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Episode 12 - Die on this Hill: WWF Royal Rumble

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·28m 35s·analyzed·Jan 8, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Hosts defend underrated 1994 Data East WWF Royal Rumble pinball against critical community reviews.

Summary

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast's 'Die on this Hill' episode defends WWF Royal Rumble, a 1994 Data East wide-body pinball machine ranked 158th on Pinside Top 100. Hosts argue the game deserves reassessment on its own merits rather than comparison to Williams games, highlighting its playfield design, theme campiness, and mechanical quality when properly maintained. The episode features multiple negative community reviews alongside defense of Data East's resource constraints and licensing strategy during the 1990s.

Key Claims

  • WWF Royal Rumble was one of four featured games at the 1994 IFPA World Championship (4th edition) alongside World Cup Soccer, Demolition Man, and Rescue 911

    high confidence · Greg Dunlap's personal tournament experience; specific tournament format and game list provided with verifiable details

  • Data East had approximately six months to develop games compared to Williams' year-and-a-half timeline, affecting quality perception

    medium confidence · Greg's explanation of industry production constraints; reasonable inference but not explicitly sourced

  • Data East flipper mechanisms, when properly maintained, are 'so powerful' and comparable to modern Stern flippers

    medium confidence · Greg's assertion based on personal experience; noted that neglected machines develop 'spongy' feel

  • Royal Rumble features a tap button mechanic requiring players to release flipper and hit button repeatedly for bonus scoring

    high confidence · Sesh Pilot review excerpt; specific mechanical feature described

  • Dave Heggie won a pinball tournament at Pinball Expo and requested programmer Oren Day create a custom ROM to reduce 'yeah' callout frequency

    medium confidence · Greg's anecdote about Chicago pinball community; unverified but presented as personal knowledge

Notable Quotes

  • “you can't compare a Honda Accord to a Ferrari, but that doesn't mean that a Honda Accord isn't a good car”

    Greg Dunlap @ ~mid-episode — Core argument defending Data East games on individual merit rather than against Williams comparison

  • “it's so bad that it's looped back around to being good”

    Alan (host) @ ~mid-episode — Summarizes appeal of Royal Rumble's campy 1990s wrestling theme

  • “if you're going to give the game one pro, you know, it's pretty good”

    Greg Dunlap @ ~review discussion — Humorous response to negative review listing only 'Doink' as positive aspect

  • “Phantom of the Opera — every time I play that thing I'm like this game sucks”

    Alex (co-host) @ ~mid-episode — Identifies worst Data East game in hosts' opinion; open invitation for defense podcast

  • “if you give someone too big of a sandbox, it just becomes a mess. Whereas if you give them limited resources, it makes you resourceful”

    Alex (attributing to Gomez) @ ~later episode — Design philosophy explaining Gottlieb Premier game failures despite large budgets

  • “I hate this stupid pinball”

    Peter Shuringa (reviewer quoted) @ ~final review — Humorous single-sentence review; hosts suggest as template for negative Stern Star Wars review

Entities

WWF Royal RumblegameGreg DunlappersonAlanpersonAlex the WaterboypersonJoe KamenkowpersonTim SecklepersonLyman F. SheetspersonData EastcompanyWilliams/BallycompanyIFPA World Championship (1994, 4th edition)event

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo tournament prizes shifted from Data East/Sega games to other manufacturers after negative community reception to Royal Rumble and Maverick as first-place awards

    medium · Kineticross review describing Royal Rumble as 'most insulting first place prize in pinball history'; context of rotating manufacturer sponsorship

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Royal Rumble significantly underrated on Pinside Top 100 (#158 rank) despite competitive play history and playability merits; community bias against Data East games persists

    high · Multiple negative reviews cited; Pinside ranking; hosts' assertion that game deserves reassessment

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Royal Rumble was tournament-viable game at high-level IFPA competition (1994 World Championship); indicates stronger game design than secondary market perception suggests

    high · Greg's tournament participation; official IFPA World Championship inclusion

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Stern WrestleMania likely to receive same community criticism as Royal Rumble despite (or because of) having more complex features; hosts express skepticism about Stern wrestling game execution

    low · Host comments that potential WrestleMania player will be 'disappointed'; personal dislike of WrestleMania expressed

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Data East's constrained development timeline (6 months vs. Williams' 18 months) affected perceived quality; however, games designed within those constraints show solid mechanical and rule design when maintained properly

    medium · Greg's industry analysis of production timelines and resource constraints; personal experience with Data East flipper quality

