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#128 Pinfest - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 40m·analyzed·May 13, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Backyard chat comparing Pinfest swap meet culture to a curated pinball show experience.

Summary

George and Dave record a casual podcast episode at a backyard pool party in Virginia, discussing their experiences at Pinfest (a pinball swap meet/dealer show) and Straight Down the Middle: a pinball show in Allentown. They share anecdotes about meeting collectors, restoration enthusiasts, and players; highlight standout games like King Kong, Dune, and various EM machines; and contrast the two shows' vibes—Pinfest being more transactional/dealer-focused versus Straight Down the Middle emphasizing game quality and play experience. The episode touches on restoration projects, game pricing, and casual observations about the pinball collector community.

Key Claims

  • Pinfest is scheduled for the first Saturday of May, which is Kentucky Derby Day

    high confidence · George and Dave discussing Pinfest dates and scheduling

  • A restored Jumping Jack with new Wade Cross playfield, protector, gorgeous cabinet, and Shea backglass was offered for $1,800 at Straight Down the Middle show

    high confidence · George describing Don Owen's game at the show

  • King Kong had only one machine available at the show and George waited an hour to play it

    high confidence · George's direct account of waiting and eventual play of King Kong

  • Firepower is considered a better game than Blackout by George

    high confidence · George directly comparing the two games after playing them

  • A Hothead machine was priced online at $1,200, then $1,100, then $1,000, and George saw it at the show and would pay $600 maximum

    medium confidence · George describing pricing negotiations for a specific machine

  • George met Steven Prusa, a restoration specialist, who purchased a Stargazer playfield from him to scan and create overlays

    high confidence · Dave's account of meeting Steven Prusa at Pinfest

  • Pinball Doctor is recommended as a high-end restoration service

    high confidence · George recommending the service to someone seeking repairs

  • Space Odyssey (Williams, circa 1974-75) sold approximately 15,000 copies and was widely distributed in campgrounds and bars

    medium confidence · George discussing the prevalence and production numbers of Space Odyssey

Notable Quotes

  • “If you want to sell stuff, you want to buy stuff, you want to wheel, you want to deal, and you want to play some, for the most part, mediocre pinball machines—that's at Pinfest.”

    George @ late in episode — Direct characterization of Pinfest's primary purpose and appeal versus Straight Down the Middle

  • “The good thing about Thursday, the other thing with selling all the stuff—by bringing the game in for the tournament play, I got in for Thursday so I could actually, when these games were set up, there was no line.”

    Dave @ mid-episode — Explains advantage of early access to new games at the show

  • “You bring a fully restored game there, you ain't getting your money for it there. The rampers or similar playfield features there are looking for a deal.”

    George @ late in episode — Key insight about Pinfest's dealer culture and pricing expectations

  • “When you go to a show, play your own games.”

    George (attributing advice to someone else) @ mid-episode — Collector/owner mentality about evaluating personal collection at shows

  • “It's like, 'Oh, it's too bad they don't. It's the best playing game in the freaking lineup. But okay, I'll take it down. No problem.'”

    George @ near end — Reflects on his restored American Pinball game being removed from tournament use

Entities

GeorgepersonDavepersonSteven PrusapersonJohn SpatespersonMaureenpersonDon OwenpersonPapa DukepersonGrantpersonChrisperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Detailed account of Pinfest and Straight Down the Middle show experiences, including attendance, gameplay, dealer interactions, and show logistics

    high · George and Dave's direct first-person accounts of Thursday/Saturday attendance, game availability, line management, and tournament participation

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Multiple evaluations of restored machines and restoration work quality; examples of standout restorations (Don Owen's Jumping Jack, Papa Duke examples) and poor restorations

    high · George's detailed assessment of specific machines at show, comparisons of restoration quality, and identification of restoration specialists

  • ?

    collector_signal: King Kong's single machine availability driving hour-long wait; competitive demand for rare or new machines at shows

    high · George's explicit statement about waiting an hour for King Kong and explanation of strategic play timing based on availability

  • $

    market_signal: Secondary market pricing observations: Hothead declining in price ($1200 to $600), Jumping Jack at $1800, disparity between online and show pricing

    medium · George's discussion of Hothead price drops and his assessment that he wouldn't pay more than $600

  • ?

    community_signal: Portrayal of pinball enthusiast community as diverse, interconnected, and socially engaged; examples of strangers becoming friendly through shared interest

    high · Stories of meeting B with 90-120 machines and muscle car collection, Chris creating video content, Steven Prusa networking with overlay specialists

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.301

0:00
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Dave, you know what? Beautiful day outside. Let's scrap being here in the house, go back by the pool, drink a couple beers and record our latest podcast. What do you think? It is a sunny blue sky out there. The pool is calling to us and so are the cold beer. I say fantastic idea, George. Let's do it. Let's go.
0:30
At the tone the time will be beer o'clock. Here we are in the in my backyard in Virginia Dave got into town with Maureen and uh... we decided we'll have cocktails and do some recording so let's start with pentast... no Not that one. Wrong one. That's a wrong hat! Pinfest, sorry. Pinfest. Dave, you were there on Thursday. So why don't you give the audience a little behind the curtain of what happens before the show starts. Let's have some of the people I met. So the first guy I met on Thursday with a part, really cool guy. You walk into the Main garage door, wearing a black t-shirt and something about I hope God, something about I hope God helps me or my wife when I die when the game sells she doesn't find out what I really paid for the game something to that effect even made stickers for it and it's trying to find me and I said he said hey are you dead, are you looking for the uh... for the overweight guy, older guy that's I'm a little bit full of shit or something like that. He's basically just trashing on himself and I go, I guess that's you? Sorry, I'm laughing. Really good dry sense of humor guy, really fun guy and I sold him some stuff. Actually, I think I might have bought, I think I bought some stuff later on from him at the show. Then Steven Prusa, who was a really good pinball player. And he now is a restoration guy. So I bought a restored or semi-restored Gorgar from him years ago, I'm actually restoring up to the next level to sell down the road to somebody else. I thought it was sold ahead of time, but it didn't work out. Anyway, so I met him again. He wanted to buy a Stargazer playfield from me, a John Greatwitch playfield that I was going to do a Stargazer swap into my game. But it's like, you know what? I get an original that's gorgeous. Why do I want to put in this one instead? So I had it forever, five, ten years, whatever it was, and he offered me a good price for it. It's great. I'm a fan of the guy who plays Aquaman. What was that guy? He had the same kind of... He looked like Aquaman. The guy who plays him. Didn't he have a bun? Yeah, he had a bun. But he looked like... What the heck is the guy's name? People are going to say they're shutting right now into the microphone. It's this guy, dum-dum. Who, Steven Seagal? No, not Steven Seagal. Hold on. I'm going to find it out. Anyway, he played Alchemist. He's also in Fast and the Furious. Okay, let's bring this up. I'm going to find out. Let's bring this back. You gotta talk some pinball. Now you're talking about only you and I and some people know this. Ah, here you are. I know. Here. Jason Momoa. So, Steven looked like Jason Momoa to me. He almost had the same build, same thing. It's like, cool, you could play Jason Momoa, dude. So he's really appreciative. Actually, he's going to take the Stargazer playfield. He's going to scan it. I think he wants to make an overlay out of it or make several overlays. Well, that might be... What's his name out there in Ohio that does the overlays? Who? The Hardtop Guy? Yeah, the Hardtop Guy. Yeah, praise for that. But Jason Momoa was going to do it for me. They all know each other out there. That's a pretty, that's, well, we said in the last show and I'll say it again, the dates for Pintastic are already out there for next year. So you know, Gabe already grabbed the dates early April. Oh, he has these dates already in stone with these guys, I think five or ten years out. I'm saying he's already where everybody else, you know, he's as show ends, date goes up. Oh, same thing. I've been the same thing too. He's got a, you know, Well, everybody knows it's the first, everybody knows it's the first Saturday of May, which is Kentucky Derby Day. Right. That's how I remember. That's what you'll never see the Mainer, Jeff, come to any of these shows anyway because he's, he's, Okay, there's your flaw. He wants, he wants to watch the two minutes of the Kentucky Derby and not go to a pinball show.
Scottperson
Bennyperson
Levperson
Bperson
Paulperson
Johnny Pinballperson
Pinfestevent
Straight Down the Middle: a pinball showevent
Pinball Doctororganization
King Konggame
Portal 2game
Space Odysseygame
Alien Pokergame
Six Million Dollar Mangame
Firepowergame
Blackoutgame
  • ?

    venue_signal: Details about show setup, game availability, line management, tournament structure, and logistics at both Pinfest and Straight Down the Middle

    high · George's observations about arrival times, line lengths, game count, Saturday tournament removal decision

  • ?

