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Episode 119 - Pinball Ranker

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·59m 55s·analyzed·Jun 1, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.040

TL;DR

PinballRanker.com launches as a simplified ELO-based alternative to Pinside's complex ranking system.

Summary

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast hosts Connor, a software engineer from Seattle, to discuss PinballRanker.com, a new ELO-based ranking platform for pinball machines that simplifies the Pinside rating system. Rather than requiring detailed categorical ratings across 20+ factors, PinballRanker uses head-to-head matchups ('which game do you like more?') to generate both global and personal rankings. The tool launched in beta just as a competitor site appeared, suggesting strong community demand for an alternative to Pinside's complex rating methodology.

Key Claims

  • PinballRanker uses an ELO-based system where users compare two games at a time, with hidden scores updating based on win/loss outcomes, rather than categorical ratings like Pinside

    high confidence · Connor explaining the technical approach to PinballRanker, contrasted explicitly with Pinside's rating methodology

  • Pinside's ranking system requires users to rate 20+ different categories including cabinet artwork, sound quality, call-outs, and light shows, which discourages participation and skews results against classic games

    high confidence · Alan and Connor discussing the friction points of Pinside's rating process; Alan notes classic solid-state games rank poorly on Pinside due to lack of call-outs and cabinet art ratings

  • The early PinballRanker global rankings (as of May 17, recording date) show strong representation of classic solid-state games in the top 10, with Future Spa, Skateball, Mystic, Dune, and Eight Ball Deluxe all ranking in the top 10

    high confidence · Alan reading the live PinballRanker top-10 list recorded during the episode, noting this differs significantly from Pinside's top 100

  • A competing ELO-based pinball ranking site launched within days of Connor's PinballRanker beta release, suggesting simultaneous independent recognition of demand for an alternative to Pinside

    high confidence · Alan and Connor discussing the timing coincidence: 'we saw someone with a very similar site launched just a few days before you dropped the beta version'

  • PinballRanker allows users to create personal ranked lists that they can share with others, and the site is completely free to use with no account vouch requirement like Pinside

    high confidence · Connor explaining the feature set and accessibility of PinballRanker compared to Pinside's barrier to entry

  • Dune (a Jersey Jack Pinball game) did not sell its full 1,000-unit production run but is now ranked #7 on PinballRanker's list

    medium confidence · Alan noting 'it didn't even sell its full thousand run copy or whatever' while discussing Dune's surprising high ranking

  • The Wedgehead Podcast Discord community inspired the creation of PinballRanker after persistent complaints about Pinside's ranking system

Notable Quotes

  • “Which one do you like more? Anyone can do that, whereas like ranking on Pinside feels like you kind of have to have a fucking PhD. You really got to know the games inside and out, I feel like.”

    Alan @ ~20:15 — Captures the core usability friction with Pinside and the value proposition of PinballRanker's simplicity

  • “Your gut knows what your brain doesn't is what I always say. You crack two eggs and one of them will survive.”

    Connor @ ~28:40 — Summarizes the philosophy behind the ELO comparative method; references the 'Super Egg' concept introduced earlier

  • “The Pinball Ranker is the ranking site for the people.”

    Alex @ ~24:50 — Captures the democratizing intent of the tool versus Pinside's gatekeeping barriers

  • “It's like they follow the Wedgehead Pinball podcast every week, and that's nice. It's updated in real time.”

    Alan @ ~35:45 — Highlights the real-time advantage of PinballRanker over Pinside's scheduled weekly updates

  • “I look at this, the top 10 and the bottom 10, and I'm like, yeah, those are bad games. These are good games. Like, way more than the Pinside list... these are for real. This is real shit.”

    Alan @ ~37:50 — Demonstrates stronger alignment of early PinballRanker results with organic community taste versus Pinside's algorithmic skewing

  • “The Pinside system is very biased against classics, you know, but... solid state games actually rank high [on PinballRanker].”

    Alan @ ~39:00 — Identifies a structural bias in Pinside (lack of call-outs/cabinet art penalizes older games) that PinballRanker naturally corrects

  • “I'm like I'm going to try to rank every game and I ranked I think three and it took me probably like 15 minutes a game and I was like I'm never going to do every game I've played.”

    Alan @ ~31:20 — Personal testimony to the time-sink barrier Pinside creates, demonstrating why simpler alternatives are needed

Entities

ConnorpersonAlanpersonAlex the WaterboypersonPinballRanker.comproductPinsideorganizationWedgehead Pinball PodcastorganizationWaterboysvenueJeff Hartperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: PinballRanker.com launched in beta via Wedgehead Pinball Podcast Discord; free, real-time ELO-based ranking platform for pinball machines

    high · Connor launches PinballRanker; Alan: 'Connor's released this and we want to get everyone out there to start using it. I mean, it's completely free to use. It's up right now.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Wedgehead Pinball Podcast Discord community actively engaged in testing and requesting features for PinballRanker; rapid iteration cycle driven by user feedback

    high · Connor: 'it makes me want to go and build those things as fast as I can... it's been fun, like kind of building on top of it with everyone.' Alan: 'Connor's been adding functionality as like the Discord kind of suggests and requests things.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Growing community dissatisfaction with Pinside's complexity and categorical bias; sustained pressure for simpler alternative documented over years in Wedgehead Discord

    high · Connor: 'we've complained about Pinside List... we've talked as long as I've known you, I think we've complained about Pinside List. Yeah, and I know we're not the only one.'

  • $

    market_signal: Competing ELO-based pinball ranking site launched within days of PinballRanker beta release, suggesting independent recognition of market gap

    medium · Alan: 'we saw someone with a very similar site launched just a few days before you dropped the beta version of yours on the discord.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: PinballRanker launched with minimal bugs and strong mobile performance despite being new software; Connor implemented multiple feature requests within hours/days of receiving them

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.180

0:00
Gagel, Gagel, Gagel, Gagel, Gagel. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Wet Chat Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Alan. As usual, but unusually, we are not in the Waterboys basement studio together. We are recording remotely with my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. How are you doing today? I'm doing okay. You know, I'm a little lonely, but what makes it better is that it's my turn to do the coffee plug, right? Cheers everybody up. For those that don't know, if you're a fan of the show, you want to throw us a few bucks, show some support, you can go to ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcast. We really appreciate it. We use that money to go on trips, go play pinball and stuff, you know? It's just appreciative for all the work Alan puts in to the show and the little bit of work that I put into the show. If you do donate like $5 or whatever, you get an invite to the Discord. You don't need to join the Discord if you don't want to, but it's pretty fun. It's a good way to kill like an eight-hour workday, you know, pretty quick if things are popping off in there. And yeah, that Discord is actually kind of a central piece to what we're here to talk about, kind of. It led to what we're here to talk about, right, Alan? Yeah, this week we have a very special guest on the show, a prominent member of our Discord community and Wedgehead Regular. Despite living in Seattle, in this week's episode we're going to chat about something that actually came up in that Discord server And something that our friend ended up building for the pinball community at large to enjoy. And that's a new and better way to rank pinball machines. One of our biggest supporters of both the bar and this podcast, a good friend to Alex and I both, and maybe most importantly, is a Green Godzilla truther. I'm so happy to introduce our guest today. Welcome to the show, Connor. How are you? I'm doing great. Happy to be here. What's this about the Green Godzilla truther? Are you talking about like the cartoons? You know, the cartoons count. Let's not discount that, you know, but like Rugrats, right? A little older, a little Hanna-Barbera for us. Godzuki, we don't want... I'm also a Godzuki truther, you know, that's an important part of this too.
2:29
Much better than Minya. Yeah, you know, Godzilla, he comes in many forms. Sometimes he's a hero, sometimes he's a villain. He's all things to all people, but sometimes he's green. Particularly in the Godzilla Millennium series. Starting with Godzilla 2000, running through Godzilla Final Wars, he's a mean green machine. He's got like a tint of green. I'd give you like a tint. That's still some green. It's like reflecting the trees around him perhaps, but I don't think – I'm not buying it. On the Godzilla wiki apparently. Yeah. He's canonically green during the Millennium Era, and that's six films of the 30 Godzilla films. I knew this would come back to haunt me. That's 20 percent of the films he's green. Canonically green. I will point out the whole green Godzilla argument started because of the Stern pinball machine, which is locked into the Showa era, right? Yes. So you are right that it is wrong for that Godzilla to be green, but Godzilla can sometimes be green. I suppose. I'll concede that. I'll concede the point. Yeah, we can move on.

