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#112 Spirit of 76 Grand Prix - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 26m·analyzed·Jan 30, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Personal updates, pinball repairs, and oyster farm adventure.

Summary

George and Dave discuss personal updates, pinball machine repairs and restoration work, customer service challenges, and a visit to an oyster farm. They cover sound board identification issues, the benefits of modern replacement boards, Firepower machine repair, and anecdotes about their lives and neighborhood. The episode ends with setup for discussing a Spirit of 76 machine.

Key Claims

  • Grant completed a brand-new playfield restoration on a Xenon machine in under two weeks while working 13-hour shifts

    high confidence · George and Dave discussing Grant's restoration work; Grant confirmed he doesn't sleep much and works long hours

  • Disney's Steamboat Willie is now in the public domain

    high confidence · George states this directly; Dave was not previously aware of it

  • Andrew's combo boards for Williams games support System 3 through System 7, while Rotten Dog boards only support System 3 through System 6

    high confidence · George explaining his large board purchase; specific technical comparison provided

  • George ordered 10 combo boards from Andrew for a multiple-thousand-dollar bulk order

    high confidence · George directly states this purchase decision based on counting his Williams games and customer games

  • John Jolly's oyster farm is located in Dennisport and requires driving through water and sand to access depending on tides

    high confidence · George describes visiting the farm with John, including GPS verification and photos from inside the truck

  • John Jolly trades in his vehicles every two years because salt water and sand damage ruins transmissions and brakes

    high confidence · John explains why he turns in trucks frequently; George observes these vehicles are then resold to unsuspecting buyers

  • The World Cup Soccer machine George was going to support had magnetic ball issues that persisted even with non-magnetized balls

    high confidence · George explains declining the job because the game 'has a magnet' and magnetizes balls, making it unreliable

  • George confused Nick Baldridge (who works with Multimorphic on games like Ranger in the Ruins and Silver Falls) with the curator of the Roanoke Pinball Museum in the previous episode

    high confidence · George apologizes for the confusion; clarifies both Nicks' identities and their respective roles

Notable Quotes

  • “He says, well, I don't sleep much. He works all these long, what, 13-hour shifts, and then come home, can't sleep, so he just works on the game.”

    George @ ~15:00 — Illustrates Grant's dedication to rapid restoration work and unusual sleep patterns

  • “I have it. and for $10 I can replace everything on it. You can try. I've tried in the past. I've got nothing to lose, and I don't mind doing it.”

    George @ ~28:00 — Shows George's willingness to invest time in cheap repairs despite Dave's advice to buy new boards

  • “Your time's valuable. I got all the time in the world.”

    Dave @ ~30:00 — Contrasts the two hosts' approaches to cost-benefit analysis on repairs

  • “I feel like I'm at an airport with a bunch of airplanes ready to take off, and they can't take off yet because of bad weather, but they're all backing up on the tarmac.”

    George @ ~35:00 — Vivid description of George's backlog of customer games waiting for pickup or delivery

  • “Now it's done. Where the frick are you?”

    George @ ~48:00 — George expressing frustration at Spirit of 76 customer who pressured for quick completion then went silent

  • “I'm down here, I put a board in, boom, the game fired up without me doing anything else to the game. It started, he goes, wow, okay, I guess I'm keeping this game now.”

    George @ ~58:00 — Demonstrates the effectiveness of Andrew's replacement boards; John Jolly changed his mind about scrapping Firepower

  • “He's driving through all this stuff, and he said the reason why he turns these cars in so quick because doing what he does wrecks the transmissions, wrecks these cars.”

    George @ ~75:00 — Explains the operational cost of running an oyster farm via salt water and sand exposure

  • “That's like buying a Hurricane Sandy or, you know, a hurricane water vehicle. You got to go fast.”

Entities

GeorgepersonDavepersonGrantpersonNick BaldridgepersonJohn JollypersonAndrewpersonNick SchnellpersonDave MatrandopersonWeebly Barackperson

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Grant completed brand-new Xenon playfield restoration in under 2 weeks while working long shifts; employed linear flipper mechs as temporary solution pending replacement with better parts

    high · George and Dave discuss Grant's work; Grant confirmed 30-40 hours into restoration with $500 in parts; linear flipper justification: 'I had them on a shelf, they're brand new, I'll swap to better stuff when they fail'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Andrew's combo boards now support Williams System 3 through System 7, extending beyond Rotten Dog's System 3-6 capability; George ordered 10 units in bulk

    high · George explicitly states technical spec difference; notes System 7 games like Black Knight and Solar Fire are covered; large order placed due to system compatibility across own and customer collection

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Disney's Steamboat Willie entered public domain; George speculates about pinball potential given recognizable IP and zero licensing costs

    high · George directly states Steamboat Willie is now part of public domain; notes it's 'free' and 'recognizable'; mentions horror movie adaptation 'Mickey's Mousetrap' already in development

  • ?

    product_concern: World Cup Soccer pinball machine exhibits persistent magnetic ball contamination issue; even non-magnetized balls become magnetized during play, indicating internal magnet problem

    high · George declines customer support job citing: 'This game has a magnet...magnetizes the balls. Even when I put non-magnetized balls in the game, it still would magnetize the balls'; cites reliability concerns as reason to decline support contract

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.438

0:00
🎵 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave. Hello, Dave, and Happy New Year. Hello there, George. Happy 2024. 24 is my favorite number, so good things are coming this year, I think.
0:46
Okay. Seems weird saying Happy New Year late in the month, but... We haven't spoken, I don't think, since our last broadcast, have we? We've communicated, but we have not talked to each other. True, yeah. So, with that said, we've got to go on the way back, Machine, last episode. What happened with taking the money with the app on the World Cup soccer? What was the conclusion of that story? We didn't go. We kind of stopped.
1:27
So, situation. So, you stopped, or they ghosted you, or a little bit of both? No, a little bit of ghost from their side, but then they came back into the picture, and then I kept thinking about it, and something in my gut was saying, no, run away, run away, this is going to be just not a good situation. And on top of that, I get my buddy, Tony, in Connecticut.
1:57
He's expressed interest in the game, as well as my other customer down the Cape, expressed interest in the game. So a lot easier transactions, no rigmarole, no, you know. Right. No reinventing the wheel. Yeah, none of that. So I want an easy transaction. I don't want any lingering, you know, stuff hanging on. So I basically told the guy, I said, listen, I'm just not comfortable doing that and trying to support this device. You know, I know you used it before. You'd be calling me up for problems, blah, blah, blah. And I said, on top of that, you know, on top of that, the game is just not as reliable as I thought it was, which is true. This game has a tendency to get magnetic balls. It magnetizes the balls. And even when I put non-magnetized balls in the game, it still would magnetize the balls. So, uh... How does, how does, how does that happen? Well, this stupid game has, has, has a magnet. Wait a second. I, I, I want to, I want to just ask the question. You didn't conclude the conversation with, most people wouldn't do this, you cheapskate. No, I didn't. I, I inferred it slightly, but I did not come out and blatantly... Look, I had a couple of people say I liked your directness in the last episode, and I was a little disappointed, audience. No, not the people that are listening now, but the people who didn't listen that are listening now. I thought it was an okay episode. It wasn't our best, and I couldn't come up with a creative title, and I've learned that that's the key. You've got to have a creative title. A creative title and also a nice icon image to go with it. yeah our account image sucks but I'm not an artist and I'm not going to undertake that thing so until you come up with something it is what it is or yeah I just didn't do it I was lazy it was the end of the month it was the dog ate my notes I don't know dog ate your homework right no he's here he's back he's like a bed rash he's back right you're my son and family is out gallivanting in the wilds of West Virginia skiing. We're left here in actually nice weather. It's 60 degrees out today. After last week, it was 10.

Dave @ ~85:00 — Humorous comparison of buying vehicles previously used in harsh environments

Maureen
person
Tonyperson
The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
Multimorphiccompany
Rotten Dog Amusementscompany
World Cup Soccergame
Xenongame
Firepowergame
Spirit of 76game
Steamboat Williegame
Addams Family (Malden)game

operational_signal: Spirit of 76 customer pressured George for rapid completion, then became unresponsive after completion; customer currently in Paris with no communication on pickup; George's backlog now includes 3+ games awaiting customer pickup/delivery

high · George describes customer 'on me' for quick turnaround; George prioritized work to get game done; now 'getting radio silence'; George metaphor: 'airplanes on tarmac, can't take off due to bad weather'

  • ?

    product_launch: Andrew's replacement boards now enable System 7 machine functionality (Black Knight, Solar Fire) that previously required expensive original components or were unsupported

    high · George notes System 7 coverage as major advantage over previous solutions; planned to support multiple System 7 games from own and customer collections with new boards

  • ?

    restoration_signal: George investigating AS-2518-32 and AS-2518-50 sound board variants with conflicting specifications; boards labeled identically despite different potentiometer counts; uncertainty about which games use which variant

    medium · George unable to definitively determine board variant designation; both labeled AS-2518-32 despite one having 3 potentiometers (pitch + echo + volume) vs standard 2; Weebly Barack's jumper-based solution also unclear on differentiation

  • ?

    restoration_signal: George discovered potential botched circuit trace on Supersonic sound board during investigation; issue may require professional repair or board replacement

    medium · George states: 'I looked at one of the traits...somebody botched one of the traces'; Dave advises against investing time in repair given cost of new boards

  • ?

    venue_signal: John Jolly operates oyster farm in Dennisport requiring amphibious vehicle access through salt water; tidal-dependent operational window; vehicle wear (transmission/brake damage) forces 2-year trade-in cycles

    high · George visits farm, documents GPS coordinates and photos; John explains 8 feet of water at high tide over oyster beds; vehicles traded every 2 years due to salt/sand damage; used vehicles resold to unsuspecting buyers

  • $

    market_signal: Fleet vehicles with harsh operational history (salt water, sand exposure) are resold through dealerships at reduced prices without buyer disclosure of damage history

    medium · George observes John's vehicle trade-in practice; notes vehicles 'just take them in and sell them to someone poor and suspecting'; references comparison to Hurricane Sandy vehicles; notes trucks remain in demand despite hidden damage

