Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 65 - Martin Talks Pins & Consoles

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 47m·held·Jul 1, 2018
View original

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Dutch Pinball fundraising strategy and community dynamics discussed amid tax law changes.

Summary

Martin from Head to Head Pinball discusses Dutch Pinball legal troubles, a GoFundMe campaign from fans, and prototype auctions. The hosts express frustration with the pinball community's pattern of repeatedly funding failed boutique manufacturers. They also cover U.S. and Australian sales tax changes affecting online pinball purchases, concluding these won't significantly impact overall machine sales but may redistribute distributor market share.

Key Claims

  • Dutch Pinball has lost community trust due to unclear explanations about payment, manufacturing delays, and board set issues

    high confidence · Martin states 'there is a high level of distrust' and questions whether Dutch actually paid original contractors or if board set delays were real

  • The 'Seattle Seven' GoFundMe violates appropriate fundraising for a failed pre-order model business

    high confidence · Dennis argues GoFundMe is 'nefarious' for a for-profit business that already collected pre-orders and should 'accept your failure'

  • The pinball community exhibits 'domestic abuse victim' behavior toward failed boutique manufacturers

    high confidence · Tony: 'it's like a domestic abuse victim who says, oh, no, don't arrest him. No, he loves me.'

  • U.S. South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling (5-4 decision) reversed the 1992 Quill decision, enabling states to require sales tax collection from online retailers

    high confidence · Dennis provides legal details: 'reversed the 1992 Quill decision' allowing states to require collection from retailers without physical presence

  • Australia implemented a 10% GST on imports under $1,000 effective July 1st, affecting aftermarket pinball parts

    high confidence · Martin: 'as of the 1st of July, I believe it is, anything...below $1,000 didn't attract...GST...that's now changed'

  • Sales tax changes will not significantly impact total new pinball machine sales, but may redistribute distributor market share

    medium confidence · Dennis: tax adds ~$500 to Stern Pro but 'doesn't matter...it's basically transparent.' Tony agrees, comparing to car sales tax

  • Spooky Pinball succeeded with a boutique model by limiting production to 150 units with achievable capital goals

    high confidence · Dennis: 'Spooky had the right idea...we are going to build 150 because we know how to build 150'

  • Highway Pinball's initial projections (2-3 games/year, 6-12 month launch) were unrealistic

Notable Quotes

  • “I need to set up a pinball company, fail utterly, make $40 million, and laugh my way to the bank. Apparently that's what I need to do.”

    Tony @ N/A — Sarcastic critique of Dutch Pinball's ability to raise money despite repeated failures

  • “There are a lot of, depending on who you speak to, very opinions on what's actually gone on about, you know, whether they actually did pay for any machine from the original contractor's ARA, whether they, you know, when they first said that there was delays...whether that was a real thing or not.”

    Martin @ N/A — Expresses skepticism about Dutch's transparency regarding manufacturing delays and contractor payments

  • “This is the behavior of an entity that is not expected to last.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Dennis's summary judgment of Dutch Pinball's decision to auction a prototype rather than distribute it to customers

  • “I would rather have a business guy who doesn't know anything about pinball, but is really good at business...than just period. I'd have more faith in this guy.”

    Tony @ N/A — Argues business competence matters more than passion in pinball manufacturing

  • “If you aren't going to be a boutique manufacturer, then behave like and have a model that is a boutique model.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Prescriptive analysis of why failed boutiques like Dutch didn't execute realistic production strategies

  • “There's sort of revenue that's sort of been leaking everywhere, but that's going to affect the end user.”

    Martin @ N/A — Australian perspective on GST tax changes impacting consumer aftermarket purchases

  • “I don't think it's really going to have a big impact. It's like closing fees on a house. It doesn't matter that it's there. It's basically transparent.”

    Tony @ N/A — Argues sales tax increases are absorbed into purchase decisions and won't deter buyers

  • “We all would like to see more competition in the hobby, but that doesn't mean you need to keep taking it on the jaw over and over and over.”