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.086

0:00
You signed your real name? Of course I did. If you believe in something, you sign your name to it. Alright, I'mma tell you right now. I ain't crazy.
0:09
This is the ground you'll die on. Are you sure? Oh my god, are you serious? Son, people can see you. I don't tell you what to do with your money. Don't fucking tell me what to do with mine, okay? I'm not as dumb as you think I am. I will defend myself. He means it, sweetheart. Well, that's because you're an idiot. I will fight and win because I am the most intelligent. You sure about that? You sure about that? I got something I want to say. Law, you motherfuckers. You think you know who Teddy Powers is? Well, I'm here today to tell you all you don't know shit. Oh, I give up. You're going to get yourself killed, and this time I won't be able to save you. I make you laugh. I'm a clown. I amuse you. I'm here to fucking amuse you. Come on, don't bullshit me. Go ahead and go, but I'm not going to stop yelling, because then that'll mean I lost the fight. So, please leave a key under the mat. I love y'all very much. Peace out.
1:10
Serenity now! Serenity now! What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. Okay, a simple wrong would have done just fine, but this makes no sense.
1:41
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm Alan of the Pinball Bar Wedgehead, and I'm joined by my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. Hey, I'm Alex. I'm one and a half of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. And we're also joined today by our friend Greg Dunlap, phoning in from California. Hey then. Hey Greg, thanks for joining us again. We're going to do a special segment. We've been calling this Die on this Hill, and you have brought to us a Die on this Hill game. And basically what that means is game that you like unironically that a lot of people don't like. So games like we've done in the past, we've done Gilligan's Island, we've done Popeye Saves the Earth. And today you're bringing us WWF Beta East Royal Rumble. Correct. All right. So Royal Rumble is a wide body pinball machine from 1994. It was designed by Joe Kamenkow and Tim Seckle with a young Lyman F. Sheets listed as a member of the software team. currently ranks as number 158th in the Pinside Top 100 games of all time and had a listed production run of 3,500 units. Joe Kamenka was the guy who had a hand in designing almost every Data East game during the 90s, and he usually designed things with a co-designer. In this case, it was Tim Seckle. I looked up Tim Seckle because I didn't really know who he was, but he has four other game credits for Hook, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Last Action Hero and Maverick, All games that I think would qualify for this segment in the future if anyone wants to defend any of those games. But today we're talking about Royal Rumble. So I want to open the floor to Greg and I want you to give your best arguments as to why Royal Rumble is a great machine, what you love about it, why others are wrong about it. Well, I think first off, I want to say that I do have a one of the reasons why I love this game. It has a spot in my heart is because the first pinball tournament I ever played in in 1994. it was the fourth IFPA World Championship. So the way that it worked was it was a 128-player double elimination bracket, and there were 25 of the most recent game from each of the main pinball manufacturers at the time on the floor, and that's where you play your games. And so the high seed would pick the first game, and then the winner would pick the next game, and so on. It was best of three double elimination. And the four games, so there were four major pinball manufacturers, of the four games on the floor were World Cup Soccer, Demolition Man, Gottlieb Premier had Rescue 911, and Data East had WWF. And so the fact that this was one of the games that I played at my first ever pinball tournament, it kind of holds a place in my heart because of that. But also, I just think, first of all, God, it's amazing how corny and 90s this game is. Oh, it's peak. In a good way. Yeah. Because it's like all of these wrestlers, like The Clown, whose name I can't even remember who it is. Doink, yes, thank you. Doink the cloud. And all of these wrestlers, and they're like corny, cheesy moves. It's like so camp. And like the main sound call is some wrestler going, yeah, macho man, yeah. It happens. Ooh, yeah. All the time, constantly. And so like from that perspective, it's just so entertaining and so 90s. From a game standpoint, it's a pretty fun play field to shoot. It's got a couple of big ramps. It's got a fairly standard, like, for the time mode-based rule set with a multi-ball that you set up. It's not particularly easy to get, but like most Data East games at the time, it would light it for you on ball three by default. another thing that I wanted to kind of point out is and one of the reasons why I thought of this game is because I think a lot of the Data East and Sega games get kind of shit on as kind of like substandard Williams games which in a lot of ways they were and Data East like they never there's I mean there's reasons like Data East never had the resources that Williams did and one of the things about the pinball industry is that if your line's not moving you're not making money and so like as soon as your last game goes off the line you got to put the next game on and when you're making less games that means you have less time to make oh for sure and so at williams where they would have a year and a half to make a game at data east they might have six months to and so like led to a lot of the reasons why a lot of them don't feel particularly great or rushed but a lot of them are really actually fun games if you take away the lens of looking at them as compared to the Williams games, right? Because like you can't compare a Honda Accord to a Ferrari, but that doesn't mean that a Honda Accord isn't a good car, right? And this is a pretty fun game. It's like, it's got modes, they're goofy, but they're, you know. They are modes and they make you hit different shots. No, but like also a lot of them like actually tie into the characters pretty well in the theme. They make you hit all of the different parts of the play field. Like you can't just like loop one shot and, you know, get a ton of points. There's a lot of points in the game that aren't tied to the multiball necessarily. The multiball sequence is pretty fun. Give me a hell yeah!
Doink the Clownperson
Dave Heggieperson
Oren Dayperson
Gottlieb Premierproduct_line
Sega pinballcompany
Phantom of the Operagame
Monster Bashgame
  • $