    operational_signal: Discussion of restoration service pricing, availability, and customer expectations; examples of restoration specialists (Pinball Doctor, Papa Duke, Don Owen) and their work

    medium · George recommending Pinball Doctor, discussing restoration costs in thousands, and evaluating quality of various restorations at show

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Clear distinction between show types: Pinfest as wheeler-dealer/swap meet versus Straight Down the Middle as quality-focused/curated experience

    high · George's direct comparison stating Pinfest is for deals and mediocore machines while Straight Down the Middle features restored quality machines

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: King Kong and Dune providing novel first-play experiences where spectators crowded around to learn games; collaborative gameplay discovery dynamic

    high · George describing audience of players cheering and providing commentary as he discovers multiball on King Kong; Dune foursome interaction with modern Stern players

  • ?

    design_innovation: Supersonic example of custom paint job on playfield instead of overlay; creative modifications to machine aesthetics

    medium · Discussion of repainted Supersonic playfield with new color scheme and custom sound callouts (airliner theme)

  • ?

    product_concern: Poor condition machine with paint-by-numbers cabinet job, roller skate legs instead of proper levelers, non-functional game mechanisms

    high · George's detailed critique of unmaintained EM machine: dirty playfield, poor cabinet paint, inappropriate mounting, needed extensive restoration

  • ?

    industry_signal: Tension between welcoming community and expert knowledge gatekeeping; George as experienced restorer passing judgment on customers' machines and restoration readiness

    medium · George declining to work on poorly maintained machine, discussing customer expectations about restoration costs, and recommending professional services