high confidence · Alan and Connor: 'we've complained about Pinside List... we've talked as long as I've known you... we've complained about Pinside List'

  • PinballRanker updates rankings in real-time, whereas Pinside updates rankings once per week on Mondays

    high confidence · Alan: 'it's updated in real time... Pinside has a delay. They drop new rankings every week, I think it is, and they drop on Mondays'

  • Connor, the creator of PinballRanker, is a software engineer with 12+ years of professional experience and a member of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast Discord community

    high confidence · Connor's direct statement: 'I've been a software engineer for a dozen years now' and Alan introducing him as 'a prominent member of our Discord community'

  • PinballRanker launched with minimal bugs and strong mobile performance, surprising the hosts who typically expect buggy software launches

    high confidence · Alex: 'I'm not a software guy, but I'm used to every piece of software launching with like a million bugs... you rolled this out and immediately it was like, oh, everything works'

    • “So it's like this is a groupthink list at this point, which is not the intention of the pinball ranker, but just because of the limited access that it's had... it's going to change a lot.”

    Alan @ ~38:00 — Acknowledges that beta user base (Wedgehead Discord members) creates homogeneous results; expects diversification post-launch

    Caucasian Two Steps
    person
    Godzilla (Stern)game
    Future Spagame
    Skateballgame
    Mysticgame
    Dunegame
    Eight Ball Deluxegame
    Keith Elwinperson
    Jurassic Park (Stern)game
    Led Zeppelingame
    Rushgame
    Iron Mangame
    Ultramangame
    Stern Electronicsgame
    Ericperson
    Flickchart/PopcornListproduct

    high · Alex: 'I'm surprised at how fast... it's kind of hilarious. You rolled this out and immediately it was like, oh, everything works.' Alan: 'implemented that... the next day you're like, OK, now you can mark a game not played.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: PinballRanker philosophy prioritizes intuitive preference comparison ('which game do you like more?') over detailed categorical analysis; democratizes ranking participation by reducing expertise barrier

    high · Connor: 'just, which one's more fun? Which one do you like more? So I show you two games, you pick, and that's kind of the end of the discussion.' Alan: 'Pinball Ranker... it's really hard for me to say what's my favorite because it always changes... I go, which of these two, if I walked up, which of these two would I play?'

  • ?

    product_strategy: PinballRanker removes barrier-to-entry compared to Pinside (no account vouch requirement, free tier with full functionality, no categories to master)

    high · Connor: 'just create an account... it's completely free to use.' Alan notes Pinside 'you have to create an account. Someone has to vouch for you.'

  • ?

    content_signal: Early PinballRanker results (50 beta users, May 17 recording) show substantial representation of classic solid-state games in top 10, diverging significantly from Pinside's top 100 bias toward modern machines

    high · Alan: 'solid state games actually rank high [on PinballRanker]... in the Pinside list, there's like what, like three of them in the top 100... The Pinside system is very biased against classics.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Long-standing community desire for simplified Pinside alternative; Wedgehead Discord members independently arrived at 'this or that' concept (Jeff Hart citing PopcornList/Flickchart analogy) months before Connor built solution

    high · Connor: 'so there's definitely people out there who have had the same kind of feeling... And also just knowing from art from the discord pinball tends to attract a lot of software engineers... it was only a matter of time before some of us were like... I'm going to build this.'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Emergence of alternative ranking platforms signals weakness in Pinside's monopoly as 'industry standard' for game rankings; multiple independent builders arriving at same solution suggests structural deficiency in incumbent product

    medium · Alan and Connor noting simultaneous launches of two competing ELO-based platforms; discussion of Pinside's persistent usability complaints and gatekeeping despite being 'industry standard'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Pinside's categorical rating system (20+ fields including sound quality, light show package, cabinet art, call-outs) creates substantial friction for location players who lack familiarity with machines and abstract rating categories

    high · Alan: 'If you're playing on location, how the hell are you ranking sound quality?... cabinet art. At a location with a lot of games, you might not even see the cabinet art... you really got to like, really this feels like it is built... for people to judge things as if they were going to a car auction.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Current PinballRanker beta results reflect homogeneous taste of Wedgehead Discord members; Alan acknowledges 'psychopaths in our Discord' bias and expects significant list changes post-public launch

    high · Alan: 'it's because people that listen to the show and then are in our Discord... it's like, this is a mind. This is very, very much like a group think list at this point... it's going to change a lot.'

