Golden State Pinball Fest Trip Report

Don's Pinball Podcast (patreon feed)·podcast_episode·24m 51s·analyzed·May 17, 2026

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Golden State Pinball Fest trip report: Bay Area travel, Lodi festival experience, Spooky games showcase.

Summary

Don attended Golden State Pinball Festival in Lodi, California with Spooky Pinball representatives (the "Bugler" and Tech Torrey). The episode is primarily a personal travel narrative covering the Bay Area trip, local exploration, and the festival experience, with scattered mentions of unreleased games (Sonic, Beetle Juice, Dungeon Crawler Carl) and community sentiment at the show.

Key Claims

Dungeon Crawler Carl is confirmed as a Barrels of Fun game
medium confidence · Don received a text message from an unknown person claiming 100% confirmation, but the source cannot be verified and Don himself expresses uncertainty about legitimacy
Beetlejuice was expected at Golden State Pinball Festival but did not appear on the show floor
high confidence · Don states he looked for the Beetlejuice game but could not find it, speculating it may have been stuck in customs or the plan changed
Sonic playfield images are circulating online but may be AI-generated or incomplete
high confidence · Don received images of an unpopulated Sonic playfield and AI-generated artwork, notes discrepancies between them, and acknowledges most details remain unknown
Spooky Pinball representatives had positive reception at Golden State Pinball Festival
high confidence · Don observed attendees praising the Spooky team, saying their games have changed lives, treating them warmly on the West Coast
Golden State Pinball Festival operates as a relaxed, affordable, community-focused event with campground activities
high confidence · Don describes the show as crossing between Burning Man, Electric Daisy Carnival, and a pinball show, with favorable pricing and campground entertainment

Notable Quotes

“Spooky Pinball, my folks that live up the street, my essentially next-door neighbors, decided that they wanted to go to this show.”
Don @ ~3:30 — Establishes Don's relationship with Spooky Pinball and explains the impetus for the trip
“I get like text messages sometimes. I don't know how people find my contact info because it's like people I've never talked to before. And then they're like, hey, here's this. Have you seen it?”
Don @ ~28:00 — Illustrates how unreleased game information spreads through unofficial channels in the pinball community
“Dungeon Crawler Carl is coming from Barrels of Fun, 100% confirmed... I can't tell you how I know, but it is.”
Unknown contact (relayed by Don) @ ~28:45 — Unreleased game rumor from unverified source; Don expresses cautious interest
“Walking down the show floor, couldn't see it [Beetlejuice]. Sounds like it didn't even show up. I don't know if I had some bad information or if the plan was to have it there.”
Don @ ~26:00 — Confirms Beetlejuice absence at the festival, creating uncertainty about logistics
“When you look at just the playfield by itself, like imagine trying to come up with what the rest of the game has based on just the playfield. Like it's impossible.”
Don @ ~31:00 — Commentary on the limitations of leaked playfield images in determining game content
“It was the cross between Burning Man, Electric Daisy Carnival and a pinball show that was going on in the campground night.”
Don @ ~56:30 — Characterization of Golden State Pinball Festival's atmosphere and culture
“The games that you guys make have changed my life. These games are awesome. You're amazing.”
Golden State Pinball Festival attendees (relayed by Don) @ ~48:00 — Community sentiment toward Spooky Pinball at the West Coast show

Entities

DonpersonSpooky PinballcompanyTech TorreypersonThe BuglerpersonGolden State PinballeventLodi, CalifornialocationBeetlejuicegame Sonicgame

Signals

?
event_signal: Spooky Pinball attended Golden State Pinball Festival with Beetlejuice showcase; team received enthusiastic community reception on West Coast
high · Don reports: 'People lauded so much praise on Debug and Mike Tori... games have changed my life... They were treated really well. Everybody was really warm and accepting.'
?
product_concern: Beetlejuice machines expected at Golden State Pinball Festival but did not appear on show floor; unclear if customs hold, plan change, or logistics failure
high · Don states: 'I was looking for the Beetlejuice game, could not find it anywhere. Sounds like it didn't even show up.'
?
leak_detection: Sonic playfield images (unpopulated and AI-generated) circulating online; images appear incomplete or inconsistent; release timeline and details remain unclear
high · Don: 'I got AI images from Sonic... the loop looked amazing. But then I look at the playfield that I got. It doesn't quite jive... 95% a surprise when we do see this.'
?
rumor_hype: Dungeon Crawler Carl allegedly confirmed for Barrels of Fun; source unverified and anonymous; Don expresses cautious interest
low · Don received text: 'Dungeon Crawler Carl is coming from Barrels of Fun, 100% confirmed' but notes 'I want this to be true. I hope it's true... strange Internet person'
?
community_signal: Positive community sentiment at Golden State Pinball Festival toward Spooky Pinball; attendees credited company with life-changing experiences
high · Don observes: 'People lauded so much praise... The games that you guys make have changed my life... just puffing up their egos.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.074

0:00

Things got fade and things got worse, I guess you know the tune, oh you're stuck in Lodi again. I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I. Oh, welcome everybody back to Don's Pinball Podcast, it's Don here.