    • 4:19
    Yeah, it's like 48 here, but it feels like 60. I can go outside right now and work on a plate filled up in a deck. I'd have no problem working all day outside right now. Is Mother Nature, like, fumbling with a potentiometer and it's not working right? No, this kind of thing happens once in a while. This is like a preview of spring. Then we're going to go plunge back into winter. But this is like a little teaser. Mother Nature gives a little teaser ahead of time to what's coming. Kind of like the stock market in elections. Same thing. Oh, no, we're not going there. We're not going there. Stay clear. So I need to apologize to you.
    4:54
    You do? Okay. You don't even know what I'm going to apologize for. Go ahead. I'll take one. There's so many. You're going to tell me? I want to hear that. In our last episode, you know, clean up on aisle seven, I confused Nick Baldridge. Yeah, I remember that one. With the owner of the Roanoke Pinball Museum, Nick with a C, N-I-C, I think it's pronounced Schnell. He's the executive director of the Roanoke Pinball Museum. And that is the person that you gave advice regarding the Knight Rider. Right. And again, I had people comment and say, I liked your directness. So, again, I know we're a podcast. We're supposed to entertain, theater of the mind. But, you know, sometimes you just got to go right to the end and say, this is it. Here's the bottom line.
    5:53
    Right. I like dancing and shucking and jiving. Yeah, we'll get to that in a few minutes. So, my apologies to Nick for messing Dave up, but there is another Nick. There's the Nick Baldrige, who owns, oh, what the hell is the name of the company? I don't remember. No, he works, he does games for Multimorphic.
    6:22
    And what the hell is the name of, oh, here it is, for amusementonlygames.com. He's done stuff like Ranger in the Ruins and Silver Falls. But I did meet this guy in Houston. That was the one part of the story I did tell correctly. So my apologies to the Knicks, both of Roanoke. It was, you know, hey, I thought I had something good, and I managed to mess that up as well.
    6:49
    Sorry. Sorry, Dave. So you kind of nicked the conversations and so forth, I was trying to say. You nicked things. I put things back in good Nick.
    7:01
    Well, speaking of Nick, here's Nick right here. You know who Nick is? I need to get a bell. Does that freaking thing work? Which one? The bell. Yeah. You didn't even ring in the new year. What's wrong with you? I need to get the bell.
    7:17
    Hold on, here comes Nick. Come in, Nick. He's ready for anything. He's... Nick Danger, third eye. I want to order a pizza to go and no anchovies. No anchovies? You've got the wrong man. I spell my name, Danger. What?
    7:34
    Okay, there you go. How's that, George? Did you have that prepared? No, I just thought of the top of my head.
    7:43
    Very good. Thank you. Very good. And where did you have found that clip from? That is from Fireside Theater. Okay.
    7:55
    who knows that. I wonder who, actually, people write in, if you guys knew what that clip was from, I'm interested in, because this, our audience should know Fireside Theater, because that was kind of, anybody that partook in Smoking the Smokables back in the 70s or whatever would probably put an album on, it was called a reality album, and just really whacked out comedy for stoners.
    8:21
    Fireside Theater. Okay. You heard that stuff too or no? I heard of Fire Time Theater, but no, I have not listened to those.
    8:31
    You know the one that I like is That's Not Funny, That's Sick by National Lampoon. So that's the album that we listen to. How's that? And were you compromised, would you say? Let's just say I was in college. Is that good enough? Okay. In college. I get it. And I bet there's a lot of certain things going on, like this right here. Things that you can't play on the podcast any longer if you do.
    9:07
    You stepped on my lines. That's okay. That's all right. What did I do wrong? Oh, hold on, hold on. I'll bring it back to you. No, that's not it. Son of a gun. Oh, well.
    9:22
    Jane Hunter stopped this crazy thing. Oh, here he is. There. What are you people? On film? There you go. Mr. Hand. Oh, Mr. Hand. I just watched that again.
    9:39
    Yes. Yeah. Ray Walston. Awesome. Awesome, awesome character in that movie. My Favorite Martian. Yeah, absolutely. Bill Bixby. We're, uh... Bill Bixby? I don't know if you're too young if we're going back down the nostalgia TV road.
    10:01
    Do you remember the cartoon McGilligurrilla? I do, and I'd like to forget it. You didn't like that one, huh? I didn't like Hanna-Barbera. Tree rock, tree rock, tree rock, tree rock, tree rock in the background. It was lazy. Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers had way better... Oh, you're saying the background art was repetitive? Yeah, all the time. Tree Rock, Tree Rock, Tree Rock, Tree Rock. All the Hanabarra stuff is the same freaking running thing. You look at Warner Brothers, way more attention to detail.
    10:32
    Okay. But I will say I did like Hanabarra sci-fi stuff from the late 60s, like Herculoids and Space Ghost and that kind of stuff. Really cool sound effects.
    10:48
    Nice explosion work with those stuff. So their sci-fi stuff was great. Their attempted comedy, not so good.
    10:56
    Since you've brought up comedy, cartoons, etc., tell me what you think of this. I was going to bring this up later, but it's a good segue.
    11:11
    I'm sure you've heard that Disney no longer owns the rights to Steamboat Willie. that is now part of the public domain.
    11:23
    I have not heard about that. You know the cartoon I wrote, right? Yeah, Mickey Mouse. The first episode of Mickey Mouse. Right. And Mickey Mouse has morphed. Mickey Mouse does not look like Steamboat Willie. Right.
    11:39
    Everybody talks about, you know, recognizable themes for pinball. Steamboat Willie? That's going to sell big time. I'm just asking. It's free. I mean, it's part of the public domain. It's recognizable.
    11:56
    Just saying. Who's the audience? Someone in a nursing home? I don't know. They're probably all dead. Exactly. Or on their way out.
    12:05
    I'm just saying. It's recognizable. You knew what it was right away. It wasn't like I had to explain who it was. Yeah, because I'm a cartoon guy. I like cartoons. I've seen all this stuff over the years. Me too, and that's kind of why I mentioned it. But somebody has already gone to the movie genre of horror with this particular character. I like that. That's good, because that's an evil mouse. Mickey Mouse is evil, so that goes great. So the name of the movie, coming to a theater or a small screen near you, Mickey's Mousetrap. That's very appropriate. I'd watch that.
    12:51
    Okay, you tell me how it is when it comes out. Okay. What else did I want to talk about? We got the world cup there. I don't know if you want to do that.
    13:06
    Let's talk about our friend Grant for a minute. All right. So last we left Australia, I explained that I got a picture that you did not get of a wrapped pinball machine. And I believe we both were trying to guess what was under the wrapping paper.
    13:28
    And why am I getting all this stuff on my screen? You still there? I'm still there. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Is that on Zoom or was it on yours? Yeah, some kind of Zoom. Zoom just broadcast a bunch of settings and crap and then it went away. I don't know. Anyway, doesn't matter. It's gone. Okay. Um, what was I saying?
    13:52
    Uh, you were saying... Oh, Grant with the rap pinball machine for Christmas. And we both guessed, and I think I guessed Rolling Stones. I don't remember what you guessed, but it doesn't matter.
    14:04
    He ended up getting a Xenon. Yeah. That's not the story. He's a madman. He turned that thing around in, like, under two weeks. Brand-new play field. You know, he loaded up the, you know, truck and did the deed. Yeah, we asked him about it. He says, well, I don't sleep much. He works all these long, what, 13-hour shifts, and then come home, can't sleep, so he just works on the game. It's like, I don't know, how old are you, 20? How can you do that? I don't know how you could do that. until I got my machine for sleeping, the nurse looked at me during the sleep study and said,
    14:51
    why aren't you either dead tired or dead? I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, you hardly sleep. You don't get any deep sleep. How are you even functioning? So I say the same to them. I don't know how you can do it on a couple hours, but some people do. not me so when you had your thing just the medical thing here so before you had the the machine thing you have now when you woke up you didn't really feel you totally refreshed you felt a little bit no no it's night and day those days and said you'll hate it you know you got the mask on and all that but you will you will say how the hell did i do this for so long and it was probably of years and years, and it's not good for your health either. Right.
    15:38
    Yeah, I don't like it, but, you know, once you fall asleep, it's the, you know, when you're in and out of sleep, you know, the last two hours, that's where it can sometimes be weird. But other than that, it's okay. Yeah, so you get up nice and refreshed and like a springtime bunny there, getting up and. I don't know about a springtime bunny, but I feel better. So, anyway, so we closed the loop with Brent. he's put like 30 or 40 hours into brand new CPR play field I don't know what he said $500 worth of parts so who knows what the hell he bought but it's probably everything but you had a bone to pick with him I did I saw something on I saw something that said Grant what is with these linear flipper mechs you're putting in this brand new game you're trying to make a nice game why'd you put those in there he had a good answer he said well I had them on a shelf They're brand new. I figure I should use them since they're new. And I'll put them in, and when they fail, I'll swap it over to the better stuff. It's like, okay, fair enough. I agree with that. Fair enough. So we're talking about parts.
    16:50
    I went through some more boxes. I think I talked about that in the last show, going through 40-some-odd boxes looking for parts. And what did I come across? and I need some help from you because I really tried to research this and I never got the definitive answer. I found a sound board that was labeled supersonic. Okay. And I'm like, okay, but I have a board in the supersonic, but it wasn't working right. That intro song that you know, bleep-de-beep-bloop-bloop, whatever it is, was really faint. So I'm like, oh, capacitors, you know, it's a 40-plus-year-old game. You know, it probably hasn't been redone. And sure enough, that's the case. But there was one thing that was different than the one I picked out of the box that said supersonic. It had the extra potentiometer.
    17:55
    Do you know what I speak of? Yeah, it's supposed to have two potentiometers, one for echo and one for volume. Right, but this one that I had in Supersonic that worked, it was all, like I said, it was all original. It also had a pitch, a third potentiometer. Oh, for pitch. Okay, nice. Okay, well, here's the question.
    18:22
    I couldn't figure this out either. There's two different board numbers. There's an AS-2518-32 and a Dash-50. Yep. So the one with the three pots with the extra pitch, what games does that go in? What's the board labeled, 32 or 50?
    18:44
    That's the crazy part about it. They're both labeled 32. Okay, so the 32 was probably the first generation of... The Lost World. Would that be the first one? Yeah, Lost World, you know, all that early stuff. 8-Ball. Not 8-Ball, it's a China game.
    19:04
    What else is early? Supersonic, maybe? No, it doesn't work. Again, I have to repair it because the intro song didn't work right. I haven't repaired it. And I'm not doing it, although I looked at one of the traits. It looks like somebody botched one of the traces. That's another question I have. But let's focus on this one first. You mean Paragon? Maybe Paragon? No, Paragon uses it too. I have that game. Here's the even weirder thing. Now I'm going to introduce your good friend, Weebly or Barack and I. Yeah, yep. So he makes a board. Right. That's got jumpers that goes in every game you just mentioned and more. Yep. Right. But, again, he differentiates it by the jumpers in two different ways, but it's not discernible which is which. because the games I had appeared on both. I'm like, what the? I couldn't figure it out. I need to repair the board and I'll get back to you. I thought you would know off the top of your head, hey, that one with the pitch goes in X game and Y game and Z game. I will say that sound board, I wouldn't waste too much time repairing that board. I'd just get Andrew's board. You know what I mean? Well, again, I have it. and for $10 I can replace everything on it. You can try. I've tried in the past. I've got nothing to lose, and I don't mind doing it. Again, remember, I'm the guy who has done all kinds of wacky crap with, you know, Molex connectors and rectifier boards and stuff that you shouldn't do, but, you know. Well, I'm just saying, listen to a voice of experience. I've been working these. Oh, no, no, no. If I had the game and I didn't have a board. all my games work now. The game that I put the box that I found the supersonic board in that was all redone. New pots, new caps. I don't even remember doing it. But I must have done it at some point in time in the last 20 years. I've wasted my time recapping those old boards and then try them out and they still suck.
    21:10
    I've tried some other stuff and after a while it's like you know what? Wasting too much time. I'm just going to buy a freaking board. Screw it. Right, but your time's valuable. I got all the time in the world. All right. So for me, you know, for a couple of bucks and I might learn something, if it doesn't work, just throw it in the pile with all the other crap. Yep. Makes sense. And speaking of piles of crap, I really wish I could bring my piles of crap to Allentown and I'm going to lament again. I got pissed. I'm like, I can't bring all my crap and spend $200 on a booth. It's not worth it. Why don't you pre-sell it? And I've got stuff that people would want. Why don't you pre-sell? The whole private book up thing. I just want to show up, put a table down, and say, I'm going to be here for an hour. If you want to see my crap, I'm here for an hour. If not, I'm done.
    22:01
    Well, you know what you can do? You can always glom on to someone else who does have a booth and say, hey, I'll give X towards your booth. Can I stay in your booth with you for a little bit? And you can just kind of sublet the apartment kind of thing. You can kind of, like Dave Matrando.
    22:16
    He usually got a big spot, and he has a whole bunch of stuff on his huge table in the back there. He might, you know, throw him a little bit of cash or whatever, and he'll probably. I'd give him a piece of the action. I mean, that's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. A piece of the action. Give a big, 10%. Right, right. Yeah, he might be up for that. I'm not going to, you know. We're talking nickels and dimes. We're not talking hundreds and thousands. Right. All right. So something like that. So basically, you can even have him even just sell your stuff, and he gets to keep whatever out of your stuff, you know. Right. I just, you know, I just look at it and just say, it's a shame for sitting in the box. It's just taking up room, and I'm not going to ever use it. It's like you just said. When it comes to MPUs and solenoid driver boards now, I take the old one out, I buy one, and I put the new one in. We're not going to go down that discussion again of who's who and what's best. It's just like you, times valuable. Sometimes it's just worth the buck up and spend $100, $200, and you're done. Right. But for you, you should have an arsenal of those things if you don't. Oh, believe me, I just placed a huge order with Andrew, multiple thousands of dollars, and he was like, oh, thanks for the order. It's like, no problem, dude. You're a good guy. So I got the order. Yeah. So what did you end up buying? Oh, I bought ten combo boards for older Williams games. You know, it's like a Rotten Dog, but better. It does basically the MPU and the driver board all in one. But Andrew has his own flavor of it, and his flavor will do all the way from System 3 to System 7. The Rotten Dog only does System 3 through System 6. So System 7s are kind of like Black Knight, and that stuff, Solar Fire, you know, those kind of games. So, his board will do all that stuff. So, I looked around, I counted all the games I have, the Williams stuff, and all my customer games that are coming, the Williams stuff, and I said, you know what, I need ten of these.
    24:18
    So, I might as well order in bulk, get a little bit of the... Oh, yeah. Yeah. We haven't talked, so I'm guessing you're busy. We'll get to your segment in a couple of minutes.
    24:34