Entities

MartinpersonDennispersonTonypersonRyan C.personDutch PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyHighway PinballcompanySeattle Sevenorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Boutique manufacturers systematically failing due to unrealistic business models, capital constraints, and inability to execute complex manufacturing

    high · Dennis contrasts Spooky's achievable 150-unit model with Highway's unrealistic 2-3 games/year projection; notes Dutch, Robotech, and others have failed

  • ?

    community_signal: Dutch Pinball's GoFundMe campaign and prototype auction spark community debate about appropriate fundraising for failed pre-order businesses

    high · Dennis critiques GoFundMe as 'nefarious' for for-profit business; Martin calls the announcement 'inappropriate'; Tony sarcastically suggests starting a pinball company to fail and make money

  • ?

    community_signal: Head to Head Pinball organically evolved from Australian-focused podcast to industry-standard interview platform with 50+ episodes and major guest appearances

    high · Martin: started as 'just banter' between two people who met twice; audience composition shifted from 65% Australian to 65% American; interviews grew organically without strategic plan

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball community exhibits 'domestic abuse victim' pattern of repeatedly funding failed boutique manufacturers despite repeated failures

    high · Tony: 'it's like a domestic abuse victim...he loves me...I deserved it.' Martin notes desire for manufacturer diversity conflicts with willingness to keep taking financial losses

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Boutique manufacturers must choose between realistic boutique model (limited production, achievable capital) or full-scale manufacturing (massive R&D, sustained production capacity)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.501

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, June 30th, for some of us. For some. And it's episode 65. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we have a guest once more, once again. This time, we have someone who is a little bit in the future from an American perspective. He is a highly skilled competitive player forged in the fires of the Outback itself, a pinball streamer known for his love of potted plants. The Eclectic Gamers Podcast is most pleased to welcome the advocate of Avatar, the discer of Demolition Man, the streaming sensation of the Melbourne Silver Bowl League, and the smart host on Head-to-Head Pinball. Martin, welcome to the show. Well, thank you very much. You've got that all absolutely right. I aim to please, or at the very least, have accurate research.
1:09
We have a link in the show notes for any of our listeners who have not happened to hear Head to Head Pinball, which is the podcast that you do with Ryan C. Or if they haven't seen your Twitch channel, Melbourne Silver Ball League, I've got a link to that as well. But do you want to know for our intro here, do you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself or about what you do in the hobby of pinball?
1:29
Yeah, look, I think probably now most known for head-to-head pinball podcasts. Before that, I did start running a, it was a monthly tournament born out of two things. First of all, when I went to Indisc probably two years ago, so January two years ago, I really wanted to see how the US thing put on a great tournament. and in Australia the tournament scene had become, you know, quite large. There was a lot of different tournaments running in each of the major cities but I wanted to sort of do one that was probably a little bit next level when it came to sort of the image and how it was promoted and how it was run and what the prizes were. So that was where Melbourne Silver Ball League was born and one of the things that we also did was we streamed the finals of the tournament. It was a selfie leak.

medium confidence · Dennis: 'Highway as an example...we are going to release...two, three games a year...within the next six to 12 months. Unrealistic.'

Martin @ N/A — Acknowledges community desire for manufacturer diversity while cautioning against enabling serial failures

Zytec
company
Melbourne Silver Ball Leagueevent
Eclectic Gamers Podcastmedia
Head to Head Pinballmedia
Pinheads Podcastmedia
Big Lebowskigame
America's Most Hauntedgame
South Dakota v. Wayfairevent
Robotechgame

high · Dennis articulates: 'either got a boutique behaving like a boutique...or you're going to go all in and you've got to have a massive amount of capital'

  • ?

    event_signal: Melbourne Silver Ball League monthly tournament discontinued after 18 months of successful operation and streaming

    high · Martin ran tournament for 18 months, decided to shut down, then immediately pivoted to starting Head to Head Pinball podcast within 24 hours

  • $

    market_signal: Sales tax collection changes may redistribute pinball distributor market share geographically rather than reduce total sales volume

    medium · Tony predicts distributors in large states gain business while those in less-populated states lose; local distributors benefit from tax parity

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zytec confirmed or believed to be Dutch Pinball's new contract manufacturer for Big Lebowski production

    medium · Martin states 'Zytec, we believe' is the new contract manufacturer; implies prior announcements or industry knowledge

  • $

    market_signal: Sales tax changes (U.S. and Australian) will add ~$500-600 to new machine purchases but unlikely to deter buyers overall

    high · Dennis notes $500 added to Stern Pro; Tony compares to 'closing fees on a house' and car sales tax as transparent costs; Martin agrees minimal impact expected