    • 4:43
    I don't know. I'd rather see a pinball show. Okay, anything else from the show? I think that's it. I'll remember some crap later I'm sure but I think oh there was a lot of uh, if you like pot and pot smoke There's a lot of that there so there How about that?
    5:01
    Great, great, public service announcement, great! And we go into our car, we park next to our you know nice Pacifica And getting some beverages getting some water that kind of thing and a snacky and every time there's a car next to it The smoking down cigarettes, letting off one another, just like constant chain smoking guy. I think they're from, I think they're locals from Allentown and they just like, they like their cigarettes and I don't know. It's like dude, can you smoke it the other way or leave or I don't know. We finally move our car. You don't see it often, but you did see it outside the doors of the building. They were sitting there smoking cigars a lot of guys. Well, that's better than a cigarette. I'm just saying you don't see that often. Not as much as when we were younger. Around noon time to set up the tournament game we brought a pinball pool as we do every the past couple years to uh and we get we get a pinball pool cleaner. Oh he just submerged. Do you think they can hear that? I'm sure they can hear that. Yeah. We're watching the as the as the pool goes by we're watching the pool cleaner Mr. Robot. Go do his thing.
    6:13
    Maureen is plantinging plants. Planting plants as she is want to do. Planting plants. You got there So I took off before 6 a.m.
    6:24
    And arrived there a little after 9 a.m. Was paid in full. I took the note from last year and got my wristband ahead of time and then proceeded into line where I was about I'm going to be talking about maybe 20 or 30 deep. I met several, Dave has already heard this story, but I met several interesting people in line. The first, let's just call him B. I chatted B up because he had a pin brewfest t-shirt on 2025. So I asked him how the show was. And as it always leads, one thing leads to another. How many games do you have? Set up or in total? Both. 90 and 120. The conversation got around to, okay, so if you have that many pinballs, you probably have another hobby. What else do you collect? I collect muscle cars. He had about 10 different muscle cars. Just think of one, he probably had it. Everything from the late 60s, early 70s, both Mopar and Chevy. I don't know if I heard any Fords in there, but I heard a lot of Chevy and Mopar. So there was that. What else? Oh, Chris. Chris, yes. Yes. I'll put it in the show notes because he's got a really weird handle. But he's going to get a shout out because we started talking about podcasts and that he has a... It's YouTube, right? I think it's YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. Yes. And we got around to it and just slightly before 10 o'clock, the opening, he pulls out this I'm like, oh, heck, he's going to do a shoot right now. And I'm behind him in line. So I'll put the, uh, the handle on there and you can go look at his, uh, his one from pin fest. I was behind him walking in and the, well, you'll, you'll, if you listen closely to the other person I described, you will happen to see something in that photo. I'm going to be real quick with it though. Okay, I think I know what you're talking about. Right, right. I can't say it. I won't say it. EM Central. Right. Anyway, so there's that. I'll bet you monsters lead interesting lives. I said to my girlfriend just the other day, Gee, I'll bet monsters are interesting, I said. The places you must go and the things you must see, my stars. Exactly, Bugs. The But that wasn't the best part. So I knew going in that there was only going to be one King Kong and I said to myself The shortest line is going to be the first people through the door The line will get longer as the day grows long and that proved to be correct. I Waited folks. I know you're not gonna believe this sedan. I waited an hour to play King Kong In守ith Drink Yatangabnamiye yt combakpan, Plolkoçurhtacabgú bankraẓ dances shots atlasting tlix 검찰švg 🎸9şl gritħŧ, D Committee 되isniy,'w0 crăčkod reservedag surfacesŭ Civic P Episode Sweet Esquire 510 Troy PManivarijšĆ manque papa! It's about the thing lying 我 прок bakery Lindaş Tinara ĕr´??? The winner of the Winning and High Score is... George. Nicely done. Give the boy a cigar. That made me feel good, but the day got better. I went for round two. Round two was dune. Okay so people were like, why didn't you talk about Kong? Kong's a decent game. It was fun to play. I played it once. I mean... I played it once. I didn't... Oh, I left out part of the story. The funny part of playing Kong with these two guys was, and the people that were waiting in line behind him, another foursome, I hear in the background when I'm playing the game, oh, he needs to do X to get Y. And all anybody wanted to see was the multiball with that train dumping all the balls out. The And I keep hearing like little mutters in the background. Oh, he's close, you know, but I'm I'm not focused on any of that I kind of hear it and chirping in the back. Finally. I got it. It was like
    11:33
    Cheering section for yourself because nobody has seen the game before everybody's on equal footing, right? So it's really that's fun They're all discovering the first time exactly. Everybody's on equal footing knows knows anything about our game. Nobody's played it before nothing, so The good thing about Thursday, the other thing with selling all the stuff, by bringing the game in for the tournament play, I got in for Thursday so I could actually, when these games were set up, there was no line. I got to play Kong about a minute after someone else was playing in front of me. But I was going to try to play Portal 2, but I wasn't quite ready yet. But I did get to play Portal on the Saturday night when everything was being taken apart. That line was long. That's when I played it. Right, but during the show. Oh yeah, no way. I was not going to wait an hour to play a game. I had to do Kong. I wasn't doing Portal. Whatever. It was just like it was at Pintastic. The line was long. There were a couple of games that were really nice, nicely done games. They're standouts for me. There are a lot of just okay stuff. Some people just like schlep a game of the show and get in and check the box and it sort of plays. You get some of that at the show. But you do have some people that actually give a crap. I mean, I don't know if I've ever played a game of the show. There are a lot of just okay stuff. Some people just like schlep a game of the show and get in and check the box and it sort of plays. You get some of that at the show. But you do have some people that actually give a crap and bring restored stuff, aka my pinball pool in the tournament was one of them. That was a standout as well as Don Owen's game. He brought a beautiful jumping jack and he wanted only $1,800 for that game. And I was like, I said, anybody offer you anything? No, I don't. No one. The game was a brand new playfield, a Wade Cross playfield with a playfield protector on it. The cabinet was gorgeous. The backglass was a Shea backglass. John went through it. He's a great restorer. He did a great job. If I liked that title, I actually would have thought of bringing it home. I'm not a big fan of that title. I owned one and restored and sold it off. The other one that was really good one that I wanted to play, actually two other ones, http://www.knappard.com.au http://www.knappard.com.au I still have it ready to put in my game. So I finally got to see this game with the real new playfield in it and you know pretty nice example all the way around. It played well and so I like doing that to these games that I'm thinking about having my collection I want to restore and I'll play someone else's restoration attempt and to see if it's worthy of me either restoring mine or selling mine off or put it to the back of the line to restore and Alien Poker made it's like okay that that's a game The other game, I think I'm going to push it up in the lineup to get done. That one and Six MillionDollarMan I want to get done sooner rather than later. The one that... Hey, you're stealing part of my story. Oh, sorry, you can go back to it. Okay. The other one was Blackout, William's Blackout. I've had that game for a while. Is that the game you had me play? Yeah. Vote up or down? Yes. It's like Firepower's sister game, kind of. I said it's an okay game. It's an okay game. Am I being mean to Steve Ritchie? That's not his game. It's not his game. I'm sorry. No, no, that's not. We'll get to book. I don't know in this segment, but we're going to get to that a little bit. Yes, that sounds good. So the blackout played it a hardtop guy did a good job on the hardtop. It played well for what it was. But I don't know the game. I thought it would grab me more. I would say firepower overall is a better game. If I'd rather play a fire, a nice firepower than a nice blackout. So it kind of made a decision for me because I have a guy that wants to buy my blackout and I think I'm going to be ready to sell it to him. Is it firepower, Steve Richie game? Yes it is. Not blackout. Firepower. So I have a firepower playfield too, so I'm going to put that one out ready to do as well. But the blackout, I'm going to either restore it for this guy who wants it or sell it as a project to him. Hopefully he wants me to pony up the dollars it takes to me to restore it and I can restore it, play it for a while and then sell it to him. I have been in the game for a long time. I bought it at the show a few years ago. It sold to me as working and I finally got to set it up two years later before I was going to bring it to the show. I had this other guy who was an EM restoration guy so he didn't care if it was working or not. I set it up and it worked but not really that well. It needed a lot of work, more than this guy told me. So I should have bought it from the guy in the first place. I'm going to let me talk for a second. No. You go ahead. I'll take a breath. George, you go. Oh my God. I want to get a brain dump. I got to go. Okay. Well, it's just collect your thoughts. So I started talking about Dune. So phase two, I played with three other gentlemen. One guy that was in front of me. I said, Do you want to play? Yeah. And that was the cool thing about Allen town. At least people are willing to play foursomes, which is good. Yeah. As I said when I talked about King Kong, they were watching me and figuring out the game because I had a long ball time. They were like... They know what to do now when they go up. Right, so I kind of, you know, they were like, oh, look at... They were very confused. I told them, you're going to be surprised. And they were.
    17:15