0:23

Sorry, something's stuck in my throat there. I'm here to tell you all about the trip report from our trip to Lodi and I'm going to give it an excruciating detail as far as the places we've visited in hopes that they will serve as either a source of joy and inspiration to your brain or help with some trip planning if you want to make a trip out to California which you absolutely should or if you live there maybe venture out and see some cool stuff. So here was the impetus for all this. I'd been hearing about this Golden State Pinball Festival forever. The last thing I wanted to do in my life is go back to Lodi, California. And so I had an internal battle going on regarding this. Well, Spooky Pinball, my folks that live up the street, my essentially next-door neighbors, decided that they wanted to go to this show. They'd never been there before. So the bugler himself wanted to get out there, make sure the Beetlejuices are unboxed properly and properly leveled and shown off, And then, you know, get a sense on what's going on out on the West Coast, you know. And this is a guy from Wisconsin, like from the middle of the W of Wisconsin, man. This dude catfishes. This dude drives a truck. Like, it's a different biome out there, you know, for this guy. And I want to share it with him. Tech Torrey was also going to come out there. Torrey, first off, amazing human being. And hell of a pinball tech. Like, when you call the tech number at Spooky, like, a lot of times it rings straight through to her, man. So support her. She's amazing. She's got a Venmo. Just like heart of gold person. Had not been on a plane in quite a long time. And with some other commitments that Bug had, he couldn't fly back directly with her. And so it's like, is there anybody else that can maybe join in on the fun festivities and just maybe knows this area? And here I am, big, dumb, and ugly. And I'm from California. I'm from this region, man. And so they were like, why don't you go out there with us? And I was looking for one more reason to go out there because I know people have been asking for me. Jorge, my homie from Reno, all the spinners lit people, like get out here. So I was like, dude, let's make this happen, dude. Spooky goes to California and that's exactly what we did. So we showed up on Tuesday, Thursday, the day before the show, you know, sometime mid-morning or something. Went through an absolutely tragic set of circumstances trying to get a rental car. And we didn't even do anything wrong. This was like normal production activity, but we waited through no less than four lines to get a rental car that was already reserved for us. I don't know why we couldn't just go out, show IDs, drive away like every other interaction with a rental car I've had in the world, but there was like a full hour delay just for no reason at all. It was miserable. Please, what the heck is going on? So we get in the car and so it's around noon and we're in Sacramento which is about a 40 minute or so drive with no traffic to Lodi. So we could go straight there the day before the show starts, go sit in a hotel room and stare at each other. And we decided that that would not be as fun as some other things we could do. Sacramento is also about an hour from the San Francisco Bay Area. You get to North Bay pretty easily and then East Bay after that and then cross over. And I'm like, look, we're out here in California. We got a whole half a day to kill. The weather is fantastic. Let's go grab some food. Let's go into San Francisco. And then we'll just like kick through there real quick and then we'll go over to Lodi. It's just enough to see. Tori's never been there. A bug hadn't been there in a long time. So I'm like, let me show you my San Francisco. So we bounce on down there. For those of you local, we went down 80 into Vallejo, the home of E40. Went all the way down to 580, crossed over Richmond-Sanderfeld, barrage by San Quentin. joined up with the 101 and then headed south to the former Waldo Tunnels, now the Robin Williams Tunnels to the Golden Gate Bridge. So traffic wasn't much of an issue at this point. We made our way around there. And it's like I spend so much time in this area, right? One of my first jobs when I got out of junior college as an x-ray tech was at the VA hospital in San Francisco. And I lived in Santa Rosa, California. This is about 60 miles north up the 101, but it could take three hours sometimes with traffic. And so I commuted through this area regularly for like a while. So it was fun to come back there when I didn't have to work or commute but could just show people stuff. And I'm driving over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and looking at San Quentin, the