    I've got some other stories, but I think that's enough to satisfy everybody with a couple of pinball things. Let's talk about the game that's on the screen. You ready? One thing, I just want to go back to the busy thing you said. You said busy. I'd say I'm so busy with games that I feel like I'm at an airport with a bunch of airplanes ready to take off, and they can't take off yet because of bad weather, but they're all backing up on the tarmac. because for one reason or another, the customer's games that I've done, they can't pick them up. They got hurt or whatever. I can't deliver them because of whatever. So I got – or whatever. The dog ate my car, too. Yeah. So now I have, like, three – well, three games plus the World Cup soccer ready to go that are stacked up here. Spirit 76, this guy was on me, you know, to get it going kind of thing, you know. And it's like, dude, you kind of came in, you know, in between the queues here, people, you know, so I've got to work on their games first. So in between other people's games, I'm working on his game so we can get it done. But he was, you know, he was kind of like, you know, on me. So I was trying to explain to him that, you know, you kind of put yourself in the middle of my queue and expecting, you know, to get it tomorrow. And it happened. and I explain it to you. So I was like, okay, whatever. I'm just going to make this thing and just pump it out and just like spend a bunch of time to get it out of here, you know, and get them done. So it's all done and now I reach out to him and I'm getting radio silence.
    26:13
    Now, he was in Paris and I reach out to him again and he's, you know, radio silence. Oh, did you come and get your game? Yeah, yeah. So you're on me to get this thing done if you're pressuring me. Now it's done. Where the frick are you? Okay. Dave, I need you to get ready with your bell. You got your bell? I got my bell. Okay. We're at the deli, and we're delivering sandwiches. Who had number eight over there, fat guy with beard?
    26:43
    Hey, you, Mr. Frenchy over there, who's supposed to pick up your game. How come you're not at the counter paying me? Hey.
    26:53
    Hey, Jersey jerk with the centaur. Shut in the car and cut down your game. Nice, George. Direct George. George is being direct. I went into this show saying I should really be more positive.
    27:11
    So you are right now. It's so fun. This is George being positive. Sorry. The views expressed by this podcast might not be shared by both hosts. Therefore, you can blame me.
    27:29
    I'm going to go to a John Jolly segment here. So I had an opportunity to go down and visit Mr. Jolly down the Cape. You're going to interrupt first and thank him? Go ahead.
    27:40
    I was going to say, our November podcast was off the rails. He must have told everybody. He must have told all his customers. He must have told all his friends, his family, and anybody else who would listen. Wow, really? Wow. Where does it come from? It was strong right away. Wow. And I was like, okay, John, coming through. Certainly, it was a good episode, but I don't know. You did a good job. So congratulations. I did a lot of editing on that one to protect the guilty or innocent.
    28:18
    Anyway, it was a good month. That's cool. You were going to say. So he said, hey, next time you're down, you know, I'll take you on a tour of the oyster farm. Now, I had no idea what to expect from the oyster farm. I had no idea what I'm looking at or what to expect. So I said, okay. And then he said, and when you come down, you know, I got this firepower, too. I know you said it might need something, but I'm just ready to just, you know, trash it or sell it off to somebody, you know, because I can't get it working. And it's like, well, hold on. Let me just bring one of my Andrew boards. And so I did. so I had it with me, I put it in, boom, the game fired up without me doing anything else to the game. It started, he goes, wow, okay, I guess I'm keeping this game now. So I'll get you the money, you know, soon. It's like, okay, pay me later, I said, don't worry about it. He said, are you sure you can take the board out and come down later? I said, no, I trust you, I know you, I know where you live. Just, you know, I'll put the board in now, I'm down here, you can start working on the game, it works, and pay me later. So he did, he wanted to pay me later. But while I'm down there saying, hey, let's go for, I got to go out to the oyster farm anyway. I got to check some stuff out. So let's go down there. I said, okay. So he went in his truck. He's got a brand new truck.
    29:33
    And I said, well, how long do you keep these trucks? And he said, oh, every two years we get a new one. It's like, wow. And you're right there. Well, think about it. Think about where he's driving that thing. Well, I don't know. But I'll show you where he's driving the thing. check this out I don't know if you can see this that's a car in the water that's where we are I did a GPS while we're no way yeah you have to drive depending on the tide yeah depending on the tide when the tide is out it's 8 feet of water over those oysters we had to wait until the tide was low drive out into the bay in the fog you can't really see where's this farm? in Dengenis it's like a private outer or inner cave?
    30:23
    bayside the bay so inside yeah inside yeah okay so he's out there and it's a special what's the big beach over there that you can drive out on well there's Mayflower there's Brewster you know there's plenty of beaches you can drive out on but this one here it's more like there's a lot of water in between sandbars so you've got to know how deep you can go. So he's driving through all this stuff, and he said the reason why he turns these cars in so quick because doing what he does wrecks the transmissions, wrecks these cars. They've got to come in, and they'll, like, wreck everything. So they just turn them in, get a new one, clean them up, and then sell them to someone poor and suspecting. The dealership just takes them in and sells them. Yeah, through all the brakes and anything. Yeah. Fine grains of sand. Yeah.
    31:18
    Oh, it gets wrecked. Oh, yeah, someone else is going to get that car. Get that truck. That's like buying a Hurricane Sandy or, you know, a hurricane water vehicle. You got to go fast. Yeah, from here, it's like the Herman Munster episode. But did you see? You buy a used car, you get it home, and the thing falls apart. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of what happens. And the trucks, people want trucks, so they're in demand, so they don't care where they came from. I want a truck. And then you get the truck. And, oh, it's a really cheap price here. I wonder why, you know. So I went out, and it was really, really cool. And I was like, wow. And Maureen can't swim, so Maureen's in the back seat. And I said, hey, look out the window. There's a couple feet of water there. And it's like, now it's getting foggy. He said he didn't really know which way to get back. We could be heading out to water, heading out to ocean, or not. So I said, I'm picturing Maureen in the back seat with one of those life jackets around her neck. Exactly. Yeah, I can't swim. She can't swim. So here's a view from inside the cockpit of the truck. Right. And in the distance there, that is some of the oysters, the oyster beds. So I guess there's a bunch of people out there. Yeah, so imagine, like, driving that, you know, and through the water, and the frog really couldn't really see after a while. So I put my GPS on. It's like, I'll tell you where we are. So he found out where we are from the GPS and we got out of there. But he was going the right way. He kind of knew where he was. But I wanted to verify because I see more he was getting a little nervous in the back.
    32:54
    But that was quite the undertaking. If you're supposed to go right and you go left, you'll end up in Boston underwater. Yeah. Right. That might not be good. and then he reached to the back seat and said would you like an adult beverage so okay you got some shots I think the oyster farmers there's a lot of drinking going on I suspected that from when he said he would drink one of those grapefruit jobs we talked about yeah it's good It's good.
    33:37
    It's cool. He's got a bunch of chickens back in his house. He's got a whole chicken, I don't know, 10, 15 chickens. They're kind of fun to watch. I like them. They're fun to watch. They're not really fun to smell. I didn't smell these at all. You couldn't smell anything. You don't live there. I was approached, oh, you need to get some chickens. I'm like, I don't need to get any chickens. No. None. Zero. I'll go up the street. I'll buy the organic eggs from Farmer John.
    34:09
    Okay, well, there you go. You got that. That's good. I have plenty of that. I told you. I think if I didn't tell you this, you're hearing it now.
    34:18
    People giving away vegetables and food at the end of the year. I've got too many tomatoes. I've got too many zucchini. I've got too many of this. Come get it. Free. Wow. That's a nice neighborhood. That's awesome. Oh, yeah. Well, you'll see. When you get here, you'll see. There's a lot of stuff going on. It sounds like you've got a high-trust neighborhood over there. Like, everybody's all friendly, friendly neighbors. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's great. It's a nice neighborhood. And the house next door to me that's being built was sold, so we're going to have new neighbors.
    34:57
    Cool. So, yeah, things are going okay. Nice. Very nice. So are you done with your Oyster Story? Yeah, done with Oyster Story. Yep, done with that one.
    35:10
    I've got a couple more I could do, or we could play this Spirit of 76. Actually, Dr. Dave Hotline just came in with a quote request for an Addams Family in Malden. There you go. So how much time do we have left on the spool here? Oh, we're getting low. Oh, again, we're down to four minutes in this one. I'm feeling mighty low.
    35:42
    No cartoon reference, folks. I just got a whole bunch of, I decided to order, because I had all these Bugs Bunny collections, you know, multiple DVD pack, and over the years I'd play them, but I never really knew what they were by the names of the titles, and I put them on, I got like a 1930s something, or I said, no, I want 50s. I want late 40s and 50s Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes cartoons. That's the cream of the crop stuff. I didn't want the Steamboat Willie kind of black and white Looney Tunes. No, it doesn't do it. So I went and found this Platinum Collection, and that's all the good stuff. I got Duck Daughters in the 24th and a half century. You wanted me to mention that I sorry to interrupt but you wanted me to mention that Might as well do it right now You wanted to change a Flash Gordon into a Duck Dodgers Yeah the Duck Dodgers Exactly. Let's do them all. Let's do a freaking conversion.
    36:42
    Now, that's a game you could do. Duck Dodgers instead of Flash Gordon. Have Marvin the Martian on there. Why don't you just add that to the list?
    36:51
    Okay. You do it. I'll do it. I'll add it to my list. We might get that in the 24th century. Yeah, yeah. That's about right. That'd be very appropriate.
    37:05
    We're back and we're beautiful. What do you think? Just dancing around the edge of things, George. Just dancing.
    37:24
    You're really good at the soft shoe. So, I am now looking at a Spirit of 76 by Gottlieb that Dave has brought into the shop. Dave, why don't you tell us a little bit about the background on this game and who owns it?
    37:46
    I can certainly provide some of the information. I did go out to IPDB and looked up some information. so I don't look totally clueless. That's good. So, you first. All right, so this is one of the most heavily produced games Godly made.
    38:07
    In fact, they made 10,569 of these. Well-loved game. They made this game in a four-player version, Sparrow 76. They made a two-play version, Pioneer, and a special to-play add-a-ball version called New York. Limited run on that one to celebrate the lifting of the laws that banned pinball in New York in 76.
    38:34
    New York required operators of pinball machines to have add-a-balls, not free games, correct? And that's why they manufactured this under the name New York? Right. Because they didn't really allow any pinball in New York at all, because you could win free games, you could say gambling. So in 76, Roger Sharp proved it wasn't gambling. He called his shot, and he said, no, it's not gambling. It's a game of skill, not a game of chance.
    39:08
    Why do I think we talked about this in one of our podcasts once before? We probably did. We probably did it on New York, I bet. I bet we did it in New York one. Did you have that game in your shop at one point? New York? Yeah, I owned that game at one point. Oh, okay, so that's maybe why we talked about it. I've worked on a couple Spirit of the 76ers. I worked on the New York I had and sold it, and I worked on Pioneer. Which is a two-player, right? Two-player. I worked on all the different flavors.
    39:37
    And interesting thing, Wayne Nyans told a story at Expo 2005 when this game was being produced, and a few colleagues were enjoying it after doing a conversation with Judd Weinberg, who was the president of Gottlieb & Company back in that time.
    39:53
    And Wayne's colleagues predicted a production run of 2,500 games for this, or 3,000 games maybe, and other numbers in that range. Wayne remained silent. Judd noticed this and asked Wayne to give his prediction of how long the run would last, how many are going to be made, and how popular it's going to be. Wayne confidently stated that the number would be 10,000 games, and the amused Judd promised that if it went that high, he would personally deliver one of the games to Wayne's house. Wayne says that the serial number of the Spirit 76 began at 3001, and it was serial number 13000 that was stamped and arrived at his doorstep later on.
    40:35
    So he was correct. So he basically did the Babe Ruth. He pointed to the outfield and said, that's where I'm putting it. Yeah, and he said, bring my game over. And he did. The guy brought the game over.
    40:47
    famous design by Ed Krinsky and art by Gordon Morrison, fantastic artwork on all these games that they did. I was just playing this game again. It's fun. I'm not in any big rush to have this game go back to the customer, unless whenever he, to a point, because I'm enjoying playtesting right now and playing something different to play, so it's fine.
    41:09
    It's kind of cool. This game is pretty darn tough. It has that one more game aspect that a modern ramp game does not have. Even at five balls, it's pretty tough. So the obvious of this game, you have two banks of drop targets. One is 1776, and the other one is 1976. So you get both banks of drop targets down, and then the middle saucer hole, which is a real bear to get in there, will light for double bonus once in a while. It basically will count down your bonus, give you double bonus, and kind of score your bonus and reset it so you can go build it up again, fill the bucket up again. So that will toggle around. It's not always in double bonus. Every time you hit a 10-point switch, it will move around. Okay, so not 10-point switch. No, I think it's whenever you hit a 500-point switch. That's right. One of the star rollovers when they're lit for 500 points. Well, why don't you back up a little bit? So for those who don't have a picture in front of them, this game's got a little bit of everything in it. It's got, like you just said, star rollovers. It's got a saucer. It's got target banks.
    42:25
    It's got three lanes up top. It's got three bumpers, pop bumpers. But the one thing it does not have. Spinner. No, well, that too, but no, that's not what I was thinking of.
    42:38
    There's no slingshots. No slingshots. How do you describe the bottom section of it? Double in lanes. Oh, it's not a double Italian bottom?
    42:54
    That whole Italian bottom thing, I don't know what that is. A double date with Italian girls? I'm not sure what that is. I don't know what that is. I don't think it's the bottom of one of the canals. Speaking of Italian buns, we just saw a movie called Ferrari the other night. Good movie with Adam Driver. That's the new movie that's out? Yes.
    43:14
    You actually went to a theater? No, it's on my special sneaky software. On the sneaky video channel. Yes.
    43:23
    Eight bucks a month, George. You can get everything you want. Sneaky vid. Yes. In high definition. It's pretty nice. So this game, when it came in, I'll give you some more history. When it came in, it was a wreck of the Hepsbris. This guy, he got it from a friend of his.
    43:39
    I don't know if he got it from a barn or a 1960s basement that had damp issues, but it was pretty stinky.
    43:46
    All the inserts fell out or were falling out, you know, so he had to go find the inserts at the bottom of the game. One of them wasn't available. I don't know where it went to, but it went missing. So Stu and Benny had a bunch of inserts, a bucket of them. So we got one that fit, and actually I needed a letter for it, the B number. So he gave me a sticker he had. And it matches pretty well. You can't really tell. It's very sublime in there. So I put all those in there. I had to buy an ozone machine for this thing, put it outside. I was going to ask you if you did. I did. I have one. Not a professional one. and I have a little fan one that plugs into the wall, but it works.
