A lot of fun. You want to do it again? I would definitely do it again. Yeah, I don't. Especially if it's a classic. If you remember when we went to Sturbridge, I keep calling it Sturbridge, Pinfest, right? Isn't that what it's called? Pintastic. Pintastic. It's easier for me to do. You just came from Pinfest. It's just easier to recall Sturbridge. Anyway. Yeah, Sturbridge and Allentown. That's what I call them. I forgot what I was going to say. You were going to say about us doing this again. Oh, we'll never get a chance there. Because I think that's Paparelli. Whatever. The guy who just put on the tournament in Allentown. Him and Levy. I think they're the... Oh, they're... I think they're the Twitch broadcasters for that show. Oh, well, they've got to play, too, though. Although, you know what, though? I think Eric was behind us. Well, let's do this. He'll get back to it. We'll put it. If it makes sense, don't put us on a ramp game. But if it makes sense and there's a couple of classics, we could do a couple of games. Oh, there'll definitely be classics here. So I'm volunteering and saying, hey. We're both volunteering. If there's a spot there and you guys want to. I'll buy the beer, okay? Is that okay? I'll buy some beer. Oh, no, I'm not allowed to say that, am I? What's that? Probably not allowed to bring it. Ah, screw it. I'll buy the beer, guys. Yeah, sure. Or the liquid death, depending what you got. Oh, jeez, is that funny? Drinking a pallet. A pallet of liquid death. A pallet of liquid death in one day. I think people were clipping. I think people were clipping, yeah. People were like, I'll take this home with me kind of thing. Speaking of lovely parting gifts. And no one died from liquid death. That's amazing. So do you want to talk about our friend Eric, who came in third. he i've seen him play better yeah he well he was all it seemed like he was always playing from behind he a couple of games he smashed but a lot of times he seemed like he was trying to catch yeah during the final he's not usually like that no during the final he's trying to catch up i mean he pulls rabbits out of his hat i've seen him do that before but yeah it just seemed like it was more frequent he was getting some bad leaves and some bad balls were coming down you know on uh especially like on the Aztec and some of the older games and so forth. Even on Star Trek. Well, no. No, not Star Trek. The worst game of the weekend. Which was it? Adam's Family. Oh, yeah. And he usually annihilates that game. He just. He couldn't buy himself a game. He puked. It was bad. It was bad. The game didn't. I played. I'll just say it. I could have played the game better. I don't know anything about the game. I gave him some crap, too, when I was talking to him on the mic, I think. You know. Well, he just got a taste. That game did play a little bit dead, though. I will say, I can just tell the balance. It was kind of not a lively game. The reason I bring Eric up is, do you have any idea where he stayed? Let's see. Did he pitch a tent out in the rain? A micro-hotel? A $10 a night spot? You've heard us talk about this, and my wife made me laugh. When we were out in Banning in January 2020 for Indisc, Eric stayed at the OYO. I don't know if you pronounce that as one or by letter, but my wife came up with an acronym. On Your Own. That was the hotel with the lime green swimming pool outside. Sounds like a feature. And the bail bondsman office was right next door. Well, of course it is. Across the street from the county seat, the county courthouse. So it was in a really... Banning is a lovely town. It sounds great. Oh, yeah. It's a trucker stop before you get to L.A. So that's where he stayed, at that exact spot? He stayed at the On Your Own Hotel, yeah. But he stayed not at Allentown, not this town. No, I'm making fun of him. He had a better mistake. He was with his buddy. So, you know, so let's, we wrote this down. Yeah. We had 114 people in this tournament at $100 a clip. So the prize pool was over $11,000. How much did, do you know how much Eric got for third place? I do. How much? $300. How much did second place get? no second place gets more than third place that would be totally wrong 200 no i think maybe four or five what does the winner get a thousand that math isn't adding up somehow george i don't know how far down the list did they pay good question i do didn't dalton say he got enough to pay for his entry he went out he was top 16 right they took the top 16 so if he got zero zero zero yeah and he got a hundred bucks i got a qualify he could qualify and you had to be you had the bees but the bees usually get only a smaller percentage right they don't get as much money right do you know where i'm going with this i dare you going and you know and i don't begrudge no i don't either but i'm just the numbers just