    • 3:28
    Godzilla talk. Imagine us dropping a Godzilla episode and it's just about the movies and the character and not about the pinball machine. I think there's a couple popular Godzilla podcasts, actually. So, you know, if listeners want that, I bet there is an episode just arguing about if Godzilla's green. If having a Godzilla tattoo in an entire corner of your house dedicated to Godzilla qualifies, I could use this. I like how you say it's one corner as if there's not multiple corners in the house where Godzilla still exists. Yeah, there's a little bit everywhere, but he does get a dedicated corner. Yeah, the dedicated shrine there. Shrine's a good word for it. So we're here, Connor, to talk about something that you built and you call PinballRanker.com. Can you tell us what that is and how it works? Yeah, so PinballRanker.com is a site where you can go and you can rank pinball machines in one-on-one battles. So the idea here was that, you know, most people when they think about rankings for pinball machines, the go-to is Pinside. Pinside, that ranking system is actually based off of ratings. So you'll see like the number one rating, a number one ranked game also has a rating associated with it. It's nine point whatever it is. And, you know, it just kind of goes down in descending order from rating there. Now, when it comes to like how most things are ranked in the world, like when you think about tournaments and that kind of stuff, that's not how you do it. A lot of times it's through competition. And so there's actually a system called ELO or ELO. I don't know if you actually say it as an acronym or not. I've heard it said as an acronym, ELO. It's just someone's name. It's weird. But it's this idea that you would have, you take two things, you pick which one's the winner between them, and then in the background, kind of hidden score is being updated for each of those, for whoever's the winner and the loser. And it actually changes how much you win and lose depending on the existing rank of the game before that. And yeah, so the idea is just like, let's not have 20-something different categories that you have to rate to come up with some overall rating that you can have at the end of the day, and then it's kind of abstract. It's just, these are games, which one's more fun? Which one do you like more? So I show you two games, you pick, and that's kind of the end of the discussion. That's the game you prefer. It's kind of like the Super Egg. Are you guys familiar with the Super Egg? No. When you crack two eggs against each other, because that's the fast way to crack eggs, and then you keep advancing the stronger of the two eggs, the survivor, and whichever egg you're left with at the end is the super egg. I've never heard of this at all. What do you do with the super egg? Well, you make cookie dough, and you pay attention to who eats the cookie because they got the super egg cookie. All right. This is a concept. Alex is dropping knowledge here. It's the same exact thing as Pinball Ranker. No, except for Pinball Ranker, it doesn't carry one game forward like some this or that formats do. Yeah. Fresh matchup every time, so you're not just being like, oh, like I'm going to just see what my favorite is right now because that would not really work with the number of games there are out there. Another thing I wanted to do with Pinball Ranker compared to Pinside is we do have the overall ranking that comes from this. But one of the things that I found kind of limiting with Pinside is that you just have this kind of global list and it doesn't really say much about what you think of pinball. So a feature I wanted to add from the get-go when I started building this is the idea that while you're doing this ranking and you're contributing to the global rank, kind of in the background, you might not even realize it's happening, those same rankings that you're doing are kind of constructing your personal list of top games. So not only do we have the global top list of games, but your own list that you can then look at and say, okay, definitively, here are my favorite games. And it's interesting because like Pinside does do that, but I don't feel like anyone really uses it. And my, I've tried, like I was on Pinside like, I don't know, like 15 years ago, and I was trying to rank all these games as I was playing. And I would rank more games. And even back then, there was a lot of groupthink and people hadn't played a lot of these games. And so it was just like whatever game that the guy bought is now a 10 out of 10. And then they push it in the forum and try to, if they have a ranking, they've rated four games that are all 10 out of 10s. And that's the only games they've rated on there. And so you do get a list, but it's hard to even make my list what I want it to be because all the different categories start throwing. Like Iron Man is one of my favorite games. It's ass ugly. So it's like when it asked me to rate art on Iron Man, I got to be truthful, but then it bumps it way out of my top 10. And then I'm like, well, that's not fucking right, because it's still a top 10 game to me. That is like the interesting part about the Pinside rankings, and I understand what they're going for there. They're trying to make it, you know, somehow more objective by asking you to qualify all of these different little pieces. But I would say like the big thing when you go to rate a game on Pinside, it takes a while. You're like sitting there filling out you're filling out like it's like 20 categories or something like that. And then it's kind of bizarre because it'll be asking you, you know, how do you rate the cabinet artwork out of 10? And you can kind of swing. You can adjust the weight of categories within some limits so you can make cabinet artwork not as important as play field layout. But like it still is a big chunk of the game's overall rating is the cabinet artwork. And you're like, well, I don't give a fuck about the cabinet artwork. Like, I'm not worried. When I'm talking about what the best game of all time is, like, sure, I do have feelings on cabinet artwork. I can understand that some games have really cool-looking cab art, and they go on the end of my lineup or whatever. I don't think, like, good cabinet artwork makes Ultraman a better game, for example, than, like, a Stern Electronics that just says Stern Electronics on the side. Yeah, the black cab. Yeah, you know what I mean? Because it's like any of those games are going to get a zero out of ten on cabinet artwork if you're trying to do this objectively at all. And you're like, well, that doesn't really make it a worse game. So I don't know. It's such a different experience going to Pinball Ranker where you're just, you know, it presents you with two games and it just says, which do you like more? Anyone can do that, whereas like ranking on Pinside feels like you kind of have to have a fucking PhD. You really got to know the games inside and out, I feel like, to try to rank them on Pinside, whereas Pinball Ranker, you're just, which game do you like more? And you're like, well, if you've played them, you probably know. It's a little bit hostile to us. And I think a lot of the listeners of the show, even though there is crossover, but location players, Pinside rating is kind of hostile because it's like, what's the sound package? What's the light show package? What's the this? What's the that? And you don't and it just creates you have to create an account. Someone has to vouch for you. You have to. Yeah, I mean, it's asking you to rank like sound quality. There's sounds and speech. There's music. There's variation within the sound package, and then there's sound quality. And you're like, if you're playing on location, how the hell are you ranking sound quality? Yeah, or even, like you said, cabinet art. At a location with a lot of games, you might not even see the cabinet art. I mean, a lot of this stuff, it's like you really got to like, really this feels like it is built, the Pinside list is really built for people to judge things as if they were going to a car auction or something, and you're walking around and checking off the boxes as you have the game in front of you. And that's not really what playing pinball is about. I don't know. The pinball ranker is the ranking site for the people. Yeah, I agree with that. Again, Waterboy always comes up with the perfect summation. That's why he's the best in the business.
    10:57