middle of the bay. If you look off across the bay, it was a clear day so you could see the Golden Gate Bridge. And I'm like, I'm entering San Rafael, California with two of the spooky people. There no way 20 years ago when I was sitting in traffic on the 101 that I thought I would be in this position We stopped at Mary Pizza Shack in Vacaville right near the Nut Tree if you know the area across from the Jelly Belly Factory the former Budweiser bottling plant And, like, this is food from, like, my childhood. Mary's Pizza Shack from Boy's Hot Springs, Sonoma County. It's a small chain, expanded all there. Look up Mary Fazio. But, like, the pizza was really, really good. And I have not found anything to replicate that out here in Wisconsin for damn sure. And so like I wanted to go there. I brought them with me. We got a pizza. We got garlic bread. And they loved it as much as I did, which was very rewarding for my soul. Thanks, you guys. You know, so we go through the Robin Williams tunnels. Right. And we drop into the Golden Gate Bridge. And there she is in all its glory. Right. You got the big reveal. You come through the tunnels and boom, giant orange towers. I have only been to the viewing area of the Golden Gate Bridge like one time. You know, like when we first moved to Northern California in 1992 from Los Angeles. And then since then, like never, because like we live there. Why would we stop there? It's crazy. So I went and went parked. We walked around the bridge, went underneath over to the viewing area. And like it was a great day, man. You could see everything. Tori really wanted to see Alcatraz. Boom, there it is right there. Sausalito's right there. You can see the former army bunkers and batteries. The whole bridge was in view. The vendors were out there selling hot dogs and mango chiladas. It was just a vibe. It was super cool to just stretch our legs, walk around. We just did this flight from Chicago. Now we're in sunny California, prime viewing location. It looks like we're standing inside the intro to Full House, right? The filming locations are all around us. It's like we're taking it in, and then I'm like, okay, we have some options. I know our plan is to make it out to Lodi, go check in the hotel. I know we're kind of exhausted. We can go across the bridge down to Fisherman's Wharf. We can go down Lombard Street. We can find free gold watch. We can go get some food, go to Chinatown, North Beach, Coit Tower, like ride a cable car. What do you guys want to do? And Buck was like, I want to go to the beach. Can we go to the beach? And I said, Buck, we can go to the beach. And so if you go across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco, the Presidio is the first thing you go through. It's military area. They've owned it forever. Nicest real estate in the entire city, and it's all government owned. The VA hospital is part of that whole complex. And, like, I used to go into the city, hang a right, and head up to the hospital, and that's where I worked at, right? Like, just bluffs overlooking the whole Golden Gate. It's great. So I kind of took the spooky guys up the same commute path that I took back in 2005 when I was going to work all the time. And, like, it was just surreal for me to do that. We dropped over the hill past the cliff house onto Ocean Beach, parked. There's a big strip of sandy ocean along the entire oceanfront in San Francisco. Go check it out. It's the end of Golden Gate Bridge or Golden Gate Park. And you can just go out there, and it's like miles and miles of beach, and it's like free parking for the most part. You can go out there, have fun. So, like, we kicked the sand around. We watched the surfers. Water was kind of blisteringly cold because it's still May. But, yeah, we just had a good moment later. Like, you know, we left Chicago. Here we are on a beach, Pacific Ocean, San Francisco. What is reality? What is going on? We stayed there for a while. We had a great time. We were all pretty tired. We wanted to get to Lodi, and it was 90 miles away, almost directly due east from where we are. So we're on a beach in San Francisco, 90 miles away from Lodi. You think an hour and a half, two hours of traffic, three hours. Three hours was the time because it was around 2.30 and work traffic was starting. So we began this odyssey that just killed the soul of my two occupants. Now I'm used to it, having commuted through this before, how soul draining the commutes in San California can be. And my God, were we in for it. We work our way through town, still kind of having fun. We ended up on Haight Street, so check that one off the list. Jump on the Bay Bridge and then we slow crawl all the way to Oakland. This was so funny.