    Nice job. You schooled the members. Oh, I had fun. So it happened in phase two in Dune. The people three of the other people that were all rampers that all own getting modern stern nice and i was here i am telling you i was here's maybe even older than that right and they're looking at me like a little far away and i think that it's been and then again i'd be tomorrow it was also well that's why i had to for that was like the highlight of my day that i think i can go back to chris in line so i'll put his tag out there I get an email as you did from our friend Grant in Australia going, hey, look at this. It's a whole walkthrough of Pinfest. Sure. So I look at the handle and I go, hey, that's Chris. And I read the dossier that's on him and he goes, my name is Christopher, yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, hey, that's a dude I was with in line and had a 20-minute, well, we had a long conversation about copyright and using music. I had a friend of mine. He was like oh no you can't do that naughty naughty, I go hey we escaped the man for five years. Maybe we can make it a little bit longer. Yeah but with that I get pretty creative with sound effects and different things like from Bugs Bunny that kind of stuff. We can get away with that stuff. That's not music. Looking for music not Bugs Bunny. Right. So did I finish the dude story? I finished the opening going into the show and Chris with his his web thing or whatever he's got. Um... Oh, I was gonna show you. So you didn't get to play it. The Supersonic? Didn't get to play that. I did. How is it? It looks pretty nice. It had all the sound. We're gonna come to sound. We're gonna do sounds now, folks. You know where I'm leadin'. Get ready. Okay. Strike. Oh yeah! Oh, okay, okay. I get that one, yes. Tell me some stuff about this game, the Supersonic. This game, the guy redid... It's a really different color playfield. Look at the playfield. It's different. Now what is the playfield? Is it an overlay? No, it's a playfield. We repainted it. He must have painted it on top. It looks pretty good. So it's a paint job. I didn't go real close. The long and short of it is it had call outs as if you were getting on an airliner. It was cool. You know, hey, you know, commander whatever your name is or pilot so and so, you know, we're taking off flight deck six whatever, you know, you know the deal. That was horrible. No, I think one of the things was like, it was like, you know, you're taking too long in the bathroom, you two get out of there. We know you're trying to make the Mile High Club, but that's enough. What messed me up is the color scheme. I own the game, and I just couldn't wrap my head around it being the same game but different colors. Q What in the garage, George? ***nazis** Well, I don't know. I can't say what you just asked. I'll call it a shovel. I want people to still like me if you get the joke. I was taking a picture for our friend Grant of us standing in front of the lovely Grant, your game has to be better than this. It'll be a cult-ridden mystic. Yeah, it played tired. It's tic-tac-toe. And I took somebody's advice, it probably wasn't yours, but it was somebody's who said, when you go to a show, play your own games. And I played a lot of my games, and I was not very happy. Well, why would you want to play your own games? Why? So you can appreciate your own? I'm a little bit of a fan of the game. I know that already. Right. But I had to do it, so I did it. And then let's go back to what you were talking about. You kind of stole my thunder. Yeah. So we're in agreement that a good game would be Six Million DollarMan. Yeah. That's the gardener. The gardener's around. Manuel, when we're done, could you please sweep up the actual part of the video? Manuela. Si, senor. Si. I was watching. Are we allowed to talk about Speedy Gonzales? We can talk about that, why not? Right, but his friend or cousin. Pepe Lopez. No, Slowpoke Rodriguez. Yeah. Do you know who I'm talking about? Yeah, the gardener. No, no, he's, he's. No, it's your gardener. No. Only the fastest mouse can make it, which is me. I'm the fastest mouse. de Near core T View point for point It turns out Jet is scattered windbg at vertical jump OT You got that? Sorry. Oh, yeah. We played. That was a good game. No kidding. We played. I have a picture. Remember? Yeah, good. To prove it. Well, to make sure that we talked about it. Right. And remember it. Now, I need cue cards too, okay? Well, we're in our 60s now, so you know. Well, whatever. Do you have something constructive to say? That was a real... I don't know if that's going to make... I have something destructing to say. Well, I don't think that's going to make the... Make the cut. That's a fun game. Whatever the heck the game's called. What's it called? Space Shuttle? Space Shuttle. Okay. What's it called? Space Shuttle? No. Yeah. Space something. Space Station. Space Odyssey. It's all. It's one of those Williams games. It's a Williams. Yeah. Seventy-four? We played it. It was good. Seventy-five? Seventy-four-ish? Seventy-five? Yeah. Famous game. That game they made, I don't know. Off the top of my head, say 15,000 copies. A lot. They made a lot of that game. It was everywhere. It was in campgrounds. It's a very colorful game. Kind of fun little game. I definitely... No, it's a really cool backlash. Yeah, it's a great, the blues and reds and yellows, it's very attractive. If that's in a campground or a bar somewhere, I'd put money into it. I'd put 50 cents in that game and play that game. Better than Lucky Ace certainly. So I don't really have, I don't really have other than, you were wheeling and dealing on Friday afternoon. Lots of wheeling and dealing. And you and I didn't come together until late. It was like almost five o'clock, 430. And I was shot. I had been on my feet for nine hours. I was just like fading fast. But we...That's all we played all the stuff, I don't know what else did we play.
    23:53
    I'll know, we walk around we played some stuff. It's a regular show... I mean i didn't pay much attention to have you know even know who won the tournament?
    24:01
    I don't know I know Benny bounced out early unfortunately, he was number one going in I mean did you do anything on Saturday? I don't think Lev was, he was already talk for at the end of his show at the end.
    24:15
    Okay. So, no, we don't know. We don't know. I know that all of a sudden the tournament is over and I basically was getting my game wrapped up early at that point. Because Scott was saying, you know, Scott was like, he likes razzing, giving a bunch of shit to people, you know, and that's what he does. So you just kind of roll with it.
    24:34
    Well, you might as well go wrap up your game now. They're not going to use it for the final tournament. It's like, oh, it's too bad they don't. It's the best playing game in the freaking lineup. But okay, I'll take it down. No problem. **
    24:46
    ** My assessment okay George Dave would ask the question George so would you care to compare and contrast both shows Pinfest and Pintastic Well Dave I think I done that before but to recap player show is definitely without a doubt it definitely Pintastic The If you want to sell stuff, you want to buy stuff, you want to wheel, you want to deal, and you want to play some, for the most part, mediocre pinball machines. Where? That's at Pinfest. Yeah, Pinfest is more swapmeet, Wheeler Dealer. It's more Wheeler Dealer. I only played a handful of games. I didn't play, I played a fraction of the games that I normally play. You're not going to get, you bring a fully restored game there, you ain't getting your money for it there. The crowd there is looking for a deal. So did you see anything, everybody's like, well, okay, you guys talk about great prices. I saw a lot of overpriced things that I would normally look at. I'm going to do a sort of, I don't know, you would call it a shout out. I'm just going to talk about it. on a I was selling it. Which one? The hothead. Yes. He went from 1200 to 1100 to 1000. Wait, 1200 where? At the show or online? No, online. Right. The last online was 950. Okay. I don't know, but I know that game was at the show because I played it and I would bet dollars to donuts unless he sold it. We talked about this last night when we were having a couple beers that I'd buy it for 600 bucks, but I wouldn't give him a dollar more. Practize for the SFB employees and помогate them by saving the 16 hours?
    27:17
    Also Gera, Ten singer assistance, fourWaiting for the profession of Конечно In USSR? simulated for New York Times Morning Inter Plaid Annual Paladin Rules called adlibatant metag呵 внут його No Dick Borne, no Dick... the guy who does the Arduino stuff! Michael Hunt? No. No, not him? No, he means see you in the Northern Territory. Yeah, that one. See you next Tuesday? No, see you in Northern Territory. That's a thing. All the Australians are laughing right now. Go Pies. Been watching the Pies. Go Pies. How is it? Well, see you next Tuesday, but it's Wednesday. Exactly. It screws me up every time I talk to... I don't know whether it's the day before, or it's Wednesday, but it's Wednesday. It's Wednesday, exactly. It's Wednesday, exactly. Although the day we go to go to go see Grant to go out there, what could that cost us for a nice plane ride out there? And you shocked me with a number. I couldn't believe it. If you want to pod and you want to have all the comforts of home for 18 hours. What's it going to cost me? It'll cost you close to 20 grand. 20 grand? I know other people are, I know I can get, yeah, you probably can but you know what, Closed Captioning by The Closed Captioning Project The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional.
    29:29
    I'll tell you what I did. Annihilating rampers and walking into the bill. I want to talk about today. Alright, go ahead. So, long story short folks, I met somebody who knew of me and I knew of him for different reasons. He knew me as, oh you're the guy who has the pinballs. The first question out of his mouth when I met him was, do you know how to repair pinballs? Also recorded in myístour shadetwick, speaking Sophie in my Midwest. The Ace, the highest card? I guess that I have no idea. Well... How's that be, why'd it be a lucky, I don't know... So it's... Ace of spades? Because it's the best... Ace of spades? No, it, ace is the highest level card. I got a lucky ace. Right. Okay. That game would be a lucky two. This would be unlucky ace. This would be a lucky two. Unlucky two. You lose, sir. Good day. There was a joke there until you busted my... I guess. I didn't joke there until you busted my... I did. I do that. Anyway... Uh... This game was far from recoverable and I had to be the bearer of bad news to the owner who I just met. I think it went okay, but... Um... Man, that game was dirty and needed a lot of work. It's all there black and white clear as crystal. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. Pretty much, that's what happened. Yeah, I dropped the proverbial hammer on him.
    31:26
    Well, first I pitched Dave. I said, look, my friend is a high-end restorer. I go just go to his website gave him the website pinball doctor.com all spelled out um just go out there I think after after the fact you right after I dropped the hammer just so you could put it and I said so you could put everything we just talked about in context I hope he understands and I hope he'll talk to me at the next party I'm not sure George we're gathering I'm not sure George you were talking with your secret decoder ring talk a little bit so I hope he understood reading the lines that you were saying No. You know, I could be obtuse. You could be a little cryptic. Is it obtuse or cryptic? You could be cryptic. Is it obtuse or cryptic? Cryptic. Sometimes cryptic. You have to read between the lines a little bit. Yeah, well. You gotta kinda read it. I don't wanna just come out and hammer them. I mean, that would be... I mean, the poor guy. I mean, he bought this thing for a hundred bucks. Then he had his, one of his... But I wouldn't burn it in my fireplace. Well, it might affect the fireplace. Yeah, it was just horrible. Yeah, it was horrible. It was a horrid game. He had some guy, some guy, Paul... Johnny Blowtorch. The Some guy Paul blow Johnny blow Paul out of
    32:34