    What's the process for someone to use the site, Connor? Yeah, so the process, I mean, you can take a look at the rankings anytime you want. It's easily available to go look at those. But if you want to actually start contributing to rankings, just create an account. The reason for the account is, like I said, I wanted users to not only contribute to the global rankings but have something of their own, their own rankings to share because I feel like that's – it's kind of providing value back to them. Like not only are you contributing to this global ranking, which is great for us, like for everyone to be able to look at that list and talk about it. But it's also cool to then, you know, you do all that work and then at the end of it, like, oh, look, I've got my own list. I have something I can share with other people. You have a cool little button that you could click on and then share your ranking, and then it gives you a link to your list so you can share it with a friend. Yeah, absolutely. Or drop it in our Discord. I wanted that to be something people did from the start. It's just like, hey, here's my definitive list. Like, if you're curious what games I like, here's the list. Just go look at it. You know, like, I think we talked a little bit about what we think makes it better than Pinside. Can you tell us more about sort of the functionality we have right now? And according to that list, how you're collecting the data and anything that you're planning on adding to it in the near future? Yeah. So right now the capabilities are there's two ways you can you can rank. One is just a random ranker where that's kind of the one you see on the main homepage. You just get two random games. If you played both of them, you can go ahead and pick a winner. There's also an option there. Like if you haven't played that game, you can just skip that game. Then there's another way you can rank, which is like if you go to your own list, you can re-rank games. So that is then you're just picking that it picks the one game you want to re-rank and then it just compares that to all the other games you've previously ranked. So you can kind of like see where it really fits in with all the games that you know you've played. But at the end of the day, either way you choose it is still giving you two games. It's just choosing whether you want to start with one particular game to rate against others or two random draws like a slot machine. Exactly. It's always two games. And the mindset I think about it when I whenever I'm actually ranking, It's like I'm imagining I'm walking into a location that only has two games, got some quarters in my pocket. Which game am I going to? Which game am I going to end up spending most of the night on? That's how I determine which one I'm going to pick. Yeah, what's your experience using it, Alex, as ranking games? Because you struggle with ranking games sometimes, I think. I do struggle with ranking games, and I am, like, I always am on here saying, like, it's really hard for me to say what's my favorite because it always changes. So when I've been, like, playing around with this, I basically do exactly that, where I'm like, if I walked into a room right now, Which of these two would I want to go play right now? It's not necessarily like I don't sit here and overthink and be like, oh, is this better than that? Like, does this have more replayability or anything? I go, which of these two, if I walked up, which of these two would I play? So my personal list is kind of a reflection of just being like, okay, this is what I would want to play in this exact moment. And it's obviously just like Waterboy. It flows like water. It's transient. Can't step in the same river twice. Like I imagine it'll be funny in like a year to kind of like go back to because at some point we'll talk about our own personal rankings on here so far. And it'll be funny to see how some of these changed. But looking at it, I'm like, yeah, this is actually pretty accurate. Pulling up my list. We'll get into that later, though. We got to discuss this because it blew up on our discord because we knew Connor was working on this for a while. And we saw someone with a very similar site launched just a few days before you dropped the beta version of yours on the discord. How funny was it to see that we had been talking about how the pinball world needed something exactly like this, like a simplified version of ratings and that the people wanted it. And then after a year, we sort of get to at the exact same time. Do you think that's like proof that people have been wanting a simpler alternative? I think so. I think, you know, we've talked as long as I've known you, I think we've complained about Pinside List. Yeah, and I know we're not the only one. So there's definitely people out there who have had the same kind of feeling like, you know, Pinside, Despite being the industry standard I guess you say there always been this frustration There always like that can Harry Potter number two Are we really Are we really And so I think there an appetite out there And also just knowing from art from the discord pinball tends to attract a lot of software engineers, myself included. And it was only a matter of time before some of us were like, all right, my frustration is boiled over. I'm going to, I'm going to build this. Yeah. I looked at it like, I know you were probably like, damn, why did I waste my time building this if somebody else was already building one? But of course we didn't know at the time, but I think it's very funny how you get sort of two of the same thing. And I know it was another person in our Discord who sort of had the original idea. Jeff Hart was basically like, oh, you mean like Flickchart where I was talking about I just want a simpler rating like this or that. Was it Jeff? I thought it was Dan. It was – I thought it was either Dan or Jeff, and then I found out it was Jeff. And then he was like Flickchart, which I don't even think exists anymore. It became Popcorn List, which I had started using to rank movies. And I was like, yeah, this is exactly what I want because it's hard to be like, it's hard to be like, what's my favorite this or that of all time? But if you start comparing two movies against each other, you're sort of like, yeah, I'd rather see that. Like, I feel like I like this one. Your gut knows what your brain doesn't is what I always say. You crack two eggs and one of them will survive. Yeah, this or that idea definitely has existed out there and it's been used in other places. And, you know, sometimes you get like an Armageddon deep impact situation where two great ideas happen at the same time. Yeah, I'm just happy and we're, you know, Connor's released this and we want to get everyone out there to start using it. I mean, it's completely free to use. It's up right now. It seems very stable and very, I'm surprised at how fast. Yeah, I would say I'm not a software guy, but I'm used to every piece of software launching with like a million bugs. And it's kind of hilarious. You rolled this out and immediately it was like, oh, everything works. And it works well on mobile. Connor's been adding functionality as like the Discord kind of suggests and requests things and has been like tweaking little things. But from the get-go, it's just worked, which is really funny to me. How do you feel about that, Cotter, having like a hundred project managers in there being like, you should do this, you should do that? You know, yeah, it can be a bit much sometimes, but honestly, it's fun to be working on something where I'm getting like this direct feedback and excitement for it. And it's motivating, honestly. Like it makes me want to go and build those things as fast as I can just so I can. Because, you know, I've been a software engineer for a dozen years now, and like very rarely have I like directly interacted with customers. There's always so many layers in between it. So, yeah, it's just cool to get that direct feedback. And, you know, I reserve the right to say no to feature requests, but so far there's actually a lot of great ideas in the Discord. And so it's been fun, like kind of building on top of it with everyone. Yeah, I liked someone had suggested early on to add the ability to mark a game as not played rather than just skipping the matchup. And then in so you implemented that, you know, immediately. It's like the next day you're like, OK, now you can mark a game not played. And then someone else was like, oh, maybe you should snooze it instead of permanently not marking it played or marking it not played. So that way, like if you forget that you did that, it just pops back into your list in a couple months or a few months. And maybe you've played it since then. An hour later, you're like, oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, I added that too. And so it's just been kind of funny to see how fast you've been working on this and how the functionality has just kind of improved over the last week or two, however long it's been going in there. Yeah, I mean, like I said, motivation makes a huge difference and it's just fun getting that direct feedback. And there's a lot of good ideas because I think there's a lot of the community knows what they want, you know, with this. I think all of us have had, even if it wasn't really concrete, some ideas of what we would like in our ideal version of what if Pinside Top 100 was a little bit better. We have some ideas, and it's cool to— What do you think is—I mean, we talked about it. It's like the usability of the Pinside list is pretty daunting for all the listeners out there. I'm sure there's a bunch of people that tried and then just sort of fell off because it's so much, just like the integration and the onboarding of it is just sort of like ugh. I mean me personally, when I first found Pinside, I was like really, I was like I'm going to try to rank every game and I ranked I think three and it took me probably like 15 minutes a game and I was like I'm never going to do every game I've played. And so then I eventually kind of conceded and I do still update the rankings for the games I've owned. But I'm like, I'm not going to take the time to review a game unless I own it. It's just it's such a time sink. That's why we love Caucasian Two Steps so much, because he's like put in just thousands of hours to reviewing every game he's ever played on Pinside. And that guy doesn't do anything half ass. I mean, he gives you a full, you know, 100, 200 words, mini essays on every single game. So you know exactly where he stands. But normal people aren't like that. He's not normal. That's abnormal behavior. Correct. It is just like it's too much of a time investment, I think, for most players. You're like, I'm here to play pinball. It's fun to, like, encourage the discussion. I like seeing the rankings and stuff. But it's like the hobby for me isn't filling out forums online. It feels like going to the doctor's office and you feel out forms like kind of in triplicate sometimes. Trying to do more than one game in a row, it's just immediately not fun on Pinside. That's to me the big difference where I can sit there and just like binge pinball rank or you just like click, click, click, click, click, click, keep going through. Yeah, it's such a different experience. Yeah, it's very fun. And I think that's the biggest thing is like it's very fun. It's easy to get into. And then you can immediately share your list, which, you know, as we talk about in the Discord all the time, Where it's like so much of the discussion is just so-and-so likes this game. So-and-so says this game is the worst game of all time. And then we all sort of weigh in on it. Oh, you hate this game, but you like that game. How can you say that? This game is definitely better. And now we actually have a tool where the people that would be unable, and I would put you in this category, Waterboy, or someone else like some of our other people in the Discord where it's like, I think they'd have a hard time if they're like, here's my top 10. 