    market_signal: Reconsideration of Data East game catalog; 'Die on this Hill' format encouraging community to evaluate games on individual merit rather than manufacturer comparison

    medium · Episode framing and host commentary; invitation for community feedback via email and social media poll

  • ?

    product_concern: Data East flipper mechanisms suffer from maintenance issues; neglected machines develop 'spongy' feel and weakened power compared to Williams machines, which remain playable even when worn

    medium · Greg's personal experience with flipper condition variation; comparison to Williams durability; mention of flipper mechanism differences

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Data East successfully licensed major IP properties (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future) despite smaller production capacity, suggesting aggressive licensing strategy to drive sales volume

    medium · Host discussion comparing Data East and Sega license acquisition to Williams approach; context of manufacturing competition

    • 6:54
    The animations and sounds are goofy. And if you get one, and this is also another problem with a lot of Sega and D&D games, is that a lot of people like they never played one that been refurbished Sure Right Yeah And so a lot of them just play like garbage because the flipper mechs on those games weren as good as the ones at Williams They tend to die much more easily And if you play one for a couple hours, the flippers get noticeably weaker and stuff like that. Those Data East flippers, when they're playing right, are so powerful. Those things can crush walnuts. They're kind of like Stern. I mean, they haven't changed that much. They're snappy. But yeah, I agree that the flipper feel of the 90s games, imperatively, like a Bally Williams game, I pulled some apart that surprisingly you could still make shots with that were pretty mushroomed and bad. But Data East, they kind of start to feel hollow, and they just don't. They're spongy when they're not kept up. But yeah, I would say, you know, Data East, Royal Rumble, we had one, put it on the floor for a while, and it was fun. I thought it was fun. Well, you're supposed to be Hayden on this game, I thought. other people hate on this game ah shit well i kind of like royal rumble too no i'm gonna read some bad reviews here i was like someone has to someone has to not like it no plenty of people don't like it i'm gonna say a lot of a lot of the data east games of that time jurassic park is a good game i agree yeah i think tales from the crypt is a solid game in the Sega era, like Frankenstein is a really good game, Baywatch is a good game. I was thinking about doing that one because that's a John Borg game, and I was thinking about doing that one as one of my die-on-the-hill games because I think that game's fun. I think too many people, I thought about Baywatch, but I think too many people actually like it. I think people do really like that game. That one's not a die-on-the-hill, that's too popular now. Starship Troopers is fun. Starship Troopers is sick. That's one that when I first got into pinball, I loved that thing. And that was part of why I got a Hobbit. was because I was like, Joe Balser game, one giant pop-up enemy. Good. Joe Balser game, four giant pop-up enemies. Got to be better. Take his ass to jail! You go to jail, you son of a bitch! You go to jail! You have chosen poorly.
    9:16
    That thing's down the road, long ago. I'm going to go right into these bad reviews then. Someone named Sesh Pilot says, quote, some people love WWF. They think it's a diamond buried under a bad theme. That may be true for some, but I just didn't like it, and here's why. I'll start with a theme. I don't like WWF, but I especially struggle with buying a game covered in half-naked dudes. Sorry, but having to stare at Macho Man in a pink spandex top just doesn't help me rate this game well i hate you i hate your guts i didn't care for the layout i know right what a pinball guy review i think this guy was in alabama or something too so it's like you're like oh yeah he's like i didn't care for the layout of the shots the center ramp is way too close to the flippers in my opinion and both it and the left ramp drain right away if you don't make it all the way up the thing while the mini play feel was super cool in its time it feels ultra gimmicky to me and doesn't feel like it truly serves a purpose to the scoring. The callouts get pretty annoying. Macho Man yelling, yeah. Yeah. Over and over again. Number four, it's a day to east. I don't mind some day to east like Star Wars, but I thought this game just felt cheap. It's nowhere near the build quality as a Williams Valley in my opinion. Lighting was nowhere near as good as the solid Williams Valley from that era, or even the era preceding DMD. There are some cool innovations with the game, like the tap button, which requires you to take your hand off a flipper and hit tap as many times as possible to score bonus points, or the fact that you get penalized for cradling the ball when certain shots are required. That is seriously cool, but I can't see myself ever buying this one. If you dig late 80s WWF, it may be awesome for you, but if you don't like wrestling or are looking for that diamond under a poor theme, look elsewhere this isn't it what do