    Mimosa, whatever most of Virginia somewhere And I don't know Paul I don't know Definitely didn't know he's talking about but anyway He ends are a certain skill. He saw our pinball machine one time. Yeah, do you think we must have an EM following? Yeah, I'm sure we do. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I can work on him and you know, I saw the game I saw the, first of all, looking at the, I'm looking at the playfields, don't you dust on it. It's on, it's on, it's on, it's on the, the legs are on rollers. So actually instead of having real leg levelers, it has like roller skates instead of real leg levelers on the game. That's really weird. You're rolling this game around permanently. Like where'd you get that from? Well, and why it's in his basement. I first, First rule is you put the game in one spot and you don't move it. Right. It is not a piece of furniture that you roll around at whim and say, oh wouldn't this look nice over here? Or I don't know, maybe he dances with it and swings it around? I don't know. I'm not sure. Hopefully he doesn't go to your website and say that we have a podcast and then listens to this and says, George, why were you such a jerk to me? You just met me. No, he won't. I don't think so. He might run me over with that Cadillac. He could. That's a 1966 Cadillac. So the game, he said, so we noticed the creative paint job on the cabinet. Tell me a story there. Oh, that was my student, she's my school I was teaching at or superintendent for or whatever. What did you say? You didn't say this to him. I said it to me. I said it. Who was it? Paint by numbers? Paint by numbers with a freaking big paintbrush. I could see the paintbrush strokes on it. It looked terrible. It's horrible. Why? Stop. So as soon as I saw that, it's like this guy cannot afford me. This guy is not going to work out. I don't know. So he offered several hundred dollars, but I just didn't want any part of it. What he really needed at minimum was a match, yes, and some lighter fluid. Before all of his past appearances, Woodatキ yhte Edge момент Kamera, the biggest catast, he tells Pantane Pollе, Crazy VideoATKT Oh, it's shopped out. Really? So by putting new flipper rubber on it, that's shopped out? That's no, it's not shopped out. I know what the hell this guy did. I don't know. This is the kind of stuff I see out there. I'd say, oh, I just got the game shot. I'm trying to be nice to the guy. The other one I like too is when the customer will say, or not a customer, a potential client wants to buy a game. I say, well, and I'll tell them what a restored game costs. You know, you're talking thousands, not hundreds. Well, I just want it for my grandkids. Do you like your grandkids? Maybe you need to pony up a little money because otherwise go to Toys R Us and go buy a little toy, but this is not the thing for you, you know? Well, no, I mean, you can get, you can get away, you can get, you can get a solid state game. Probably that's not too bad for under two grand. There are titles. You can find them, but you gotta be able to work on them. No, I'm saying mom and pop person that wants a game. They can't work on them. That's the problem. They can't. They can spend about a grand or two, great, get in the house. It's not gonna play right. It's gonna play like ass. Oh, well let's go there, because we're gonna do this probably in the next segment. We're gonna play like junk. The Dr. Dave evaluation of George doing his blackjack. We'll go through that live, but Dave is thorough. I know you don't want to hear this. Just give me 30 seconds.
    37:14
    We're going to talk about chimes. The chimes in that game, I would disconnect them. Those are horrible in that Williams game. Oh yeah, the Williams, the clunkity clunkity clunky, you don't like that? Yeah, that's not even- Clunkity clunkity. It sounds like a bunch of- I could get a chimp to make better noise than that. It sounds like, you know, you got a bag of glass on top of some chimes and you kind of hit it with a hammer. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. Yeah. It's like grating, unplug them. Horrible. Yeah. Just- That's how Williams said- So, so, so- What are you doing folks? William said everybody likes this. William said that sounds good. Let's do that. Oh. Sorry. Okay. So I'm dissing on my new neighbor or newly met neighbor's game that's just horrible. He's gonna come over here. I think his eyes are gonna fall out of his head. Probably. If he went to your house, he'd probably have a frickin' heart attack.
    38:09
    Okay. So we done beating that dead horse? I think so. I know one thing, you know, do not... Anybody else you want to put on the rotisserie?
    38:18
    Well one thing we should not talk about something Right don't talk about Fight Club George, that's the big thing. Okay, I won't. Okay good
    38:34
    Wow I wish I had more to talk about I'm like I've been in like the outdoor zone. It's so nice here barrisapanci.com gary sam.
    39:09
    brill ever MARCO Talk to igualsi, Casey Kasem. I hate you. The winner, George for $30,000. Are you going to let me describe this animal that I don't know what it is? George for $30,000. It had furry legs and looked like a llama, but I wasn't sure whether it was a goat or a llama. Do they make goats look like that? No. No, a llama looks like a sheep with a big tall head like a giraffe sheep. That's a llama. Oh, we're going to do that. Do what? I'll let you know in the next episode. Okay. The woman up the street that Janice knows is going to be birthing some little lambs soon. Aww, that'd be fun. So we've been invited to go. That's awesome. I don't know if we're going to see the birthing. I don't think I want to see that. I'd say I would like to go see Mary Had a Little Lamb later. Are you going to bring your bug zapper thing? Your salt the bug? Why? Because you think there'll be lots of bugs? No, just to kind of bang on the frickin' new mother. No. Be mean to her. What are you? As she's birthing. Where are you going with this? I'm not even kidding with this. What is wrong with you? We can talk some pinball. Do you have any story? You gotta have a story. Bail us out here. And is this thing almost done? No, we're still doing okay. Oh shit. Sorry. We're 40 minutes in. We're doing okay. How do you do that? I thought we had a 40 minute cutoff. I thought we did too, but we don't. It's still doing okay. No, we had 30%, not 30 minutes. 30% battery. How much do you have left? Oh, you're recording. Not on Zoom. We're on infinite bandwidth. Okay. Do you have anything else to talk about the show? I do, but I can't think about it at the moment. But I probably do, but I draw a blank. Well, as always, Jerry had a hard time trying to sell the gorgar he had. So he had a gorgar out there. There are several gorgars out there. um... and i looked at it when he was taking it down and i was like what happened to this Gorgar? I didn't get any hits at all on that. well i said whatever what did you what is that what's on that playfield? what is that thing? that's a hardtop right? oh no it was a classic arcade oh it's a classic arcade from junkie jeff classic arcade guy And I said, well, the colors are a little bit muted. Maybe that's why. Well, I put a hard, I put a playfield protector over it to kind of make it look better. So now it's even more opaque. Okay, now it's more opaque. It's not quite centered. It's not quite lined up to its inserts. So let me get this straight. So you could have bought a real hardtop for X amount of dollars and you paid... Those aren't inexpensive. Well, how much? $300, $500?
    42:27
    Under $500, more than $300. Alright, okay. No, a playfield is double, but I'm just saying, it's not $100. Alright, alright. Let's call it $300. Alright. You're gonna pay, German Playfield Protector, $113 plus shipping. You're gonna pay, say, $125. Okay, so you're at $400. $125, and then you're gonna pay, classic, Jeff there with the junky playfields he does, his overlays are junk, crappy color. You're gonna pay him probably what, $150, $200? I bought my crappy overlay for Supersonic for $30. Time Out Pinball
    43:16
    This Week in Pinball begitu I don't know what he was thinking when he did that. Wasn't. I don't get it. Unless he got, maybe he got the thing for free, maybe he got the classic arcade thing for free, because no one wanted the freaking thing, I'll take that, throw it in the game. There's a certain market though, maybe a certain market we want it but I would figure pinball... Uneducated? Uneducated market? People with one tooth, maybe? I'm not going to cut that out. No, I'm not going to cut that out. No. A Mainer, somebody in Maine. No, anybody. We're not going through this. Let's insult the whole state of Maine. We're not going through this. You're really doing a bad job. Can we insult all the states? Is there any wonder why we don't have anybody listen to us? No, there isn't. We just alienate everybody. They're all ready to turn it right off. We're an equal offender. I'm trying to think what else has happened. I'm sorry, Jerry. I didn't really mean it. We're just having some fun. I've been derailed from the pinball thing, so there's not really a lot going. I mean, other than, look, go to all the other podcasts if you want to hear about Kong and Dune. Oh, we didn't talk about that tournament. Oh, Merlin. Merlin, that stupid game. What a piece of crap. Merlin. It's a freaking overlay. That playfield is a plastic overlay. It's not even a real playfield. The game we went through this afternoon. That was the game designed by Deep Root. You sure? Yes. Now didn't you tell me, no this is the other, this is where we got screwed up. No, Dune was the one that went from spooky, people left spooky to go Dune. Right. Right. Because they're sick of spooky, you know, we get a spooky barrel of fun. And Bowen worked on Dune. Yes. CH steht a no C c K goal this but no all quit here The following is a product of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, the Center for Autism and Related Disorders. I don't get it. A lot of brown. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. You know what, I'm so glad we collect the classics. We're mixing it back. So we're talking about Dune, we're talking about that weird game from Turner, Merlin. Yeah. We already talked about Portal, we talked about King Kong. Yeah. I don't like any of them. They all can just burn them. I don't like any of them. Burn them with Lucky Ace. Burn them. I will say Kong is okay. The If you want Keith Elwin ever to come back you might say no no no Kong is no it's a good effort I like Kong is like the new Godzilla and as we told before we can see down the road Stern's gonna release Kong versus Godzilla pinball machine I believe they're gonna combine I believe that right I think first you're gonna see black and white Kong Then I think at some point in time you're gonna see Kong versus Godzilla The Black and White Version of that. So by the time you're done collecting all the Elwin games, how many would you have? 