100%, yeah. But now with Pinball Ranker, like you just choosing this or that, you will get one and then you'll look at it and you'll be like, yeah, that's about if you rate enough games that way, you kind of get there. The middle gets a little murky. The cream always rises. Things are pretty tight in the middle, but it's really interesting because the biggest advantage to doing this over trying to just like naturally come up with the list is the bottom 10 is way, way, way more conclusive with this method. Yeah. Because you're actually going to see, like, it's going to present you with games that you would have never thought about otherwise. Like whenever, like we were recently just talking about everybody's least favorite games in the Discord or whatever, and everyone just lists games that they see all over the place and they dislike. Right. And you're like, well, okay, you can say whatever, Jurassic Park by Stern is your least favorite game of all time, but that's bullshit. There's no way that's actually your least favorite. It's just a game you see often that you're tired of playing. And you're like the worst. I mean, when we talk about the list, when you hear it, you'll be like, oh, fuck, I forgot about that game. Yeah. And that's like that's the fun to me seeing the bottom. That's one of the big advantages of this is that it's like it makes you think about games that you would have never, never thought about otherwise. Oh, dude, when Eric was like, it's Led Zeppelin or it's Rush. We're like, what? You're like, those aren't. No, it's just like, yeah, he's just sick of playing those games in League and stuff. Yeah, totally. And you're like the truly shit games aren't on location. Yeah, dude, they're hidden. They're hidden away.
    22:27
    It's like stuff that's like tucked away because it's like, oh, it was worth 500 bucks, you know, forever. And nobody, it doesn't earn. It's an embarrassing thing, whatever. So it is kind of funny. You're like, that's what the real bottom is. Well, this list is, you know, very dynamic. Connor, one of the other things he did is made it so where it's all live rankings. So everything's live. Like Pinside has a delay. They drop new rankings every week, I think it is, and they drop on Mondays, same time as this podcast. So it's like they follow the Wedgehead Pinball podcast every week, and that's nice.
    23:02
    It's updated in real time, so you go and you rank your games here, and you have your own personal list. And then right now, since it's only in kind of beta and before this episode, we haven't really told anybody about it. So it's like whatever, like 50-ish people, and they use it to rank their personal favorites. I'm sure this list is going to change a lot after this episode, but I think it'd be hilarious if we just kind of discussed the list today as of recording. I was going to say, it's kind of funny because right now is like a snapshot of what the psychopaths in our Discord think are the best and worst games of all time. Yes. Personally, I probably agree with this more than any other list I've ever seen. I'm like, oh, they got some pretty good taste. I look at this, the top 10 and the bottom 10, and I'm like, yeah, those are bad games. These are good games. Like, way more than the Pinside list. I'm like, these are for real. This is real shit. But, of course, we gotta say, it's because people that listen to the show and then are in our Discord. So it's like people like our tribe, basically. So it's like, this is a mind. This is very, very much like a group think list at this point, which is not the intention of the pinball ranker, but just because of the limited access that it's had or that people have had to it so far, it's kind of funny. It's going to change a lot, and I think it'll be fun to get this down, but I hope that at the very least what doesn't happen on the pin side list, but what does happen on this list so far is solid state games actually, like classic solid states, actually rank high. Yeah, they actually have a chance here. Like in the Pinside list, there's like what, like three of them in the top 100 and they're all. Yeah, because they don't have call outs and call outs is like an entire section of the ranking. They don't have good cabinet art and cabinet arts, an entire section of the ranking. So it's like the current like the Pinside system is very biased against classics, you know, but we're going to read this list off. I think you'll get a kick out of it. The overall pin ranker list right now, you know, May 17th when we're recording this. Number one, or I'll start from number ten. Let's do that. Number ten, Future Spa. That's a good game. It's a good game. It's kind of hilarious because you're like, it's not a sought after George Christian title. No. Number nine is Skateball, which is another classic Bally game. I can see that one. It's a friendly Bally with cool art package and everything. I love playing that game. It's got the King Kong outlanes that Keith Elwin invented, so that's cool. Number eight is Mystic. How do you feel about Mystic? Phenomenal game. Alex was in our Discord. I think you probably willed this into existence where someone brought up Mystic and then you're like, there's not ten better games than Mystic. Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, I do feel that way. And then, you know, all of a sudden it rises into the pinball ranker top ten. Everyone's like, yeah, yeah!
    25:57
    Number seven is Dune. Oh man I do love Dune but it's kind of crazy when you see like the the reception that game got and like how it didn't even sell its full thousand run copy or whatever and then being like yes the seventh best game of all time I think there's a strong buy towards it in our discord but I do think it's a phenomenal game it just cost a lot. Number six is Eight Ball Deluxe. Yep that's an all-time classic I mean that's objectively one of the greatest games of all time. Yeah you did the objective list so that that was there. Here's the craziest. I think on this list. Well, I guess Future Spawn this. Number five, Demolition Man. That is kind of a crazy one. I don't know who these psychos are. I have it in my top ten. I will say that. It is in my top ten. It's one of those ones that it's like, well, I do enjoy it. It shoots like butter. It's fun. I really like it, but I am shocked to see it so high. Because that means I know there's only 50 or so people in there, but I was like, there's enough psychos in there that have it highly rated enough that it's somehow Now the number five. Number four is, this is no surprise to me since we have a lot of wedge regulars in there, but Frontier. Yep, exactly. Not a surprise to see arguably the best George Christian game, the best Bally Solid State. Frankly, one of my favorite games of all time this high. So we've got a lot of similar-minded folks in there. Number three is Attack from Mars, also on the objective list that Alex put together at number three. It makes sense. It's a classic. I mean, like, that's kind of, yeah. And it's of those big classics, it's got the replayability, I feel like. I agree. Number two is Stars, which I also kind of, it seems like... It makes sense. The cool guy answer for best solid state game, Stars, I think is sort of it. It is a really, really good game. I feel like it's like a perfect early solid state, like just the crossover from EMs to solid state before they started fucking with things and making it too complicated. Agreed. And number one, Preacher from the Black Lagoon. That one's, that's crazy to me. This list, I was like, wait, did Megan the Water Girl slip in and create her own list? And that's why it skyrocketed to the top because I know she loves that game. That is funny. Megan would like a lot of these games. There's a couple on here that she probably doesn't have strong feelings on. But, yeah, she does love Creature. Now that I'm thinking, I'm like, a lot of people really like Creature. I'm just, I think it's, I think it's fun. I do, I enjoy it quite a bit, you know? I can see why it got there. All right, well. That is crazy, though. I've never heard anyone be like, Creature from the Black Lagoons, the best game of all time. It's funny, man. It's funny how, you know, your gut knows things that your brain doesn't. I think so. I think it's just when you start comparing it, you're like, yeah, I'd rather play it than that. And you get enough people doing that. I'd be curious if it's topping like a lot of individual lists or if it's just in the top five of a lot of individual lists. Yeah, I'm sure we can get Connor to find data on that at some point. But I want to ask Connor how our top 10 compares to the current Pinside top 10. Can you give us that list? All right, so the current top ten on Pinside, starring at number ten, Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast. Yep, good game. Number nine, Metallica Remastered, specifically. Remastered. Huh.
