The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round. I can't believe you're still listening, but thanks! I'm Jeff Tiorris. My name's Martin Robbins. Welcome everybody to the Final Round Pinball Podcast. How are you, Jeff? I'm good. You know, that is the benefit of being on the Pinball Network. People download our show whether they want us or not, and they're like, oh shit, I'm listening. I might as well listen now. So, you're welcome, everybody that really is listening to the pinball show. I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't talking about our show. I'm just saying, you know, people listen to ours and they gotta get the other shitty shows. I mean, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. We're gonna get fired. You're not kidding. Everyone really is listening to the other shows and we are just the stuff that they get as a bonus. We are the, if you remember, you two releasing that album on Apple iTunes without everybody's If 지금은... Just forgotten two invisible connections. Almost have no base please tell me exactly what was going on around the start date, if not what they wanted from their poetry. We were up there about five verses down the 15th where they'd told us 각 hay presente in echtчемing av.... And they saidٍ Can you even call your체적 chair ''jTik respand''?adı Star wars what it really is, 6 days from situation one, complete with top-notch ink stealings, more gum in the bucket, curveball in the forecast, and some flying sheep or sondern Christie'sville.com. And for some reason it was that album. So I don't know when that got released, but the first time I've listened to that album was two days ago. It was the songs of the innocents that they kind of gave you back in 2014. And I actually didn't mind it. There were some good songs on there, Raised by Wolves, I listened to it once in a while. And anyway, you're giving it to me for free, just like this podcast. Just take it. You don't like it, throw it out. But like I was gonna say, whether you like it or not, fuck it because you've got it. Have you been the last two weeks? Um, look, I've been very busy the last two weeks. I'm gonna probably leave it at that because I think by the time this airs or maybe a little bit after, people will know why I've been very busy. I've been very busy. Jeff, how about you? I assume a Netflix special? What's going on? Correct. Oh. Absolutely, yeah. There's probably something about that, yeah. You know, I'd like to give you some great story that this and this has happened, but really not a lot. I mean, I delivered one of the reach arounds to one of our winners, and they're going to be joining us in the second half of the show. Who? Who could that be? How could that be? Exclusive. But before we get to that guest, we have our main guest, if you will. Most people in the industry really, really like this guy and his family and everything he's done in the pinball community. We're going to try to disprove all of that, but I don't think we'll be able to because he's a pretty stand up. He is Charlie Emery from Spooky Pinball, and he joins us right now. Hey, Charlie, how are you? Hello. Hello. Welcome from Benton, Wisconsin. How's everything over in Benton at the moment? Not really warm, sadly. Like we had one week where we got mid 60s about a month ago and we haven't seen it since. So good thing we work indoors. Now, I know that we're going to talk about a lot of things about you and Spooky, but just speaking of that, aren't you like moving or have you moved? Oh, okay. In a nutshell, we started in one room in the Benton Business Incubator eight years ago. And when we started building America's Most Haunted, we rented another room thinking, wow, this is as good as it'll ever get. Two years later we built our own 60 by 90 shop. A year after that we outgrew that, added a warehouse, and then this spring we bought a bigger building across the street and we thought this is two stories, it's bigger than our old shop by more than double the square footage, you know, when you count the up and down, and we've outgrown that. So we're adding on to it now. Bigger and better, but I guess that's the whole thing with the spooky factory. The games themselves, the number that have been sold, it just keeps growing and growing. And this once small company, it's not so small anymore. I mean, the expansions that you mentioned, but also the staff too. In the recent years, you've seen Eric Pripke come on board and Bowen Kerins helping with the rules. Bigger factory, does that mean more people, more machines per week? It absolutely does. Basically, when we moved into the new building, it had a lot of the equipment that we were already using anyway with a partner company, and we just kind of teamed up and bought that. And it greatly expanded our capability, but the building wasn't necessarily laid out the way we would have wanted for production, and we absolutely made it work on Rick and Morty. We're very proud of the fact that when we launched Rick and Morty, we told everybody 18 months to deliver all 750 games, which we, at that time, we had hoped we would sell, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. We've gone over that this week. We just hired two more people. We hired an electronics engineer slash programmer, so we even have more help in that regard. We still have Eric on hand, kind of helping us out with some stuff, and we'll see where he wants to go in the future. He's only a few hours away from us, but obviously did a great job on Rick and Morty. Couldn't be happier with his performance. And yeah, man, it just keeps growing, and it's always been a steady, slow growth. We're very proud of that. The new expansion really is no different. We just decided if you're going to take the time and effort to train all these people, you better give them something to do. So obviously we plan on upping our numbers again on our next game launch. So really looking forward to that. Marty, he's going after the schools, what I'm hearing. You know, Alice Cooper had a song called School's Out. Benton, schools, not the number one employer. Lookout, Spooky's on their way, Marty. Well, we passed the bank, so... Well, so just on that, and I know you've talked about it before, but I would just love to hear your thoughts now that we're into, like, well into production of Rick and Morty. You limited it to 750 units, and a lot of people were like, why would you limit it? You would sell twice as many. Tell us why you wanted to keep it at 750. Uh, does anybody remember a few years ago when I said something like, uh, we never want to do more than 500 games in a year? I remember. Uh, Rick and Morty broke that, obviously. We thought, you know, and again at the time, the most games we'd ever built was 550 total nuclear annihilations, and so to jump up to 750 is, it's not a small feat. I mean, for a large company, it's nothing to add a couple hundred games, but for a company the size of ours and, you know, a town our size, it seemed a little daunting at the time. But, you know, it's great and it's wonderful that we've managed to gain some traction in the pinball world, but we've also managed to gain some traction locally. So it makes it easier to get good workers and get, you know, people that want to come in for the long haul and stick with you. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, Charlie, I think it is very flattering to be considered a solid, good employer in the area. I hope we can just keep that rolling and keep everybody employed. That is always the goal. Charlie, forget the expansion on your current facility. Go back to that school, make it part of a co-op program. Summer Spring We do and Rick and Morty is a natural draw obviously but everything we've ever done has kind of drawn kids towards us like you make toys and you know some of them have wound up working for us after high school you know most go off to college and do their thing and and some do that and still come back to us it's really kind of a neat process but you're not wrong yeah but what Marty was saying too about that number 750 which was once 500 and it was less even before that it just keeps growing and growing you sold out immediately with Rick and Morty when you You look on the secondary market and seeing Rick and Morty's being sold as you're still making them. Do you think, okay, we played it safe, we underestimated, it's going to happen anyway. What are your thoughts when you see the demand much bigger than the supply? It's a bit of a mixed, I do have mixed feelings on it. You know, and again, when we launched Rick and Morty, we knew it was going to do well because of the theme and because of Scott Danesi and because of everybody that was involved with it. But as a company, you don't imagine that you're going to sell 750 games in four hours. We weren't even entertaining that kind of idea. We were hoping that in the first two weeks, which was what the Fang Club was all about, it would give people an opportunity to get in and buy before the general public and kind of cater to the hardcore pinball fans a bit, give people a way to feel like they're part of the company or part of the family and make it something special. We had no idea that 750 people were going to join the fan club and just buy it all out. It was a ridiculously good problem to have, and I'm telling you, in the eight years that we've been in business, I've never experienced another day like that. And knock on wood, I hope we get to do something like that again here, maybe coming up soon, we'll see. But yeah, you feel like, yeah, you definitely left a little bit on the table, but at the At the same time, when the secondary market is strong for the game, it kind of gives buyers confidence going into your next title, which is pretty much just common sense for a business that's good for you going down the road. And again, when you make 750 games for the first time, you have to figure out how to do it. You have a pretty good indication of what's going to be expected after doing 500 or 550, but every bit of growth is always a little bit daunting. It's daunting, it's intimidating. The more mouths you have to feed, the harder you have to work, the better you need to be. And right now we're just doing everything we possibly can to make, just to make sure that our product going forward is the best it possibly can be and comparable to everyone else's, if not better. That's the goal. So, yeah, it's a tough road to hoe. I mean, you gotta be careful and, you know, we don't want to overreach. And at the same time, you know the old saying around here, you gotta make hay while the sun's shining, so we're doing everything we can to kind of keep that balance. So I'm gonna just go a weird sort of tangent here, but I'm gonna go almost like cinema, right? So we had the things that go bump in the night, the spooky pinball story, I don't know how many years ago that was. That seemed like maybe four years ago? Is that right? Yeah, it seems like a million miles away. Right, well it does seem like such a long way away and it's now a different world because really the story arc of that was pinball is really hard, it was challenging for you and it was a triumph at the end, you know, it's all great, it's fantastic. Cut to now four years later, what is it that you have actively done to keep the success of spooky pinball to now like cut to today, 750 machines been sold? How does that happen? Um... In ten words or less, please. Ten words or less. Um... Okay, you can expand. I think I can narrow it down to one. Um, honesty. We own up to our mistakes. We take what we do well, and we try to expand on that. No, you know, when we did the documentary, and again, it wasn't us that did it, it was some producers that had come to us, Dana and Joel Reeves, and I said no for like three I'm a fan of Pinball. I've been playing Pinball for like three months and then was glad that we did it after the fact. You know, it was kind of strange shooting that for like a year and having them follow you around and going to Lawrence's and everywhere you went, they went. And it was kind of, kind of strange. But yeah, it really only told kind of the beginning, which was the scariest time. Don't get me wrong. So I'm kind of glad that that's all documented and out there now. But since then, yeah, it's just been steady growth. Being honest with our customers. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. I certainly do not to watch, you know, people like Scott Danesi and Ben Heck and everybody that and then you know Jerry Sullenberg at Multimurfic when we need all these people have come into our lives at different points in time and we still all talk and communicate and everybody gets along and you know we're doing the absolute best we can with what we're given and and again trying to expand on what we do well and I just yeah I'm nervous and I'm excited for everybody to see what we're actually working on right now because I think you're We're really going to see all those little things I mentioned kind of come together and really take us to where we want to be as a company. So you sort of indicated it before, the sort of rumors are that we are going to see something in the next couple of months? Well, I don't want to put a specific date on it, but obviously spring, summer of this year, we're going to run out of Rick and Morty. So yeah, I guess we better have something else ready. Get something ready. We're going to keep everybody working. Yeah, we better have something in the pipeline. And of course we do. And it's the most complete team effort I think that Spooky Pinball has ever done. My fingerprints are on it, but I am certainly not the lead designer. And it's really kind of dumbfounding to see this thing come together the way it has. It is, I think it's a little bit unique. You know, in pinball, it's always there's one guy and everybody helps him. And in this case, It really wasn't the situation at all. It was everybody got their input and it wasn't the case of too many chefs spoiling the soup. It just kept getting better and things came and went and if it didn't work we threw it out and we... It was nice to actually have a little bit of breathing room. This is the first time that, you know, when Rick and Morty sold out in four hours, it bought us 18 months worth of work, guaranteed employment, and we'd never really had that before. So it gave us time as a team to kind of regroup, reorganize, and, you know, learn from our past successes and mistakes and make the best possible product ever. And I know Scott Danesi has mentioned a hundred times, you know, that my worst habit is I'd never say no to a designer. Like, I, you know, no, throw in whatever you want. We did that and then some in this game. And I really, really, really can't wait for people to see it because it's unique. It's different. It shoots smooth and beautiful. So, our games kind of have a reputation of being really tough. This might hurt that a little bit. It's a little bit easier to shoot, but man is it different. It's so unique, and I'm just, I'm really excited about it. Do we know the designer? You've met some of them. Okay. Yeah. Like I said, it's not necessarily one person. It's a complete team effort, which is, it's been a unique experience because we've never done things that way, and I'm not sure that anybody else has either. So I'm excited for people to see the results of that. Is this a hybrid with Chicago Gaming Company we're talking about? Oh no, no no no. This is an all spooky product. Yep, this is a completely different game. Yeah, no, we announced on our podcast several months ago, boy I don't know how long ago it actually was, but yeah, we get along very well with Doug Duba and everybody over at Chicago Gaming and we had a Ben Heck design that Ben kind of wanted to finish and we absolutely John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, It's good for all of us. It's good for pinball guys. Come on. Two pinball companies working together? Does anybody do that? Well, they do now. No, I'm really proud of that, you know. And that's, to me, the way it should be. This is a very small pond. We all know each other. If one company can help another or vice versa, you know, two companies helping each other grow, why not do it? And I'm very happy that we got Ben's game. We're, you know, he had some engineering help and stuff to finish up some things that we didn't have time to do while we were working on our game and he's kind of doing his own thing there and he gets a lot of creative freedom and, you know, Ben's a creative, strange individual. So, yeah, I think what he's doing is really, really cool and, you know, it's, timing's good, his game will come out a little bit later, ours will come out a little bit sooner and everybody's happy. So, yeah, I'm very happy about all that. When Spooky first came out, I mean obviously Spooky it's all about horror and horror themes and all that because that's your passion really is, you love horror and that's kind of how it started with the first couple of machines. Then you sort of branched out a bit, I mean obviously Total Nuclear Annihilation was a, let's call it a happy surprise, it just came to you, Scott said, can you make my machine or you probably said to him I want to make the machine and then it happened. It's really different to the horror brand. You've obviously had some other side ones like Domino's and Jetsons as well, but they're sort of commission games. Then we had Rick and Morty, which also isn't horror. I guess what I'm saying is, is horror still the overarching theme for Spooky? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, even with Rick and Morty, it's a science fiction... horror and science fiction to me, if you look at the... I'm sitting in my TV room right now. My shelves are loaded with horror and sci-fi. That's their first cousins, if not brothers. So to me that's all kind of one group because anything with aliens and monsters and all that stuff is just a blast to me. And Rick and Morty, honestly, the writing on that show is some of the best science fiction writing in the history of television in my opinion. Oh, hands down. Hands down. As funny as it is, it's just brilliantly written at the same time. So, but yeah, I I mean, spooky pinball is there on purpose. It's in my soul. I mean, everything, our whole house is nothing but monster stuff from the basement all the way to the, you know, to the upstairs. So, that's never going to go away. And TNA even is a science fiction theme, you know. Well, I do agree about the science fiction and horror kind of being linked. They're cousins, if you will. But what I noticed with Rick and Morty and TNA was the humor in the games. And you might ask, well, where is it in TNA? That's when you see the mystery and things like Lion Man come up or just some of the different messages. There's tons of humor obviously in Rick and Morty. We don't see a lot of humor in pinball machines or certainly humor themed based pinball machines and I've always wondered why not. I think there's a huge, huge void in that. Does humor become stale? I don't know. You know, last time I played Attack from Mars, I still laughed at the callouts. Same with Medieval Madness and things like that. Deadpool's got some pretty good callouts. Of course, Rick and Morty's callouts are leaps and bounds of any I've ever heard. Humor seems to work for me. And, you know, here's the thing with Spooky. You've got a set amount of games, whether it's 750, maybe it's 1,000 for the next one. You don't have to sell thousands and thousands of them. You just have to, with the fan club and everything else, just sell the certain limited amount. And like you said, that also helps you propel for the next 18 months when you know you've got work. So can Spooky take a risk on something like that? As far as you mean doing something humorous? Can Spooky take risks on something that might not be horror or science? Maybe it's humor. Absolutely. And, and, oh man, I love the, how do I put this? The hardest I've ever made Rob Zombie laugh, we had a game backstage and he was at a, like a VIP meet and greet deal. And the game was being played by fans and Rob was taking pictures with people and he's like, I don't remember saying that. I'm like, you do know that there's like three lines of you saying Roadhouse dialogue in this game, right? And like his band just lost it. And then I look and Rob was kind of tilting his head back and he's just laughing and he's like, I was seriously just reading the script and just... But anyway, it was... the moment was hilarious. And we've always, even if the game didn't call for it, we've managed to slip a little humor in there. Alice Cooper definitely has a lot of little tongue-in-cheek kind of tales from the crypt humor. Rob Zombie is loaded with it. Sid Hegg's lines in there are hilarious. They're extremely vulgar, but they're funnier than hell. Charlie, there's nothing funny about necrophilia, alright? That is a serious, serious... Are you talking about Cold Ethel? Yes, Cold Ethel. I love the dead. There's a couple in there. I would like, uh, you know he runs around with a rag doll on stage while he's singing that? I honestly did have one customer kind of berate me over that. I've been an Alice Cooper fan my whole life, and I don't approve of necrophilia. And I'm like, he wrote that song in 1975. You've been a fan your whole life, you'd think you'd be used to that one by now. It's a joke. That tongue is firmly in cheek on that song. Oh my goodness. It's funny. So then, that was, for me I remember that was the first time we saw Bowen Kerins really put his stamp on a machine. We've seen it since. How does that for you, going from all hands on deck, it's you and what you've got to do, to now having to rely on other people to produce these machines? Define produce the machines. Well, get them, like, we're talking art, we're talking rules, code, mechanics, assembly, everything that goes into a pinball machine. Like really, it was you and, I don't know, a handful of people when you did America's Most Haunted. You've now got 30 people. How's that adjustment for you going from being in control to now having control through a lot of other people? You know, it's kind of funny because when you talk about rules and stuff, I personally have never really been in control of any of that. I always try to let the talent do what they do. Bowen kind of gave us the opportunity a bit to clean up a little bit, maybe pick up on some of the things that we were missing. But like on Rick and Morty, Eric definitely directed the code on that game. And yes, we all have our say and there were certain modes that I wanted and certain modes that everybody else on the team wanted and we just let everybody kind of pick in shoes and I've been lucky enough to kind of get to talk to Justin Justin Roiland quite a bit and he loves the game and asks me questions and, hey, have you thought about adding this mode? And helped us like even on the latest code update We got Moon Men in there. And Jemaine was super agreeable to get the song in the pinball machine just to have it in the pinball machine. Little things like that. But realistically across the board, even when it's Scott Danesi or if it was Ben Heck in the early days or now even with CGC and stuff like that, it's a little bit of all of us. It's our animator David David Van Es. It's Scott Danesi. It's Eric. It's Bowen. It's me. It's Phasma. I'm a, it's my son, Bug, who's honestly still the best pinball player we have, so he kinda knows what he likes to see as far as a rule set goes, and maybe he'll push it a little harder than I will, because I'm not as good a player, so he'll wanna see a little bit more depth here and there and things like that, but it really is a team effort across the board, and I've never, I'm just not that guy to micromanage people and say, no, no, no, can't do that, you know, we sink or swim together as a team, and the best ideas win out, and it's always been that way, I really hope it always stays that way. You mentioned Justin Justin Roiland had some ideas and obviously he's a fan of this. But for you to put in different modes and maybe get different assets, it's not just Justin you're dealing with, it's probably not even Dan Harmon. It's likely Warner Brothers. Are they very receptive to changes or is that kind of every time you want to do a change you kind of have to go back to the drawing board and renegotiate? They definitely see everything we do. There's nothing in the game that in the early days of just us and Adult Swim, things might have been, for lack of a better term, a little easier. They had a little bit more trust and we did have a little bit more creative freedom in that regard. With Warner Brothers, it's definitely a process. Every single thing gets shown, everything gets reviewed, everything gets approved. Sometimes things that are in the show get frowned upon even by the executives because is her free kiss against the right to register in with one of late night France and get it off with a deal with license you got always get everything he looked like to see andаласьi으로 the justin ro blueprint is creating pounds and and and harlem b motherfucking up but not almost record that so okay where they were really really want we were in the little bits and uh... together those guys and see if it helps but sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't and and I understand all of it it a little bit different right now because like in the video game world there are rating systems and in pinball there really aren So some of the studios kind of struggle with that a little bit and how to handle it They don't understand that games have an adult mode that can be turned off and on so you have to kind of explain that process and when things will be allowed to be said. If you've heard any of the Scary Terry dialogue obviously he says the B word a lot. It's kind of his whole, you know, parody of that 80s horror icon with the knives for fingers that they don't talk about and what he did. So, yeah, I mean, little things like that will kind of get... it draws a little bit of a red flag sometimes with the studios because they don't understand that you can turn that off and on and bounce it back and forth. And is it in the home environment? Is it an arcade? Is it... it's a bit of a challenge, but yeah, we get through it. Was there anything that you really, really wanted in the machine that got knocked back? Um, yeah, a little bit on the wizard mode. Uh, we had a concept that I don't really want to throw it out there because I'm afraid people will be like, oh my god, that would have been either good or terrible. I don't know what people's reactions are going to be sometimes. But the studio just felt that it didn't kind of fit into the world, so to speak, of Rick and Morty, which we thought was odd because, I mean, he literally turned into a pickle. And what we had wasn't any crazier than that. So, but yeah, and there's little things like that here