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 5, 4. OK. That's pretty good, Ron. All you Elwinites. You go out and buy that thing. They will go out and buy that thing. That's what they do. They like to buy Elwin's games. But I don't blame him because Elwin does a nice job. He does, like you said before, he describes what you said before about his games. The game is good for beginners and good for... Well, he... because he's designing and doing the code, he's appealing to people who like to play pinball but don't know the ruleset, but also appeals to the tournament player who understands that they need a deep ruleset. So, you can play the game and enjoy yourself and score, but if you want to have the high score, you need to learn how the game operates and where the scoring is. It makes sense. It's a, it's, it's, when people say it's a balanced game, to me it's a balanced audience game. You're pulling people in and if they care to understand how to really make the game score, they'll advance themselves to the next step. It's a logical order. Where some games, and we could probably name a recent Stern, they're just, for the average person, they just don't seem to be as approachable. How's that? I would say if you want to marry old school people to new school design and technology, you should make a Schoolhouse Rock pinball machine. You know Schoolhouse Rock? This one here? No. Lonnie Lonnie Lonnie get your adverts here Lonnie Lonnie Lonnie got some adverts here Come on Dr. Lonnie, get me adverts here Oh, I know what you're talking about. Okay. That one. Schoolhouse Rock. No, we're not making that. You know what I'm thinking? So, okay. I'm going to do a little reprobating right now. All right. And non-understanding. This is going to be, we're going to hit this on several levels. Should I get a beer for this one? Do you need one? I do. Uh, yeah. First off, I want to thank Steve Ritchie again for pulling us out of the weeds and doing the podcast with us. It was great. Got a lot of positive feedback. I'm going to turn back the clock a little bit from during the Pinfest show. Most of the people that I spoke to, especially the Rampers, had no idea who you and I were. They also had no idea who Rebby Hardy is. Rebby Martin. Rebby Hardy. Rebby Hardy. Not Remy Martin. Of course I wouldn't remember if I had some Remy Martin. Anyway, so there's that. But remember I said that I sat at the bar with Steve Ritchie and that there were some things that I wouldn talk about Well you know what I going to talk about this Now first off I would have thought we would have done much better with our numbers having Steve Richie on I recognize that he also did the seminar thing which I talked about Dave and Gabe So you could go watch him and listen to him But that not a podcast Most people listen commuting or going to sleep or you know fixing their pinballs Even an American kennt You heard that the night that I sat with him was the night that they had the Ozzy Osbourne tribute band. So I thought to be topical, remember I called Steve topical? I asked him why Ozzy Osbourne and or Black Sabbath had not been made into a game. The game. And he said to me, I really wanted to do that game. However, difficult to get both parties together, i.e. Ozzy and Black Sabbath band members to get them to agree to what would be put into a pinball machine. They were just not being, they're not playing well in the sandbox together. So that's why that game has never been made. Now, I'll take it to the next step. I didn't ask this question but inferred it. And this is not, you need George's decoder ring, I'll just say it. I believe, and this is no diss, when Ozzy dies, that game will get made. I bet it will. I have no doubt that it will get made. With this since May 8, 2020, you're you something was we didn't all feel that you're having also anything Z love Look, I appreciate all our listeners and thank you for listening. It wasn't a bust. It's been much better than most of our other shows, so thank you. But just spread the word. I thought it was a pretty good interview. I wish more people heard it. I wish people knew more about our podcast. Dave has lamented time and time again that we have great content, but for whatever reason, we don't get listened to. I also told him the story, and I'm not telling tall tales Out of School. This was on their podcast, The Loser Kids. espère Knapp Arcade is a production of WPPR.com, not WPPR.com. This Week in Pinball, Game of Thronesduino I'm not going to do it, that's why you had the groundskeeper here. Boy George, how dare you. So... No, you said we. I did we. You didn't say you, you said we. I said we. I tried to bring you in. Oh, I thought you were going to throw it on me. No, I'll take some of that for you. So that little bit... That's not like you. Well, you know, I figured it would help out a little bit. Hold on, let me turn my key.
    54:55
    There we go. That's better. So Grant saw that picture of you and I poolside in your backyard. With the... With the comment about... The Melbourne and the Koozies, the Australian Koozies. And the American flag and the horse. American flag and he said, he said, what a great photo, just a couple of blokes having a beer and enjoying each other's company. It doesn't get much better than that. And those stubby holders, even though a little small for those IPAs, still look the part. Hopefully your summer is as good as ours was. Thanks for sending this my way. You know I appreciate all the correspondence of any kind. Below I've included a freebie rant from the one and only Kaneda. Enjoy and thanks again. Regards, Grant. I don't know what's he got to say. So Kaneda, Kaneda said some stuff. I don't know what's Kaneda saying here. You can listen to him? You don't have to pay money? No. You go on, let's see, Patreon, let's see. Supposedly. Oh, Patreon's pay. Yeah, but let's see. Let's see, there he is. Oh boy, why? Pressure. The Stern Army is coming at you. I'm already bored. I'm bored with Kaneda. He's dullsville. Already sucks. Sorry, George. Our show's better. I'm bored. George, our show's better. He lost me already. Oh my god. And I wonder why people don't listen. How many more? We're gonna go after nuns and young school children next? That's coming up next. Coming up next, George, that's what we're doing. Okay, do you have any stories from the field? Oh boy. Maybe. Oh boy. Don't I have a story from the field? I must have a story from the field. Let me check my story from the field file. My secretary is out there gardening and planting the lawn and so forth. If you haven't figured out, we're still outside. The girls are, oh the women, are wives. Wives. Whatever. I don't know what pronoun to use anymore. They're out gardening while we're sitting here drinking beer and making a podcast. Well, that's fair. You know. Let the girls work while we chill out. We worked hard for this. At least I did anyway. How many people right now are going, God, those guys suck. Yeah, I know. They're having way too much fun. A couple. Yeah, yeah. You know, they wish they were here having so much fun. That's why. The guy I dissed on earlier with the unlucky two. Lucky two. Unlucky two. That's going to be our new thing. That might eclipse Lost Cause. Yeah, probably. Or Sin Sad. We've added another one. Unlucky two. I got a story. The guy that picked up my fishtails cheap. Okay? I won't say the name. I went to my fishtails cheaply and talked me down a bunch. I said, okay, whatever. Then I had the guy say, oh, why'd you sell it to me? He's the 80-something-year-old guy, friend or acquaintance or whatever. And I said, well, sorry, it's gone. You lose or you lose. You should have, I said it's available. You didn't say go. Sold it to him. Finally, about a month later, picked it up. And then three days after that, said, yeah, I hope you don't mind. I might sell your game. I don't understand if I'm flipping it, but I found a better game in Florida from the Jupiter. The Jupiter Bob's restoration and outhouse in Florida
    58:29
    I looked at the pictures look pretty good. I talked to a game has been through a meteor shower. Oh, no, I'm Jupiter Bob Jupiter Bob No, it's been through all our texts have looked at it They looked at it drank a beer and they kept it going to put it rubbed a dirty diaper on and called it done So that's fine. So he's gonna go do that. So, you know what you go sell it you go do what you want to do So then what does he do? He sells it, doesn't get that game, he gets a getaway and for cash whatever and moves it on. Whatever.
    59:00
    But I don't know. It just is kind of weird. It's just kind of weird. It's weird selling into the pinball collector community can be kind of dicey versus selling into the mom and pop world. Everybody wants to beat you and get a deal. Yeah, when they buy from you, oh, it's a piece of junk. When they sell it, this thing is gold. Okay, we get it. We've seen the movie. We've seen the movie before. So that was kind of strange. But anyway, it's gone. Don't care. Cover the LXO. Don't care. It's fine. Got a bunch of games coming out. Just working on Austin Powers. That was a fun game to work on. Weird problem. Fixed that one. I really want to get next for me is the $6 million man. I have a CPR playfield for that. I want to do that for myself. So I played the one with a bad sound card. I overpriced $2700 for that piece of crap. And I know I talked about the same game at York being $1500, $1700. I don't remember, but it was much more reasonable. So, yeah I'm going to put that one on the radar. They made a lot of them. I don't have the number in front of me, they made a lot of them. 10k? I don't know if it was quite that, but it's close. I'd say it's a better game, I'll take that over an Evel Knievel, a blackjack, supersonic, Don't diss my game. Nightrider, Don't diss that game. Any more? How much more? Any of your games George suck compared to this game. It won't be real fun sleeping over in that corral over there tonight. With the horsies. Your wife's earning her keep over there. You, unfortunately. And with the horsies? You'll be earning your keep over there. Oh, the horsies. You'll be with my neighbor. Neighbor. Hey Wilbur. Hey Dave. Hello, I'm Mr. Ed. Hello, my name is Mr. Ed. How are you Dave? I'm gonna give our audience though that one. I mean, I think our real audience. I said something to you last night. It's been driving me nuts. You were like, I don't know what that is. Like, you're only, you know, you're not that much younger than me. But you know, it's not like decades. You didn't had no idea. You're like, I don't know what that is. And that's the same thing with Rebby, Rebby Hardy, other shit, other shit that I talked about. I'm like, God, I'm old. It's weird. offs fo fore citation I'm pissing again. I just keep pissing. Sorry. Two old grumpy men talk about pinball. Right. I'm pissing because I'm pissed about Steve Ritchie. Why? Because I liked him. Wait, so how did we do pretty good? Right? Something like that? Not bad. How did he compare to our- He's a thousand a day. What's a thousand a day? Those loserkids. Yeah, but he's a loser kid. 28 days straight. A thousand. His name is Loser. He's got a bunch of losers that listen, George. They're not losers. We have winners here. Winners, George. Winners. That's what we want. Not losers. Most people don't lose... Everybody I talk to, no, I don't listen to podcasts. So it's like, we just... You listen to pod... I don't listen to pinball podcasts. You do. I don't. No, most people don't even listen to podcasts. It's... What are you listening to? Why am I trying to climb the mountain when... You listening to Lizzo? You gotta tell me you listen to stupid Lizzo? I don't know what they listen to. Chunk. I don't... Two Chains? I don't know. I don't really care. Is there a reason why when you go to a pinball show they play ACDC and Metallica? Yeah, old school. Old school. That's our stuff. Right. So that's the game you should go with that. So that's the sweet spot. Yeah, it is. They should be the same games from those same eras. Right, but that's younger than me. It's younger than you. ACDC? And Metallica. Go look up how they were only made less than 20 years ago. I mean the games. Not the bands though. The bands. Even the inception of the band. What was the inception of Metallica? 87? Yeah, 87. Okay. I'm guessing. I'm not a Metallica fan. Yeah, it's only the mid 80s. Early mid 80s. Okay, right, right. Right. So sweet spot. If you were 17 and 87, you're a fan. Okay. How old are you now? feet några are pretended Cartoon decade fender and so again industry the first game twelve years ago universe show we selling that in this whole harry potter thing that's common if goes by and that will will find that out but that's a I did hear. You are selling a $10,000 game to somebody who's 21 years old coming out of college. Now, had they been working for the last five years and accumulated some level of wealth, they would be able to do that. Okay. Are we really? This just in. Are we really bitching? This just in. Stern is selling My Little Pony. This just in. As the beer flows, we bitch more. Who else are we going to undertake? Who else are we going to attack, George? Well, you know, the Pope's in the news, but I don't want to go. No, you won't. I can't do that? You sure? No, you won't. Look, we can't talk about any of that. I don't know about Father Guido Saducci, the Pope and the pizza. We're not talking about that. Can't do that either? We're not talking about any of that. Let's get back to pinball. Back to pinball. You're done. How about a firepower, a Williams firepower out in near Amherst, Massachusetts, taking this long drive, almost two hours, working this firepower, restored boat, 10 years ago, Hi, I'm Karl DeAngelo, guy with a weird problem. Go there, about an hour or so, fix it, fix a weird problem with electrical. And as I'm into it, about 10 minutes, Maureen's with me, and she says, what's that right there in the window? Now we're downstairs this guy's basement, a glass slider door right there. Oh, in a daylight basement. Daylight basement, glass slider right there, and that's what Maureen sees. That's like a 150 pound bear. Yeah, Smokey the Bear. Well, yeah, but there's a garbage can there. Yeah, that's and what's filled with that garbage can. Let me get ahead bird see, right?