    29:23
    Number eight, Monster Bash. Yep, that's objective. That makes sense. Number seven, Evil Dead. Mm-hmm. I know people say that's a top ten game. It came out like a year ago, as did Metallica. Number six, Attack from Mars. That one makes sense. Objective.
    29:43
    Number five, Medieval Madness. That makes sense. Objectively correct. Number four is Jurassic Park by Stern Elwynn I know people like that game Similar Three is number Jaws Number three is Jaws Yep another Elwynn Two is Harry Potter. I think that's just like... It's kind of funny because I'm a defender of Harry Potter within the context of our Discord, but saying it's the number two best game of all time to me is fucking bananas. I got something to say about the Harry Potter defending on our Discord. He's got some info he likes to drop here. I've got some facts and numbers.
    30:29
    Oh, yeah? There's a lot of defenders of the Harry Potter game on our Discord. Whenever, you know, I'm one of the few people who comes out there and, like, has some really negative things to say about it. Despite the defenses, Harry Potter is currently ranked, on Pinball Ranker, 374.
    30:47
    So all you guys that get to write games collectively. That's the thing about Pinball Rancor is that it's making me realize, I'm like, I do think, because I'm like, yeah, 374, that tracks to me. I'm like, there probably are 373 games that I would rather play than Harry Potter, but I do still think that game's pretty fun. I just think it's insane to me to hear it's at number two on Pinside right now. And then number one on Pinside, as always, Godzilla, which on Pinball Rancor is 113. 113? 113. Wow, that's a big difference. I think that indicates that players are a little more sick of Godzilla than buyers. Yes, I agree with that. At least thus far. Godzilla is one of those games, I think it's just so many people own it. The games that are owned by Pinside accounts are obviously going to get rated higher because people want the games they own. They don't want to own dumb shit, so they go on there, conscious or subconscious, they're going to rank their own stuff higher. And then it is objectively a good game, as you guys know, objectively one of the top games of all time, actually. So it's kind of a perfect storm. Makes sense. Godzilla's always ranked number one, even though they made him the wrong color, as discussed earlier. Yeah, but the disparity between that and where Godzilla's at on Pin Ranker is crazy. Yeah, we also have some big disparity with Jurassic Park. Like I said, it's number four on Pinside, but it's 206 on Pinball Ranker. Yeah, that's not surprising, knowing the Discord crowd. I think a lot of us are really sick of these, like the games we see everywhere. Right. And namely, like, I think there's a thing with the online community in general, and I always try to be very careful when I say this, because I think people get the wrong idea. But I personally do not seek out or love playing the average Keith Elwin game. And then it becomes, I can't appreciate Keith Elwin, he's a genius. And then there's like this glazing of Keith as a genius that when you don't like somebody's games and then everyone in your hobby just tells you that you're an idiot because you don't like their games, you're just like, dude, we have different tastes. I mean, it used to be, the old argument used to be Pat Lawler or Steve Ritchie, and pinball heads would be like, yeah, they're both talented, great designers. You just have one of them just sort of speaks to you more, and that was okay, and then now it's just like it's Keith or nobody. And it's just like this crazy thing that happens, and you're just like, I could just say that if I walk into a line and there's a Jurassic Park and a Jaws there, I'm not playing them. Pretty much every other game I'd rather play. And it's not necessarily that I think those are the worst games ever made. Far from it. It is weird how it's like guys can confidently say, like, John Wick's horrible. And people like the John Wick fans, the Ellie Eisman fans are just like, well, it's not for everybody. Like, that's fine. But, like, if you go in there and you're like, Jurassic Park's horrible. Everyone's like, you're crazy. Like, you have to, like, you have to. If you say you don't like Jurassic Park, you have to, like, add the asterisk. Like, oh, no, it is a good game, guys. It's just not for me. But it's like no other modern designer needs that like asterisk attached. And you're like, well, that's attached to like every like there's a lot of good games that I don't personally like. Yeah, absolutely. Or they're not my personal favorites. Maybe I kind of like everything is what pinball rankers made me realize as we'll get into their personals. But yeah. Are there any other good outliers, Connor, that you want to give us on that top list? Oh, for sure. So, like I said, Evil Dead is number seven. Over on Pinball Ranker, it's 197. It's a pretty big difference. I think there's also a really big, you know, interesting difference if you compare what the Pinball Ranker top ten is and you look at where those are ranked on Pinside. That's, there's some huge difference. Oh, okay. So tell us these. Yeah. So. Oh, the classics, dude. We mentioned Future Spa, number ten for us. 271 on Pinside. Yeah, we had to do a die on this hill for it. Yeah, Skateball in our top 10, set 200. Frontier, 175. Jesus. Yeah, that's crazy, man, because you'd think with the Elwyn popularity bump that would at least be in the top 100. Mystic doesn't even have enough ratings to be ranked on Pinside. Ooh. I didn't realize that. Is that game rare? That's going to piss Alex off, dude. I'm mad as hell, dude.
    35:23
    I'm genuinely surprised. I didn't think that game was that rare. But that's just like, you know, cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see type thing. I don't even think that it's that rare. It's just like nobody cares about it. The rating process on Pinside is so annoying. Keith hasn't hyped it up, so like a lot of the Pinsiders haven't gone out of their way to play and rank it lowly.
    35:45
    That's an interesting one. That's just funny to me. Dune is fairly close, so we had it in our top 10 and it's number 11 on Pinball Ranker. I really do think that... No, we have it at 7. Pinside has it at 11. Yeah, so we have it in our top 10, and it just barely didn't make the top 10 on Pinside. We'll see years from now if I still feel so positively about Dune, but at the moment, Dune still feels pretty much like this is what a boutique company should be doing. Like, it's a unique experience. It's a gorgeous game. It has a really nice layout. I just really like that thing. I think that's, like, the high-water mark of a boutique game to me. Because I'm like, this game isn't for everybody. It's not for location, necessarily. Seems to work pretty well as a location game, honestly. Yeah. But I really think that thing's just, like, it's just a really nice game. I just wish it was, like, two grand less. Yeah, totally. I wish we had one. That's how it is. It's like, I wish we had one. Yeah.
    36:48
    And we had Demoman at number five on Pinball Ranker. Oh, this has got to be the biggest disparity. 142 on Pinside. That's actually higher than I thought it would be. Yeah. People like that game. The handles still bug me. I have some sort of like texture aversion to like when the chrome starts peeling on them, it makes the game genuinely feel like unplayable to me. But when you have freshly chromed handles, like if someone does replacements or if it's just an immaculate original, then I like the handles. But that's my only gripe about that game. I really enjoy it otherwise. And the other big disparity we have is S.T.A.R.S. sitting at number two on Pinball Ranker and 138 on Pinside. Jesus Christ, 138. Jesus Christ, dude. What's crazy is that's actually pretty high for a solid state on Pinside. Fuck, dude. But you're like, that is a top ten. And yeah, I guess I didn't put it in my top 10, did I? Shit. Objectively, that's like game number 12. I love you're always like, I love Alex's listeners. That was number 11. And then you're like, what about this? Or you're like, that was 12. Yeah, that was a hard cut, but S.T.A.R.S. had to make way for Pokemon.
    37:59