aren't adding up right but still if you run this thing and so forth you have expenses and you should make some money on it i totally agree i i don't deny anybody making a buck and covering their because they're working they had to freaking make it happen you know it's a big product i'm not slighting anybody it just i would have thought with that kind of prize pool yeah it'd be a little bit the one that that i think lion's share is the one out at indisc where you're buying a card for 50 bucks and winner takes all so play four games in a bank of eight or ten games yeah 50 bucks for you know playing four games and the prize pool every 50 goes in and it's completely paid out to the winner every 50 goes out too huh really like that so one winner wow no second place money no third place money yeah i think the person got several thousand dollars wow because you can play more than once you can play as many cards as you want i do because the pot keeps it is nice to do a lot of different a lot of payouts all the way down the line to you No, it is, but... I'm going to also talk about Eric and the Batcave. If you don't watch, watch at 7 o'clock on Monday nights on Twitch. What a cool place. 90 games. He's trying to get them to do a tournament. You know and I know if it's there, and they have three, four, five tournaments in a couple days, that'll attract everybody because the prize pool, the whopper pool, the whatever else. Plus it's Florida. Plus it's a new game room. Everybody's going to want to see it. And Dave, he was saying, the games are great. He said they're, like, perfect. Hopefully that'll happen. The reason I bring it up is, fantastic. Just one tournament. Right. And same, they're resurrecting the one in Allentown. One. Maybe that'll branch out. But you keep saying it, and I agree. At a minimum, there should be classics tournament. You've got to be a classic because you know who does it? It's Texas does it. Well, District 82, which neither of us have been and everybody talks about. I mean, that's like, you know, that's pinball time. If there was a classic tournament, I would at least, you know, I'm thinking I'd bring one or two games anyway. I'm going to contribute as well. I'm not going to be a loser because I can't suggest it and then not do something. If someone like Mark, Backhand Pinball, if he wanted to have the rigs and all that kind of stuff, and they ponied up all that stuff and so forth, and I could hook up with them and put my games in something like that and have a nice bank, I'd be open to it. I'd be open to talking about it. Because I've got to pat myself on the back too much, but I have some nice restored classics that play like brand new. We're entering another world. Yeah, we are. We are. And you have some nice stuff too, George. Yeah, like I said, I'm not going to suggest it. I just think I get why people go to certain events because it's expensive to go. Yep. And you want to be able to play nonstop. And I want – I mean, this format was cool. 12 games in one day. That, you know, with 114 people, that's some big queues. I mean, that takes a long time to do. I'd like to see some really high-end pinball players play on my stuff and see what they can do with a nicely playing old school game it's better than hats off to people who bring their games for free play for these guys, it's great that's different because we play those games and no offense to the people that bring them but you're not bringing any titles and if you are, they usually don't play all that great Because when you have the general public on your beautiful piece of your story you spent 100 hours on, it's like, I don't really want the general public on that stuff. It's just like... Because it takes a long time to tune it, and you bring it to a show, it's out of tune in an hour. I don't know what Joker's going to come up to it, but you have a tournament person coming up to it playing a game. There's a certain amount of respect for your game there. There's going to be less play on it. There's not going to be play the crap out of it. Better said. Better said. So a little velvet rope situation around the games, I'm all for that, for my stuff. I have two things I want to talk about. because if I fail to mention them, I'll feel bad. One, I got to see Matt again from Rage Tilt. Good guy. Talked for a while. It was a lot of fun to see him. I got to play with a guy from Annapolis, Maryland, named Joe on Aliens. I think I told you this. That's a very cool-looking game. I did not play very well, but visually, and I'm not a big Alien movie guy. I thought it was a really neat game. I mentioned to Dave, my only problem with buying a game like that is they haven't made a lot of them, and I always wonder if there'll be parts later down the line. I just wonder why they didn't call the game Space Invaders 2. Why? Because