    • 2:23
    And then I ran that for probably 18 months. And then there was this crossroads where I had to decide to either keep it going or shut it down. I decided to shut it down for whatever reason. And within 24 hours of shutting it down, I heard Ryan C on a couple of other podcasts. And I just had this moment where I said, right, I'm going to contact Ryan and start a podcast. And that's what we've done. and it's been going for nearly a year. We're about to do episode 50. It is a weekly episode, and it's been a pretty crazy ride so far. Yeah, and you know, the rumors swirling in the air are that Twippy may be in the future for Head to Head. You guys have been scoring a lot of major interviews, and what I really like, you're one of my top shows. Actually, I'll go ahead and say you are my top podcast to listen to. Thank you. And, well, you guys earned it. I don't give this away lightly. So it's just, I mean, in terms of the dynamic, the chemistry, as a lot would say, between you and Ryan, you both come at the hobby from very different perspectives, but it integrates really well. You guys get along together, at least on air you do. And the content that you generate in terms of both the research aspects and things that you've brought up on your own through your show and then bringing on guests of a myriad of backgrounds. So I get to learn about the Australian scene, which I am incredibly ignorant of otherwise. And then also you get a lot of industry people on at this point. So you're really the go-to podcast to learn about a lot of this hobby at this point because your weekly format really keeps that pace going. I think it works really well. But I'm very grateful that you're slumming it with us. Yeah.
    4:09
    You're also one of my favorite podcasts as well. And I know that you sort of also mentioned about, you know, your journey and how it was. It was pinball and gaming and also tabletop, and now it's sort of pinball and gaming. And that's great for me because they are the two different things that I do. Obviously, now more pinball than console gaming. But, you know, as a lot of people went through that phase where, you know, probably during the 2000s, pinball sort of went away and people got more into consoles. Well, so did I. I was a massive console gamer, and as I've mentioned a number of times, I also was one of these people that succumbed to World of Warcraft as well. So did we. We never talked about it on the show. We'll talk about it. But the interesting thing about the podcast is, I know you sort of said that we get all these, you know, the industry interviews. That's not what we planned to do. We actually just planned to do a podcast for the Australian audience, audience from an Australian perspective because Pinheads was the go-to podcast in Australia and the quality of that podcast was just phenomenal and it was a monthly format. They sort of went on hiatus for a little bit, so we thought, well, let's just do something that fits into that slot. And it was always just going to be Ryan and I just having a bit of banter.
    5:34
    I've sort of mentioned a number of times, we didn't know each other before we started the podcast. I think I'd met him twice. Once I bought some blades from him, and once he did come along to one of my streams because he had an America's Most Haunted that we streamed. But I think we've just sort of lucked in that we are very different. We obviously do have a different perspective. But, yeah, I'm surprised, as most people, that we do have great chemistry.
    6:02
    And I think the interviews that we get, I think just came out of more and more people listening. And I know that you're into stats, and I'm massively into stats as well. And, you know, when we first started, the audience that we had was 65% Australian, probably about 25% American, and then the rest of the world. And now it's 65% American and about 30% Australian, and then the rest of the world. Yeah. And the thing with the interviews is I feel that it's noticeable even from the listener perspective that that's grown organically. It was clear from the start that that wasn't a strategic focus. It's just the way that the show has evolved.
    6:45
    And it works really well, and I like how you guys conduct those. Tony and I, we do interviews on occasion. We like this. We like to do the guest host thing, fill in our weaknesses that way, and have a discussion rather than go and do interviews. So we don't like to do a lot of that. Yeah, we did some in the beginning, but it got to the point where it was more annoying to go do an interview where instead of just having somebody come on and be with us and talk and joke and stuff, it felt better. Just for, yeah, for our approach. But I like to listen to them. So I'm glad that there are others that are executing very well in that area. Yeah. Well, thank you, Martin, for the introduction. Tony, everyone knows about you already, but we don't know what's happened over the last couple weeks.
    7:28
    Nothing. It's been really hot. It is. It's been really hot, and I work outside all day. So I come home, and I haven't done much of anything. I haven't even played very many video games. Not even Battletech? Not a little bit. There was a major patch that made major changes, so I started a whole new playthrough, and I got a ways into it, and I've also been, I finished my naval insanity Excel run as the Italians, and I started a run as the Germans.
    8:03
    And it's going very well. But that's all stuff that's slower paced that I can just do here and there and stop and go do stuff with the kids and do various other things. Mainly, I've been reading and relaxing because it's been just so darn hot. Okay. Well, I had last week off of work. My coworkers are wondering if I even work anymore because I've been taking so much time. It's like every episode we have, you're either, I was off work last week or I'm off work next week or I'm off work this week. I think after this, I finally have less than 600 hours of vacation.