    Oh, how's the difference in Pokemon? Oh, yeah. Yeah, where is Pokemon? I gotta check Pokemon on Pinside because it was sitting. Because that's a hot new game that Alex and I did an episode on. What's it at on Pinball Ranker? Let me pull that up real quick. Okay, I have the Pinball Ranker, if you have the Pinside. Yeah, where's it at on Pinball Ranker? Sitting at number 26. Sitting at number 26? So if you take that number and multiply it by 10 and then add another 14, you'll get where it's at on Pinside right now at 274. That's insane, dude. People on Pinside fucking hate Pokemon. I've never seen a new Stern. I had no idea it was this low. I've never seen a new Stern. I don't think I've ever seen a Stern release go over 100. And this is at 274. People fucking hate it. That's crazy. Because on location, people love it. The coin box says that the ranking on Pinside is a little wrong and the pin ranker is probably a little more accurate. And it's crazy because it's like I'm not even necessarily the biggest fan of modern games. Like I don't play a lot of them. And I was even like, well, I would play more if they were like this. Like I like this is what I want. I want games that are simple like this. It's got a good hook and catching Pokemon. It plays kind of like Attack from Mars. It's good shit. 26 versus 270. What was that? 274. Jesus, man. I was trying to find it. I was control effing for Pokemon. And I was like, oh, it's not popping up. It must be because of the little accent over the E or something. And then I was like, shit, it's not in the top 100. And then I'm like, it's not in the top 200. I'm like, what's going on? Yeah, it's 274. Wow. That's startling. That's jarring to learn such information. Do we have any more that are like that? Yeah, any other interesting ones that we want to call out, Connor? What's the difference between Creature? Oh, that's a good question. Because ours is on... Number one. Yeah. What's Creature from the Black Lagoon on Pinside? I think it's top 50 probably on Pinside, right? 64. Oh, yeah, 64. Okay, that seems right. Okay, that's not horrible considering, like, yeah, 64 games have been made since it, and Pinside's basically a list of the newest releases. Except Pokemon. Except for Pokemon, which can go fuck itself. You know what's interesting is that's because Pokemon's mostly in the hands of operators right now, and there's not a lot of Pinside owners, I think. And I think it's just like the difference of why Pinball Rankers for the people and why Pinsides for the collector. And it's just like, yeah, it's like we're cutting down the doors and it just allows players. Connor and I talk about this a lot. You're like, it's funny how in the worldwide discourse, how, I mean, he pointed out, it's like, you know, our show is the only Northwest sort of media that gets created or whatever. All these other creators are elsewhere, and yet in the Northwest, when you think about it, it's like between Portland and Seattle, we're the two biggest pinball cities in the entire world, no matter how you look at it. And it's just interesting how – and then Connor's like, I think it's just because everyone's out playing games, not making content about games.
    41:15
    Again, there's a difference there. I think that's what it is. And yeah, if you live in Portland or Seattle, you live in the Northwest, you know that you're like, I don't need to gossip about new games because it'll just come out and then I'll just go play it.
    41:29
    And so we wanted a ranking system that could fit into their lives, though, that they can go out and play and just sort of go, nah, this or that, this or that, this or that. Oh, that was fun. And then now I have sort of a list. But I do want to talk about this is something I bring up in the Discord all the time and I want to bring up here because this is my favorite topic of all time. I love top 10 list and I love bottom 10 list. So I want to talk about the current bottom 10 of the pinball ranker list, which is starting with number 10 is Oktoberfest by American Pinball, which is, I think we all agree, pretty stinky.
    42:03
    Number nine is Stern NFL, game you never see for good reason. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Number eight, South Park. Yeah, that's not too surprising to any person that's played it. Alex refuses to play it. Dude, I've played it enough.
    42:19
    I probably put double-digit games on that thing, and that is ten more than I needed to. Number seven is Stern Rolling Stones. Yeah, that one's pretty bad, too. Number six, I think Alex can speak to this game, Ultraman Kaiju Battle. How was that, Alex? How was owning one of those? I did not particularly enjoy my time with that game. I don't think it's the bottom ten of all time, personally. Well, you're wrong. The people are supposed to be.
    42:50
    I mean, you're right. You're right. I am wrong. But it's not in my bottom ten is what I would say. Number five is Rob Zombie's Spook Show International. That doesn't surprise me. Although Connor said that he doesn't think this is a bottom ten game either. Yeah, I wouldn't put it there. It doesn't surprise me because I've heard so many people say it's their, like, least, it's one of the worst. But I kind of agree. Like, I don't think it's the worst game to play. Here's one that I think all members of the Discord are. This is particularly interesting. Number four worst game of all time by the pinball ranker currently is Popeye Saves the Earth, which is a very game that comes up a lot. And some people like to pop their little heads up and say, actually, it's pretty good. Well, actually, nobody else thinks that. Like, it's not a surprise that nobody likes it, aside from a handful of lunatics that live on the East Coast. Outside of that, everyone else in the real world understands that it sucks. I still haven't really played a decent copy of this. I've just played the easy mode copy at next level. You've played a good copy. That's what the game has to offer.
    44:00
    It's not fair judging games. Judging games at next level is really hard, like we always talk about, because you can stumble into exceptionally easy copies of stuff, which can just ruin an otherwise okay game. But at least it's going to be working. Oh yeah, it worked 100%. It just had long flippers and it's just loose tilt and stuff. So you get stuck in that purgatory. It's the worst. Number three, Halloween. That's what I think is the worst game of all time. It's Halloween. At least it's below Ultraman, which makes sense to me because it's worse than Ultraman. Yeah, for sure. It's the same layout, just worse. Number two is Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball, Pinnball, which I think is sort of a laughingstock game, both on Pinside and now here on Pinball Ranker. Yep, it feels like a gumball machine or something, not an actual pinball. And number one is Jersey Jack The Godfather Worst game of all time according to the Pinball Ranker list What do you have to say about that I like that game It not very good It is not very good It again see I wouldn call it out I think this does get influenced by games that people have had access to So we're seeing an over-representation of new games on here versus there's a lot of, like, horrible, horrible solid states that a lot of people have never played because why would they? Sure. You know, they don't really exist at this point. And so I do think it's kind of funny. We're kind of having an opposite effect of Pinside where we're like over inflating the negative on on modern releases. That's my personal feeling. I know you strongly dislike modern like the the things that bug you about bad pinball in general are exaggerated on moderns. So I'm not surprised at all when you tell me your least favorite games are moderns. Well, because to me it's like if the game's going to suck, it should be over fast. You know what I'm saying? 100%. When a game goes on a long time and it sucks, I'm just infuriated. Yeah, playing a bad game for two minutes is one thing. Playing a bad game for 15 minutes, if you're giving it an honest shake, is something you will remember. And I'm not exaggerating. You will remember that for the rest of your life. The first game, I played that game of, I played my first game of JJP Guns N' Roses and it was set so fucking loud. And I was playing at next level and it's just blasting like Sweet Child of Mine or something. And it's just like the multiball would never end. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. And that's like burned into my memory. I'll remember that when I'm an 85 year old man, my kid's going to be like, you remember, like, what was the worst pinball machine you ever played, Grandpa? And you'll be like, JJP Guns N' Roses. Because it's like I couldn't drain the ball. Yeah, yeah. Or it's just even like the game you mentioned in our Discord that you hate, which was Rogo. Because Rogo is a classic solid state. It's a street-level game. And the thing is, that's a commonly very hated game, but at least it's over. At least it ends, dude. At least it's over. Exactly. It ends. I mean, it's like a bad band. If you have an opener come out and they suck, but their set is three songs long, you're not going to tell your friends about that. You're like, that's fine. That's whatever. It's over now. I don't have to relive that. If you have an opener come out and they play through two full albums, they're out there for an hour and a half, you're like, what the fuck is this? Yeah, dude, for real. And the 10-minute set could have been worse, objectively, but you're going to remember the hour and a half opener. All right, Connor, do you have any, do any of these stand out as compared to the Pinside list on our bottom? I actually didn't get the bottom. Oh, okay. That's okay, that's okay. I think I can pull them up real quick if you want to do that. No, that's all right. No, there's too many. I'm curious, where's, so we say the worst game of all time is Godfather. How does that one compare? I'm a little curious about that. Godfather, that's a good call. Godfather and Halloween because Halloween is hilariously high on the Pinside list. That's a top maybe 50 game. It's definitely like a top 75.
    48:07
    So Godfather, which Pinball Ranker has as the worst game of all time, it comes in at an 8.256 out of 10 and number 68 best game of all time. Get the fuck out of here, dude. And I've got Halloween here. Halloween is currently ranked 104. Fuck that, dude. And like, you know, maybe people on location, you got to play it at home to appreciate it or whatever. The resale value of those games tells the story. Like those two games have depreciated more than any other. I mean, Ultraman, Godfather and Halloween are probably the three biggest hits you could take if you bought them new in box. Yeah, and they're hard to get rid of. A 12 grand Godfather collector's edition is worth about six grand on the market. And so you're like, it's the resale value agrees with Pinball Ranker. Money, like your gut, doesn't lie.