    66:27
    Actually, there was bird seed in it, but he removed the bird seed But he still thinks there is bird seed there because he's probably been there before been there before and then he goes over and tips it over of course and then walks away and then we say Hello, mr. Bear and there he is The weird thing about this story is about a week before this happened to me, I had a weird nightmare. I woke up and it felt real. I was like in this gully, my mother was up on this kind of a hill, grassy hill, I was trying to get up to her, I was trying to climb up this hill, it was like a bunch of roots and branches and I couldn't get up there. I was like, I'll just go around this other way and go up to her and get out of this little pit I'm in. And then as I'm doing that, I see there's a cave I was in the cave at the other entrance, I was going to go near this cave and I see this big brown bear going in the cave away from me. And I said to him, hello Mr. Bear. And all of a sudden he turns around and starts walking towards me and said, okay, what did I learn everything from Bugs Bunny so forth. Oh yeah, Bugs Bunny said, play dead and he won't bother you. So I did, I laid down in my dream, I played dead, fetal position. Hello Mr Bear presentations Of The Week at�로 mí Ë거� I'm a little way you come back out. Like that. And then I played dead some more and then I woke up. And then fast forward a week later. Now is a real bear and you know what I said to him in the window. Hello, Mr. Bear. I did not learn my lesson. I he could come right through the glass and kill me. But anyway, he did. He do. He didn't come after me. But then I was afraid to like, well, if I have to go outside, get parts. Is he around the corner? Am I going to have to play dead in the driveway? Welcome to my world. It's this time of year. And so, you know, in my... They've been taking apart chicken coops in our area. Well, here's the thing. I guess in fifth grade, I remember going in literary class. There's always something, it's man against man, man against society, man against nature, and man against himself. There's all these little conflicts when you write books and so forth. And all came to fruition and came to around full circle to me is, you know, in my neighbor right now, it's getting a little more cityish, a little more noisy, let's say, and it's becoming like, you know, kind of a man against noisy area, let's call it. And so it's a stressor. So I figured, oh, go out to the woods in Amherst and it's, and I went out there, it was peaceful, peace and quiet. It's like, ah, there's no problem at all. And then I Filmed on Tits?
    69:26
    Filmed on Tits? The Stingray. Okay, so the boys that... A Stern Stingray. So, I'm probably not supposed to say it this way, but they are. They're young men that cut my lawn. Yes. He comes one day, one of the brother, two brothers, the younger of the two brothers comes and I see his hand all bandaged up, big bandage on his arm. I'm like, what happened to you? My snake bit me. I go, let me guess, you were feeding the snake. He goes, yeah. I go, what were you feeding him, a rat? He goes, yeah. And I go, and he goes, yeah, the snake mistook my fingers for the rat. I said, what kind of, what kind of snake do you have? Oh, I have a red-tailed python. Nine and a half feet long. How would you like those fangs? What would you do if you were stuck in your fingers? I wouldn't. Okay, so we're going to conclude this animal segment and move on to pinball. We could do that. Okay, so is there anything notable about the fire power that you fixed or is it just the bear story? Well, it was a bear story. Actually, speaking of the python, hold on a second. We're going to show you how to guilt your kids into dropping out of college. But right now, let's return to the story of little Zach Shaw who last week was tragically crushed and eaten by a bear. Valerie iß exhale It was just a regular morning. Rich was taking the girls to school and Zach was playing in the habitat. I was studying and converting it. Oh great! Come here fluffy and freaking crush my aorta. So I left out part of the story. He told me after the python bit him. 자� Sauce Todd Wolfe, Ze Shawanimann muj'man, probate송 habitats turkey Bastet K straightact Aufgy ar washing indicates really sunことstentveckle Closed Caption by The Closed Caption Project That's a bunch of... So anyway, next... Should we go next story? You know, other people do this on their podcast. We never do this. We usually... I try to avoid having these human interest stories to start. Yeah. But that's pretty funny. That's pretty funny. I like it. It works. It kind of works. How about a Stern Guardians of the Galaxy? Great. Relatively... Groot. Groot no work. A grabber or a non-grabber? A grabber. What is a grabber? A grabber or a non-grabber? Well, is it one static and one not depending on pro or premium? Yeah, premium. So this guy, you can throw it in Groot's mouth and he goes yum yum or something. And Groot likes balls. He does some. Oh my god. Maybe that's not quite accurate. But, I don't know. Johannes da Vinci andillington E divulge被 ed האו Jackson Barber Lincoln P for Talk Now 12 oria I think Groot lost his virginity. Boy oh boy. Multiple. Anyway, poor Groot. Groot's misunderstood. So, Groot needs a new motor. You sure his name's not Root? I think it's Root. Yeah, it's Root alright. He needs a new motor. So that's what happened there. But you know for a new game motors go bad on Groot I've heard this before versus like a 1990s Valley Williams game they have motors they don't go bad after I know 10 20 years. This is only okay what is that that downstairs hmm what was a ghost How's it in the house?
    76:25
    J You sure it's not Karl Was it downstairs or upstairs? J You sure it's not in the Dodie We're gonna say he has something down
    76:35
    Karl Where were we? J Where where we? J Grutz balls, that's where we were nós estamos de volta Anyway these Stern motors where did they get anything from, Chinese Motors or us not too good I know they don't wanna hear it again, but I replaced, I replaced a pump for my septic system after a year unwarranted. DISTRIBUTOR OF HISTORY THE FARCATHIS democrat The game was released in 2017. It's pre-COVID. Ok so that's better. So but the motor still sucks. Ok but at least you got 8 years out of it. I guess in home use. I don't know. I think I had about 200 plays on his game. So what did Steve Ritchie tell us? Uh, he said his name is Gary Stern. No no what did he tell us about parts testing? That they put it through? A million times. But not They set up the testbed I'm not even gonna go there. There was a joke there, but he's not going to worry. There's many to come. Trust me. Yes, indeed. Down in the basement
    78:42
    Is there a doctor in the house? Is there a doctor in the house?! I'm a doctor. What's up, Dad? Well I'll tell you what's up
    78:55
    George, what's up? I think the basement's up I think a Xenon is what's up Your Xenon Like you, has all kinds of problems
    79:02
    We were trying some nice games I went from Harlem Globetrotters and let's play some Xenon. And then play the three player. I wanted to say what I always like to say. Dave, you broke my game. But. But that's not really accurate. No, no, no. Folks, I'm going to pay for this one for a long time. Long time. Me love you long. Anyway. Uh oh. Back to group.
    79:34
    If you've listened to this program for any length of time, you've heard the proverbial phrase connectors, connectors, connectors, but I'm a little ahead of ourselves here.
    79:54
    What would appear to be a very simple fix for a ball not going into the trough to play on in a game It's a good name. It turned out to be the rat's nest of all rats nests and you're looking at the headking rat right now or listening to him. That would be me. Georgie needs some crimping help and crimping skills and I know I profess that I love to do it and guess what, I am not very good at it. You got bit by your crimping skills. Yeah, I did. You need the right tool for the job. We, I made some major mistakes, but it's not a game that I did a long time ago. It's Xenon. It worked for 10 or 15 plus years, and then all of a sudden it didn't. And a lot of things came to fruition. One was at the end of the diagnostics. It turned out to be a crimper, but it was also having a electrical plug that doesn't have a ground on it. We will further explore and explain this in upcoming episodes, but just touching metal on simple switches. I'll walk through it. I'll walk through how we solve it. I'll let Dave go from here because he's the technician. But the long and short of it is I was the culprit, but to get to where we figured it out was a fairly long And mind bending journey. How's that? One, if you have, I'll say this, we'll throw it out there. If you can figure out why it did what it did, contact us because it's a good one. Why were we getting current on switches? Yeah, so it's a weird one. So how does this all start? We're playing a three-player game and all of a sudden we lose the ball and the ball never served out to the shooter lane again. Again, Xenon's a two-ball game. You get multi-ball if you, you know, get the right qualifications there up the tube and so forth. But it wasn't serving a ball. It's like, okay, so that's going to be either a bad coil, bad wire, bad Transistor, you know, saying, okay, so some driver, driver, you know, so I basically, you know, took a jumper to the transistor in question and to ground and it made that coil that shoots the ball to the lane work. So, okay, everything from that transistor forward is fine. So therefore that transition is probably bad. I put in a spare sauna driver board that George had and that and Alltech. So you know, working... Working bar. Yeah. That fixed that problem. So you know, okay, bad transistor. Then from there, things started getting weird. You would go and switch test, touch a switch, the either out lane switch on the left or the flipper feed on the right, and you get a pop-up which would fire, a kicker would fire. It would report four different switches per How to be a pinballympting scientist Complfest Sidney Anthony configurationsnectopetti Geminice untukdit K And then I'm touchinging it. I'm just touching the switch frame itself, not even the switch blades, but the actual actuator, uh, the actual wire form. And when I just touch it with my hand, I make the switch go off all four switches. It's like I would be grounding it for me to ground through the floor. It's like, well, that's really weird too. Why is that? So scratch my scratch my wood and concrete floor. Yeah. Wood and concrete floor. I did have engineered hardwood on top of concrete. I was conducting a ground path somehow. Now, I could have put shoes on, I guess, but... Even so. How? How am I conducting a ground like that? How is that a good ground path? So I really scratched