    8:40
    This is from years of accumulation where I just could not get away because of contracts and such that I had to service. And I'm free of a lot of that, which is not good for the organization, but it is good for me. And so, yes, so I had last week off, and I finally finished Prey. I'm still trying to formulate my thoughts on it, because I have very mixed feelings about that game. So I'll talk about that at a future point. I played and finished The Evil Within 2, which is something of a spiritual successor to the Resident Evil series. At least the first game was. So, again, I'll talk about that more in a future episode. So I've been playing now with my, continuing my monster theme, Dead Rising 4, which is the campy, silly, you're in a shopping mall and you get a plate dress up and all that stuff. And you get to use duct tape to turn a baseball bat and some other random stuff into a lightsaber. Yes. Yeah. You know, realistic stuff. So I'm working on that right now. So that's really what I've been doing. Not a lot, I haven't played a lot of pinball in the last week. I was hoping, actually, while I had that break, to get a project and work on another project, but all the ones that were available were not of interest to me, so I just had to kind of put that off to the side.
    9:51
    But before we go into the pinball segment, and for the listeners, we will have a pinball and a video game segment this time, I do have one correction from our last episode, the E3 episode. This one was on me. Actually, there are probably a lot of corrections, but this is the only one I know of. And that is, while I was discussing Tales of Vesperia, the definitive edition, I said the prior game release of it was where the DLC was only available in Japan, was on the PS4. It's actually a PS3 game. Oh, no. I was... Get the rope, boy. I said Gen 8 instead of Gen 7. Get the rope. Yep. I probably can't ever talk about E3 again, my cred. My cred is crud.
    10:32
    So let's move into news, and we're going to start off with one that I know Martin's already spoken about on his show, Head to Head Pinball, and that is Dutch. We've spoken at length about Dutch pinball, Tony. Yes, and in warm, glowing, wonderful, loving terms. Well, your mileage may vary on that interpretation, but we'll put that to the test here. So there was a newsletter that Dutch Pinball put out and announced that there was a group calling itself the Seattle Seven is starting up a GoFundMe to help Dutch pay its legal fees for the ARA conflict. And while this was going on, Dutch was auctioning off a prototype build of the Big Lebowski, I'm assuming one of the Zytec ones, and selling things as far flung as T-shirts to plastic sets on its website. The only other thing I wanted to note on that is the prototype is no longer, I guess the bidding's done. I don't know what it ended at. The last I saw was 16,000 euros.
    11:32
    And the newsletter that said all of this was, in my view, surprisingly chipper. So, Martin, I know I've heard your thoughts before. Not all of our listeners might have. What do you think of either this or just Dutchess' position in the hobby at this point? I've sort of been really hopeful with Dutch. And I've said I've got a very close friend of mine who's in on Big Lebowski. So I've sort of tried to be positive because I really want him to get his machine.
    12:05
    But I'm now just, I'm done. I'm done with Dutch. I think that now, I don't think they've necessarily become pariahs at that stage because I don't think the real story has come out just yet. But there are a lot of, depending on who you speak to, very **** opinions on what's actually gone on about, you know, whether they actually did pay for any machine from the original contractor's ARA,
    12:37
    whether they, you know, when they first said that there was delays and they talked about it was board set issues, whether that was a real thing or not. so I certainly don't think that there is a high level of trust at the moment in fact for me now there's a high level of distrust so when this newsletter came out you know I almost did a facepalm I was just like this is I don't know it almost felt a bit inappropriate that they're asking for more money well sure they're selling some goods there's machines there's play fields There's, you know, decals or decals, and that's fine if you want to have some money. But then people setting up a GoFundMe, for me, I feel that that's a little bit misguided because the money that has already been given to them for people that have paid either part or full for their machines is gone. They don't have money to pay for legal fees. They don't have money to go into production with the new contract manufacturer, Zytec, we believe.
    13:47
    So a GoFundMe, it seems like it's more money for bad. Okay. Tony, you've been pretty hard on Dutch Pinball over the last few months. Has this changed your mind? Have you come around? I'm not surprised that their announcement seems surprisingly cheery. How could they not be cheery? They found yet more people who are trying to give them money and get more money for them not doing anything. I'm in the wrong bloody business. That's what it is. I need to set up a pinball company, fail utterly, make $40 million, and laugh my way to the bank. Apparently that's what I need to do. I don't know if they made $40 million, but there was a conversion for this thing, right? Yeah, but still, it doesn't matter. I mean, it has moved beyond just, I mean, it was already a joke. It is past being a joke. At this point, I don't know who the Seattle 7 is. I don't know who anybody touching this GoFundMe is. I feel bad for these people. And honestly, honestly, I think they need to seek mental help. Because they obviously have some serious, serious issues. They either have very, very bad issues, or they have so much money that it doesn't even matter to them. In which case, I can think of a lot better things to do than to give it to people who have proven that nothing's ever going to come out of it.