that's the same alien. It doesn't look anything like it. It's Geiger. I know, but it doesn't look anything like it. I mean, you've got the little molded sculpt in the back, but no, it's not in your face with the back glass. Gotcha. um let's talk about should i call him by no i'm just gonna say the person who redoes games you've used him several times to tweak gameplay with the software oh okay yeah he's very benevolent with his time oh yeah yes he is two things we'll talk about him one when I first saw him he knew who I was right away he goes yeah I know who you are George I'm like okay cool like you remember me that's cool um he sold a bunch of games I told him I had a supersonic he told me how much he hates supersonic and yeah I don't get him he's got some strong and then he was calling you out on Flash Gordon and you did the mea culpa of I never talked to him about I never talked about Flash but he was talking about you know how that timer and I said yeah he goes it's only 15 seconds yes he goes that should be longer i said you know how to do it make it longer he goes well you know should it be this i go you could make it he was telling my head was spinning he just starts going off maybe i can do it in one second increments maybe i can do it in five second increments maybe i can make it a whole thing i'm like have at it as a what he was thinking he was thinking basically no but that would be really cool if you could set your game and say hey, I want it to be a minute, or I want it to be 30 seconds, or I want it to be 42 seconds. Well, that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is, too, you get the 15 seconds originally. If you hit a certain target or whatever that's flashing, that'll give you maybe five more seconds. That's what he's talking about. You've got to keep earning your time. But it's kind of like beat the clock. So I don't like the whole, the beat the clock game didn't work out too well. It's adding more time to your game. So I don't know. So is that what he was saying to you? He didn't say the beat the clock thing, but that's what he's thinking. He's thinking of doing that. Okay. Yeah. Like earn it. I would think you could do it maybe once or twice, but to keep it going for a long time, I don't know. It's interesting. I'd be willing to try it and see how it goes. Anything else with him? Oh, yeah. Today. So bring it to current. Today's Monday. Two days after the show. You sent me an email communicating with him about changes for Mata Hari. Mata Hari. Speaking of Mata Hari. So, explain to me, because I'm befuddled, what the hell were you guys talking about changing? Something with the 50,000, when you, instead of getting extra ball, if you go through those orbits, you get... I'm totally confused. He was talking three different things. Okay. It sounded like one, but okay. There's three things. So one was changing something so that when you go on the top saucer, I think the first time it lights a 50. Well, you get 3,000 points, and on my game, you get three bonus advances. Correct, and your 50K light lights up. Can you change that? No. Because that would be really cool if it could be one, two, three, four, or five. He could change that, but that's not what he's talking about. But that would be very cool if you could. Yeah, we could make him kill it. Well, no, you could make it a lot harder. So are you saying going into top saucer, what happens? On my game, the way I have it set up, you get 3,000 points. The first time. Every time. Okay. 3,000 points and three bonus credits. Okay. Plus the advance on the multiplier. Okay. So you get three things. Yep. It's generous. So that's why if you want to get to 5X in tournament play, you keep wanting to hit that saucer because you could build it to 5x by 15 getting it in there five times that might be a setting too is that a setting about getting you getting your goal i haven't changed the settings in my i didn't do that but that's the way my game's set up okay but i have it on conservative settings i don't think you can make a lot of changes to that you can and that's the problem with the ballet games in this time frame the extra ball but that would be pretty cool if you could change all those different factors it would turn them on turn them off yeah he can do that he can do that but the original software is no it's very locked down it's very much right very little selection the extra ball and and special are locked together they're either worth extra ball and special or they're both worth extra ball or they're both worth points and that's it so what i had him do he separated them so the extra balls with an extra ball and anytime you get a special it's 50k okay it's way better but he's talking as well as to do with the a b lane it's what it's like one thousand two thousand three thousand five thousand then extra ball