you make of that review i don't like wrestling like i've never watched wrestling or cared about wrestling but how can you not like love like the campiness of this game yeah like it's so 100 it's very much in that realm of like it's gone it's gotten so bad that it's looped back around to being good like no fear to me i grew up liking wrestling so it's like to me this bits i love the theme because i love the camp and the soap opera of it and i love re-stuck muscle men in tights like because i think that that's hilarious like this guy's like i can't buy it and i'm like that's the best stuff yeah like i think that's like what a lot is going for this game like it's like me with no fear yeah like the theme's the best part alex really likes the theme of no fear not just the game like he loves the theme which is hilarious all right but the The next review, we have Caucasian Two-Step, which seems to show up on this series a lot because he's rated over 1,000 games on Pinside. But he says, quote, World Wildlife Fund is a pinball game that needs a serious software overhaul. The pros, doink. The cons, the rules on this game are deader than half the wrestlers on the game's art package. Shut up, bitch. Oh, my God. Look out. Oh, man. Look out, old man. They killed me! Ramp spam up the middle is a valid description of this, rendering everything else on it worthless. You would have thought they had learned their lesson with Star Wars. The takeaway, this game could use some steroids for code, or a P3 rewrite. End quote. So the only pro he lists is Doink the Clown.
    12:55
    I was gonna say, if you're gonna give the game one pro, you know, it's pretty good. I mean, there's some legends on there. Hulks on there, Machos on there, Undertakers on there, like Like from a wrestling fan standpoint, there's some like great wrestlers on there. Doink wasn't like an all-time great, but he was of the time. That's what's funny about watching. These games are time capsules of when they came out, just like Rollercoaster Tycoon, like the time capsule of its time. Like it was such a big deal then that now you look back and go, why did they make a full pinball machine about that? Or why is Doink the clown on Royal Rumble? But you know, right. Why did they make a game for Johnny Numane? You know, it's like, what's interesting is what you were saying. about data east is and i think this speaks to joe hammond kyle personally but it's like you look back at the data east games and like while bally williams also got licensed and they got it they got a couple really big ones like terminator 2 they got batman like data he's got batman star wars like oh yeah they were getting big licenses which is and then that continued with sega yeah sega got monster licenses too which is wild that like we look at everyone seems to think the bally Williams games are better and I think they by and large are but it's interesting that they got these massive licenses even with you know less time to make games and selling less games and they got Jurassic Park like we were talking about like that insane and then they gave Jurassic Park or maybe with was Star Wars John Borg first design was a monster license Yeah And you like Jesus Christ Two Star Wars games They did, you know, Star Trek 30th anniversary. They did Back to the Future. They got massive licenses. I think it, you know, I think it shows their kind of a different attitude towards what they're doing to sell games where, and you know, you see this in Stern now where they lean very heavily on on themes that will sell whereas valley was more focused on making a game that was fun and they both found success in their own way i mean you look at like a game like south ark for instance first of all they got that game at the height of its popularity yeah like they and then got it out the door very quickly and that game is awful i agree that game is really yeah really bad and they sold a shit ton of that yeah man they still earn like crazy yeah Yeah, they earned like crazy. And that was in like 99. So like pinball's collapsing, right? Like it's Valley Williams is shut down, right? That was the last game that was purely a Sega. Because after that it was Sharky's Shootout, which came out as a Sega and a Stern. All right. So then Gary rebranded it as Stern right after that. That's interesting. All right. So another review. Wait, wait, wait. We got to go back to that one. Can you really just spam the center ramp? Is that like a safe strategy? I don't remember. I mean, it's a safe strategy. The thing is, I don't remember it actually being worth any points. That's the thing. Right? I don't know why you would do that. That's like a coward strategy, but I don't think it would even get you points for a league night. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, though. I feel like there's something that builds up on the center shot. I do remember that there's something that builds up on the center shot that you can hit. It's, again, like there's points in the multiball. There's points in the modes. I guess you could just hit that over and over again. see I don't have that self-control even if you tell me that's yeah I'm a big defender of the coward strategies and pinball like whatever it takes to win is what I'm gonna do but I mean I'm just saying and maybe that's a good topic for another podcast but I don't remember I mean I'm not saying it's not but I don't remember that being yeah I don't remember that either all right we got another review here from jester64 says quote games last forever not a real challenge I'm a wrestling fan too and this game got boring and the sounds are very annoying end quote short review know your damn role and shut your damn mouth there's a guy named Dave Heggie who was a very very good pinball player for a long time in Chicago and at a pinball expo he won the tournament one year and he won a WWF and there was a programmer in Chicago named Oren Day who worked on most of the dating East games. And he, one time Dave came up to or, and it asked him to make a custom ROM for WWF so that it would say, yeah, less.