my head. So we went out for a ride and we were just thinking about it, thinking about it, and I say, okay, I know what I'm going to do. When we get back, I'm going to go bare Bones with this thing. I'm going to unplug all the boards that are... Fastest unplugger in the East. How did you fight the Steve Lund, The lights started going wonky. Lights started going wonky too. There was one light that was always on. Well you kept saying why are those three bonus lights always lit? Yeah, that's not right. And then one of the lights for the target bank was lit. Yeah, the extra ball light was always on. And then all the lights for the regular bonus didn't work. And the tilt light was always on. Right. So that's the question folks. I'm wondering, I don't know, I'm not him, I'm me. Did that crown plug cause all that problem? That's number one. If you know the answer, you're like our friend John Day, super genius, call in, write in, carry your pigeon, text your girlfriend, your mother, whoever. Get in contact with us. No, I'm serious when I say this. We really do want to know the answer. Yes, we do. So there's that. We did cut the, he had some old... Well, you cut a lot of caps. You cut a diode. Well, I had old, there were old green capacitors on a lot of switches in the game. I cut all those out or cut one leg of those. I was looking for a short, I never found a short. I did find a lot of George's crimps were questionable because he didn't the right crimper. He basically used I think the proverbial pair of pliers and a blowtorch. No, I used the $20 special. It's a manual crimper. It's not easy. Wrong tool for the job. Don't buy a $20 crimper. Buck up if you're going to do it. I do the right thing. I should. And I'm... Anyway. So this one here. We'll get there. So this one wire in particular is the last... We fixed all the weird switch problems, some of the whole way between messing things around, cutting caps and doing some other stuff. I still don't really know the exact fix. I think this thing had multiple problems that cascaded and I just started going methodically in this one by one. I can't really nail it to one certain thing, but somehow, I don't know, it started working. Yeah, but we want to know the voltage thing. The voltage thing is the really weird thing about because I started to I took out the fuses for all the lamps as well and To get rid of that voltage on there to give it all that I Still was getting voltage even without the lamps even as part of the circuit I took the lamp driver board out of the equation that's when things started getting better then I put that I was hesitant to put lamp back for a cardboard back in but I did and it all came back Then I found one of your crimps of the came out of its housing 2 So that one wire that pulled out of the housing, you put that back in. And that fixed the light problems. So it goes to the beginning of the story. Connectors. And the cord you had in the game was missing a... Well, the ground. The ground piece, the third ground. Well, I think we said that, but even so. But it also had a cut in the wire that George, I think at some point, reconnected a cut. So why is that... So I think you had it backwards or something. So there's a... what's the right word to use? The polarity? Yeah, the polarity. The polarity was wrong.
    89:29
    It's like, because on a plug you get the wide side and the smaller side and the two spades. Right. And I think you might have had those reversed somehow. So I think... So you think that's going to be it? One's cotton, one's neutral, and when you get them backwards, I think that's part of the problem. But then again, why is your game work up until now? It's been like that forever.
    89:50
    So that's weird. Why all of a sudden... I don't play it often, but I did when I lived in New Hampshire play it often. And it was just the same way. But then again, we talk about this at some point in time of the show. I don't like moving games. If you set up a game and you get it working, leave it alone. Yeah. That's usually... No, once you start disconnecting connectors, Yuyuko 있습니다 This Week at pinball semiconduregierung fäh좀지 recyclelez inhabit jard subsetnadex nah aex mexican له안ㅋ This We are now open to see live I'm not a hobbyist. I try real hard, but you know what? It's just sometimes it's not good enough. And then you got Dave who comes in and I was scratching my head. I was really scratching my head. Well, no, it's... a lot of people can't take criticism. We've gone through an episode with somebody in Dave's family, but the long story... most people are not very receptive to criticism. You got... if you want to learn and you want to get better at what you do... I mean, we try to help... I try to help people here. I... I make mistakes. Try not to. Everybody does. I love the hobby, but I was pretty... I was pretty upset this morning. principal
    92:11
    Well, it was, it was a weird one, multiple weird problems. But the other thing too, the fish paper on the door for the for the credit button, that seemed a little bit sketchy. So I put a piece of black tape, I didn't have any. But that's an easy one. I've got coin doors, I've got parts. I will isolate that just to get that out of the loop. That's an easy. Yeah. But not, it's not evident for most people to know that that's gonna be a problem. That fish paper can be a big problem. Guilty. Yeah. So I want to take that out of the loop. I even unplugged the coin door. I was trying to isolate everything and put it down to bare Bones and then build it back and see... You gotta watch him in operation, I guess is what I'm saying. I've had the opportunity to watch Dave several times, but this one's kind of the deep dive, the really... Oh yeah. The really head scratcher, okay George, what did you do but he didn't say that? George was watching the gears turn. And George, what we did, I think we built it back better. Did we do it today? Did we build back better, George? Oh my God. No, we didn't do that? Good. I can't do voices. I wish I could. Oh boy, we had a lot of fun. So that was the story of the xenon that almost got a big trip. We're going to leave everybody with this. Earlier in the day. So in between heartbreak and heartache, we went, we'll only talk about it for a minute This Week in Pinball, Game of Thronesdisciplinary Raza),period, Game of Thronesdisciplinary Pinball We went to the Manassas Battlefield. We did, the Civil War battle. So, it was my second time. It was really cool seeing these big cannons arrayed in one line here and you look in the distance against the tree line and the other cannons on the other side. You saw the Confederate versus the Union. And you can just picture how... The Battle of Bull Run, the first battle of Manassas. And you can just...it was a nice beautiful blue sky day. And actually it was stormy in the distance so it was kind of cool. You can just picture the storminess of that day. And you can just imagine these things going... Pffft, pffft, pffft, pffft. You know, just... Explosions going on everywhere. It's pretty close, isn't it? Very close. When you start looking at where people are shooting at each other. And you get this picture of limbs flying off and the armaments, you get to see heads flying off, blood, I mean, you could just, then you go inside and listen to how the battle went and how these armies kind of confront each other and it's like, yeah, I don't think I want to live during that time, no thanks. Public service announcement. I'm not big on history for the most part, but one should see the battlefield. You'll have a pretty good context of what went on during the North versus the South. It's not as big an area as one would think. No, it's pretty small and you can just see. Then you look and go inside the museum, you see these little doctor's kits they have with a big with a bone saw and some other crap. There's no anesthetic. They're cutting up. Or those long rifles with the bayonet that's like three feet long. важно suoqix ungwen vai conquest department neoooo bib shadow endo they uh... lasted by a cannonball he be� they are zero c that was done mode such that which will ed hal site The old lady in the farmhouse. Oh that one. Mrs. Henry. Oh right Mrs. Henry. Was it Mrs. Henry? Mrs. Henry. Yeah Mrs. Henry took a cannonball by the Union Army which is just awful. Awful because they basically said hey that house is thick and house is snipers so Mrs. Henry is an invalid she's in the house. Well that's nice but we can't take any chances so let's blast the crap out of the thing with a bunch of cannons. I mean, if you see the picture of the house with cannonball holes through the roof, it's like nobody would survive that. Hold on, gentlemen, I just made you fresh cookies out of the oven. Boom. Yeah, Betty Crocker is Betty Berry. Okay, enough.
    96:41
    Well, if you do happen to come back in our next episode... Oh, they were saying me. After that Xenon thing. I don't know, George. Okay. So do you have anything else? We're going to go to another segment if not. I think no, I think I'm good except for I worked on an Andromeda, very nice Andromeda I worked on. For those of us of the game plan Andromeda on one of the few game plans is a desirable game made by the guy who made centaur. Help me with Paragon. What's his name? Hello. Ferris? Yes. Ferris. Say Ferris. Call Ferris. He did the artwork on this game. It's very similar to Centaur, more of a Halloween kind of Centaur feel to it. Orange, black, and white, and red, I think. But pretty cool game. Rare, I'm guessing. Rare. The guy was missing some drop targets, and the drop targets are made up of unumtanium, so I brought with... No swings to the rescue? Nope. Nope. They don't make them. So what you had to do, you have to go and I brought with me new stern drop targets will which will fit. But they sit too they sit too high. They sit too high. So I had to actually make my drop them. I had to make my own little bunch of washers and make spaces that have extra long screws to go in to bring the drop target assembly down more. And then now they go up the right height. So you bring the unit down into the game into the game or into the box. And so so they sit flush. Yes. Okay. So that worked out great. That's a good MacGyver. It was a great MacGyver. It works great. Now they have drop targets. So where'd that come from? Somebody did it before, obviously. Uh, no, someone, they broke the drop targets before. And so this came... No, but I'm saying somebody said, hey, you could use... Yeah, on pin, on pin side, someone said, yeah, you can use... That's what I'm saying. But now, now they didn't say, when I was reading that little story, they didn't say, oh, you have to shim the drop target. I didn't know that. I found it out later when I'm doing, putting the things in. It's like, wait, this ain't right. Home Depot to the rescue to buy some lobsters or... No Dr. Dave's stash of parts and washers and screws and so forth to the rescue. I carry everything with me when I go on one of these calls and good thing I do. Folks, thanks for listening to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. Happy flipping. Stay lit and tilted. Until next time, Dave, you want to close us out? Yes, stay lit, tilted. Watch out for those bears Pinball begitu the woods and if one comes upon you to be sure you play dead and be sure to stay asymptomatic. Transquestion? Sure. Are there bears in Provincetown? There are bears in Provincetown George but not those kind of bears and also those ones you should play dead as well. Otherwise, you might have a problem. Well, it looks as if our time has just about run out. Just enough left to tell them who the sponsor was. Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! A-right! But George, you don't know what you're saying! You're under their control! George, we've had it with you. Say no rodeo bro dad. Hasta la vista, baby.