11:06

Fortunately, we made it out to Olodi. I played the Creedence song on the way into town too just so they can get familiar. And then there we are, Central Valley. And I'm looking at the 99 and heading south, and I'm like, guys, we could jump on this. And in five and a half hours, we could be at Disneyland. Should we do that instead? And like, they were all looking at me like, yeah, absolutely. But no, we were there for a reason. We wanted to see all our pinball friends. We wanted to see the show. And so that's what we did. You know, so the next day, I got up and as an aside, I'm away to the airport. I was waiting for Bug and them to show up. We all we got a hotel the night before. I had a skate park in Schaumburg just to go roll around for a little bit. Did not stretch before I went to skate. And then after skating around for like 20 minutes or so, did like the smallest little trick. And for some reason, my left calf just decided to get the worst cramp in history and it would not let up. And so now I'm hobbling, right? And so after a couple of days, I was like sick of this, like hopping around and limping. So I got up early the day of the show, Friday, and I just went out to the parking lot to go walk around, stretch the leg out. And, you know, I walked to the end of the parking lot. I went through a hole in the fence and then I just kind of kept going. Then I figured I'd go find a liquor store or something, grab a Diet Coke, walk around the city in the coolness of the morning. And after about two miles, I was at the Lodi Grape Fest building. So I had walked all the way to the show. It was two miles down the road. Walked, just enjoyed like, you know, sense is a powerful thing, you know. And so like smelling the same air and the same plants and the anise that's out there, like it felt just like I was, you know, 20 years old again when I was living in California the last time. And so it was just like a fun walk for me to kind of reconnect. Yes, I was in Lodi. Yes, it's not as bad as I remember. Yes, I'm still having some fun. Yes, people are still wild. And definitely there are some characters in that Central Valley, man. I got to the show, got to walk around it, was looking for the Bedretti game, could not find it anywhere. Sounds like it didn't even show up. I don't know if I had some bad information or if the plan was to have it there and we're going to hear that it was stuck in customs or something. But that was kind of that was kind of rude. I was getting pictures of like the AI Sonic play field images. I was getting pictures of the unpopulated play field and trying to put two and two together. So like those images are all floating around out there. It's so weird. You know, I get like text messages sometimes. I don't know how people find my contact info because it's like people I've never talked to before. And then they're like, hey, here's this. Have you seen it? And then like I get photos just dropped to me of like this is a game that's unreleased. What the heck's going on? And then I try to go around and say like, hey, look at this. I don't know if it's legit. I don't know what. Or I get messages like this message I got the other day that was like, hey, by the way, Dungeon Crawler Carl is coming from Barrels of Fun, 100% confirmed. And I'm like, okay, strange Internet person. I want this to be true. I hope it's true. And like, you know, they were like, I can't tell you how I know, but it is. So I'm heartened. And so I'm sharing that with you. I get AI images from Sonic. Like, I got the loop. The loop looked amazing. But then I look at the play field that I got. It doesn't quite jive. So look around. I'm sure those photos are floating around out there. You know, pick through them and everything. We're going to find out pretty soon, like, what's actually real in this game. And it's still going to be mostly a surprise. So I can't wait for that. You know, you look at games, games you really like, Elvira House of Horrors, Deadpool, Bond or something. When you look at just the playfield by itself, like imagine trying to come up with what the rest of the game has based on just the playfield. Like it's impossible. Look at Scooby-Doo. Look at TCM. Like you see the art, but like look at Evil Dead's playfield. If you just see a playfield image like unpopulated, there's no way you can put together like what kind of complexity is on there. Less so with the Sterns because they don have as much of the detailed information as you do like with a storytelling game like Evil Dead for instance So I got Sonic It half of a playfield that painted half of it wood There an orbit I can tell that But other than that, I don't know. There's inserts. They light up. It's hard to tell exactly what they say. So it's still going to be 95% a surprise when we do see this. But yeah, walking down the show floor, couldn't see it. We got Beetlejuice's all set up. We. I held a back glass. I was really pretty useless the whole time. And then, you know, we hung around the play field or play field around the campground a little bit. People are still waking up. It was time for the the show didn't start till one o'clock and it was like 10 o'clock. And I'm like, guys, everybody's hungry. Let's go get some food. So we were driving all through Lodi and I'm like, you guys should get some Mexican food. You know, what do you guys want? I'll go anywhere. But what I want to do is go to Wienerschnitzel, which is a hot dog chain that exists only in California, Arizona, Texas, and for some reason, Champaign, Illinois. I have no idea why there's one in the Midwest. But I like to get an all-beef hot dog with a pretzel bun, and it's delicious. And, you know, I can't get it everywhere. So when I'm in L.A. or when I'm in California or Arizona or Texas or TPF, I like to at least go out and get one. But I don't want to subject anybody else to my crazy stuff that I like to eat. And so I was like, listen, I'll go with you, man. I'll help you find it. We'll go get some good food for you guys. You like seafood, we'll go get seafood. I just want to go get a hot dog before we go back to the show. And they're like, Don, no way, man. We're in on this. Man, I'll eat anything. Let's go. So they all go to Wienersitzel with me. And their bellies probably kicked their butts a little bit later. But it was super fun. And I love me some Wienersitzel. So that was awesome. Awesome. By this point, it's Lodi, it's Central California, it's May, it's getting hot, it's dry, it's hot, and our hotel did not have a pool. It was like the only one in the complex without one. And I'm looking to the east, and you can just see through the agricultural air the outlines of the Sierra Nevada foothills. And I'm like, all right, guys, we got some time.