    17:16
    And it just says it too much. Like, can you just make it say, yeah, less, the less, yeah. Guess who shows up for no reason at all to get his grandstanding and hot dogging in.
    17:29
    Can't imagine, you know, having that be your biggest gripe. I don't know if that ever happened or not, but I definitely remember him asking. Great. All right. Tabasco man 77 says WWF Royal rumble is basically like a wrestling match. It's not always pretty. There are botches. And most of the time you're rewarded somewhat. I'd love to tell you that it's fun to play, but it's aggravating. First, the play field is ugly as hell, mainly because most of it's covered by a metal ramp version of the Jersey turnpike. and there's not much left to work with. Seriously, there are ramps everywhere, including a huge ramp right up the middle that you will hit multiple times, even if you're not trying to hit it. That middle ramp is a huge detriment to the game, taking away most of the other shots that would make this an actual game. Hitting the upper playfield ring in the corner, for instance, is a miracle if you can. And you may or may not even know you're up there until the ball drains away from it. The audio is basically a variation of Hulk Hogan's Real American and Vince McMahon yelling stuff through a pillow. You take me to him. Take me to the son of a bitch. Take me to him. Come on. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Where is the son of a bitch? Where is he?
    18:44
    All the audio sounds this way. That's a shame. I've yet to play Stern's WrestleMania, but I'm hoping it's an improvement on this mess. Uh-oh. End quote. I think he's going to be disappointed because... Yeah, I do too.
    18:58
    I don't know. we played a wrestlemania le for the first time not too long ago oh yeah it has a lot more going on than the pro it has some more i hate that game though to be honest oh it's awful that's so bad ring it's very different i mean it's very unique but i hate that game i like royal rumble to me is the best wrestling game for sure unjustifiably in a position that i'd rather not be in but the cream will rise to the top oh yeah it's funny i'm looking at it right now and at the time i remember we always used to make fun of data east because like a lot of the artwork on like their playfields looks kind of like somebody like took a magazine made a xerox of it and then cut things out and pasted them out to the playfield and this definitely kind of has that vibe yeah i think it looks good but i but now i find it kind of charming right like at the time i thought it was dumb but now I'm I find it kind of big I kind of think I agree with that they look like they're cut out of a comic book to me so it doesn't look bad it just looks kind of like a stylistic choice yeah all right so quickie mart says I think this is one of data east's worst games but it's not the worst game ever by any company so I think that that's a good review I don't know that's like a mediocre review that's like it's one of their worst games however other companies have made games worse than this you're like i guess uh i don't know if i would say it's even close to data east worst game though no dude uh phantom of the opera is the worst i that game sucks phantom the opera is pretty bad what else is last action hero is not fun lethal weapon 3 is not fun there's a lot of there's a lot of questionable stuff yeah i don't like the original simpsons game oh yeah that one sucks disappointment yeah i agree back to the future is pretty bad to me it's phantom of the opera i every time i play that thing i'm like this game sucks if anyone wants to come on the podcast and defend phantom of the opera i would love to have you on i played tommy for the first time recently and that was not good oh really tommy so i don't know he's considered one of the good ones i actually like I like Tommy. I don't know. Maybe it's because maybe I just had too high of hopes because I'd heard it's one of the best ones. Yeah. Again it like it got to be playing well which you never know on location and you know but well I went down Okay So Quickie Mart said it one of daddy worst games so maybe not the worst game ever by any company but 10 pinball disagrees and says the worst data east game period comparatively speaking you are like a grain of sand in the sahara desert yeah and i am the entire desert so uh that's that one's self-explanatory a one sentenced the worst data east period i mean anybody who wants to like know think about bad games needs to like take a data east game and then play some of the godly premiere games from that era because those