then special with a 50k then he wants to go beyond that right what i had him doing was every special for that it's like 50k 50k 50k but he was thinking maybe well how about 50k and then and then in 5 000 increments it would be great yeah 55 50 60 and how would you think of it like in xenon when you're you know doing the wheel right it would keep increasing so that would be That would be a really cool feature. I mean, you could blow the game up. Yeah. And you would definitely have to have seven digits in the game. Well, it's better than going, if you do the way I have it set, 50K all the time. Right. You know. The other thing. You shut the extra ball off? No, extra ball's on. Okay. But specials with. And another thing I had him do is that the beautiful thing about the way I had him do for this last time is when you get the first bank of drop targets down, it's 50K. Then when they come up again on the same ball, it's 50K again. But it's also worth a special. Well, there's another 50K. So the second time the target's down, now you get 100K. Oh, that would be really cool. I have that right now in my software. Right now in my game, that's what it is. It's great. Okay. Because it's hard enough to get them all down the same ball anyway once, never mind twice, and you earned it. You earned the 100K. I love shooting targets. I've always played the game shooting targets, but having watched a lot of tournament play, the saucer is definitely the way to play the game, as I said. if you get it up there and you get it to 5x you got 15 000 points and 75 000 so it's worthwhile right once you max out at 29 so the most you can get is 145 000 bonus he could probably do that too he could probably add that so you go up higher i bet you can add that ladder he can make it go higher than that right i mean that to me is the biggest limitation of the game is 29 because you've got so many ways of getting you know you got the targets you got the you know the orbits yeah i mean and the saucer right you can get to 29 and then that's it there's no more building bonus like you were saying during the broadcast oh no now it's time to just do targets because he's done everything else that was that was a wild man wall yes wild man yes exactly right another thing you want to do is when you go in the saucer it lights up your 50k out lane you want to change that so make that tougher or something. He just didn't care for that in the game. So I don't know what he was thinking about that on that line of stuff. But he's got some good ideas with that. In fact, the weird thing is I was just thinking after watching, every time I see a tournament play and I see a game being played, I don't have it set up, I feel like, you know, I need to set that game up. You know? So I need to set up Mata Hari again. Well, we're talking about it because I did my repairs. Then it's in the tournament. It's top of mind. I got home, I didn't play it Saturday night, I was shot, but yesterday I played. Oh, it's my heart, I've got to play again. So I didn't play very well, but I played the game quite a few times. He also mentioned that those drop targets had a problem during the tournament, and I didn't see any problem, and I wasn't there for that. I was watching it on an iPad while we were driving home, so the detail wasn't there. I'd have to watch again. I will. it was fun to watch not in the car and watch you and then watch the two of us so again we'll put that in the podcast on Saturday night at the show end we went out with Eric Stone for dinner and his friend DJ who he was with DJ Real top 10 Top ten Top ten player He's keeping it real Obviously Alright that was Too far George You're going to make me Tell a joke You're going to make me Tell a joke Okay Alright yeah I don't want those jokes What do you mean You don't want my jokes My dad jokes are better I I have a beauty Okay We might hear it later So we went to dinner Finally found a A decent place in Allentown. I don't know. We actually had a good look. Few and far between of a nice place to go there. But we need some hints and tips and tricks on a good restaurant there. We found some okay ones. But this is when we hit a pretty good one. And Eric started to... Actually, come to find out, we go all around different parts of Allentown and Bethlehem, all these places. The best restaurant we went to was right across the street from the show We should have went there the whole time Where This little pub What it called I don know It right next to the show at the entrance of the fairgrounds It's right across the street. They usually have a live band outside playing sometimes. There's like blue lights all over the place. I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, you definitely would see it. Just like somebody asked in the Twitch broadcast, how many pretzel things did you eat? I'll be