and there, but you pick your battles. And you know, the important part is at the end of the day, the game, I think, is coming out absolutely fantastic. I love the modes that are in it. We couldn't have asked for much more asset wise. And we have all the videos. We have custom speech from Justin Justin Roiland. We've got speech from Dan Harmon and now Jemaine Clement. And I mean, it's so good. I'm just really, really thrilled with it. And I hope we can kind of keep that role going. You know, we actually had Rob Zombie and Sherry Moon and Sid Haig. We had Alice Cooper. We have Justin Justin Roiland doing the voices of Rick and Morty. And we kind of pride ourselves on the fact that we're getting the actual people that have created this world that we wanted to be a part of and make games for and been able to get them in the games for the true fans to, you know, not have to listen to us play. John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, Bally Williams, Straight Down the Middle, Bally Williams, I don't know how much you go on Pinside and read the forums and take everything with a grain of salt, but they can be pretty vicious on Pinside and on the forums. What kind of interaction do you have with the fans or do you kind of just leave it at bay and go, you know, I only care about the customers, people behind keyboards, eh, they can say what they want. You know, it's, it's, there's a lot to be learned from Pinside and I think at this point in time, and we've had our ups and downs in there as well. www.willywonka.com The Valley Company, Subsidiary of Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Mirco Playfields, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. You kind of take for granted because pinball parts are pinball parts and they've been around for a long time and none of us are really re-engineering, you know, like a flipper or a slingshot. Things that are just super common, but at the same time there are tolerances and little things we can do better to make it a better experience for our customers. And like I said, we want to be as good as everyone else, if not better, so we kind of take the noise with a grain of salt when required. But at the same time, if you're deaf to it, to me, you're doing yourself a disservice because you can learn from it. And we definitely put an emphasis on trying to do that. Every game we've done has gotten better. And now, you know, like I said, our focus is to just take all that knowledge and we had the time and we had a little bit of money to kind of re-look at some things and re-engineer some things and just do things a little bit differently and a little bit better. And yeah, I can't fault anyone on PIMSIDE for speaking up if it actually helps us make a better product. And that's what we're aiming to do. The fact that you do acknowledge this, the fact that you do go on and respond to some of these concerns, speaks to, again, that honesty, that one-word example that you gave earlier. It's, we admit our mistakes, we learn from them, we fix them. I believe that was the case in point with early Rick and Mortys that went out. There were some adjustments that were made from the manufacturing side to maybe adjust the upper left shot or things like that. Is that accurate to say? Yeah, absolutely. The whole thing with like, I know what shot you're talking about, like the inner loop, the kind of, you know, upper right flipper to the left. It was one of those things that we had played that thing on so many different variants of the white wood and it was never an issue. And when we made that final printed, clear-coated, everything polished, the speed picked up and that shot got harder and it began to, you know, you get a little bit of rattle and stuff. And it was, I think I've heard Scott actually say this publicly so I don't feel like I'm throwing him under the bus, which I would never do because we love Scott. He had that rail completely locked down in multiple locations and it actually took like loosening it up a little bit to give that shot a little bit of forgiveness and it's really been fine ever since. But yeah, it's little things like that that you can learn from getting those games out there and seeing that people are struggling with it. And you know, sometimes it's just you're bricking the shot and the game's not easy and other times there is something you can learn from it. So, you know, to me, it's, you'd have to be a bit mad to ignore it all and just say, ah, everything's fine. If you do that, then you're in trouble. We do have our moments where you get a little frustrated and think, you know, why are people focusing on this one little thing that doesn't really affect anything? But if it's important to them, then it should be important to the manufacturer because once you stop listening to your customers, then to me, you're already lost. So I guess being able to make adjustments, you would have to do a lot of that throughout the whitewood phase as well. What I'm kind of curious to know, again, you now being this, let's call it a big manufacturer now, right? I would say you're not boutique anymore. Do you see yourself still as boutique or not? You know, it's still, from the inside, it still feels boutique because I know we don't have some of the resources that the bigger companies have. But when you start looking at the numbers, I don't think it is anymore. No, I don't think so. But it's really leading on to the fact that you are creating and designing games and then obviously you've got to manufacture them. But what about the parts themselves? Do you rely on, you know, the likes of pinball or are you now building your own parts as well? It's kind of a mixture of both. It's the high school shop class doing it, let's be honest. It's like, yes, everything's being made at the Benton High School. No, it really is a mixture. We are the, as far as I know, the most self-contained pinball company on earth. We literally print our own playfields, backglass, plastics. We laser cut our plastics. We have our own CNCs. We have our own thermal press. We make our own ramp molds. We pull our own ramps. We cut our own ramps. We do our own powder coating. We have our own powder coat oven. We have, I mean, it's ridiculous the amount of work we do in house. And even our metal. I mean, all our ball guides and stuff is, you know, it's a team owned thing. It's one of my workers who's incredibly ambitious early, early on, we were kind of struggling to get consistent quality on our metal and he's like, let me take it over. I'll buy a laser. So he bought a metal laser and started doing some forming and metalwork and that's expanded to several employees and bringing that in house and it's been anything that we really needed that we were struggling to find we've managed to find somebody that can either partner with us locally to get that stuff made like for example thicker metals and stuff like that we we can only do so much with what we have we can do ball guides and aprons and side rails and all that kind of stuff but thicker metals we've got a partner company now in Hazel Green Wisconsin and which is a town of twelve hundred people two miles away that can help us with that kind of stuff um it's it but it really does take a small army of people to do everything that is required and pinball life has always been a big part of that I don't think that's a big secret Terry has several employees that do nothing but assemble parts for Spooky Pinball. So many of those little jobs that we've kind of farmed to local help has turned into two, three, four people doing whatever it takes to make stuff for us. We're making our own habitrails locally now. Just hired a young man basically and set him up with a small business just doing nothing but fabricating habitrails. So, Rick and Morty doesn't have any so I guess I just gave that away that there's some habitrails that I can't... Whoa! Exclusive! So yeah, I mean, it's all a process for sure, and you need to keep those good working relationships, and there's, you know, little things we've done with CGC and vice versa that they've kind of helped us with some stuff that we felt we could get better, and they had more sources and access, so, you know, using that, and still have a wonderful relationship with everyone at Pinball Life, and hope that never goes away, and, you know, some things it's worth reinventing, And other things, just if it isn't broke, don't fix it. So that's kind of always been our motto is, you know, you take the clear path to get to the finish line, which is not always easy. But yeah, I mean, we depend on a lot of different people to do this. And I'm just glad that we do have a lot of really good partners. Well, I think you said I'm sure you said this before. It might have actually been in the video, but I think what you kind of said was, and I am paraphrasing here, But it was effectively because you are in a small town and people care, that's kind of really been a really good success factor for your business. And I sort of extrapolate that now to when you're saying there's somebody that's now set up their business just to make something for you. And, you know, there's a town of 200 people that have now set up this, three people doing it. I think you're in a fortuitous situation because of the size of the areas around you. What you're doing means so much more to these people because they are of a smaller scale. Would you agree with that? Absolutely, I would. And nothing makes me feel better. Like, for example, one employee we had, we hired him straight out of high school. He worked for us for a couple of years, was a tremendous worker. And one day he comes up to me and he's like, I'd kind of like to go do my own thing. If I did, would maybe you feed me a few jobs? We had a product that he could absolutely help us with and for sure I'm going to encourage that. And he was making like some metal art and powder coating it and doing all these kind of really neat things for other industries outside of pinball and I would lay out files for him and stuff. And now that kid is providing a ton of product to us and he's got two of his friends helping him full time. So to see little side projects like that kind of grow and expand and it also gives me something that I don't have to worry about. P internal and everything else in our area that really does kinda grow your reputation and give you a little bit of a... it's a nice little boost in your community for sure. And to see what it's done for Benton really makes me happy. Like I pull into the shop in the morning and that parking lot is overflowing and there's cars on the street and I'm thinking, how did we get here? You know, it's just... it never ceases to amaze me and I never take a moment of that for granted. That is not how I thought the story was going to end about that kid who decided to leave and they've never found the body. No, no, no, we still see his body several times a week. He drops off some stuff and, how you doing? And, you know, grabs a check and takes the next batch and off he goes. And it's just, it's a good thing. Congratulations, by the way, a few more Twippies for spooky pinball just recently. And I got to tell you the one that I really liked, I knew you'd get call outs. I mean, that was a given. In a tough field too, I might add. But when you add what Justin did, it's just off the charts. I mean, you can't compete with that. But the one I really liked was the topper. You know why? Because it was free. Pookie said, here, you get a free topper. Not a thousand dollars. I'm glad you won the Twippy for that. Thank you. And that was all KT. That was her. You know, and it's kind of funny, and I don't like to poke fun at anybody, but there had been some really goofy, expensive toppers coming out. And my wife's like, I know what we should do. We should get everybody a free one. And I'm like, what are you crazy? That's going to be... Wait a minute. Yeah, we can do that. And yeah, the goodwill we got from that, it was expensive. Don't get me wrong. I mean, it's not like it's the most brilliant topper ever designed, but it's interactive with the game and it's cute and it's fun and it does something. And you know, when the portal's lit, you know, because the topper's moving and lighting up and it's kind of fun. But that was all her idea. And yeah, I'm I'm really proud of that, you know, and it was, we owed it to the customers of that game. I mean, come on, 750 games in four hours for a company our size, and you think we're not going to be nice and do something a little bit extra special? I'm really, really glad that people took it for what it was, and obviously... You didn't have to do it. We didn't have to do it, but, you know, it was... But you asked that kid, you said, yeah, you can leave, but you got to make a 750 copies before you go. That's not far off the mark. I'm glad it was received the way it was and I don't pretend to believe that it was the best topper but the way it was phrased was favorite topper and that apparently won a few people over our way and yeah thank you everybody who voted for us on the twippies. Typically we get buried by the bigger companies in those award shows and that's perfectly fine. We know they have a lot more games out there to play than we do and we just kind of do our best but this year we actually, I mean let's face it, Eric and Guns N' Roses dominated, deservedly so, but that little company from Benton actually held our own there and we won a handful and got a lot of finalists, which I didn't know that, you know, Jeff was going to send us this huge box of, we were a finalist in like every category, so I mean, for us to kind of pull that off with a team our size and a company our size, I was incredibly proud of our guys. I think really, the real sign of success for you, sure it was nice to get some trippy nominations and obviously some awards, but really, I think the real mark of you being a successful company with a successful product is you didn't get a reach around award from us. He probably doesn't know what that is. I do not know what that is, but it sounds interesting. We did our own awards. They were the reach arounds and let's say they're kind of almost the reverse of the trippies. Okay. So what we're saying is if you didn't get one, you've done well. Okay. So like what, I'm reaching around grabbing somebody's wallet or what am I doing here? Sure, sure, sure. Wallet, yeah. A couple of loose coins if you know what I mean. Well, then I take very kindly the lack of reach around award. That might be the best endorsement for us not doing it again next year, Marty. I just heard... Again, I want to go back to that honesty thing because I have yet to find anybody, and I'm looking. I really am. Somebody who can say a bad word about spooky pinball or the Emery family. I don't know what you've done to those people. They don't exist. The Point is, everyone roots for Spooky because, I assume because of that honesty, and everyone wants to see you do well. You're this little company in Wisconsin that takes care of the town in many ways, but just you put out great products and it's fun to watch the progress. And it's kind of the model, I think, that a lot of companies should be looking at if they want to get into this game, which is not easy and there's a lot of bumps, but you've done it right. You've done really well, Chuck. I appreciate that more than I can say. But, I mean, we definitely have our detractors. They're out there. And that's fine. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. And, you know, sometimes I kind of feel like the baby face in wrestling, like, you get to the point where people start to, you know, they want the bad guy to come out and kick your ass every once in a while. But our fan club members, our fans, or whatever you want to call them, I hate the word fans, it sounds goofy to me. They're incredibly loyal, they're incredibly kind. If somebody has an issue, they typically come straight to us because they know we'll take care of them. We answer our phones all day, every day. We answer our emails. We have multiple ways to get service help. And it's been a long, steady, slow growth to kind of build that trust, I think. I think and all the good that has come out of Alice Cooper and Total Nuclear and Rick and Morty is, like I said, I don't want to waste that. And that's what we're doing on the next game to make sure that everything is even more reliable, better built. I'm absolutely honored and thrilled to say that in the entire run of Alice Cooper, we had to replace one playfield. And in the entire run of Rick and Morty, we have replaced zero. I can't tell you how much time, money, and effort we spent into making that statement true. So, it's things like that that you build on and you also just keep improving everything around that playfield as well. The last few Final Round episodes we've been talking about manufacturing and what standards they consider acceptable. And you just gave the example of having to replace one playfield on Alice Cooper, none on Rick and Morty, no issues. Other companies are having some difficulties with playfield issues. And we haven't really heard what the kind of... I know it's a case-by-case basis. There's no general statement you can say. It has to be this for it to be flawed or whatever. What's the process for you when a customer says, I think there might be an issue with this? How does it work? And there are customers out there, not of Spooky, but of pinball in general, that are concerned that they're spending a lot of money on a product and they want some assurances that this product will work, there won't be any flaws in it, and such and such. Um, in, boy, that is a, uh, that's a tough one. It is, and I apologize because I can't think of a spooky example, so I'm asking, not exactly a manufacturer I want to ask, but it is a question of maybe a future spooky owner. Here, I'll defend all the manufacturers at once because, and it sounds like a cop-out, but it's really, really not. When I started in pinball and started dragging games home and stuff, they were all operated games. Very, very few people that had ever bought a new in box game and drug it home. And those playfields were, or the games in general, were pretty solid, but nothing was judged as minutely as it is today. Not a single thing. I mean, you look at like the edging on a Williams backbox, the Cadillac of the industry, so to speak, and they were just raw wood. They were rough. And, and playfields, you know, people can say they were indestructible back then and they must have been using more money and better. No, they weren't. Trust me, none of us are cutting corners, at least not in Spooky's case, to save a nickel in any way on a playfield. It is so much more expensive to have to replace something after the fact than it is to just get it right the first time. And all of us are honestly being held to a much higher standard because it's a home-driven collector's market. Any little bubble in a decal, any little chip in a playfield, any tiny little thing is seen as a detriment and this is going to cause me to lose value on my game and we get told this when it happens. And I understand it. I'm that guy too. I have a few new unboxed games and I'm fortunate to be able to even say that. I went several years without buying anything just because everything goes back to the company and it's been lucky enough the last couple years that I've rotated some of my older games And, you know, I have a Jersey Jack, I have a Guns N' Roses, I have a CGC Monster Bash, I have a Stern Elvira, you know, and I'd be lying if I said we didn't look at them all and kind of compare and see what they're doing better, what we're doing better. And, you know, there's things that it is a different ballgame now, and it's going to continue to be that way. So there's no point basically complaining about it as a manufacturer because this is your market and you either meet their standards or you probably are going to have issues. So, realistically, when somebody comes to us and they say, hey, look, this doesn't... You know, of course you try to calm their nerves and explain to them, you know, that this is either a natural piece of the wood doing this, or, you know, this is how you can fix it. But if it's something that really bothers you, we're going to take care of you. We have had maybe two games ever return in eight years. And we've always found a way to satisfy somebody, you know, if it's an electronic piece or a playfield. And, you know, we had some issues on TNA and we owned up to it and did everything we could. And we still do that. So, I mean, our warranty still goes for home use one year on everything in the game. And sometimes that's tough. It really is. You know, if a plastic gets shipped or something, we typically send you another one for free. But at the same time, it's what has allowed us to build that trust with our customers. And even if some, you know, in that instance, if something goes wrong, say an electronic part fails or something, a CPU, a battery dies. This is just weird stuff that happens that we really don't have any control over. We don't make the CPU. We don't make the battery. But a brand new one may have a dead battery two weeks after we send it out. This stuff has happened. customers are always going to be more accepting of your answers and willing to work with you to fix the situation if you're being honest and just doing everything you can in that regard to take care of them and you know that's i think that's a little bit of a trust factor that we have managed to build over the last eight years and and uh you know we'll continue to do so Charlie, I can't thank you enough for coming on the program because we kind of missed the podcast. I mean, you've gone silent on us for crying out loud, but I guess you've been a little busy too. So I know a lot of people were looking forward to you coming on the program and you certainly didn't disappoint. I'm looking forward to what comes out at the end of spring or maybe in summer. I know it's going to be another winter for Spooky. Well, thank you. I'm very, very excited for people to see what we're up to. We've got a few tricks up our sleeve. We certainly didn't skimp on anything that's going in the game. And I'm glad you missed us, Jeff. I appreciate you guys having me on. You don't have any silly questions to ask me? People usually ask me some weird obscure horror question that I have to try to answer on the spot, or something odd like that. I'll give you one. What's a horror movie that everybody loves that you don't? Umm... that's a tough one. Okay, uh... I enjoy the first Saw film, but probably not half as much as everyone else, and I don't think the 115 sequels needed to be made. You think? That's probably a good answer. You were saying before about spooky being like sci-fi and horror. Surely Event Horizon would make a great pin. Marty, is this like one of your favorites? Yeah. Okay. It's not one of mine. Well, there you go. You just answered the question. What is Event Horizon? That's not the one with Lou Gossett Jr., is it? Except Sam Neill in it. What's Event Horizon? It was a horror movie set in space. Yes. I haven't seen it in years, to be honest, but I didn't... it didn't thrill me the first time I saw it. I'll have to go back and watch it again. It's been a long time. Any other Australian actors in horror movies, Marty, you want to ask about? Well, Wolf Craig was a horror movie. Wonderful movie. There you go. I'm going to go back into some cool Aussie exploitation films, because I can do that. You can go back and watch Patrick or Outback or... Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've certainly got a very interesting take on cinematography, I'll tell you that. The movies that were being made in the 70s and 80s in Australia, the exploitation films, are absolutely marvelous. Yep. Yeah, because I was still very... Have you ever watched the documentary Not Quite Hollywood? No, I'm looking that up now. So look it up. I actually bought a copy. It's so entertaining. But it's literally about how the Australian government was helping fund all these exploitation films back in the 70s and 80s and they were just using it to make the most raunchy, wonderful, wild, weird stuff off the government's dime basically. Wow, okay. Yeah, like they refer to it as Ozploitation. Okay, I've never heard of it. Absolutely. It's a whole genre upon itself. Quentin Tarantino is a huge fan. Yeah. As am I. I think I've seen most of them in that documentary, so it's a blast. I have to talk to Marty every two weeks. I now have to watch a bunch of Australian films too to get caught up on this podcast. Come on, Charlie. I mean, I've done my own work, all right? I mean... Well, I'm lucky enough that our animator is from Adelaide, and he is as much into horror and science fiction as I am, So, him and I get along very, very well. David, right? Yep, yep. My next-door neighbor. Oh, wow. Really? I thought, why, why do I think he lived in Texas? He does, part-time. Okay. But he built a house right next to ours here in Benton, so. Alright, here's an obscure horror question from me. I'll give it my best. It's more of an opinion than anything else, than a question, but it is in the form of a question. What horror movie needs to be remade? What horror movie hasn't been remade? Event Horizon. I just love it. It's a horror movie in space. See, well, I don't know. It's tough to beat Alien for a horror movie in space. That's pretty top notch. When I was young, one of my favorite, and to me it was a horror movie, but they did remake it and I was so mad when they remade it. I was in love with the movie Fright Night when I was a kid. I just thought it was Chris Sarandon was a great vampire Roddy McDowell was spectacular It funny It great And then they remade it and it just didn do it for me Is there one out there that okay we could see this being done I actually gave David, my neighbor, a Fright Night poster for Christmas, an original. Framed it for him and everything. That was so nice. He loves that movie. I do too. A movie that needs... See, the problem is they keep remaking good movies. And, like, you don't need to do that. They need to grab movies that weren't great the first time but had a good premise and make it better. I don't know. Night of the Lepus. You know, the one with the giant bunny rabbits? That's a good one. That should be remade. I would like... If The Terror from Beyond Space was literally remade into Alien, the premise is identical. Uh, stuff like that, you know, some of that 50s stuff, John Carpenter taking the thing, which was an absolute classic, and at the time, everybody was like, leave it alone, it's good, and then he made something that everybody hated on the first day, but absolutely loves today, and it's a masterpiece. Stuff like that, go back and grab some of that stuff from the 40s and 50s, not, you know, the 70s and 80s, we all remember that stuff, we've all seen it. It's too fresh, in my opinion, and that's, I don't know. And the last thing, without giving any spoilers away, thumbs up, thumbs down, what did you think of the new Godzilla vs. King Kong? Ooh, I'm very proud to say that I have seen every Godzilla film released in the States, be it Toho or United States films, since 1972. And this was no exception, it was the first movie I saw in the theater in over a year. It was good. It was good. They broke a lot of stuff. They got together. I left there happy. You know, there were some implausible things in there that sci-fi nerds kind of lost their minds over, but I watched them fly backwards in, you know, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster and didn't question it then, so why would I question him drilling a hole to the center of the earth with his breath now? Spoiler alert, just for those who haven't seen it. Spoiler alert! That doesn't really affect the plot, but... I was trying to go back and watch Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and I couldn't find it anywhere so I gotta... The one with the... okay I can tell you what's on the poster. I think they were on the Twin Towers at the time. So that has to be, what, late 70s? That was the US released poster version of Godzilla vs. Megalon. Spoiler alert, they were never anywhere near the World Trade Center. I know! You know why they did it? King Kong. You know De Laurentiis King Kong did it. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla was done in twice in the 70s, twice in the 90s, and he also appears in a couple other films. So, Mechag has been around a long time, but I was very excited to see him in the new film. I didn't love the look of him, but it was good that they threw that in there as a nod to, like, the hardcore fans, and it served its purpose. It was a fun movie. Before you give any more spoiler alerts, we're going to say so long and thank you again for your honesty. Thank you for coming on this program. I appreciate you guys having me on and being so darn nice to me. No worries, man. Thanks very much. We'll speak to you probably in about a year's time. Whenever. I'm always available. Now that I'm podcast free, I have more time to talk. Okay. Well, maybe in a couple of months. Sure. So there you go, everybody. There was Charlie from Spooky Pinball. Jeff, what did we learn? He is too damn nice. And how nice is he? He couldn't even admit that Godzilla vs. Kong was a piece of shit. I watched it the other night. That is two hours of my life I will not get back. And I've done fuck all in 14 months. Okay, that does seem quite bad. I've heard mixed reviews about it too. I think if you're not a fan of the genre, you won't like it. If you're a fan of the genre, you'll enjoy it, but you won't necessarily love it. That's the consensus I'm getting. I've got to be careful when I'm talking to you because I told you how bad Wonder Woman 1984 was and you were like, I'm not watching it now. I still haven't seen it because of that. Alright, Godzilla vs. King Kong. I don't know why I was expecting more. I was hoping it would be more like the book. There is no book, I'm just... It's a leave your brain at home movie. And it's fine. It's just... Okay, here's the good thing. If it was just Godzilla fighting Kong, home run. Greatest movie of all time. It's the shit in between. You're like, just get to the fighting already. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Okay, so what you're saying is a long setup for a payoff that's not worth the investment. That's the great thing about being able to watch it at home is, you know, fast forward, fast forward. There he is. All right, let's slow down. Let's watch it. Yeah, okay. So I watched that two hour movie in, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes. Kind of like people listening to this podcast. Yeah. So I don't know if you know about Zack Taylor Snyder's Justice League or whatever it is. I saw it. You've seen it? Yep. This is a podcast for what, four and a half hours or something? Yep. Did you skip through any of that or did you watch all of the four and a half hours? It took me three days to watch it and I watched about an hour and a half and then another hour and I was saying to my son who had already watched it, I said, I don't know, does this thing get any good? He goes, trust me, it gets great and it did pay off in the end. It certainly was better than the original but four hours, that's a long time and some people say two hours for a podcast, that's a long time. But don't speed things up because we have important things to say, especially when it comes to our sponsor of the week. Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Doggycoin, Dodgecoin, I don't know. It's the way of the future, not just to exchange for goods and services, but for wise and wealthy investing. Who doesn't like making money? You think we'd pollute our podcast with any shitty sponsor that takes away from our quality content? Hells no! Then it's time to put your money where your mouth is and invest in the next best thing. Final Round Coin. I like the name. Sounds legit. But what if I still want tangible currency? Something that I can hold in my hands but still have the benefits of big gains with cryptocurrency. Final Round Coin does it all. Those other cryptocurrencies have the nerve to use coin in their title. There's no fucking coin with them. We give you an actual coin. You know that coin that ejects from a safe cracker? We have stolen, I mean we've acquired a few of those. How about old Papa tokens? Yup, converted to final round coin. Remember those old Petros in New York's Times Square? Who doesn't? What happened to those tokens? We've got them. Really, I used all mine, but, oh, you know what, there's also my personal favorite, Canadian quarters. So many final round coins to offer, and the time to buy is now. Look, we haven't figured out the details of trading or transferring. Do we have the technology? Do we have the security? No. We're just a couple of guys trying to get ahead of the game. Trust us. You mean, get rid of some old coins in our possession? Yes. Quiet. Buy your Final Round coins today. Email us with your name, address, e-transfer, and pin, and we'll take care of the rest. Marty, I don't know how many fans we have of Final Round, but I do know pretty much everyone that listens to this show, I believe, has a reach around some way, somehow? Yeah, I think you're about right. I mean, how many were there? 16 reach arounds, 16 fans, maybe a couple that we gave out even though they're not fans. So I think you're probably on the money there. Try to get them to become fans. That was kind of the key. But there are some people that even when they have their own podcast, even when they're on the Pinball Network, even when they're probably on more shows than anyone else, I think even more than Zach, if you think about it with the midweek show, with the correspondence, now here, they still need more. All of these are part of the Give It A Try reach around, and that's why we have a special guest from my home country of Canada. Craig Bobby joins us right now. Hello Craig. Hey, how you doing guys? Thanks so much for having me on. Is this going to be another episode where you are now going to gang up on me for how I speak English? It might be. You know, two Canadians against one Aussie. Nothing can go wrong there. We're all colonists. Let's just say that we've got that in common. Just we are a colony of convicts. I'm not sure... We're still mourning Prince Philip, I think is what we're all trying to say, right? Yeah. Yeah, we are. Yeah. Poor Philip. I'm not even sure the Queen knew he was still alive, honestly. Oh, come on. Too soon? Is it too soon for that one? It is. She watches the crown. I think it was paperbubbly saying it was, he was only two months away from getting a letter from his wife congratulating him on his 100th. Probably the last time she spoke to him. Yeah. Yeah. Too soon. Anybody else over the age of 95 we can make fun of before we get started? Yeah, exactly. Well, me, Jeff, your Klyce, too. I wish that I'd get a vaccine. Anyway, that's another side story. All right, Craig, we do know you from the midweek show. We know you're the Stern correspondent. How did you get to be the Stern correspondent? Well, you know, I was the only one who applied, funnily enough. I thought I was going to be last in line. Turns out I was the first and only. I'm a fan only, so yay for me. No, you know, back when they were doing Special Inlet, and that was one of the first podcasts I got listening to, and I really liked their format and I was trying to think of a way that I could participate in this hobby in some way, you know, beyond actually buying a machine or playing. And so I was, after listening to it for a few weeks and they were doing sort of an open call, I thought, well, what the hell, I'm just going to send them a thing and surely I'm not, they're not going to pick me, but I'll just send it in anyway. And at first I wasn't going to do it. I was like, nah, I'm not going to do this. And then my wife was like, no, you got to do it. And I was like, oh shit. Okay. And turns out, uh, you know, I was the only one that applied, so I got it. So, so sometimes it does pay to just show up, you know, Marty, we got to teach this guy on how to grease his own wheel. You know, you're the only one you say, you know, there were, I don't know how many people applied, but obviously I rose to the top. I was the best. They said, this guy's got something. Let's get them on. Well, you know, Canadians, we're brutally humble. We're like to a fault, I'd say. So, we're always playing ourselves down a little bit to the rest of the world. Is that actually true though? Because I know you do have a reputation for being very apologetic and very nice. That's a reputation. In my experience, I'm not saying the same thing. Sometimes it does skip a generation, the niceness, you know. So then obviously that's been translated to you doing the correspondence for the pinball show. How did the midweek show come about? Well, it was really two things. The first thing was that Ken Cromwell, of course, left to join Jersey Jack. So that was sort of a natural pause in everything as everyone sort of decided to do a little bit of a reset. I was a little bit more of a stickler on this than good old Zach is. Zach's a little more easy going as far as what we can do in terms of our correspondence. Ken was pretty much like, didn't want much more than a minute and a half, which I get, and that was about it. I started to feel that I had more things to say after a minute and a half than the format John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, Frank Chun regarding the And Zach was as well. So I thought, oh, what the hell, you know, I'll put an episode or two together and see how I like it. I was very nervous about the editing because I know you guys have talked about it on your show as well. The editing is the most brutal part for me. I enjoy doing it, but then when you're listening to yourself over and over again, oh, God, it just gets to be a bit much after a while. It's still tough. I have to, like, take it in chunks to make it manageable. But beyond that, once you get going on it, you know, I really enjoy the creative part, as I'm sure you guys do, In terms of being able to speak and write stuff and just kind of be able to do whatever you want with the platform, it's a lot of fun. So what is your... Session over. Yeah. Great answer, nice and succinct. I like that. So what is your history with pinball and do you have machines at home? I currently only have one machine which is the Avengers, Infinity Quest and Premium. And, you know, as I've been saying, it's actually nice to have one machine only. I mean, trust me, I'd have a basement full of these things if I could. So I often, you know, my mouth is salivating as I go onto Facebook and other social media and see the beautiful arcades that people have set up in their basement. But just having one title has really sort of caused me to focus and think, I'm only going to have one, so I better choose one that I'm going to like. So I force myself to really take my time and I've been really enjoying getting to know not only the game but the internal workings of the game. And I was particularly nervous at first about getting this thing open and getting inside this thing. I've done a few mods now, I've had to make a few repairs and I'm becoming much more comfortable getting under the hood of this thing. And as that keeps encouraging me and telling me, like, everything can be replaced in the thing. So don't be intimidated by breaking a plastic or doing something crazy to it. So I've been pleasantly surprised that it's held my attention and continues to do so. Was this your first new in box? Yes, so it was my first new in box after doing a lot of research and it's been a lot of fun. I'm really glad I chose the Avengers with what Keith Elwin's done on this game. It's been a lot of fun. I know you said before you're kind of a bit anxious. Was that what it was like as your first new in box to put that kind of money down? Were you sort of having doubts about, oh, God, is this going to be the machine for me? I'm only going to get one machine? Exactly. I was sweating buckets, you know, trying to think, am I going to like this thing? When I get it home, am I going to be, you know, the first time I turn it on, is it, you know, am I going to be too intimidated by it? I over-thought a lot of this, right? And at the end of the