    44:29
    These can be kind of dangerous, especially these promo. Oh, no, no, you don't want to be breathing that crap. No, you don't. So I put it outside on a warm day recently when we had a warm spell, and put it in there with a timer on it, like set fuse and run away. So I put it on for like a half hour at a time, and every time it came back in there, let all the air out of it. It smelled like a nice spring day for a little while, then it came back again. So I probably gave it like about an hour and a half for the ozone treatment, and then I wiped it all down inside the cabinet, outside the cabinet with vinegar, a vinegar and a rag. And now at least when your game's all set together, you can't smell the game, but when you do open up the coin door, you do get a little bit of a funk. It's like... It smells like a salad.
    45:13
    It's something. No, the vinegar scent's not there. No, it just smells like a funk, like some kind of like just a 60s basement slightly. It's not as overpowering as it was. You know, it's not as like, get my head out of this game. I can't work in this game anymore because it stinks too bad. Now at least it's tolerable. Okay, I can deal with it. So I had to deal with that.
    45:35
    Backglass, the playfield and backglass are in nice shape. Backglass are a little bit flaky in the red, so I do a little red touch-up on that, on the 1, 2, 3, 4 numbers. I put all warm LEDs in the head, all incandescents down below in the playfield, except for the red star rollovers that I put red LEDs, and for the saucer in the middle there, there was one light socket there. I added a second light socket and put two red LEDs in that, so it's like blasting red like, like, ha-ha, try to hit me, ha-ha. It's like basically shouting to you like a sucker shot to go for it. And it gets extra maddening because when that double bonus is lit, you want to get in there, but if you go for a direct shot, it's mostly going to loop around and go down the middle and do some crazy stuff, and it's going to be deadly coming back down. So what you're supposed to do is shoot for the lower end of where a drop target is, like the one on 1776 or the six on... So you're trying to do a ricochet shot instead of a direct shot. Yeah, a ricochet shot. It's like playing pool. You want to, like, bank the shot over, you know. And sometimes it works, but it's not a done deal. I was trying with the glass off last night to see if I could find the exact spot, and I was having a bear of a time. But I got it once in a while.
    46:50
    It was even worse before we first got the game. That little horseshoe metal thing in the middle there that's a backstop of the hole, it has three tabs to hold it down. Two tabs were broken. It only had the rear tab holding it there. And you know why? Because the thing was getting bashed all the time. It broke the metal wells. Right. And I talked to Steve. I said, we're ever going to find one of these? And I talked to Dave Matrano. He said, oh, I think Steve has those. So I talked to Steve. Oh, yeah, I got a whole box of those. These things break all the time. Steve Young. Steve Young, yeah, Steve Young, Pinball Resource. Oh, those break all the time. They make 10,000 of those, and they're almost all broken, so I got a whole box of them. So Steve makes a lot of money on that part. Oh, yeah, so I bought a couple of them. I bought a spare for the future. So I bought that. I got all new color lane guides on it, brand-new plastic set, brand-new pop bumper caps,
    47:41
    flipper rebuild, flipper bats, front coin door stuff. So this guy wanted me to make a really nice Ferry 76 for him. He really wanted me to do him. So I made a nice one for him, you know. No, you can't tell. I mean, given the description you gave of the game, it looks really nice in comparison to what you just said. Oh, thanks. A lot of elbow grease, a lot of magic eraser. Maureen did her touch-up work on it here and there, cleaned it up. Silicone rubber everywhere on it. So it really pops now. some more features with the game so you do the drop targets to get that double bonus to light once in a while when you hit a 500 point rollover the stars don't give you 500 points unless they are lit stars, the unlit ones give you 100, when they're lit they give you 500 and that's what makes that thing move to go to double bonus you light them by getting A, B, C, D, E each letter down is a star roller that comes up, that comes on so by getting if you just get all the letters down, you'll get all the style rollers to come on, which is good. And they also add bonus points, too. So you get 500 points for the style roller, and you get a bonus point for it as well. Because it's hard to build bonus in this game.
    48:57
    I had a question about that. Yeah. What's the maximum bonus on this game? 15,000. Right. But there's something called a double-double-double. Yeah, yeah. So I was going to get to that one. Oh, sorry. So, yeah, so the double-double. So that's on ball five, the double bonus will light. The pink double bonus will light. So you lose the ball, you get double bonus on ball five. But on the same ball five, if you get all the drop targets down and you get that double bonus center hole as well, you throw the ball in there on ball five, double, double, you're going to get four times bonus, which is rare as hen's teeth. The stars have to be all in alignment just right. you can get everything lined up, all the lights lined up and now you're trying to get in a stupid hole and it's maddening if you miss it you lose the ball, it's like ugh it was lit and everything, it's ball five the game's over, it's very similar because I went from this game last night playing this game and game after game after game, I kept pressing games I was like I'm going to try something different I went to go play my Flight 2000 down the other end of the room and it's so weird coming from playing Godly experience and how the Godly plays on a nice Godly and going to a nice Stern. The Stern plays like butter compared to fighting with this game. Stern kind of played more like butter. The bounces were a lot nicer. It's a lot more flowy. But it's the same, almost the same maddening effect of trying to spell blast off, go up the spinner lane two times, then you have to count down 5, 4, 3, 2 on the drop targets, then you've got to throw the ball up the spinner lane to get multi-ball. So that is the same effect in that game on ball three. You've got everything ready to go, just all you do is throw that ball up at spinner one more time, you get multi-ball, and so many times you get a thing all lined up and you lose the ball. So these games have that in common. It's like a build up to this certain thing, and then get paid out. Then the money shot. Right. But when the money's trying to, and you can't make that thing happen, it's like you built up all these castles and all these houses and hotels like a monopoly, and then you go bankrupt, you know. So it's pretty bad. I have to be honest with you, Dave. Yeah. This game didn't intrigue me at all when I first looked at it. I'm like, I remember this game, but I don't really remember playing it because, you know, I played, you know, volley games, bally games more than I played, you know, Gottlieb games back in the day. But, you know, it certainly was everywhere. But after your description and saying that, oh, no, this is not an easy game and it's got the one more to it, I get it now. I can see how, hey, I want to accomplish the goal, which is to get the double-double bonus. And here's one more thing about the work done. Also, all brand-new white posts in the game, too. So everything in the play field is brand new. That's why it looks so nice, plus the touch that Maureen did. The other feature in this game, which is really neat, if you get A, B, C, D, E down, the extra ball will light up for that hole. And that will move around. Every time you get a 500-point roll over, that will move around to be either on or off. Now, if you get the drop targets down and the A, B, C, D, E down, then the special lights up. So now it's always going to be that hole is either a special, a double bonus, or an extra ball. It just keeps moving around every time you hit a 500-point rollover. Which one do you want, you know? And it's just you really want to get the hole at that point, you know? I have to be honest. This looks like a game that wouldn't be easy to master. No, it's not. I can't remember ever seeing this game in a tournament.
    52:53
    This game would be great in a tournament. In fact, I want to have a tournament soon before this game goes. I'm going to do something, I think, with Jeff's over here. Maybe there's a couple guys.
    53:06
    You know, I'm not sure how big it's going to be. I don't want to go with a huge tournament. But some kind of fun thing where this game is involved.
    53:13
    It'll be a great war on this game, I think. You know, put a dollar up or something, you know. Yeah, you could definitely play dollar games. Yeah. This is a fun game. It's maddening, though. At some point, I say, okay, I've had enough. I can't get in that hole. Screw it. I've got to play something else, you know.
    53:33
    So, yeah. Do you want to give us a quick game and go through it? Yeah, sure. Sure, we can do that. I mean, you did all the setup. I mean, you spent, I'm guessing, an inordinate amount of time trying to get the technology to work so you could show me the game while we're talking. That's true, yeah. So, let's go. Let's hit it here. Let's hit it. Here we go. All right, Spirity 76.
    53:59
    Let's roll them. All right, successful launch. That's a good thing. All right, we're going to shoot for the ABC at the top, and we got the D. Is the C the middle? Yeah, the C's the middle. Right. And the B, B's on the left. We just got the B just now. So B left, C middle, D right. And we just lost the ball. I had almost all the drop targets down there. So what's a good score on this game? A good score? Well, a free game is 62. I guess 62, 78, and 100 for scores. Right. It's only a five-digit game, right? Yeah, five-digit game. So getting 62, I'd say getting over 60 is really good. Even getting in the 50s is good. I just like to see if I can win a game it's easy to but it's even that's hard even that's tough yeah I mean it all depends on you know some our neighbor your ex-neighbor would call one of these games more of a luck box probably that's the terminology for an EM a luck box you know it's funny that you mention I had an idea. I'll play it here. Cut it if you don't think it's appropriate. Okay. But my thought was... Oh, I got it. I got them all down. You got ABCD. I did. So now I got... Let's see. 9,000 bonus.
    55:42
    And I got... If I get up the star roll over here again, if I get a roll over, it'll be extra ball. All right. You just did. Well, the extra ball is not lit yet. See that? I went in the hole right there. You got 10,000 points.
    55:57
    All right, that extra ball is lit. See right in the hole there? Yeah. It has to go in that hole. No, now it's off again.
    56:06
    Oh, boy. Like that, see? Yeah, that's a tough game. Oh, it's a bear. Ball three, 20. But if it was too easy, you wouldn't like it. Right. Exactly. This game keeps you coming back.
    56:24
    Like, uh... That's why I'm not in a huge rush to get this back. I gave him one tick where, you know, I'll say, hey, your game's ready. But I'm not going to keep hounding him. I'll say, all right, I'll keep it for a while longer.
    56:36
    Well, hopefully he doesn't listen to the... Oh, I doubt it. You know... No, I doubt it. He's too busy going to France. Okay. There's a little fade there. Let's see. You've got to go for drop targets here.
    56:54
    Just something about an EM. We have a lot of EMs. We talked about the sinker we did. But this is a popular game. I mean, they made 10,000 of them for EMs. But I'm sure this has got sentimental value. You don't plow that kind of money into a game like this unless, you know, you have sentimental value. You're never going to get your money back out of that. No, although sometimes you can. There's actually people out there that want a real nice EM. They'll throw good money at it, like that guy, Pin Rescue. That's all he does is EM restorations. He gets big money for his EM games he does. He does nice work. you know, so I'm pretty much I get what he does pretty much my games, my restored EMs are pretty much in line with what he does and I get about the same money typically give or take because a lot of work goes in, a lot of hours goes in because it's like working on a really super old car, you know, it needs everything so a lot of time, a lot of parts so this is ball five where the double bonus is lit right now the one in the out hole is Oh, I almost cut in the out-hold. Yes.
    58:16
    So, pink double bonus if we go out-hold. So you need the A and the E. A and E will get me, I can get an extra ball of that. So I can go down low.
    58:31
    Right now I'm going to probably go drop tight. Almost. Get the one. Almost got the one. I just need the... There we go. That way there. More bonus points. 9,000 bonus. That's good. Let's see. There you go.
    58:53
    Yeah. So there's 20,000 bonus right now. So I'm guaranteed a free game right now. Okay. So you need the one. Okay. So this one. Oh, that's the one. So what do you got? One on the other side there? Yeah, I need the seven over on the other side. And I got the A. oh, almost got the E I got the E down let's see if I can backhand it oh, I backhanded it alright, so now we got double-double right now double-double is lit if I get in that hole we're happening when the E is lit too now I get everything now if I can just so everything's lit special extra ball this is awesome I need to get that hole is worth everything right now You going to try a ricochet shot? Ricochet. See that ricochet? I tried that. See, I tried that.
    59:47
    Oh, and now, see that? Madness. Oh. The physics weren't with you, dude. Oh, I got two free games. That was a little show right there. That was good. You got to see a nice show. No, that's really good. Well, okay, that's game one. Are you prepared to talk about the other game you said was next to it? Uh, yeah, we could do a little of that. Let's see. Well, you don't have to.
    60:14
    Well, it's really not, I can show you, it's not really ready for, this game needs a lot of work. Boy, oh boy. Well, let's talk about it, because you have it in the shop, and who knows if it'll be here a month from now or whenever.
    60:30
    This game, I remember. And the game we're talking about is Williams Grand Prix. this game also well the game Spirit of 76 the one we just did came out in December of 75 but for the most part it was produced during the year 1976 this game came out in June it was also a big number game 10,554 and I forgot to ask you about this with the other game both of these games had sample runs Yes, he did. Can you tell the audience, because I think I know, but I'm not sure, what the sample run is and why they did it? I don't know, but I've happened upon a sample run of a Card Whiz, or maybe it was Royal Flush. I actually have to get back to that customer, too. They have an issue I have to go back on. They were working on it a year ago on their game.
    61:30
    But I remember the game had, like, an S next to the serial number for sample. and it was stamped weird on like a metal guide rail on the side of the play field. It was stamped on that, which I thought was really strange. So I guess a sample means they make it, they put it out there on location somewhere and see how people like it. They kind of gauge what's coming in on the cash box and in a certain amount of time, how much money it makes. they can gauge interest on it and say, okay, is this going to be a winner? Are we going to go forward and make a whole run of these things, or are you just going to scrap it and just make a couple hundred and say, I don't think so?
    62:12
    So they did basically testing and sampling of the audience prior to releasing a game, which obviously is not done today, not even close. Yeah, today, no, Today it's kind of release the game, and then the customer is the beta tester for about a couple years. They'll do some upgrades that they want to, the manufacturing. I just don't get it at all. Even Godzilla, you know, everyone loves that game. I played it a bunch of times now. A new customer had it, and John has it, and Mike has it, and everybody has that game. I just find way too much delay of game. you play the ball a little bit, you go into some hole, then all of a sudden the screen goes on with some kind of Godzilla graphic and some movie comes on and then you're waiting and you're waiting and you're waiting to get the ball back so you can play some more pinball. It's just way too much of an entertainment factor versus being a playing factor for me. Well, riddle me this because I started down this road and I never got to it. we were talking about our neighbor, and I went out and watched our neighbor, my former neighbor, your neighbor, go out and play World Cup soccer.