honest. All the years I've gone to, I never had one. I never had one either. Until I got home. Janice bought some. She said those Amish women didn't stop the entire time. No, they kept going. She said, they're like machines. They're good. They're good. I'd like a little bit more salt on mine but what flavor did you have? I had the chicken buffalo chicken which was quite good I'm still afraid to because they cause crop dusting George the show is heavily crop dusting I think it was a cheesesteak pretzel I didn't want to talk about crop dusting then someone said the toilet backed up I don't know George especially while you're talking about Oh, yeah, back to the restaurant. We're all over the place. All right, so we're back to the restaurant. I could say something, but I'm not allowed to use that word. It was a really time, but never mind. Insert word here. Go ahead. Okay, got it, George. Tell us the story about Eric. Because I know it's about Eric. It is about Eric. How did you know, George? So have a nice day and a couple beers. And then Eric started to tell a story about all the tokens over the years. He's won at Fun Spot. He just keeps playing these pusher games called Carnival Charlie or something. We've talked about this in our Fun Spot podcast. I don't know what number it is. It doesn't matter. Look it up. I've known about these tokens for quite some time, almost two years. But we weren't really allowed to talk about it. Okay, well, now we can because the owner is no longer with us at Fun Spot, so it's okay. and on top of that there was this guy that Eric called the Hawaiian dude that came in from somewhere, started going to this thing, started playing like Eric was, playing that thing and winning tokens and Eric started talking a little bit and said, oh here's what I'm doing, I'm trying to work my way up to 100,000 tokens, I take them all the time, I wait until a weekend comes in when all the kids come in they load them up, I go away for a while, come back I don't sit there all day long and do it because they'll bust you he bought some other friends. You shouldn't go there all day long. It would be like a card counter. You've got to go in there here and there. So Eric's got it down to math and science and how he does these things. So Mr. Hawaiian Shirt Guy that Eric talked to his friends with, he decided to go over for whatever reason, talk to the Fun Spot management and said, hey, you know that Eric dude, he was winning way too much on your circus. Why do you have Eric? Because he felt bad for Fun Spot because Fun Spot at one point, Eric was winning so many tokens that they had to keep reminting Fun Spot tokens, they had a shortage on it okay, it's like the Federal Reserve of Fun Spot had to make more tokens, well he loves that dopey Frogger game, but you only win tickets on that one, you don't win tokens he's getting tokens when you mint tokens I forgot there's a difference you gotta remember how this goes so tokens are expensive to mint and Fun Spot at one point put an ad out and put a sign saying, hey, if you have more tokens please bring them in and we'll buy them off you. Now when they say buy them off you, what they mean is saying we'll give you a gift card worth so many tokens. You bring in 50 tokens, we'll give you a gift card for tokens. It doesn't really get me to want to do that George somehow. That seems like redeem in my world. Yeah, redeem. We'll give you a little we'll give you an IOU. So what are you going to get? We'll give you a card 150. A plastic gnome. Yeah. Or a squirt flower or some other piece of. No, you get to. No, you. Some other piece of junk. Some other tchotchke. No. No, you get a little. I'm not allowed to use the words. I get you. So you get a little special thing that says, I want 50 tokens back when I come back next month. And they'll give me 50 tokens. I mean, you give me double the tokens. Then I'd be. Right. I might be a little bit more amenable to giving you my five gallon Homer bucket of tokens. Well, it's like going to the bank and getting no interest on your bank account, which is what we're doing now. But it's the same thing, but worse. You get no interest at all. So not really where to go. So fast forward to now, they pulled that game out. Eric cannot win any more tokens anymore. There's no way to win tokens now. So Eric is really dejected and sad about that. So enter, enter Walter Day. Walter Day. Oh, who's Walter Day? Walter Day was the guy that was always at these Fun Spot tournaments and video game tournaments and all about. He wore the special referee shirt all the time at these things. He was always a referee. He'd always be Guinness Book of World Records. He's always pumping people to get the world's record of Donkey Kong and all those different things. He was a record guy, record keeper guy for all this stuff. That's what he