day, you know, I realized that the community is strong enough out there that I can, you know, if I get it home, get it set up, and I realize it's not for me, I can move it on without taking too big a hit on it. And but it's been the exact opposite. It's been a real thrill to have it. And, you know, interestingly, listening to you guys, too, you know, initially was really helpful just to get a little deeper into the hobby from that point of view, because I remember hearing your first episode where you guys were talking about, you know, encouraging everyone to go out and play in a tournament. And that's exactly what I did. So I had you to thank for part of this ongoing addiction. Now, Craig, I remember playing you and I think you talked about it once on your midweek show and even going back when you talked about picking Avengers, you hummed and hawed over it. Will it be Turtles? Will it be Avengers? And you settled on Avengers. But you went to a tournament and I remember seeing you in Scarborough, Ontario, Bluffs Pinball. I think it's one of two times we've met, the other time being the awarding of your reach around. But the first time I met you was a tournament and I don't even know if the Pinball Network was up and going then. I don't think it was. I think you were just doing the correspondence. That's right. You're exactly right. I knew you because I've been listening to you and Marty. And yes, it was the first time that we had met and you are now my pinball nemesis because you... I remember every single ball. First ball, I actually had you. I was like... What game? No fear? It was no fear. So I've told this story, so I won't bore everyone again, but I was so nervous at that tournament. I'd been to one tournament prior a few weeks earlier, but it was really a house tournament and it was only a handful of people. So it was my first kind of bigger tournament where there was... how many people were there, Jeff? Was it 50-ish? Can't remember. They're all a blur. It's so long ago. But I was extremely nervous and the first game of the tournament, who am I drawn with but Jeff Teolis. And there was two other people who were doing sort of four-player games. So I was very nervous. And then when I found out this was actually, you know, after I beat you on the first ball, and then I stood back, we were watching someone else play, and we started to sort of do a little small talk, and then you revealed to me that it was your, that it was actually a game that you had owned for many, many years. That's the way Jeff gets into your head, isn't it, Martin? Like, he tells you these things to throw you off your game. Yeah, he does. Here's the thing about No Fear. I see a lot of people play that game, and you have a choice of what skillshot you want, and you'll get it. You just pick which one you want. And I see people always go for award lock, award lock, and they think multiball is the be all and end all. Not in no fear, not in match play. So all I did was the super cross levels, I think it was. I can't remember what it's called. It's been a while since I've had that game. But basically, by the third ball, you're guaranteed to get payback time, which is $25 million a shot. So if you can go up the big left ramp and start doing some upper flipper loops, $25 million, $25 million, $25 million, I'll take that every day of the week. And I'm thinking, I got him. I got this guy, right? Nope. Well, that's tournament play for you right there, isn't it? And right there, once again, we have proven that the humble Canadian theory is all bullshit because it's not like I haven't bragged once or twice about a tournament victory here or there. I'm going to say I'm going to leave it at that. But Marty brought up a good point, too. He was talking about the games and the price of games. So I'm just curious to know when you were saying how it's such a big purchase for a new inbox. Interestingly, I've been looking at the market over the last couple of weeks, well, probably last couple of months, probably even a year since COVID happened. And in particular, the second hand market is going a little bit crazy. And what I've also noticed is the resale of new in-box machines is pretty crazy at the moment. People are putting $3,000 to $4,000 on a machine that they're just flipping. It's still in the box and they're reselling. What sort of effect does that have on you when you're thinking about a new in-box? Do you feel secure at least you're getting the retail price from the distributor? My rationale for getting a new in-box was exactly that. I started looking at the secondary market because initially I was like, I'm not putting, I'm not pointing up the money for a full thing. So I started looking at the secondary market and it was so high that I felt like I wasn't going to get a game that I was going to be happy with long term, as crazy as it sounds, even with a game that might be, you know, five to ten years old. Even some of the older titles that are 20 years old, the secondary market is extremely high. So I just thought, you know what, I might as well just go all in here and spend, you know, 30% more for a new in box title and get something right out of the box that's brand new, no one's played it, and I get all the benefits of all the great new designs and LCDs and the RGB lighting and don't have to deal with other people's headaches. So that all went into my rationale for getting it, absolutely. And, you know, since I've had this and I've sort of sat back and I've thought about the amount of money that I've got in it, compared to other hobbies and the amount of time that I'm spending on it, you know, the initial price tag is steep, don't get me wrong. But, you know, I haven't spent a dime on it since, well, a little bit here and there in a few little mods and stuff like that. But I've put on, you know, well over 1,600 plays on this thing over the last four months. And there's a lot of hours there that I've put in. The Yeah, when you look at your previous hobby, you mentioned that you buy a pinball machine, you can probably sell it for almost the entire cost, but your old hobby, you know, once that blow is gone, it's gone. I mean, that's, there's nothing to show for it. Well, an online porn masturbation, it's really, you know, it's not what it's cracked up to be. There's porn online now? I've been rewinding all these VHS tapes. Okay, I'll have to check this out. Hmm. But Marty does have a good point. It makes sense to buy a new game because of the value it will retain for the most part. You're probably overpaying for the older games, but the bigger picture is, and we've seen price increases across the board, and we know that parts are hard to come by, and we know COVID and this and that, I would assume the pinball companies are seeing the price of the older games go up and up justifies raising the prices of their new in box titles. Yeah, and they're not dummies either and they're in it to make a buck. And the other thing I noticed when I saw that tour of the Stern factory that Jack Danger did a while back, I was blown away by the amount of hands-on labor that went into this thing. And it started to make more sense to me once I saw the incredible number of steps that it took to put this thing together and the number of man hours that I'm sure it takes. You know, again, not to justify their, you know, the prices that they're charging these days, but there's a lot of manpower that goes into this. This is not something that is an automated, roll-off-the-line machine, and it's a complicated beast, and not to mention all the development time, the licensing. So, again, the sticker shock is high on it, but I just try to look at it in terms of the value that I'm getting within the hobby itself, In terms of the time I spend on talking to other people in the hobby, the podcasting, and my own personal time playing the game and enjoyment, to me it's worth it. But it is a lot, and so I can see that there is a ceiling there for folks, and you know, for some folks that ceiling is just a bit too high, which is too bad. It'd be nice if they were all thousand dollar machines and away we went, but we're not living in 1965 anymore, you know? Yeah, look, I think the other effect it has as well is I think it makes location play more appealing as well because as the new inbox has gone up, secondhand market is now absolutely crazy. So, and I've had this conversation with a number of people here that used to buy a lot of machines and they don't now because they just say, well, it's too expensive, I'd rather go on location. Now, here in Australia, we are all but back to normal. We don't even need to wear masks anymore. And obviously, the rollout of the vaccine is happening really slow, but not really necessary because we just don't have a lot of cases. So location play is really important. And it sort of brings up a point that I want to ask, I guess, both of you, because I just saw the Pinball Hall of Fame. It's just opened up. They just found a soft opening in their new location on the Strip. And I'm just sort of keen to know what people's thoughts are on what makes a good location and whether you've been to the old location of the Pinball Hall of Fame. It's definitely a destination to go to whether you're new in the hobby, whether you're a collector, whether you're a competitor, whether you've been in it for a while. It's good to see the variety and it looks like we're going to see a lot more with what they've got on the strip now. People will tell you, oh, you know, this game, that game doesn't work. What doesn't work? Well, there were a bunch that did work, and it was good to see all the different games. With a collection that huge, you're going to get that anywhere. It was a volunteer basis, too. Let's not forget that. I'm definitely looking forward to going to the Pinball Hall of Fame, the new one on the strip, and I agree with you, Marty, about location pinball. What I like in location pinball is the variety, the atmosphere. The most important thing for location pinball for me though is the games do have to work. They don't have to be pristine. They don't have to be mint. They don't have to be super clean. As long as they play and flip, I'm good with it. You know, the flippers don't have to be as strong as maybe they are at home. That's okay. As long as everything works, you can adjust. And again, I'm so envious of what's going on in Australia. I saw Ryan See's picture at Moondog and, I mean, there were just so many people there. The... Jesse Jay, by the way, came fourth in their tournament. I almost didn't know that. Well done. Our first tournament. Yeah, so going to location pinball is certainly a good way to get into this hobby. Yeah, I agree. I think that for me, playability of the machine is the most important. I don't care if it's dirty and it really hasn't been cleaned. As long as the flippers are strong enough, all the mechs work, the targets work, I'm happy with that. The thing that drives me mental is when machines aren't leveled. I would rather have a mech not working, but it be leveled. You know what I mean? And that's an easy fix, you're right. It's such an easy fix, but it just doesn't happen all that often. You know, the only thing that frustrates me about location play, the main thing, is not being able to hear the audio on these machines very well, typically, when it's busy and noisy. You know, but it really, for me, being on location, it's just being around friends and being around other people when you're at these locations. Jeff, what do you think about the variety of the games that you come across that you don't see there in your personal collection or see very often out in the wild? So I love going to different locations. I was really disappointed when, you know, one of the many disappointments, obviously, when COVID broke out, I was visiting Vegas for a while, almost yearly through different conventions and work opportunities. And the last time I was there, I actually put off going to the Hall of Fame because I was thinking, well, I'm just going to do it next time. I was a little tight for time, so I thought, okay, I'll do it next time. Of course, there was no next time because of COVID. So I am itching to get out there again and to visit their new location because I think it looks fantastic. And they're extremely brave to embark on that, given what the world has was entering. But I love location play and I miss it for all the reasons you guys have talked about in terms of just the atmosphere, the variety of games, being able to hang out with your friends. I can't wait to get back and appreciate these places even more the ones that make it after this time. Well there's also news of another big, and I mean big, pinball location. So this is the pinball museum in Banning where they have Arcade Expo and where INDISC, which is now what the pinball, opened. So there's rumours now that it might be moving to Palm Springs, which I think would be of a benefit Because what I've heard about where they're located in Banning, they're only allowed to open very sparingly, like I think twice a year, maybe once a month, if that. So I think for them to move to Palm Springs, maybe go to a more commercial location means, A, it's more accessible because Palm Springs is obviously bigger than Banning, but also it can be open a lot more. Oh I hope that true because I love the current Museum of Pinball in Banning no question about it I love INDISC and everything they do But if you can get to Palm Springs where there an airport where