    63:37
    And I kept saying to myself, okay, he's explaining the game, and I'm getting to watch the screen. I don't play pinball that way, and I know that's a 90s game and things in advance, and it's a different, you know, pinball era. but I don't pick my head up to look at the back glass, if at all. So, how do you, you know, the modern games to me are, I like shooting them, they're fun to play, but as far as watching the screen and learning how to play, it's a different kind of game. It's an ADD game. Attention Deficit Disorder game. Yeah, I mean, look, things advance and it doesn't matter. If you like 60 cars, 70 cars, 80 cars, everybody hates the car analogy, but you know what? Hey, there's a flavor for everybody. I'll play them. I'll play them. I know. I hear it in every show now. You have your taste of a modern, and you spit it out, and you're not going back. Correct. It's like the really bad broccoli. You're just not having it. That's not the vegetable of choice for you. And speaking of stirring, Rush, I got I wasn't thinking of that. You were now. Okay, I will. All right, well, I'll speak about this some more. I got an email from Stern, from Stern Tech Department. They would, you know, would I like to go out a couple, hour and a half, two hours out west to work on this guy and the customer's rush that he had a problem with the play field because the play field was kind of getting torn up. So he basically said, hey, Stern, I need a new play field. your game, it's already, you know, not happening. They sent him a whole, after like months, I don't know how long, a while, sent him a whole new created play field. All right, here you go, throw it in your game, and when you're ready, send us the old play field back. He put it in his game, and now I guess the play field's better. I mean, he hasn't really played it much. And now there's a switch problem. He can't, there's some kind of multi-ball problem. There's something wrong with the play field he got. So they're calling me and saying, hey, can you go out and. Oh, sure. Can you give this guy a call? Now, we haven't really talked money. I'm going to give this guy a call.
    65:53
    Are we talking money? Am I on your payroll? It's like, I don't get it. And on top of that, okay, give me some data. Are you guys going to set him apart? Do you guys have any preliminary stuff for me to know? Am I just going into this blind? He didn't really have much for me. So I let it go. I didn't get back to the guy because he didn't get back to me. I said, give me a call. He didn't give me a call. Then he called me, like, the tech department called me, like, a week later. I said, hey, did you get to call that guy yet? And I go, I called him. I said, I haven't called him at all. I'm not doing anything until we talk about money and, you know, moolah. I'm busy. You know, I can't just go and I'm going to talk to this guy and not know all the details and if I can fix it or not.
    66:35
    So I basically said, did you guys try this? So you guys try this. And I basically said, did you guys try swapping out the node board? or the connector to the node board, or these other things. He goes, no, it's like, he said, that's a good idea. Maybe it's like, I'm going to ask him. It's a good idea? Yeah, yeah. So you're giving the tech department technical tips. Yes. So now I'm Stern's tech support for the tech support.
    67:06
    What is wrong with the world? What is going on with the world? Do people not accept responsibility anymore for their actions? No, they don't. No. It's like, ah, you know, they'll figure it out. Right. Yeah.
    67:25
    Oh my god. Dave, you're better off. The stress level of owning a $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 game that you know ultimately will stop functioning for whatever reason, why put yourself through that? I said to myself the other day, I've been playing a lot of Paragon and Embryon, and I talked about Supersonic. I kept saying to myself, simple. Yeah. Fun. Right. Sure. Right. Brain power, half speed or less, you know? Just casual. Yeah. Fun.
    68:05
    Not, oh, my God, am I going to hit Godzilla in the head and break him? and, you know, am I too forceful with this or that or, oh my God, what just happened with the node board? That's a hundred and something. I mean, I would try to be absolutely crazy.
    68:22
    Yeah, I don't get it. Well, you do get it because you get all the work and you're a very fortunate man to have a company like Stern out there.
    68:32
    True. It's great. I just, I don't know, I just, I like the old school games. better. But I believe I don't mind fixing the new school games because they're all new and I don't have to go through and rebuild the wreck of the Hespers either like I do with the old games. The old games just take a lot of time. And you've got to have a special customer that's going to understand that and it's going to pay for lots of time. Some of these customers, the ones that aren't going to be a good fit, call up and I'd say, well, it's going to be so and so this much approximately. Well, it only paid $100 for the game years ago. It's like, okay, well, do you want it working or not? It's not years ago. These games are a lot more money now, so you know, what can I say? It's like, they're not worth $100 now. These games in restored shape are worth thousands of dollars. Well, like we've said before, and getting the drum again is it's nostalgia for us. You know, again, we're in an older demographic. if you look at what the marketplace is saying about our generation we're out spending money and we're having a good time and this fits the profile especially if you have a home and a basement or you have some entertainment area you know hey, you got at least one and my son's gunning for his game, I don't know if I said this in the last show, but the Fireball Classic will probably be leaving my house at some point in time this spring. Oh, really? You're going to give him... Oh, yeah. He's been gunning for it. He came over. He wiped me around again. I gave him a good run this time. But, man, he never plays. And he gets on that game, and this is a jab at Jeff again. Jeff, he'll clean your clock. He just knows how to play that game like you know how to play Paragon. He can just get up to bat, and he can just start hitting the ball. He's really good. Wow. So, but the wife won't let me buy a new one. I've been gunning, and I keep looking, and I'm going to find some. Like a new what? I need a project. Well, like, what are you thinking? Like, what's in your mind? I'm not thinking anything.
    70:52
    I'm seeing some looseness in the market, but I'll be honest. It's mostly for newer sterns and newer games. Galactic Tank Force, how many of those do you want to buy? Really? They're dumping them, huh? Oh, they're on retreat. The enemy is advancing, and they're in retreat. Oh, my God. Bad. Really. They're saying, again, we're not modern pinball show, but they're saying that that company could go under. Wow. It's an experiment. It's up for sale. I should say a different price.
    71:34
    It's up for sale. So if you want to go buy a pinball company, there's one available. Well, Kuna's doing it for trying something different, though. They tried something different, and it failed. You know, it's like, I don't know. Now, there is a market for the old school, but Grant Schoen said that old school game that someone's doing with, like, it looks like a. . . Oh, April Fury, the one made in Australia, the one that. . . Yeah, but it looks like a three-year-old. of the artwork. It's a three-year-old with the artwork on it. Who, you know, it looks like crap. That's not a good... That's the first thing I said. I go, you're not going to sell one of these. It looks horrible. And that, let's face it, that's the most, it's one of the most important details. I mean, you can have a great shoot and game, but if it looks like hell, you know, you're eliminating a lot of audiences. For instance, all you got to do, take a game like Spirit of 76 in front of you, right, or was in front of you, and just do a couple little tweaks to it and redo this game, you know, make it digital, you know, maybe add a spinner, add something else to make it a little bit different flavor, you know, part two, Sparrow 76 part two or something.
    72:44
    And you could sell this game. It's a great challenging game. You bring up a point. So it comes every couple of years. Why haven't they redone – I'm coming back to World Cup soccer again. I going to keep hitting you with that Yeah why haven they remade a soccer game I mean you don have to pay your royalty It doesn have to be called World Cup Soccer In fact, I thought of this, and I don't know if you know who this is. You're not a great sports fan, but I would think you would know who Messi is, one of the best soccer players in the world. He plays for whatever the team in Miami is. I heard that. If you cut a deal with that cat and said, hey, look, we want to do a machine on you, that thing would sell a bazillion copies. What's the guy's name again? Everywhere around the world. What's the guy's name? Messi. Wait, you know what? I heard about him. He bats clean up.
    73:41
    Oh, okay. That's extra bad. Oh, my God. I had to think about that. I'm like, oh, oh, quiet, why me? Feel free to turn it off now, folks. I'm holding my forehead with my hand because I can't believe you just said that.
    74:08
    Anyway, I'm on this IT thing. I'm like, everything I look at, because everybody's talking about it. There's nothing else other than we haven't come to it, but I have to pitch it. everybody's talking about Jaws. Now, let me do a little preamble.
    74:27
    We did a Jaws show. It's episode 33. And every time I hear them mention Jaws, I think of that dog. I don't know why. Because I thought it was a funny story, I guess. You remember what I'm talking about, right? Yes, I do.
    74:46
    Right? Wasn't the dog a little amorous? A little bit, yes, slightly. So I think two years ago when we were at Fantastic, I believe.
    74:58
    Weird. What the hell? That's good. So you played, remember the Silver Ball Mania remake Jaws that we played at Fantastic? Yes. In 2022. Okay, so I always think of those two. Everybody going back and forth. I'm sure if you haven't heard this, Dave, that you've really been under a rock. Okay. Everybody bitching about the fact that the shark doesn't eat the ball.
    75:30
    Yeah. Even the L.E. version doesn't either? No. None of it does. Yeah, it is kind of stupid. Yeah, I think I did see something about that.
    75:43
    We're in the club. So I still haven't told our neighbor's story. Third time. I'll get it out this time.
    75:52
    I thought that you and I could play the video he did for Papa on World Cup soccer. Okay. Obviously, we don't own the rights, so we can't play the audio. Right. But we certainly can both play the video on our phones. Sure. think up and comment accordingly on our neighbor playing World Cup soccer. I like how you're going with George.
    76:20
    That sounds like fun. So, easy. We don't have to do anything. We don't have to set the game up. We don't have to play it. All you have to do is comment accordingly. I like it. Okay.
    76:35
    I'm not so sure he'll like it, but I don't really care. That's okay. So before we timed out, I did want to congratulate Bowen for winning the Classics Division, or one of those, out in Indisc, California. It never varies from Southern California. So congratulations to that. I didn't want everyone to think that I was just being rude.
    77:06
    What games were that in the Classics? You know, I forgot that it was even on, to be honest with you. So I didn't watch. I don't think I watched any of it this year. Was Mr. Stone a part of it? Do you know that?
    77:20
    He was, and he got into the final four for one of the tournaments. There's so many different tournaments. And he ended up getting either second or third. and all he kept saying was, you know, he was doing the woe is me. Oh, yeah. That's classic. I heard that from several different people. You say, I suck, I suck. He said, I suck, I just suck. Oh, yeah, yeah. That whole routine has been old. It's like, hey, Eric, you're still, you know, top five player in the world, top ten player in the world. I mean, come on.
    78:00
    You know, the torch gets passed. There's some young kids that are really, really good. And he knows that. I'm not telling him anything he doesn't already know.
    78:10
    Yeah, you think they're sad. So that was interesting. I did happen to watch this past weekend some of the championships.
    78:20
    Did you watch? No, I haven't watched any of that stuff. Were you even aware of what happened this past weekend in the pinball world? No idea. I don't know. don't know i knew i knew i would catch it believe it or not it was the state championships and i went to turn on the twitch machine and there's like over a thousand people watching what the hell is going on there must have been 20 different feeds of all the different state championships that were going on which was pretty good so i happened to watch the one from New Hampshire. Okay.
    79:04
    Where was it located? A place I had never heard of before, Port City Pinball in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Okay.
    79:14
    A shout out to your brother from a different mother, Brian O'Neill. Yeah, that sounds familiar. I think he made it to the top four. Derek, forgive me, I don't remember your last name, but we've talked several times at shows, and I've watched your podcasts, or Twitch broadcasts, whatever you want to call it. He was in the top four, too, but it ended up being two women.
    79:47
    Okay, when you say women... I can't. You are good at reading. You know me very well. Are we talking a they situation? Danger, danger, danger. Why don't you not read?
    80:06
    So, Jillian and, hopefully I'm pronouncing this correctly, Zianna, were the final two for the championships in New Hampshire, and Jillian won. and no, it's not that Jillian. I was going to say, okay. So, no. So, just leave it alone. I got my reaction. Let's move on. There's nothing to see here.
    80:37
    I think we should get to one of my favorite segments, and I'm sure the audience's as well. I know. You know what that is, don't you?
    80:47
    Setbackers? You're not going to botch this again, are you? I wouldn't. Before we go there, I know where you're going. Before we go there, you know, Maureen loves soap operas, much to my chagrin. I like to throw the cable box out the way. Maureen. What does she watch? What doesn't she watch for soap operas? I think The Young and the Restless. I think The Bold and the Beautiful and General Hospital. I'm pretty sure those are the ones. Those are the ones that are still on. Yeah. So I was thinking they needed to do an update for the Young and the Restless. For the Young and the Restless, the new one for nowadays crowd, the older crowd, would be the Old and the Listless.
    81:31
    What do you think? I thought you were going to say the Young and the Wokeness. No, the Old and the Listless. Okay.
    81:41
    Okay. So that's what I was thinking. But anyway. so where were we? We were at basically What's up doc?
    81:56
    What's up doc? Is that the one? Yeah that's a good guess. Thank you Good. Yay Get the boy a cigar. I have some other stuff but I figured before we get labored into everything you know let's get the What's up doc segment out of the way so with that said bring us up to speed what's up doc alright what's up doc well here's what's up an 8 ball champ in Newton got a call to work on one of these and it needed a lot of work he bought this from the ultimate games during years ago and it just had all kinds of weird switch issues so and these games to have a little keypad inside them instead of just a little button on the door. You had to do all those different things to get into software, see what's going on with the game, what it's reporting. And come to find out there was a stuck switch, which on these games means, okay, old capacitor, switch capacitor, old, creating a partial short. You clip it off. Okay, that bad switch went away. Another bad switch. Cut that capacitor off. Another bad switch. I must have cut off three or four different capacitors. You know, I'm just going to cut them all off. I did. The game came up to pretty much to ready, but then I need, you know, so I need to put all these caps. It just, like, wrecked the game. So I put all new caps on the game, on the Switches. Well, you just found out what was wrong. So, I mean, it's short money. It's a lot of time, but it's short money. Well, that was short money, but then I did a lot. I mean, the bill climbed up pretty well. Oh, no, no. I'm saying the part itself is short money. It's the time involved to do it all. yeah oh yeah well for that part yeah so that fix was that's the major one and then you go through and day spa the rest of the game we were there for 8 hours you know on this one so that was took quite a bit of time Led Zeppelin you remember there's Led Zeppelin in L.E. you and I were on site for this a couple years I just had a conversation with my friend Jack about this you first and then I'll chime in so I went over to his place because he had a broken rubber. Now, I put silicone on this game a couple years ago.