was known for, world records of stuff. He's still alive? He's still alive. Okay. He is. he wanted Eric to get 100,000 tokens because it would be a world record for 100,000 and he wanted to get and Eric has like 95,000 he's so close and he can't win anymore now so he wanted to get Eric to be to have a big pile of these tokens he wanted Eric to be just laying in the tokens he wanted to get a picture of and then Maureen asked what did you ask Maureen? are you going to be nude? are you going to be nude in that Eric? for the shot? kind of like American Beauty with the flowers with the roses. American Beauty Eric. What did Eric say? He's good enough to cover him. What did Eric say? How do you know that? That's a lot of tokens. He would cover him up. He could be, you know, new token boy. There was a joke there. You kind of missed it. Oh, I did miss that, George. Very inappropriate, George. I get it now. I get it. Whoa, that slipped right by me. You keep pitching him, I keep missing him. That might be a good thing with this conversation. Let's move along. Okay. Now, the reason why Eric is so on this whole thing. So why is he coming clean? Why? I wasn't allowed to talk about this for almost two years. Why are we coming clean now? Well, because now we can't win any more tokens. The tokens are off the freaking thing. He doesn't think he's going to get hunted down by whomever. No, he won them fair and square. Who took the rings? He won them fair and square. Was there a son or a daughter or both? Yeah, I think so. But he won them fair and square. He didn't cheat. He won them fair and square. They just took away his device. So are we now going to be the intermediary for Eric saying, hey, Mr. Fun Spot, you want your tokens back? We're holding them hostage. Well, the reason why... We want double. You know that... No, we don't even want the crappy crap you have. Do you want the street value on that, George? Right. How much would it cost him? You're exactly right. How much do you think it would cost him to reproduce 100,000 tokens? Hmm. What's a token cost? It's got to be at least a penny. At least, okay, call it a penny. Maybe it's two pennies. All right, so what's one penny? Well, it depends what they're made out of, but you get what I'm saying. And would you even be able to get them? Is that $10,000? $1,000. What's the math on that? Just take two zeros off the end. So if you have $100,000, it would be $10,000, right? Yeah. Right? Take the last two zeros off. No, $1,000. $1,000. So at a penny, it's $1,000. Right. So it's more than a penny. Right. If it's two pennies, it's $2,000. The number keeps going up. And there's probably a setup fee. You know? They're not just going to... Different year. You have a different year on there every year. they do maybe but whatever it is set up chart right yeah sure oh yeah hold them hostage um i want 10 come to me the classic pinball podcast number one at gmail.com send me an email and we'll negotiate very nice george yeah the reason why because he got thrown out he was there as a kid It was a snowstorm, a blizzard, and he was winning too much one time as a kid. The owner threw him out in the snowstorm. Yep, Mr. Lawton threw him out in the snowstorm. He would be locked up today if he did that. Yep, different times. No phones back then, no nothing. You're just out on your own in a snowstorm. Poor Eric. He had to walk home for miles. Poor puppy dog Eric. Exactly. Nail between his legs. And his tokens were weighing his pants down and everything. Right, he had the gangster look going. The plumber butt going because he had so many tokens in his pockets. You know, and there was snow. Did you see that? Speaking of plumber's butt. Yeah. Did you see the picture somebody posted on Pinside of the guy who had an umbrella tucked between his cheeks? No. Yes. At the show or just? Yes. Playing a pinball machine. He had like one of those, well, could have been a long one. Wow. Okay. Hold on. another one. How do you know, George? I don't. That's what I'm saying. I don't. I could only see the top part of the umbrella. I don't know how far it went. I don't know that either, but go out on pin side. Look, I don't make this stuff up. I wish I did, but I don't. Can we get the viewer mail? Viewer mail. Yes. We actually have that now. We do have viewer mail, but they're, they're contacting you. They're contacting me. I get them carrier pigeon. They come all different ways. All different ways. That's great. Do you want me to start? Go ahead. Or do you want to start? Well, first we're going to. Which one do you want to start with? Do you want to start with the good one or do you want to save that one for last? We need our music, George. So here's our special viewer mail music. Animal! Animal! Animal! Animal! Animal! Animal! Animal! George, what do we got? What do you have? Okay, I actually