there a lot of other things to do I think that would be great and a lot more accessible But that a big undertaking You see how much that how many millions that going to cost to do Yeah, but right now, they can't really monetize what they've got at the moment. They can do Arcade Expo and they can do INDISC and I think one more event. I think they're open three times a year. They can't get their money back. So it's a bit of a money sink at the moment, whereas at least if they do invest in a commercial property that they can open whenever they want, they can start getting money back. That brings me up to a different point and I want both your opinions on this. When you go to location pinball, when you go to an arcade, there are usually two different types of arcades. There's the kind where you pay an hourly rate, play as much as you want. There's locations that Craig and I are used to in Toronto called Tilt that have this. Modern Pinball used to have that when they were open. There's the new one, High Score Pinball Arcade in New York State that does hourly rates. Or there's just the coin drop. For me, I like both. I think when I first started playing, I liked the hourly rates because you could play a A variety of different games, but you always had some patrons that were maybe hogging the machine for a while and you could never get on it. Yeah, I think it comes down to the difficulty of the machine. So, for example, if it was Sunshine Laundromat, I would prefer it to be an hourly fee because they are set up tough. There's no extra balls. There's no, well, maybe there's extra balls, but there's no free games. And so you burn through money, whereas that would be good as an hourly rate. But for me, and I would say for other people as well, so I'm not just being myself, I can last quite a long time on one credit. So I would rather have Coindrop in that case where machines are a bit easier. I like doing either the hourly or the pay one price play as much. And the only reason I say that is I like supporting the location, so I don't mind paying a little bit more in terms of per game. And I also just like relaxing once I'm in there. So I just like to, I just want to pay my whatever it is, 20 bucks, whatever they're charging to kind of play as much as you want and just have a beer and chill out and sort of consider that as part of the night out and kind of be done with it. Fair enough. The main thing, whatever your location does, whether it's hourly rate or coin drop, we certainly want to support these and it's nice to see in the States and in Australia, they're We're opening up again and we're a ways yet. Here in Ontario, Canada, we're talking about something you had to go through in Melbourne. We're looking at possible curfews now for 8 o'clock at night or 9 o'clock at night. So not a good time for location pinball here in Canada at the moment. Not fun. But here's the other thing. Here's a really smooth segue. Jeff, you ready for this? Sure. So if we can't go out and play, therefore we have to play at home. But what if you could play at home but still be connected to other people playing at home? That's impossible. How? Well, no, I say this because I recently streamed Guns N' Roses. All Guns N' Roses machines came with Scorebit pre-installed. And I didn't really know that until I got to the end of the game. And they said, right, now you can put your name up on Scorebit. I'm like, what? I know all about Scorebit, but I didn't realize it had been integrated with Guns N' Roses. And it is so much fun to be able to finish a game and then go to the scoreboard and see how your score competes with other people that you know and also the world. I think scorebit's fantastic. And yeah, that's standard for the Guns N' Roses machine from Jersey Jacksville. Exciting to see that partnership. And I doubt it's an exclusive partnership. I don't know that to be true. If I were Scorbit, I would kind of want to get it out there as much as possible for all machines. So I really don't know them. I don't want to speculate. But yeah, it's that connectivity is great. And we've heard and maybe Craig knows because he is the Stern insider. If Stern's close to that, because we've heard George Gomez talk about how they want to have that connectivity. And I would have thought it would have happened by now. Maybe they're close, but I'm surprised with COVID and everything that we haven't been able to get there. Even if it's something as simple as using scorebit. I thought going into COVID that they were super close to doing this. And then since then, I think these companies, as much as they're getting titles out right now, everyone, especially in the early days of COVID, where there were a lot of a lot of shutdowns in the US, these guys were just hanging on by the skin of their teeth and just trying to get games out the door. And I think a lot of stuff got sidelined and then they were swamped with just a sheer number of orders and they're just trying to keep up with the backlog. You think they were hanging by the skin of their teeth? I don't know about that. Well, I think early on, you know, again in the first few months, these guys were shut down a lot. Like, I remember when I ordered the Avengers back in the end of August or right around Labor Day. And I can remember like week in and week out biting my nails and I thought, John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Knapp Arcade, Bally Williams, Straight Down the Middle, Bally Williams, I sort of mentioned on a previous episode that I know somebody that is still waiting for their Avengers premium. So yeah, you're right, premium is done last. We're always the last to go. You know, we're always the last in line. First in, last out. But I do think some of these things got delayed because, you know, their attention got shifted. And I think initially it was, can we get to keep the factory open because we're being told we have to close? And then it was, can we just keep up with the sheer demand that the hobby is now placed upon us? Of course, no one's going out and they want to now focus and there's all this money sloshing around because no one's going on vacation, they're doing other stuff, and everyone's sort of focusing on their own personal entertainment. So, pinball has been the beneficiary of a crazy time in the world, you know, which has been fantastic. But it's kind of ironic, you know, that for so many decades it's been sort of on the ropes and it took a pandemic to propel it, you know, to its highest heights, really. Okay, Craig, people are starting to get to know you, whether it's here on Final Round, certainly on midweek show, definitely as the correspondents, occasionally shitting the bed at No Fear Pinball Machines. But we need to really know more about you. So it's time for you to give us two truths and a lie, and Marty and I will try to figure it out. And you can play along at home, too. Here's the truth. So you heard about my experience with Jeff in our first matchup at the first big tournament I played. In that tournament, although I did not win it, I placed very well. In fact, I placed 20th out of 75. Okay. Although Avengers was my first new in box pin, I actually did own another pin. It was actually a Gottlieb by the name of, I believe it was called Atlantis. Okay. Well, one of the reasons why, a big reason I purchased the Avengers Infinity Quest was because it was actually Little Flipper's favorite title at the time that was available from Stern. There's the three statements, two truths and a lie. Marty, do you want to take a guess? Let's summarize those. So, you placed 20th in the tournament out of 75. You used to own Atlantis by Gottlieb, and you picked Avengers because of Little Flipper. Those are the statements. Marty, what do you think? I'm going to go out and say that I think that you, the finishing 20th out of 70 people is the lie. I think the other two things are true. I'm gonna call your bullshit as well because I don't remember 75 people being at Bluffs. That was the flag. If you said 20th, I would have bought that, but 75 people, that would be like sardines in there. That would have started COVID. I'm gonna say... Oh, I think we got them. You guys are too good. I thought you could see the sweat pouring off me when I was... but we're not on video, so it's not... that's not it. And it made sense that little Flipper, your daughter, would love something like, probably even Turtles, but Avengers as well. Although, give her a few years, Iron Maiden, look out, and then you're in deep shit when your daughter starts getting into that. Exactly. Yes, and I did own Atlantis back in the day. It was actually my first pinball and believe it or not, I bought that, the thing didn't even have legs, or actually, or they were wooden legs and it was like crooked, it was not a good first use title. I think I sold it for like 200 bucks. I like that EM though because you shoot the two drop targets at the same time you get 5,000 points on the left hand side there's kind of a weird sling on the left side I find the Atlanta's a fun funny EM. It was funny because my first wife had given me that as a birthday present one year and it was right after I had seen I believe at the time Indiana Jones had just come out. We went to some bar, some pizza place, and there was the brand new Indiana Jones. And I was so wowed about this, and that's all I was talking about. I was, oh my god, I love this pinball, you know, I'd love to buy this pinball machine. But I think even back then, in the 90s, the thing was like, at the time, it was like five grand or something like that, which was, you know, an exorbitant amount of money. And so all I was talking about was this Indiana Jones thing. And so my wife decided she would surprise me for my birthday and found, you know, this I was looking at this old pinball machine at a garage sale and thought I would love it. And I can remember like, you know, ripping off the wrapping paper and I was just staring, I just stared at it like, why did you buy this hunk of shit? But it was a great game. I got it going, I fired it up and it was actually quite enduring. You know, there was no Indiana Jones, but it was still a lot of fun for what it was. Yeah, I hadn't seen this machine before. I'm looking at it now. It's got that sort of bagatelle section like Centigrade 37 and I think some other games that Gottlieb did at the time on the right hand side. It looks fun. There's a bagatelle? It's a very, you know, it's got that typical kind of late 60s artwork on it and... It's got the, what I like to call the waterfall on the right hand side where, you know, you try to hit the lit lights between the two lanes but near the end you've got to give it a bit of a nudge. Yeah, the bagatelle. Because...you call that a bagatelle? Yeah. A bagatelle is like a cavacombe, isn't it? Yeah, it's a similar sort of thing where it's sort of just dropping down and you can really really nudge it. Yeah, I thought Bagatelle was Italian for reach around. No, I think you'll find it's a French preface. Okay, I don't think Atlantis, definitely not Avengers, none of these games made the most overrated battle royale, but we are into our second bracket, the other field of 32, and I gotta tell you, that first round was unreal. It was tough picking some of these games, Marty. Absolutely. And we just literally, as we've been recorded, we have now just clicked over to round three of the second battle. The interesting thing was that there were a couple of real sort of interesting heads up machine versus machine. I just didn't know which way they would go. But would you like me to go through some results? I'd love it. So if I can think about some things that I thought were going to be really tough. Wizard of Oz versus Champion Pub. I thought, I didn't know which way that was going to go. Who do you think won that? Well, that's a perfect example of a game I didn't want to vote. Champion Pub is my favorite novelty game ever. It's just, it makes me laugh. I've always wanted to own it. I hear it's possibly a nightmare. But if that thing works, I get such a kick out of the game. I know it's simple. It's not exactly the greatest competitive game, but I love it. And then Wizard of Oz is such a trendsetter. It changed pinball with Jersey Jack coming on the scene. And I know people, oh, I don't like wide bodies. I don't know who won. I don't even remember who I voted, but I think I flipped a coin because I didn't want to pick either. I would say the fan favorite of Wizard of Oz had to have won that battle. I don't want to count out Champion Pub, you know, just for nostalgia reasons, but I think for all the reasons that Jeff mentioned in terms of its trend setting and it really was a game changer back in the day when that game came out, I got to think Wizard of Oz. We're not looking for winners. Yeah, it's overrated. It's which one do you think is more overrated? You're correct. It was actually Wizard of Oz that got through. So, it was relatively close. The next one I couldn't work out either way and they're radically different games. It was Tales of the Rabian Nights versus Munsters. And it was Tales of the Rabian Nights that got through just. I mean, that was fairly close. There were others that were pretty much a walk over. Oh, no pun intended, but Walking Dead versus No Good Gophers. No Good Gophers sailed through. And I guess it's probably because people look at Walking Dead and say, well, it may be overpriced or maybe whatever, but it is still a really good game. My