    84:19
    You know, we did a rubber on the game called the black rubber, and I couldn't believe he had a broken rubber or two. But come to find out, it was not all silicone rubbers made the same. So I have since switched manufacturers where I get it from. I get better reliability. so I redid the rubber on it to the better manufacturer.
    84:42
    And while I was there doing the work and getting it all good to go, I said, I noticed he has a lot of high-end equipment. He has a beautiful Macintosh turntable, and he told me about his subwoofer, the Bose subwoofer in his room. This guy, I think he's got some money, you know. He's got a nice house, nice game room. and I said, I really looked at that stuff and said, hey, you know, your game sounds great. You ever think about, I could really upgrade this sound in your Led Zeppelin for you? Pretty recently, when I added a sub to it, sounds good, hooked me up. So I did. So I came back, I upgraded, I put a sub on it, and I tuned it in. What a difference. You know, I was even amazed by how much it, and he came downstairs and I said, do you want to hear it? and he goes oh I heard it upstairs already so he said I don't think my wife is going to like it and I said yeah that's alright I'll just skip out of here before she gets home but he loved it he thought it was great so he's very happy with that and now I'm on the quest for him he wants me to find him he's really into poker he likes playing what's the poker there? no no the game what's the game five card stud no the game everybody plays these days the five card game everybody plays five card Monty oh god boy oh boy spades no one knows what this is no it's poker it's the world champion poker ship and they put their sunglasses on and they do all that stupid stuff you know if my brother-in-law was here he could tell you everything I don't know that's something I don't know it's bugging me so I'm going to find out what it is. Although I did hear, I don't know if you knew this little tidbit, you know Greg Paparelli? Yes.
    86:41
    He's supposedly a... Texas Hold'em. It's Texas Hold'em. He's a world-class poker player, I guess. Okay. No, I'm just saying, you know. He's a good football player. They say he's a really good poker player. Okay. Just saying. I like playing poker, too. Years ago, you know, when I was playing pinball, high school, that kind of thing, we'd have regular poker games. Once a week at someone's house, we'd go play poker and nickel-dime quarter.
    87:15
    Dealer's choice. I like dealer's choice. Unless it doesn't get too wacky with too many stupid ten wild cards.
    87:23
    Baseball and all the other things. I like the baseball stuff. I like the I'll follow the queen stuff. I like that stuff. But, you know, some of the stuff gets off the rails. but I like some simple stuff. But Hold'em for me, boring. I just don't, it's just very dry. It's like, I don't know, it's like having a bourbon. It's like bourbon in a cigar. It's like an old man's game. I don't know, for Hold'em. For me, anyway. You just insulted some of our audience. I know, it's okay. Sorry, audience. It's okay.
    87:52
    Sorry. No, it's not okay. I'm being a straight shooter like George. You're drumming off of me. I thought I was the involved one. I don't know. It's just too dry.
    88:03
    So this guy, he wants a world poker tour if I can find him one. He wants me to find him one and then restore it up nice for him. Yeah, because he likes poker.
    88:14
    I don't know anything about that game, but I never hear a lot of favorable things about it. He wants it to go to his Nantucket home. Oh, well, then he can get whatever he wants.
    88:26
    Now you get it, George. Yes, sir. Coming right up. Order up. Coming up. Yipper. So, I actually. So, you're out hunting for one of those? I'm out hunting for one of those. I'm actually hunting also. You're on a podcast, so, I mean, maybe you'll get some leads out of this. I want one of those. And also, I got another email. Ask Dr. Dave email here. a guy out in the west coast somewhere I want to say north of California somewhere Oregon maybe anyway he wants a Nugent he wants a nice Nugent he wants me to find a Nugent and restore it for him and give me some buy money down that's going to be a tough one I had one I had a beautiful one that I sold back in 2016 I sold it to a woman looking for one forever, they grew up with the game, knew Ted Nugent personally, I guess either he was her babysitter or the wife was his babysitter or something. They knew Ted Nugent. They kind of knew him back in the day.
    89:41
    She got the game from him or something. I don't know. They got rid of the game. Now she wanted it back. I had mine. I bought from mine. I thought I would like it, but I didn't need that game. so I sold it. Now I wish I had it because I could sell it again to this guy.
    89:58
    Call her. Maybe she wants to sell it. I always think of that. I looked at an old email from her and it looked like, you know,
    90:05
    for me, it sounded like the way she wanted this game was like bolted to the floor. You don't know unless you ask. I'm going to ask. I'll ask. But, hey, we'll send the smoke signals out. You allowed to say that? Doesn't matter. You can say that. Why can't you say that? Send the smoke signals out. Hey, you know, Dave needs a Nugent and he needs a World Poker Tour. What else do you need?
    90:25
    I think those two for now. I think that's all I have for wants right now for games. But I'm going to be getting in here. I got people knocking on the door to bring me a haunted house full restoration. That's going to be a bear to do. I got another guy who wants to bring an Addams Family into me.
    90:48
    And I got the planes and the tarmac and everything. The taxi runway is all building up here, so I'm trying to get games out. Okay, so we've got some games we'll talk about. You don't ever want to talk about, like, Adam's family. I don't know anything about it, so, you know. We'll be getting a couple of those in. I mean, I've got one coming in. We should do a show. Look, folks, this year, I promise.
    91:12
    I don't know. I'll promise. You'll promise? Okay. We've got to do at least a game every show. We have to.
    91:22
    Well, we got sort of two games now. We got a Grand Prix you can see right now on the viewer. We started with that, and I got sidetracked with our neighbor.
    91:32
    I'll tell you what. Out of the two games, you know, the other one being Spirit of 76, I thought this was a really cool game. I do remember playing this back in the day. They made a lot of them like we were talking about. You've got the classic design and art by Kordek and March. I mean, the thing that I thought was great was they put the breakdown of materials for $402.23, the bomb on this game. And it retailed to a distributor for $945.
    92:07
    Wow. Right. Amazing. I thought that was great. But the cool thing about this game, and correct me, I know it's in pieces, you're not playing it yet, is that the spinners. The spinners are the deal in this game. And not only do you get bonus, but you can collect it with those hulls or saucers on each side. Yeah, this game, like, so, actually, it's intermittent. Like, I spent about maybe 20 hours so far in this game going through all these steppers. This thing was just beat. It needed all kinds of stuff. I broke one of the stepper pieces that I'm surprised that Steve Young has a bucket of these, too. So I said, okay, take a couple of those. He had some parts on that he, some parts I need he did not have. It wore out a couple of these slugs that go for the, I think, for the bonus countdown. Those saucers on the left and right. There's a bonus countdown that's always being utilized. And the metal wore to metal so much that it wore these giant pits into this thing to make a bunch of slop. So instead of being a nice tight assembly that's supposed to click like a clock, it's all like sloppy and not really accurate. So I asked if Steve had them. Steve did not have them. I was surprised he didn't have them. They're like plungers that go inside the short coil.
    93:25
    But who's going to actually hook me up with them is, remember Dave? The guy, Dave and Gene, you've met them over here before.
    93:35
    He's an EM guy. He actually has a nice EM collection. and... Yeah, he actually has a bunch of Williams parts. I said, hey, I need this. He goes, oh, come right up. So, he, like, sent it to me. I didn't get it yet, and I said, oh, what do I owe you? It's like, nothing. You've done plenty for me over the years. Nothing. Here they are. It's like, oh, very cool. You know, super cool. So, I'm getting those for this game. The game right now, I actually... Someone actually hot-wired some wires from the start button all the way to the back of the head, because they couldn't get it running right. It was all just someone was in there trying to mess around and got it all wrong. And so right now I have it so that it does play. Let me see if I can hit the start button. Let's see if it will go. Let's see.
    94:25
    Come on. Turn it over, baby. Let's see if it's going to pop it open. Let's try this. Okay. There we go.
    94:37
    Okay. I had to kick in the guts a couple times, but I got to go. So it sounds like an old adding machine, you know, when you hit this here.
    94:47
    Sounds like NBC News, Dan Grano reporting, you know. Sounds like Walter Cronkite, you know. Today in the newsroom, in our newsroom today, we have a special guest. This is what it sounds like.
    95:01
    In today's news, destruction and despair. That's what it sounds like. Walter Cronkite reporting. Hi, Club Reporter George, here at the team. Oh, my!
    95:19
    What are you talking about, George? What's going on over there? I'm just having fun. Okay, that's okay. Explain to me what, in the center, between the two arrows, what do those 4, 3, 2, 1 lights correspond to? All right, so that's when you get the C and D and A and B.
    95:41
    Let's see, let me think. A and B. I guess every time you get down a pair, they go up. I thought it was supposed to be the whole set, but maybe it's two at once.
    95:51
    Now it's got a problem. Oh, maybe not. So double, I'm not sure what they do. I'm not sure. Oh, yeah.
    96:00
    Everything else seemed really intuitive. The other thing that I thought was cool was once you max the bonus out on both sides, it automatically flips over to the spinner being worth 1,000 points of spin. That's a pretty cool thing.
    96:17
    What is made out of Unitanium are these ABCD drop targets. They're kind of stand-up drop targets. They kind of look like a stand-up target, but they actually drop down.
    96:31
    Williams made a bunch of these for this game, and I think maybe Pat Hand or some other game around the time frame. But no one, and they break all the time because they get direct hits all the time, especially the C&D. They break all the time. People have been looking for them forever. No one's making them. Steve Young, I guess the tooling wouldn't make sense to make it because it just helps so many of them. They wreck the tool. The tool doesn't exist. It doesn't exist or something. So, come to the rescue is 3D printers to the rescue. So, I found a guy on Pinside who makes them. 3D prints them. They look great. And I ordered a set from him. So, they're coming in shortly. You didn't order a backup set for your customer?
    97:14
    Well, what do you mean? What customer? Well, because you just said they break easily. Why wouldn't you order a second set knowing that the guy makes them? You don't know how long he's going to make them for. You got a backup set in case one breaks. That's true. What I was thinking of doing is basically, I'm just going to replace the, there's only one that's broken in this game right now. Both the ears come off it, so the center part's still there, but it broke off clean. I'm just going to replace that one, leave everything else original on there, because I think it's a lot of work to replace these. So we'll see how it goes. I'm not suggesting replacing the ones that are there. I'm just saying, in case the ones that are there break because they are 40 years old, you have a backup because you know it's available right now. It's like anything. You know, I was thinking, you know, and you remember when this happened, when there weren't going to be any more bumper caps for all the... Oh, yeah, Tim, I bought everything for that time. We talked about this before. Oh, yeah. So that's kind of what I'm thinking is, hey, I hate to be a hoarder, but you know what? I want to have these in case one of mine breaks. The likelihood is low, but you know what? I got one. Worst case, I sell it off later on.
    98:30
    Right. And what happened after that? I start with all this stock now, and now you can get them all the time. But I have a bunch of stock with all the drop-downs. Yeah, I have some stuff, too. But, you know, the price doesn't go down. I mean, the crazy thing now with it is the shipping. And I know you order things in multiples, so you have big orders, but if you only need a couple items, the shipping just kills you. I mean, it's crazy. Somebody wrote out on Pinside, you know, what used to cost, you know, two or three bucks is now seven or eight.
    99:05
    Yeah. The thing was, too, is, like, when I ship things out on, because I sell a lot of stuff on eBay and some other stuff, I use a thing called Pirate Ship. It's really cool because, like, RRMAD, Pirate Ship, you know. But it's, like, 60% or 70% off of rates. So something that usually costs you, like, $20 to ship is, like, only, like, $9 to ship or $7 to ship. So I don't know why these companies don't do that. Or maybe they do, and they make money in the shipping, too. Maybe they charge a regular rate when they're getting a cheap rate. That's what I do. If I was them, I wouldn't have cut for it like that, you know. Maybe that's what they're doing.
    99:44
    But you can do it at a cheaper rate. Just use Pirate Ship. It's the same thing as eBay. eBay shipping utilizes the same thing. You get a discount rate when you ship through eBay.
    99:54
    Okay. Didn't know that. Yep. So, anything else on this game that you want to talk about? I haven't done any real research on it. Basically, I've been going through all the stepper units for all the score reels for all the different flavors of games, the Gottlieb game, the Williams games, and the Bally games. They all have a different method of nine carryover, and there's three switches on each score reel. They have to be, depending on what number it's on, either open, open, close, close, close, open, open. They've got to be in the right sequence. If they're not, your score is going to be all going together at the same time. Your scores are all wrong, not scoring right at all. So, and each manufacturer did it differently. So, while one might be on, the other manufacturer has it off, just depending on how they did. So, Stu gave me a cheat sheet on it, a picture of each manufacturer, what it's supposed to be. So, I had that as a reference. and what messed me up is like depending on the viewpoint you look at this picture and looking at the game it doesn't really correspond so you know yeah it's like you know okay the switch towards the screw versus the switch that's fronted from the screw you're going to adjust well on the picture it says that the one towards the screw should be open and the one away from the screw should be closed but you go in the game No, it's the exact opposite of that. It's the one away from the screw. So even with the reference sheet, you still have to, like, double think it. Because I did it the way the reference sheet said to do it, and the game was all screwed up. I said, wait a second, before I do that, let's look at one I didn't even touch yet. Right, let's not get too far ahead. Let's undo what we just did. Yeah, exactly. So I looked at one that was working, and it was the exact opposite of how I adjusted it. So I adjusted it back the right way. And so now at least it's scoring right. And it's still, you know, the Grand Prix, I made a lot of good strides with it, but I'm going to put a couple of those parts in and maybe do a little more with it. But eventually it might, I already told Stu, I might have him come over for a little, an hour or two in the afternoon. A little consulting session. A little consulting session just because, you know. Right. Because you don't feel like fiddling with it forever. Yeah, I mean, right. He'll come back to the chase. He'll get you there fast. Exactly. I could get it done. It's going to take all day or two days. If we can come over and get it done in a half hour, you know, I'll take that. Another cool thing about this game is it's six digits.
    102:30
    Yeah. Yep. Does that change things, too? Yeah. Well, I mean, it gives you points for everything. No, I understand that, but I'm saying, does it change it mechanically, you know, as far as fixing it? Or, no, it's just another back.
    102:44
    It just adds one more score reel. So you get five score reels versus, you know, the gobbledygook next to it has four score reels. So you have 20 score reels to mess with on Williams. On this one here, you only get 16 score reels to mess with. Gotcha. You know, that can give you problems. But there's a lot of stuff, like, inside this game.