16:57

There's fun stuff if we drive east from here. If you go north, you get to Sacramento. If you go south, you get nothing until you get to Los Angeles in about five hours. And if you drive four hours, you get to Biggers Field, and that's like the worst. And if you go back east, you get back into traffic east or west, you get east bay traffic. So if we go east, there's mountains. Okay, Tahoe is out there. There's like trees out there. It's fun. And they're like, we're down for adventure. So we left, and we drove about an hour to Angels Camp, California, just nestled into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. And as we're driving, we're going through these cute little towns, these cute little agricultural towns, these tiny little cafes, fun little food places. You know, cool gas stations and we're just having fun time. We're getting into some topography. There's some mountainous regions. There's trees. There's animals and stuff. And like these guys are having a blast. And I'm like, I love them for this. You know, I love to go on random adventures. And going up into Calaveras County is a place I haven't really explored myself. It's about a county or two north of where Yosemite is, where Sequoia Kings Canyon are. These are places that I've gone camping with the family like all growing up. But I've never really been to this area. And so I went online and I found a hike down to something called Natural Bridges Trail or something. And from the pictures that I saw, it was only an hour away and it had caves with streams going through it that you could swim in. So I was like, listen, it's hot as balls. Let's go into the mountains. Even if we don't make it this far, there's reservoirs and lakes we can go check out. And so it was great. We went the full distance all the way to Angels Camp. We found a trail. We hiked about a mile downhill through Poison Oak and giant lizards and everything, just in the foothills of the Sierra. It was such a great time. We got down to this place, and there's some friendly locals here. They're pointing us out where to go. We hike up this creek a little bit, and then there's this giant cave that the stream is coming through where it's kind of like tunneled through over time. That's the natural bridge. And so we're like standing inside this cave. Water and moss are dripping everywhere. It's hot out. The water's cool and clean and clear. And it's just like such a cool time. And then it fed out right through like these marble rocks where the water had eroded a channel through it. And it was about three or four feet deep. And so you could get in it and like to swim back and forth and clear water in the mountains away from any kind of pinball headache, away from tech calls, away from, you know, your pager's not going off, my work phone's not going off. We were having the best time in California for about an hour just waiting because we had to kill time before the show started. It was just one of the coolest things that we did. If you want to email me, I'll give you the locations. I'll drop the pin. I'll show you where this place is. I want to go back here and explore even more of it. Talking to the locals, they said if you follow the creek down a little bit more, there's more caves that are even bigger. And so just to be exploring caves and this river, and it's hot and it's dry, and there's blackberry bushes that are just starting to bloom. You know, like later in the season, there's going to be like blackberries everywhere. And it's just, I just, you want to camp there. I want to camp there. So this was a super cool place. We went back into town. We got to the show around 2, 3 o'clock. People have been texting us like, I'm here. Where are you guys at? We met up with everybody. Everybody was super cool. People lauded so much praise on Debug and Tori. The games that you guys make have changed my life. These games are awesome. You're amazing. Just puffing up their egos. I'm like, you guys, oh my god, you've got to back it down. But they were generally excited. These are guys that don't get to see, they probably don't get out to the Midwest very often. So here's the company that makes these cool games coming and making an appearance out on the West Coast. Come say hi. They were having a blast. They were treated really well. Everybody was really warm and accepting. And then when the lights went down and we went out to a Moto's compound, it was just nuts, man. I found out that Arizona makes hard iced tea and as a girl drink drunk, that is exactly what I want. Now listen, for my more tempered members out there, I drink but it's pretty rare. I really kind of have to have a reason that alcoholic gene runs very strong in my lineage and I seen it completely obliterate lives And fortunately I don think I have the addictive gene for that necessarily So I can go like an entire year and not even notice that I haven had anything to drink But if I'm in a social situation and it's super fun, like I can partake and do fine and then forget about it the next day and not even think about going back to it. So listen, I'm fortunate that I'm in that position. But yeah, it was fun drinking hard iced teas. I even had a bourbon that somebody had already pre-poured for me.