favorite battle, and Ian Ian Harrower commented on this. He also felt the dilemma of, I have to pick one of these? This really hurts. It was Ghostbusters vs. Whirlwind. Two games he loves, two games he owns, and he's got to call one of his babies ugly. Who won that one? Okay, so the winner of Ghostbusters versus Whirlwind for what is considered more overrated was Ghostbusters and only three votes were the difference. Whirlwind's the first kind of game that gave us modes or that I really noticed about modes and, you know, it certainly set the bar. It had the incredible upper right flipper shot. Ghostbusters certainly looks great. The flipper gap and the flying off the left hand side, the rail jumps, those are the things that drive me nuts. I'm fine with the code. I think Dwight did a great job with the update, but to me Ghostbusters just reeks of overrated. My vote went for Whirlwind, just so you know. So really, so then it came to round two and these were, I would say most of the pairings here were close. There was, you know, Scared Stiff really was really probably the outlier here that was quite, it was more overrated than X-Men and the other one really was Big Bang Bar was significantly the clear winner. But the others were quite close. Wizard of Oz vs. Tales of the Arabian Nights. It was Tales of the Arabian Nights that got through this time. And Theatre of Magic vs. No Good Gophers. That was one I couldn't pick which way it would go. Who won that? No Good Gophers. Lawler's taking to shit-kicking in this Battle Royale, I've noticed. Yeah, he is. Bless him. Was there any Willy Wonka match-ups there along the way? We only included games that weren't being produced right now. We didn't want to crap on any games that they're trying to sell. Just give us a few years, we'll shit all over them. The other one that I thought I wouldn't know which way it would go is Simpsons Pinball Party vs. Tron. Geez, they're both great games, but I'm going to guess Simpsons won that because it's such a love-hate game. I know so many people that think it's the greatest, and I know others that get rid of this thing. It's two, stop and go, forget it. Simpsons had to have won that. Yeah, it did. It did by about five votes, so relatively close, but yeah, it was the winner. What other ones did we miss? Red and Ted, so Roadshow vs Elvira and the Party Monsters. Elvira just narrowly won that one. Scared Stiff vs X-Men. Scared Stiff won. Ghostbusters vs The Hobbit. Wow. I'd have to say The Hobbit. I mean, as much as I despise Ghostbusters, The Hobbit www.thevillemuk.com love you all And the last one of this round was Cactus Canyon vs Funhouse. Does Lawler take it in the teeth again? I would have voted Funhouse. I'd say for me, yeah, it would be Funhouse too. Yeah, I am not a huge fan of either. I think I picked Funhouse, but it was actually Cactus Canyon that got through. Wow. That's right. So, I mean, by the time this airs, this thing is probably going to be over, but the next round is Tales of the Arabian Nights versus Nocle Gophers. That's going to be a tough one. Elvira and the Party Monsters versus Thinson's Pinball Party. Again, I don't know which way that's going to go. Scared Stiff versus The Hobbit and Big Bang Bar versus Cactus Canyon. Interesting. We're recording this early. I think Big Bang Bar is going to do quite well on this battle royale if winning is the I think you're right. We do these things and other fun events on our Facebook page, which you should be joining. We're also on Twitter, Final Round Pin. We're on Instagram, Final Round Pinball. And you can always email us, finalroundpinball at gmail.com. And we did receive some interesting emails. They're always fun. We had a guest on episode 29, Todd McCulloch, great, wonderful NBA player. And David Lee wrote us. And Todd, if you're listening, I know you are. I'm just throwing this out there. Maybe Todd's not listening so you could just say you didn't hear it. Hi, Jeff and Martin. After listening to episode 29, a thought has been rattling around in my head. You guys know Todd McCulloch, and Todd is a pinhead and was an NBA player. I didn't know that. And Todd might know the right channels to get me in touch with current NBA players. Todd, if you could just go to your Rolodex and help David Lee out, that would be wonderful. IndieSite and estanka., parent company, Sports Clips at We Aaron When God Hats On The World! I just need you to get me any Steph Curry merchandise. So I did. So there you go. You're wrong yet again. I apologize. So you should. I apologize just like a true Canadian. Marty. The rest of this email goes on to say that maybe a miracle can happen. Who knows? But Steph Curry, if you're listening, reach out to us. David Lee would love to play you a game of pinball once everything is fine COVID-wise. So thanks, David, for writing in to us. Thanks, David. And we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. We have another email. This one came from Nick and I see Nick on a lot of the Twitch streams and chat. I think I even saw him on Melbourne Silverball just recently. Well, yeah, he actually has his own Twitch channel as well. It's Keeley, K-E-Y-L-E. Check him out. He is one of the nicest people I've ever met in pinball, easily. So, he was talking about, we were talking about rubbers as we often do and he was saying... Was Ryan on the show? Probably. So he was talking about the different types of rubbers. He said, this is from my experience, the default rubbers from Stern will be great for home use but you'll get grime, although a lot of it's carbon from coils, you'll get grime deposit. They absolutely won't last on location. In a busy arcade they'll snap within a week. They're actually not pure rubber, they have some kind of coating on them, you'll see they look shiny. They bounce and grip but sadly they won't last. So Titans are okay. They don't bounce like the real rubbers. They're 10-20% bouncier and can be really annoying when new. Over time they become less bouncy than real rubbers and suddenly okay. Once they're old they can make a live catch a little too easy. Mostly applies to black titans. So super bands, love them or hate them? I used to hate them. I'm actually not that much against them now since everyone has colored titans. Super bands are basically the same materials as your watch straps or shoe soles with various degrees of chemicals. It's the same stuff. They tend to overbounce low speed balls and deaden the bounce of high speed balls, which is why most people hate them. They can't wrap their brains around them. The worst of the super bands though is the grip and the amount of spin they create on the ball. Where the ball rolls down the flipper from an in lane feed, you can flip it off, your ball is spinning off like crazy. Add Mr. Sheen to the playfield and your machine makes no sense. Once again, as they get dirty... What? Add Charlie Sheen? What's Mr. Sheen? Is Mr. Sheen not a thing? Mr. Sheen is like a furniture polish type thing. Have you heard of that Craig? No. I thought you were talking about Charlie Sheen there for a minute. Yeah. Well once you add Charlie Sheen to your playfield, the machine makes no sense. Winning. He says, once again, as they get dirty, the spin isn't so bad anymore and the bounciness tends to average itself. Superbands on locations, if the machines aren't cleaned by maniacs, are okay. Operators like them because they last forever. All this of course is affected by the tightness of the rubbers and flippers. Freshly installed, they may not have stretched perfectly. That's fascinating to me. Yeah, my take on it is I would rather keep the default rubbers on and replace them when they break. That's actually, you know, because a couple of my rubbers, it's so weird saying, are starting to crack mostly on my Avengers. It's the upper third flipper because you typically you brick a lot of shots off that off the end of that flipper. And so I've developed a couple of nice cracks in that upper flipper rubber. And so I'm thinking the same thing. I'm just going to get, you know, factory rubbers again, just to keep the same feel of the game, I guess. But it is amazing how many people buy new in box games and then change so many different things on the games. We've heard Bruce Nightingale from Slam Tilt talk about getting a new game. And I think one of the first things he does is change the coil stops, rubbers. I mean, we're not even talking about just modding up games. We're talking about putting on maybe it's carbon based balls. Yeah, a lot of people do those. I think that there's varying degrees of quality in new machines. The balls I received when I bought my Guardians, I still have them. They're not in my game, but if you look at it, it looks like a golf ball because of how many divots there are. I had never seen that before, but I know because there's a magnet in the orb, multiball, you can only put in certain balls if they have magnets in the game, and obviously I think it's the carbon-based ones. So it'd be nice to be able to plug and play without having to switch a lot of these things, but if you're going to play a lot of it, probably switching them out is a good idea. Well thank you Nick for that email. Ben Madison wrote, you were talking about Bond, James Bond. I think the movies would be modes and you would have sub modes to work with for each villain. Then spend the mode playing cards or have a card theme area in the table. There's a lot you could do and I think Ben would be a fan like I would of a James Bond pinball machine. So thank you again. You can write to us at finalroundpinball at gmail.com. Craig thank you very much for joining us. It's been good to get to know you and we love hearing you on the midweek show with the correspondence. Do you guys have like a battle between the correspondence? Like are you better than Dr. John or do you like shit all over Matt or? Dennis likes to pit us against each other. I think he's trying to create a little bit of an internal rivalry, you know, so we've ganged up on Dr. John quite often because, you know, the Aussies, they're an easy target, let's face it, right? Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. Yeah, and what is he? Just a surgeon. Exactly. What's he ever done? What's he ever done? But no, the guys are a ton of fun. It's the reason why I've continued to do the correspondence segment because these guys are fantastic and they each all have such great personalities and it's just a ton of fun being a part of that. We enjoy what you do. Thank you for your news pieces. Thank you for the midweek show and thanks for supporting Final Round. I'm glad you've got your reach around and it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Hey, it was a pleasure to be here, guys. I really appreciate it and I can't wait to enjoy this reach around for years to come. Timeless. Absolutely timeless. Take care, buddy. Thanks, guys. Thanks, bud. I think that's enough for one day and one week, or I guess really two weeks of Fortnite, if you will. I still just can't understand that Fortnite is just not a regular thing. It really isn't. It'd be like people going around saying score. How old are you? I'm two and a half score. Yeah, okay, so you're saying that it's old fashioned or it's never been used? It's just not in this part of the world. Is it all the time in Australia? All the time. Yeah, and how's that working for you? Oh well, another shot at the Aussies. Well done. You know I love that country of yours, don't you? Yes, I know where we're headed with this and let's move away, back up the truck, beep, beep, we're not going there, I'm not getting you anywhere near close. You have an obligation to our fan that you don't talk about anything related to something that happened in Australia. Just walk away. I am not going to say a word. Trust me. I want to tell you my origins of loving Australia. It has zero to do with pinball. It has to do with my honeymoon and being on a Antonio Cruz. I think there were 2100 people on the Antonio Cruz, 700 of them Australians. And boy, did they have a good time and I had a good time. We all had a good time. Made friends for life. And then of course through pinball and yourself and Ryan Singh and others that I've met, Dr. John, Stacy Borg, all these good blokes. There's something about it. I don't know whether it's the Canadian-Australian Commonwealth connection that we talked about earlier, but it's just, it's a good time. And especially with how responsible your country has been for this pandemic, it just makes it all that better. So anyway, I enjoy these little chats every two weeks. It brings me a little closer to what I like to call the way it was. You know, the other side of this pandemic, if you will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We are kind of on that side now, really. As we said before, we don't even need to have masks at all now. So it really is back to normality for us. Coming up on a future Pinball Profile, I'll tell you right now, I talked to Danielle and David Peck. So they're coming on. And they're in New Zealand, not too far from you. Yes. Those Kiwis don't even know what the pandemic is. No, they, because they went into hard lockdown before anybody did. And their Ryan Policky right from the outset was to eradicate the virus upfront and it worked. Ah, someday we'll get there soon. Yeah. But we'll be back here in two weeks. Marty, have yourself a great one. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. And thanks everybody for listening. Speak soon.