    103:10
    Like, I don't know if you can see that. Lots of stats. There's lots of steppers, and I had to basically go through all these steppers. They all had issues.
    103:23
    I think this game was well loved and well played. I think it had a lot of plays on it. So I'm going to do my best with it, but I think the meter is running, and I'm looking at the budget I kind of laid out for what I told the guy. It's like, we're kind of getting towards that. it might be a phone call in order pretty soon, depending if we're going to be breaking through the ceiling.
    103:51
    We'll see what happens there. What else? I had something that you wanted me to remind you about. Go ahead. You asked me to remind you about Mario and the alpaca story. Do you know what I'm referring to? Oh, yeah. Yeah, what's it called? Mario Brothers or something? Yeah, the Nintendo game, the Nintendo Gottlieb game, the Gottlieb Mario Mushroom World. I think it's called Mario's Mushroom World. Okay, that sounds familiar, but I don't know what that is. So. It's a pinball? Pinball machine, yeah. Yeah, it's pinball, and basically, let me pull it up here. So this game had all kinds of problems.
    104:40
    What did it do? I'm trying to think. So where's the alpaca come in? Well, he has an alpaca farm. An alpaca farm is a huge farm. We went there, and I didn't know we were in the right area because I'm going in there, I see a farm. You drive around, there's a nice house at the end of the farm. But I guess he had alpacas for a while. he has a huge collection of bourbon like barrels of I think, what's that stuff called I got sick of it as a kid or as a young adult I should say with Southern Comfort that stuff, I think he got a whole bunch of that different flavors of that or something Tennessee Whiskey I was like, no thanks ok but I'm not sure what else I did with that kid hey Maureen okay but I got other stuff yeah I can't remember much of it I just know that game well that game basically you could not shoot the ball it didn't have a regular shooter rod it had a stupid button you pressed so whenever you hit the button it would fry a component on the board and I changed the coil, the coil was fine. I changed the board, I wanted a new board and that messed up too. So then I figured out, you know, to get the game working right, I basically,
    106:12
    golf leagues are weird anyway, this is System 3. I had to undo, there's a kickback coil for the left lane when it's lit, it'll kick, it'll shoot the lane, shoot the ball back. so I undid that coil and then you could shoot the ball with the shooter rod now or the button would shoot so you could play the game so I made the game playable the new board, the day spa, I had to go back out there again for a second time to get this thing running right because it's all screwed up so to make it run right I just disabled one of the features of the game but now it won't blow a fuse it won't blow up the MOSFETs anymore nothing like that and I looked inside the game there actually is a hole to put a real shooter rod in there. And I told the guy, listen, down the road, if you want to, we can get rid of the shooter button and all that kind of crap. I'll put a real shooter rod in there. I'll put the coil of your thing back on so the game will fully work. So the game will work, but you're going to have to manually pull the rod. Well, he wants to do it. He's an old guy. That's not right. Well, yeah, yeah, bing bing. So, you know, people, the shooter rod is the way to go. I don't like hitting the button to shoot the thing because you can't do a skill. There's no control. It's chimp work. Yeah. So down the road, I said, you know, play it for a while. Down the road, I'll come back and I can. But it's going to require me to drill a hole in the cabinet, I think. I actually ordered a whole shooter rod assembly from Pinball Resource, all assembled for golly. It will go right in there. So I just got to do a little bit of woodworking on it, but I can make it work. So that might be a project down the road for this guy.
    107:53
    We'll see. But that was a weird one. That was really strange. The guy was a nice guy, too. He was understanding about it. I told him all about it. He wasn't a jerk about it. So that was cool. And he got a No Fearing Weston that I did about a year or so ago. That guy bought. He spent a lot of money on this game. It was a wreck of the Hesperus. made it a day spa or two, like a two-day day spa, made it nice. He's still missing a part. I finally sourced the part and it's out there again. It's a Biddle. It's a fun game. No Fear is actually a fun game. 1995, I believe. Williams game. I have a t-shirt for that game, too.
    108:29
    Any else? Oh, Snow Queen. Did a day spa on a Snow Queen. A Gottlieb. That's a fun and a good-looking game. 71, I believe. Small flippers. it's called Snow Derby oh Snow Derby okay with an animated back box no animated back box it doesn't have a snowmobile or a skier on it no it has girls skiing but no it's very colorful and it has two spinners on it and when you hit the spinners the little the light will go around the center of the play field like you're skiing through some moguls like a light will go around in a circle Dave Mitrano had a snow derby at Pentaxic several years ago I was really tempted to buy it too because it looked gorgeous, it was fun to play I even told this guy after we fixed it I said, you know, if you ever want to sell this game let me know, I'd be, I have some interest in it, I have mild interest in the game for not working he said he hasn worked it for like 20 years for us to do it as the day spar on it it came out working great it was real real it was built really the games from the early 70s late 60s games from Godly they really built those things, they used different kinds of metal too the metal is kind of this bronze metal they used, really durable game, built like a Cadillac so that was nice and we just worked on the last thing we just did, we just did a Tales from the Crypt Day to East game, early to mid 90s funny thing on Tales of the Crypt is that when you finish playing the game,
    110:02
    the DMV game, so they'll scroll up and say, you know, designed by blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, and thanks to the people, whatever. And they'll say, in memorial of Williams Pinball, or rest in peace or something, right? So basically, they were given the freaking, you know... Management? They were tweaking. They were tweaking Williams, because Data East was the competition. They tweaked Williams on their little Despiders thing, you know, we're better than you. Even though they were the small-time people, they were just kind of tweaking Williams, which I thought was pretty funny.
    110:36
    That's actually a cool game, Tales from the Crypt. It's actually, it has a shaker motor in it, which has got me by surprise when I'm playtesting it. So that one's going to wind up being, I have several games out these days that hadn't worked in a while. They're from the 90s. I have one that's a Shadow from the 90s and Tales from the Crypt that are going to require a day spa part two. So the day spa part one was get them clean, get them running reliably, but there's some things left over that I couldn't get to that'll be a part two, you know, to make it even, to bring it to the next level. So those two games, I keep putting people on the day two out about a month or so. Get them going, get them playing the game, but come back. Right. And this way, I can say, you get to play the game, get it going, and this way, if you find anything else that's wrong with it in the meantime, make a list for me. When I come back, I'll take care of that stuff, too. So it works out well that I can, you know, capture it all that way. So, but that, I think that was all I had for my stuff. I have a segue for this. Okay. Did you happen to see the thread on Pinside called Question About Liability and Responsibility as a Pinball Technician?
    112:04
    No, I did not see that. Okay. Was it super scary? Reading assignment, yeah. Yeah, we should actually go through that thread in our next program. program and we can make some comments on it because it was there was some good stuff in it actually and it made me think. I'm like, I wonder if Dave read this. You think it's over the top?
    112:30
    Hey, I'm here to repair X, Y, and Z. That's all I'm here for. If something else breaks, you didn't ask me to repair that. And I just kept saying to myself, you know what? Dave gets rid of all that garbage and says, here's how I work. I do day spas. Your game is broken. You give me the list. I'm going to tell you what else is wrong with it that you missed. Right. And then we'll go from there. But it's going to be a minimum of one day. Trust me. You're going to get your money's worth. Exactly. It's a clean game, a fixed game, a combination thereof. So anybody out there who just goes to go, quote, unquote, fix it, I think the phrase that they used was, you're married to that Yeah, see, no, homie don't play that homie don't play that, no But I said, I'm reading through this and I'm like, Dave's got this one nailed he doesn't need any help, but I'd be curious to hear your comments on some of the thread we're going to start doing some of that because there's some humorous stuff out there that we could give our take on how's that? I like that, it sounds good reading through stuff and kind of commenting on it so we've got our neighbor, we'll get him and maybe we'll do a combo we'll do something from Pinside and maybe something from Twitch or somewhere out in the internet sphere okay so So if you don't have anything else, I have a couple of shout-outs. Can't talk about the one, but I can talk about the other. So our Scandinavian friend emailed me about a topic, which he asked me not to read, which I won't. I'll respect it. Bo Giannato, his little doggie, wished me and you both a happy new year. Says he listens all the time. and, you know, Bojim, he's checking in with the Classic Pinball Podcast. Nice.
    114:36
    I wished him, and he wished back to both of us, Scott from up in Rochester, New York, your buddy who I have the picture of both of you playing the big or standing in front of the big Lebowski. I think you know who I'm talking about. We met him at Pinbrew Fest out in Ohio, which is coming up again. oh yeah 8 hours plus from here I really would like to go because what's his name's place in the supermarket opened up, help me past times the guy who used to run I just pulled that up I just pulled that graphic right out, it's called past times yeah tell me, who's the person Rob Burke he has my cheetah, my gorgeous cheetah but he's now open and I think something's going to go on between those two enemies. I have a feeling Gerard Ohio is going to be put on the map but I think if you're not opposed, I'll give Keith a call again and see if he wants to do a quick rundown of what the show is and we'll include it as one of our segments. You like the show, I like the show. He's going to have double the beer vendors, so how bad can it be? I don't like to drive. I don't like to drive. That's how I like it. It was eight hours plus, and we got two other ones that are like right behind. They're all within like six weeks. See, if they were all right near the time where I can go ride some roller coasters in Cedar Point, Ohio, I could do that as well, spend a couple weeks out there, then, you know. Right, that ain't happening. And then we've got Fantastic, which is now in early April, so we're going to have to do our show on that. I got a special segment here if you want, a little quick little segment from George Lucas. I just talked to him recently about Star Wars.
    116:33
    He's talking with Harrison Ford. Hear a little clip? Wait, wait, wait, stop. Go ahead. Harrison Ford, I just got a reminder that Marco Pinball is going online, and the theme today is Troubleshooting Switches on Indiana Jones. Interesting. Well, this will segue nice. Okay. Go ahead. I'm game. They're going to talk about the carbamite. When he was in Carbonite, you know, Harrison Ford. So here's what they're going to talk about here. Let's see. You know what I always loved about you is when you do those crazy hands, you know, when you're in pain or something. Yeah, that's great. I love it. Those Harrison Ford hands used to joke about that.
    117:19
    Are you shitting? Yeah, it's like carbonite. The carbonite was actually based on, we were walking by your trailer, and I'd seen you pinching one out. And I said, that's an interesting face. And she said, how'd you do that same face? That was it. That's it, yeah.
    117:37
    The key was to never let it out. Yeah, but I mean, you did on that last take. That's the one we kept.
    117:46
    Oh, we kept it. We kept it. So the idea is that. So there you go, George. Nothing like pinching one out.
    117:57
    There's some theater of the mind right there. Right there. Okay, I started to say before we were rudely cut off again, we need like the one-minute signal.
    118:11
    Yes. There probably is one. We just ignore it anyway. Exactly. I said that I had correspondence from Scott up in Rochester, and he really did a cool thing. I guess his son got married over the summer, and he built a pinball shed. And it came out really nice, and he's got a really good collection. So I'm going to politic today and say, Scott, you really should come on our show. So you've got a great collection, and we could have some fun. Does he want to come on the show? Did you try to get him on the show before, or he was shy? I think I mentioned it, and I think we said something to him when we met him. But now it's more formal. It's out on the airwaves. Yeah. So there's that. We were talking about shows. I was leading into Pentastic. I booked my room, so I'm definitely going to go. I'm not going to blow that off. We talked about all the different shows that come together. So you got Allentown as well in early May. So it's like boom, boom, boom, six weeks, there's three shows. I'm going to try to get to Allentown. Janice wants to go, so I think that's a lot for at least one day.
    119:30
    And why does she like Allentown? For the farmer's market? Yeah, she loves the farmer's market. Yeah, it's awesome. No surprise there.
    119:39
    So we'll do that. And a shout out to Grant. I didn't use this when we first talked about it, but he was busy as a beaver, as they say. And then it got to thinking, I haven't done an animal story.
    119:55
    Do they have beavers in Australia? And the answer is no. Yeah, I wouldn't think so. Yeah. No. More like marsupials. Okay. Anyway, so there's that.
    120:13
    What else? I think that's it. I have another animal story. You probably saw it. You see about the people who had $4,000 lying on a counter,
    120:27
    and they were having a contractor come over or somebody to come over and pay for services. And Woofy Woof Woof ate the $4,000. So he had to go around with a cup on his backside to get it back? No, he wasn't a very good ATM. He only gave about three grand to the back. Where'd the rest go? And I saw pictures. Oh, boy. Yeah.
    120:54
    Yeah. What kind of dog was this? It must be a lab. No, what's the one that's got, like, the whiskers? like a Scotty-like looking dog. Okay, yeah. Whatever that, yeah, I don't know. I don't know dogs, but whatever that kind of dog is.
    121:12
    Yeah, he became a very expensive dog for a few minutes. I got a couple of things here. I got one thing. Before you were saying you want to, remember when we started the show today, you said you want to apologize for a couple of things. You said you wanted to do some apologies or some stuff you were saying about whatever. So I'm going to say, so here's a little quiz. which is the hardest for anyone to say?
    121:35
    Number one, I need help. Number two, I was wrong, I'm sorry. Number three, I love you. Number four, Worcestershire sauce. Number five, I appreciate you. Or number six, my conspiracy theorist friend was right.
    122:00
    Number six? Yeah. Okay. What conspiracy theory would this be? Which one? There's a lot of them. They've become conspirafacts lately. A lot of them have come out to be like, yeah, you know, that's a true thing.
    122:19
    Yeah. Again, we're not that kind of show, but yeah, my head, yeah, I shake my head almost every day now. and yes, your news source is quite accurate. Thank you. It's the only one I listen to these days. I look at everything else and say, nah, they don't got it. This guy's got it. Yeah, it was weird for me to be sitting in Virginia and watching the elections in New Hampshire, having participated for so long. That was kind of weird. But that's okay. It wore off. I'm good.
    123:07
    Oh, you know who just sent me a picture of Boothead? Your buddy there? Sharon. What is his real name? His name... I found a lot of stuff about him. I did some research on him because Sharon said, who is this whack job? And I said, that's not a whack job. He's actually poking fun at the establishment calling it a clown world. Yeah, he let me take a picture of him. Yeah, he's been at it for a long time. He's part of the Libertarian Party. Oh, yeah, he was probably one of the 50 candidates that were on the ballot up in New Hampshire. Yeah. I can't believe, I think they said, if I heard correctly, there were 26 candidates for the Republican nomination on the ballot.