games are terrible don't you say anything about our years barbed wire barbed wire uh freddy a nightmare yeah i agree freddy's pretty bad shack shack is terrible these games are so dude check attacks got it's like how can one of the worst bat glasses of any pinball machine it's got him like i love the shack back it's so bad and that game's loaded all of those premier dmds it's like they had unlimited budget for the play field yeah they did a lot on the play field they just didn't come together i think that's what and gomez has said that in interviews where he says if you give someone too big of a sandbox, it just becomes a mess. Whereas if you give them limited resources, it makes you resourceful, I guess. You do more with less when you know there's a cap. And I think those DMD premieres is a perfect example of that. You could give them a monster license. You could give them unlimited budget for the max, but not enough time and not enough experience. And it comes out like garbage anyway. All right, so I got three more left, Three more bad reviews I found. Think76 says, Okay, I really want to apologize in advance to those that like this pin. He starts off with an apology. First off, the theme just doesn't work for me. Why did I buy this pin? Would you like to ask a question right at this particular time? Would you like to do that? I mean, what was I thinking? Then, of course, there's that silly little ramp in the center. I don't know. I've had it for a while now, and I'm afraid I must send it out the door. I just do not get it at all. I don't know why I'm writing an honest review when I'm trying to sell a game. If the prospective buyer is reading this, please ignore it. It's only my opinion. Apparently some people really like this game. I just can't figure out why for the life of me.
    24:01
    End quote. I like that one. Yeah. Like an apologetic, like, I don't like this. Why am I being honest about it? It's, people do like it though. I like when guys buy games blind like that. Yeah. And you're like, what did I get into? Especially when it's an old game. It's like, dude, you've had 30 years to try it. Yeah.
    24:24
    All right. So Kineticross says, pros, no, no, no. Negative reception towards the game led to different games being awarded to the A Division victors in future pinball expos. It's also good for spare parts. Cons. most insulting first place prize in pinball history so he lists the pros as like they gave it away at a couple expos at the tournament uh as prizes and then he says cons it's got to be the most insulting first place prize in pinball history he's like terrible sounds all i can hear is yeah shoot the ball up to the upper play field to make the game never end no flow at all rules are terrible for experienced pinball players. It was funny because at Expo every year, they would switch between which manufacturer sponsored the tournament every year. And usually that manufacturer would give away one of their recent games. And so like one year, Data East did it, or Sega did it, and I think Maverick might have been the tournament game, and then the winner got a wrestling. They got a WWF that they just happen to have sitting around at the factory i mean between those two i'd rather have the wwf but it would be hilarious yeah it was just like it just felt like a slap in the face at the time all right and the final final one i have is peter shuringa says i hate this stupid pinball that's it it just wrote i hate this stupid pinball don't be a cry baby and did him personally he wrote like a whole review of that that's funny maybe that's what I should write for Stern Star Wars that's all you need to say for Stern I think everyone already knows why you would hate it alright so you have any last words on WWF Royal Rumble Greg anything else you want to say no I don't think so I just think people should give the Data East games more of a chance and stop comparing them to Adam Stemp like everything sucks compared to Adam's family sure yeah you know play them and accept them on their own merits and just kind of like you know lead into the cheesiness like there's there's a lot of fun there to be had 100 I agree I like WWF Royal Rumble but I also like a lot of those other day to east games and every time I see one I'm always trying to play it like I I love playing those games like because you don't ever see them anymore and they have such a bad reputation just You gotta play them. Make up your own mind. So we're going to end this episode of Die on this Hill with a plea for everyone to go out, find a Royal Rumble, use the pinball map, find a Royal Rumble near you and go play it. And then make up your own mind. You can send any emails, wedgeheadinfo at gmail.com. I want to hear your thoughts on it. We'll probably post a poll when this episode goes live on seeing what other people think of Royal Rumble. And we'll post it to our Instagram. So if you're hearing this, go out, find out, play it. Make up your own mind. For everyone else, thank you once again for listening to the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I want to thank my co-host Alex and our guest Greg Dunlap for being here. For everyone else, we'll see you next time. Good luck. Don't suck.
    28:00
    But I'll say one thing. I am, for one very, very good reason, the best there is the best there was and the best there ever will be.