got one this past week. Oh, where is it now? Oh, here it is. Titled, I'm listening. This one's from Bob Evans, or Rob Evans. Hello, George. I'm glad you mentioned the email address. Yeah, I usually forget. The other possibilities of contact seems to be leaving a voice message on Anchor FM. Hopefully I got your email address correct, as it was not totally clear at the end of episode number 83. Okay, again, theclassicpinballpodcast, numeral one, at gmail.com. I'm the owner of a Williams Firepower that is hopefully soon to be restored. I'm an avid podcast listener, and I've been listening to get some insight into Dr. Dave's work queue while I await service. Okay? You should feel special. Yes. as yours yes i'm special i have a bus too as yours is the only pinball podcast i regularly follow my other listens are mostly news stories and computer technology okay in 1984 i bought my firepower from fun and games dave's old hangout okay that's right i like that although close to my home i was not frequently there well not like dave cutting school all the time just before the time I lived in Pepperell, and every Saturday morning I would play at Fun Spot before doing the weekly shopping. Boy, that's a long haul. Yeah. Just saying, I know those arcades from personal experience. Okay. I enjoy your podcast, which seems honest, real, not selling me anything, just two guys enjoying their hobby, friendship, and sharing that with the listeners. This guy gets it, George. He does get it. He does get it. Now let's, do you have one? uh you know what i had a call here i have a really good one i have a couple but i can't find them so i'm gonna have to we'll save them for next time okay i do have the one i sent you though that i do i'm gonna tell you exactly what it came i got this one and i sent it to you that george check this wasn't an email this was a text from dave on thursday april 28th i was traveling so i wouldn't have gotten this at 7 15 p.m one of our loyal listeners from allentown quote unquote i appreciate your subtle political humor. George seems to be on the other side of the fence. It's all good. Now. Okay. Now. Now. What fence would that be, George? I was wondering the same thing. I don't know. Now, how do you know my politics? If anything, I am so agnostic on this podcast, I don't think I've said anything political at any point in time. So I'm sorry, I don't know your name, and I wouldn't put it out in public anyway, but I think you might be sadly mistaken. If you ever want to engage with me at a show, and you want to really hear what I think about it, remember, this is a pinball podcast. I just warned you, your hair will stand on end for quite some time. I can handle myself quite well. Yeah, you'll know exactly where he stands after, I don't know, a couple sentences, maybe a couple words. Well, one, we were talking about collections. Let's just start there. Okay. And you were saying, oh, I collect decks and, you know, records, or I collect stereo equipment. What was my answer? I collect money. I think that that's a big clue George yeah it might be it might be so I don't know how you came up with that but it was I had to read it a couple of times really anyway how's that for I like that it's good we have some pretty good reader mail bag we talked about Glenn earlier but that was just like oh my god shut my eyes oh there's always Grant too Grant is good for oh he was well we got tons of Grant mail he lives vicariously through he wants to hear and I talked about this folks and sorry we're just so verbose today I'm going to talk about my vacation and what places I visited on vacation but Grant was just champing at the bit to hear all about the places that I visited that's another show entirely I thought I was going to do them by myself but Dave is going to participate with me in one leg of my trip and you'll understand why when we do it stay tuned, that will be a very, very insightful and funny show you have anything else yeah uh grant just commented on our uh on our little uh twitch our twitch commentary on the on the uh the tournament there he said uh i'm watching you guys right now bloody bloody nice work bloody nice work guys looked a little lost when the fella left you guys all alone but you loosen up and it was beautiful work that now i know that Who's Will Wood? Oh, that's Walt Wood. Oh, okay. Wildman Walt Wood. Okay. Wildman Walt Wood Hazard. Okay. That Walt Wood is on the gear, I'd say. I'm going to give him a name no matter what. What is... I don't speak Aussie, so what does this mean? That Walt Wood is on the gear, I'd say. On the gear. It's not like a Mad Max thing? Yeah, I'm guessing it's like, hey, you know... It's the duck's gut. He puts it into seventh. Okay. All right, yeah, sure, yeah. You could have a six-speed car, right? Okay, you could do that. How many inches is that? The