    49:28
    100%. If that was really the 64th best game of all time, there's not a fucking chance it would be selling for 50% off like a year or two after release. It's crazy. So just funny. I do like seeing the disparity. I think some of it's a little exaggerated, a little mean maybe from our Discord rankers. But I think it's closer to the reality. Mean. They're not writing bad reviews. Mean. They're just getting shown two games. They're just saying which game they'd rather play. That's the funny part. It's just the game they like the least. Yeah. Exactly. No one's saying it's the worst game. That's true. That's the one thing we need to say is that this is not the worst game of all time. It's just the game that people like the least. Yeah. I mean, I'll say it. I have no problem saying it. It's the same thing, but it sounds better when you position it like that. You're like, people would just rather play Bugs Bunny than Godfather. It's okay. So I want to get to our personal top five list because I think that'd be fun to kind of quickly run through here. I think for listeners of the show that know Alex and I, these won't probably be that surprising. Mine might surprise you. Okay. My data is a little – I haven't spent as much time on Pinball Ranker as some people in the Discord have, so I would say my data is a little incomplete. But, yeah, I think we should go through this. I'm going to start with my top five list, which is Whitewater, number one, Frontier, number two, number three is Iron Man, number four is Big Game, and number five is Countdown. Yeah, those are five games you won't shut the fuck up about, so that tracks. That's a very Alan list, honestly. It tracks. What's yours, Connor? My number one is Black Knight, Sword of Rage. Number two is Total Nuclear Annihilation. Three is... Wait, do you own one of those? No, I don't. Oh, I thought you did. Yeah, okay, okay. Number three is Attack from Mars. Nice. Number four is Dune. Yep, that makes sense. And number five is Scared Stiff. Ooh, interesting. Surprised you like that game so much. It's kind of different because most of the games you like are mean, and Scared Stiff is pretty friendly, but it's a really good friendly game. Yeah, well, you love Zalbira. That's a big part of it, too. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, my number five. Number one is Frontier, which is, I can't argue that, because that's the thing. When you put Frontier against any other game, I'm like, I think I'd rather play Frontier. Number two, this one, I don't know about, but number two is Attack from Mars. Oh, nice. Which I do, that's another one that it's like, I do like that game a lot. Like you put a good copy of Attack in front of me and I'm going to keep playing it. Number three, one that I don't know if I can conclusively say belongs here because I really haven't played that much, but I'm about to play it a lot more. And that is Alien Star by Gottlieb. Oh, Alien Star. Fucking phenomenal. That's my favorite Gottlieb game of all time. And it's an incredible package. I love how it looks. I really, really like Alien Star. Number four, which is kind of funny, is Rick and Morty. Ooh. Which I think is a really good example of a modern game done right. It's full featured, but it doesn't play that long. That's cool. Number five, similarly, is Total Nuclear Annihilation. Oh shit. I really like that game too. You're Scott's an EC super fan. I am a little scoop fan. Number five being TNA, I think I would push that down consciously and as we keep going we'll see. I think there's some others nipping right on the heels just to round out the rest of mine real quick. Six is John Wick. Seven is Totan Tales of the Arabian Nights. Eight is NASCAR which I think is a little high. Nine is Paragon which made me do some soul searching because I would have never said that. Did I like Paragon that much? And then I was like, man, I really like that game. Alex, I'm hearing a lot of I think. You've got to stop that. Yeah, this is feel. I feel like it's in the right spot.
    53:23
    The funny one on here is number 10 is Bally's Dungeons & Dragons. Whoa, that's crazy. I do like, but I don't know how it got that high. That one will find its way down, I know, because there's a lot of games that I'm like, oh, I'd pick that over there. But it's there now. So I just wanted to bring that up. Cool music. It does have fucking good music, and it's one that I want to play more. I've just not played it much. The art's not as good as Hardbody, so it's kind of like the art package. All right. It's like a dragon and shit. Boring.
    53:58
    Well, this was an illuminating list here. I think we had a good time. We hope the listeners had a good time, and go to pinballranker.com, create your own account, Start making your own list. You know, it's a good way to waste a little bit of time on your phone. Instead of doom scrolling, you can scroll through Pinnball machines and. Yeah, it'll make you think about games you forgot about. It's really I think a lot of the fun is seeing these like it's like when there's a matchup between your favorite game and anything else. You're like, oh, that's easy. But then it'll be like, do you like who done it more than Popeye? And you really start thinking about it. And that's that's when it's funny to me. Yeah, and it's a fun time if you're in our Discord after this episode and, you know, a lot of people like to post the really hard problems for them. You know, they'll post a screen grab and be like, ugh, you know, like because it's their two favorite games of all time. Or it's two games they can't stand of all time and they're like, I don't want to say one of these is good. Like Nugent versus Guns N' Roses and you're like, well, shit, dude, that's a toughie. I'd rather play Nugent because it's over faster. Yeah, so it's a good time and we hope you all sign up and start ranking your list and it would be interesting to look back on this list because we got a little time capsule of just our little discord and the people that listen to the show sort of rated games one way but it'll be interesting having way more people than we'll ever rate games on Pinside and just sort of seeing how it goes from here. I want to thank Connor for joining us and creating such an awesome resource. Thanks for being on the show, man. It was great. Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate you. I'm also going to put Connor on the spot, so I'll release it now to make sure he actually does this. The other thing Connor's been talking about doing is doing a best game ever for his best game ever, which is Black Knight Sword of Rage, so look forward to that episode coming soon. We all love that game. Sometime soon. It'll happen. See? That's what he has to do it now, because I said it. He has to do it because I said it on the show, so everyone can look forward to that. Yeah, let's get the boss up here, Mr. Calvin Trampagne. Where's Cal? Where are you, Calvin? No, I don't want to. Okay, he's being shy. Everybody clap so he's got to come up.
    56:07
    See, they're clapping, you got to come. You got to come up. Hurry up. Come on. It's good. Everybody loves when the boss comes up. It's fun when the boss comes up. Everybody loves it. But yeah, until next time, everybody, go out and play some Pimball on Location. And as you're on location, watch your phone, start ranking some of these games that you play. While your buddy's playing a 15-minute ball on Avengers Infinity Quest, you can just go on pinballranker.com. You could be like, boo, this game sucks. Yeah, exactly. Boo, Jeff's too good at this game. Fuck this. Like, boo.
    56:39
    We want to thank you for listening to another episode. And until next time, everybody, good luck. Don't suck. Winding your way down on Baker Street Lighting your head and dead on your feet Well, another crazy day You're drinking out of way and forget about everything This city desert makes you feel so cold It's got so many people but it's got no soul Okay, what about your bottom fives? Okay, so my bottom five. Your least wanting to play fives, I should say. Okay, so I'll start from the very bottom. I think the worst game of all time is Halloween.
    57:28
    I think the second worst game of all time comes up a lot in the Discord as well, which is Rogue Kings. Now, I want to pause here. What's it currently rated on the Pinball Ranker? Can you find Road Kings for me? Pull that up real quick. Because I want to say that recently, much like Popeye, this game gets discussed a lot as I'm a psychopath, how dare I, oh my god, there's worse games than this. But if you go to Pinside, it's in the bottom 15. What is it on Pinball Ranker? 454. Alright, you motherfuckers. I knew you guys were gasping. You motherfuckers, dude. I knew it. I fucking knew it. What's like the worst, how far do these rankings go? 501. It's better than 100 games? That's pretty good. No, it's a 4, what was it, 450 something? Oh, I misheard. 454. It's 454 out of 501. Yeah, it's better than 50 games, that's pretty good.
    58:27
    What? The gaslighting continues. The gaslighting continues, everybody. You put 50 games in a room, you're like, oh, 50 games, that's nothing. You put 50 games in a room, that's a lot of games, Alan. And Road Kings is better than all of them. Road Kings is better than one game. It's Halloween. He used to think that it was so easy. He used to say that it was so easy. But you're trying, you're trying now.
    59:00
    Another year and then you'll be happy Just one more year and then you'll be happy But you're crying, you're crying now
    59:30
    We'll see you next time.