    123:53
    Really? Oh, $250 and a handful of signatures gets you on the ballot. For what? For president. For New Hampshire. Oh, yeah. Wow. Oh, yeah. You pay the dough, whatever it is, and I think you have to have so many signatures, they'll allow you on the ballot. Oh, yeah. Well, his name is... You could be on the ballot, Dave, in New Hampshire if you want. I don't. I wouldn't want that at all. Don't want the job. verman love supreme that's it verman verman love though verman love supreme you gotta get the real name go look folks go look him up just put it in there in the google machine and put image in i'll give you a quick he is quite the character a quick bio born in 1960 ish american performance artist activist who's run as candidate in various local state national oh that's right he wants everybody to have a pony. Yes. He served as a member of the Libertarian Party's judicial committee. Supreme is known for wearing a boot as a hat and carrying a large toothbrush. And it's said that if elected President of the United States, he will pass a law requiring people to brush their teeth. He has campaigned on the platform of zombie apocalypse awareness and time travel research and promised a free pony for every American.
    125:14
    That I do remember. I remember the pony. You know what? Actually, he makes a lot more sense of a lot of people running these days, I'll tell you.
    125:23
    Yeah, he's quite the looker. He's actually, I think the rest of the election actually lets people be elected. They're actually caught because this guy's a clown. They've actually caught up to him now. Now they're all clowns. So he's leading the pack.
    125:37
    I'm sure you could, if you lived in New Hampshire, you could have voted for him in this last election. I'm sure.
    125:46
    Good old vermin. Good old vermin. Anyway, if you don't have anything else, we'll close January out. I'll come up with a witty name if I can.
    126:02
    I just have one last question of you. Yeah. Did you participate in, quote, unquote, dry January? No. What is dry January? Don't drink at all?
    126:18
    Yes. No, I never heard of it. You really don't watch the news. Never heard of it. No, I don't take any edicts from news to tell me to do certain things. No, I'm gathering that. That's why this is always good. Yeah, I had no idea. Contrast is always good, Dave. That's true. No, I had no idea that they were telling me I should be dry for January. Although I have been pretty dry for January. No, I'm not saying they said you should be dry. I'm just saying a lot of people participate. Oh. Actually, my neighbors were participating. They were very nice to us when we moved in and, you know, gracious neighbors. We invited them over for a drink. They come in and go, we're celebrating dry January, but we still wanted to come over and have a drink with you. I'm like, okay. So they drank soft drinks and I drank beer. Okay.
    127:08
    I'm not participating, Dave. Yeah, I... I wasn't expecting the answer I got, but I'm not participating. Yeah, I don't want to, you know, when I'm on the, I actually, although coming up, I might do a little like that, maybe like a week or two, you know, just to kind of get off the beer a little bit, you know, and then start clean again and then have some more beer later. But, you know. I couldn't convince them. I said, you know, there is a such thing as a damp January. You know, you have the urge to cheat. you know, you can have one and, you know, chuck it up for you know, just chuck it up. Oh, no, no, no, I'm close to the finish line. We're going to see it through. But come February 1st, they said, okay, deal. Yeah, it was good for them. It's called having some willpower. You know, if people can do it, great. You know, it's good to abstain for a while in anything. I guess I have no willpower.
    128:09
    I've been a bad Bad boy. Bad boy. Yeah, well, I've actually been, you know, going to some restaurants here and there, and they don't have any IPA on draft. Oh, we just ran out. We don't have that. We'd like a Michelob Ultra, and I go, yeah, you got any coffee? I'm going to go with coffee.
    128:30
    Thanks. How about some mouthwash or gasoline? Yeah, anything, but, yeah. Yeah, not so much. So if they don't have the right type of stuff, then I'm not going to go and just kind of participate, you know. There you go. Me either. So anyway, I'll let you close us out unless there's one more thing.
    128:55
    And we'll kiss this episode goodbye. All right. Sounds good. Well, thanks, everybody. This has been Dave. And that has been George. And this has been the Classic Pinball Podcast. Like, share, subscribe. Go on my website, pinballdoctor.com, all spelled out. And you can also send me an email at dave at pinballdoctor.com and see what we have in the restoration queue. If you have something in particular you'd like to get restored or have me look for you and find a restore, I can do that too. And Maureen, with her lovely touch-up skills, and touch-up the playfield and cabinet as needed.
    129:35
    So, George, over to you. Anything you got to say? I'm going to say thank you all for a great 23 I'll try to be more positive although that's no fun in 24 we've got some good things planned even though Dave doesn't know it we've got some good things planned for this year what's left of this I think this will probably come out next Tuesday so you'll have one day left, chuck it and make it a wet January.
    130:10
    Stay lit and tilted. Yeah. I got a question for you. I don't know. Is there some kind of surprise happening?
    130:21
    No, no, no. But, I mean, our dance card for the first three or four or five months is pretty much filled.
    130:29
    I mean, we're going to do... We talked about this. we're going to maybe do the idea I had with our neighbor. Do something like that. Yes. Yep. I also said that I want to do a game. Now, I'm not going to be as technical and as professional as you, but I have a couple of games that I want to talk about in my collection, and it'll be very easy for you to participate. So we got that. We've got Pintastic coming up. We got the Allentown Show. I can never – they call it what? Pinfest? Pinfest. Yeah, the Allentown Show. The Allentown Show. That's what they should call it. We got that. So, you know, that takes us up until sometime in May. And then we have that half a year because we're only monthly.
    131:15
    Yeah. Right? Yeah. Right. So we'll be verbose. We'll be long-winded. We will definitely try to entertain you. Go back and listen to all the episodes that I referenced in this particular podcast. I don't think I have anything else I think that's it, we've covered everything alright I do, I got one more thing for you I do, I do here it is, one more thing those Merco Playfield everybody's complaining about you put the post in and it turns the, you know, artwork comes up and the clear comes up we talked about this at length last month. Right, right. So now I talk to my customer who wants me to do a really nice nine ball for him. Oh, no. And I have his nine ball play field here, and I got the nine ball here, and I was thinking like, you know, I should... who's this going to be? Oh, PJ's calling. What's PJ going to say? Hold on.
    132:20
    Hello, caller, you're on the air. You're on the podcast. You're on the air. What do you got to say, caller? Hello, PJ. Are you really on the air? You're on the air, yeah. Say hello.
    132:32
    Hey, everybody. Hi, pinball fans. PJ, hello. It's George. Hi, George. How are you? We're doing well. Things are good.
    132:49
    Glimmer Hold. Glimmer Hold's coming online very soon, George, if not already. Who? Glimmer Hold. Remember that place up in Manchester with a board game company making an arcade?
    133:00
    Remember there at Pintastic? You said you couldn't talk about it. I don't think we ever did. Yeah, they're online, right? Is that today the day, PJ?
    133:11
    I think yesterday was preview day for people that wanted to go see it, and they could actually play the games there. Yeah, yesterday. I think it started yesterday, and I think it continues for a few days.
    133:27
    Rewind. So this is the arcade that was to open up in Manchester, correct? Or maybe it's Nashville. No, it's Manchester. Manchester, okay, Manchester.
    133:42
    Supposedly, if I heard correctly at the time, it was going to be like 100 games or something like that? It is actually about 200 games, and 100 of the games being pinball machines.
    133:56
    So, PJ, how do you know so much about this? I've been following it online. Oh, okay. He wants to go. What? Okay. Where would one... I've never seen anything about this. You've got to sign up for Glimmerhold. You should have bought some tokens from them when you were there. Remember? Glimmer Hold.
    134:20
    Glimmer like in Glimmer Quinn? Yeah. G-L-I-M-M-E-R. Not the best name in the world. Glimmer Hold. It's basically a board game company. They donate a lot of their profits to Toys for Tots, and they made an arcade for some reason. The board game and arcade doesn't really go together, but they do. So now I'm really intrigued. Do you even know what board games they produce? and if you did, do you know anything about them? No, they're like those board games with the cards that you have monsters on or something, you roll some dice and you have a monster in your card my monster beats your monster or something like that some kind of D&D Okay, PJ, now that I got the one answer, do you know anything about that company?
    135:11
    Not a lot about the company, but I know that they're in association with Toys for Tots, and some of the proceeds go to that. And they've been waiting for their licensing from Manchester, and I think they finally have their licensing.
    135:27
    So they're allowed to open now. It's a beautiful arcade. So is this going to be a coin drop or a thing? Coin drop. It's tokens. It's expensive. A dollar a token. It's a bucket token. It's a bucket token, and some games take one token, some games take two tokens. Whoa, okay.
    135:49
    Or you can go down to my buddy Jay's place at Freeplay and pay $10 and play all day and all night. Right. They have a lot of new games. They have a lot of expensive games there, so that's why they're, you know. Yeah, I'm guessing they're going to have a lot of Stern games. Exactly. Interesting. Okay. I'll have to go check it out. So, thank you. That's A, an unexpected call. B, topic I knew nothing about. He's our reporter from the field. Okay. Terrific. He's checking me. You have a big Lebowski there, too. Oh, a big Lebowski. That's worth it. Yeah. Put a couple bucks in that.
    136:30
    Okay. That's fun. Okay. They'll probably have all the latest and greatest. At two bucks a throw. The 007s, they have, I don't know, they have Willy Wonka, they have all the new games. Right, but... Some of the older games, too. Not to crap on them, but guys, you've got to be fantastic. Man, you can play all those games all day long. I must have played James Bond 10 or 20 times. Nobody was playing it. So, you know, at a buck or two bucks a throw.
    137:09
    Yeah, I don't know. You like me now, Gabe? Yeah, I know that's going to work out. But if you had, like, some old games in it, all restored, I'd even throw a buck into those, maybe. They're actually pretty quick of a game. Maybe 50 cents. Well, that's, I remember I told you last show, that place in Virginia, the Maltese, 50 cents a game, even for all the brand-new Stearns. That's not bad at all. For brand-new Stearns, too. Right. No, they're great. They're busy.
    137:47
    Yeah. So you coming over, PJ? Oh, I don't know. No. Spirit of 76 is calling you. It's calling your name. I need a professional playtester. That's you.
    138:04
    Okay. You guys can have your product conversation. Let's close this out. Yeah, I got to close out the podcast with George here, PJ. Can I give you a call? I'll give you a call right back. Yeah, no problem. All right. Well, have a good podcast. PJ, I'll see you in April. All right. Take care. Are you going to come to the show? Yeah, definitely.
    138:30
    Oh, great. Excellent. Okay. I'll see you then. All right. Take care, George. You as well, PJ. All right. Okay, bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye. That was my friend PJ reporting from the field on the Cluttered Pinball Podcast. Back to you, George.
    138:49
    I got nothing else. That was timely, though. I had no idea that there was such a place. You had talked about it a long time ago.
    138:59
    It seems like a long time ago, anyway. Anyway, they got some free pub. Yeah. Good or bad. There you go.
    139:07
    So, okay, folks. Until next month. Stay lit. Stay tilted. And tilted. And don't drive like my brother.
    139:19
    That's a click and clack reference. People will know that from Boston. Oh, boy. Anyway. Okay. Bye, Dave. Peace out, George. Yeah, later. Okay, bye-bye.
    139:35
    All right, let's see what we've got for calls here. Let's call the old voicemail. There's three messages here. Let's see what this is. You have 26. Dave to message. Hey, Dr. Dave Hutline. Dave to message. Who called me? Dr. Hayes, call me up. My pinball machine isn't working right. Okay. 408-202-439. All right. Okay. We can do that. We can call you right away. Ask for Rick. Got it. All right.
    140:10
    Message saved. What else we got here? Read the message. Who else called me? Yes, my name is Rick. I left a message earlier today. Okay. I think we got it already.
    140:26
    Okay. Uh-huh. Wait a second. That sounds like my number. You're calling my number. Nine. Okay. Now, I think that's my number. Are you...
    140:46
    Do you take drugs? Okay. All right. Okay. All right. I think he's in, do you know the way to San Jose? Let's see. 408 is California.
    140:58
    Now what? You again. Mechanic? I'm not a mechanic. I'm actually a craftsman artist, but okay. Slot machine?
    141:11
    No. Okay. All right. We'll try to do that. I thought it was 774 a second ago. 774? No. I will try it. Rick. Got it. We're going to call you right now.
    141:27
    All right. Rick. Rick would like a phone call back. This would be interesting. Let's call Rick. Let's see what Rick has to say.
    141:37
    All right. Ricky Ricardo. Let's see what's going on here. Let's see. Dialing for dollars. calling Rick from California. I don't think Rick knows that we're on the East Coast.
    141:54
    I think Google is serving up a lot of, I don't know. Hello? Hello, looking for Rick. Yes. I like the song in the background. It's Creedence. What are you doing? That's Creedence.
    142:12
    Whoa. Yeah, Rick. Somebody turn that on. I've got to turn this crap off. All right. Well, you can call it crap. It sounds pretty good to me.
    142:25
    That's okay. All right. Okay. There he is. So, this is Dr. Dave. You called about a pinball machine, but I think you're in California, right?
    142:38
    Yeah, I am. Yeah, I'm on the East Coast. Oh. That's a little far apart. A little bit. I'm not sure. How did you find me? Google search? It was on the internet. Okay. I was going around and saw that on there. I said, oh.
    142:55
    Oh, interesting. What I got is a couple of slot machines, pinballs and stuff. Well, that's what I got.
    143:07
    Okay, what kind of pinball machines you got? Well, I got the Batman, the new Batman. Got that one. Then I got the, what the hell is the other one?
    143:21
    What is that? I gotta think about this now. What the hell is the other one? Monster Bash. Oh, that's a good one. Got that one too. And then, uh, oh cool yeah okay what's your issues with them yeah oh the chopping block yeah well I am I could start driving now, but it's going to be quite a while before I get out to you, I think.
    144:14
    Yeah, I think so, too. So, uh... Because I got a slot machine, too, and then I bet that doesn't work. It doesn't show the credits or something at the end of the game.
    144:29
    You know, when you're playing the slot machine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know much about... I know pinball machines. I don't know much about slots, though.
    144:41
    Yeah, yeah. But, uh... Yeah. Well, that's a little bit sort of far now. I think so. I think so. So, but Google keeps giving my information out to, uh, I don't know, everybody around the world these days. So, that's a Google thing.
    145:00
    Yeah, you never know. You never know. Okay, well, thanks for calling anyway. Yeah, you're welcome. Good luck on your search.
    145:10
    Yeah, we'll see what happens there. Okay. All right. Have a good night. Bye. Okay, bye-bye. Yeah. And that was Another Case Cracked by Dr. Dave.
    145:26
    Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Right. But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. Used to make beer brewed here. It is used to make the brew beer here.
    145:48
    Oh, Earth Riders, thanks for the great legs. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron besides. I heard that. Thanks for the compliment.
    145:57
    Hasta la vista, baby.