Perth Super Shifter. It's like, wow, great to watch. I enjoyed it. I'm looking at Mata Hari left sling light flickering, and I wanted to pull the glass off and fix it myself. The sling? Oh, no, not the sling. Oh, you did this to me, Grant. I watched the feed again yesterday. The light that never came on the right 1,000 bumper, it never lit. It was always out there. It was bothering me. Yeah, me too. It was because of you, Grant. You were saying the slingshot. Is that what he said? The slingshot? Oh, no. The light on the bumper never lit. Well, he didn't say it, but he said the left slingshot light kept flickering. I want to pull the glass off and fix it. Nice work, guys. The other one just didn't light. Didn't light at all. Right. Maybe it's a feature. I doubt it. Nice work, guys. Great commentary on the gameplay. Looks like a great show and tournament. No excuses now, guys. Live feed podcast. Come on. I'm saying I'll continue watching it at work. I'll continue watching it at work tonight, and thanks for the link. Looks great. Good luck, fellas. That's good old Grant saying that. You're not going to say what you normally say. Just sign off, please. Not one more thing. All right, two more things, George. Okay, see, I didn't say one more thing, did I? Speaking of mail, George, I've got two, count them, two more mail call things for us here. this one is actually from the same person his name is Darren goes by Ballypin on Pinside and he wrote Dave I really enjoy listening to you and George on the Classic Pinball Podcast and watching your YouTube videos of your ballet restorations I will be there all day Friday and would love to meet you and George with a face to your voices are you going to be in a specific booth or give me your number to meet up thanks Darren and then I gave him my number and he also wrote George He wrote, Hey Dave, Darren from Ohio here. I enjoy listening to you and George on your podcast. Didn't get to meet you last July at Allentown. Hope to get a chance this coming up week, which was a couple days ago. I'll be there Thursday for free play set up and all day Friday. Hope to see you and will George be there Friday as well? I so need to put a face with that voice. So he brought a beautiful, he's thinking of bringing up either a Bally Roundup, a Bally Surfers or Captain Fantastic. And good thing he brought a ballet roundup. I don't know if you got to play it, George, but what a great game that was. 1971, very rare. It's 70 made. He put a lot of effort into, I don't know, I think he did do something. It looks like it's a museum piece from out of the box. So either he restored it really well or he had a really nice thing to start with. I think he did that and cleaned it up a little more, but it looks really fantastic. It played well. And I don't wonder why I like the artwork so much on it, because the same artist, Christian Marche, also did the Ballet Hocus Pocus I have, which I played also at the show, and made me so much want to play it some more, I actually have one, and I was thinking, what am I going to do for my lineup? And I think that's going to be coming up. I'm going to clean it a little bit, and it's going to replace the four-square I have upstairs right now. So I'm going to put a nice two-player in where one player was. we're going to sub in Valley's being called in and Godlieb's being taken down for the moment just one more thing please and George speaking about that tournament and us commenting on it and being in the broadcast booth there Eric needed someone to record him while he's playing he needed some footage because he his show down there Channel 8 in Florida they wanted to say, hey, get some footage. We want to put it on for you. We'll give you a little puff piece out there as part of our weatherman thing and show what you do for pinball. And Eric said, well, can you give me a camera crew? No, no, just use your phone. So he came up to me and said, can you? Oh, sure, no problem. I said, well, maybe give me your phone, Eric, because you've got an iPhone latest or whatever, iPhone 27, and I've just got an old Android. He said, no, just use yours. I said, okay. so I got him with some great fancy footwork in front of Star Trek, the Stern one and then I got him over at I believe it was Jungle Princess a couple shots over there where he was kind of dancing around and then I shot a couple shots of the award ceremony and some other stuff on a couple shots so enough that they could definitely use all that, gel it down edit it up and it came really well, it's on his Facebook page Facebook's page for the station of them doing that for him. So, glad to help. Good night, George. Good night, Dave. Dave, what's fuzzy, green, has four legs, and would kill you if it fell out of a tree? Caterpillar. A pool table. Wow, George. So long, screwy. See you in St. Louis.