    15:17
    Okay. I think one of the points that Ryan and I made, and Ryan in particular, was why is it that you have to come back to the pinball community to bail people out? can't these people for Dutch Pinball friends and family or go to the bank and get a loan just get your own money to bail yourself out stop coming back to the pinball community preying on their weaknesses which is wanting a great theme or a great pinball machine to bail you out it's a good point and in the case of who is the Seattle Southern I don't know the names individually I don't know if they all live in the Seattle area even I think the term Seattle 7 comes from something, comes from a movie or some historical thing. I'm not certain on that. That said, what I think maybe in the case of some of them, we discussed this whole idea of sunk costs and that issue where maybe some of these people, it's not necessarily that they're so loaded that the money is meaningless to them, but they're $8,500 in. What do you do? sit by and watch it fail or pay another $4,000 and try and get your machine. And then when it fails, you're out even more. Well, I'm not saying it's smart. I'm just saying that I can see where that mental process, you can get stuck in that boat thinking, I have to intervene or else I'll for sure get nothing. That Dutch can't save itself, so I have to save it. But you can't save it.
    16:55
    Maybe they think that they can. Yeah, and that was sort of the parallel that I had with a couple of Kickstarters that I spoke about that failed.
    17:05
    And, you know, collectively the community says, well, you know, how many backers were there? If we gave, you know, another $500 each, then that would resurrect the program. And, you know, $500 isn't that much more to pay. And, you know, that might be an extra $1 or $2 million. Well, if you've given them $20 million and that hasn't worked, why would you give them another $2 million? And what makes you think that that extra $2 million is going to be a different path and that's going to work? Well, that thing happened with the Robotech Kickstarter that we talked about a bunch of episodes ago. They did the same thing. There were people who were like, well, if we give more money, if we do this or if we do that,
    17:45
    and they did that buyout and people were all over it. They were all over it. They sold out the remaining stock of a game that nobody plays and it's completely useless. And that was even with people having to pay more to get extra stuff because it was beyond what they owed. And people had to call in pay for their own shipping to get stuff that they'd already paid the shipping for. And I don't understand the thought process on any of it. I mean, I can't. I remember when, speaking of, we talked about WoW earlier. When I quit WoW, that was part of it I've spent years playing this game And paying money to play this game And I've built all this up Can I just walk away from it? And the answer was, yeah, I could Right And so I think when you watch When you read the threads on the forums About Dutch Pinball You see that it runs the gamut So you've got some people that have Accepted and are at the point Where they understand that they're essentially cutting their losses You've got another block of people that are angry and are at the point where they want litigation to try and get something back. And then you've got the part that still thinks somehow Dutch Pinball can execute and pull it off. Regarding these particular announcements that were in their newsletter, I want to weigh in on a couple of them real quick. First is GoFundMe. As Tony knows, I've never supported a Kickstarter. I despise GoFundMe, though. I think it's far more nefarious. For me, GoFundMe exists for one purpose, and that is to help people out who aren't charities and they've had a disaster strike them. So like someone's house burns down and you want to do like a fundraiser for a family or something, GoFundMe is great. This, especially for Dutch to use, and I get that they're not the ones leading the way, it's their customers leading the way, but it's a charity drive for a for-profit business that was not using Kickstarter as its concept of funding their production. They did the pre-order model. It failed. Accept your failure.
    19:48
    And then the other thing is this prototype. It should not have been auctioned. What is this? Some sort of third-rate flipper who buys a new in-box game and saves it and then sells it for a profit? Why isn't that being sold off? I mean, are they using that money to split amongst their customers or what? No, you can't auction anything back to a customer. Why didn't they give it to a customer?
    20:08
    I get why they didn't do it. I'm just saying this is the behavior of an entity that is not expected to last. No.
    20:17
    Anyway, so it is what it is. Okay, I'm glad we solved that problem. I think at this point we could sit down at this point and put together 12 stages of I got screwed by a pinball boutique. and all you ever see, because it's everybody, like you said, the people who are angry, the people who are like, well, why would you do this? This is the fourth time you've had this happen to you. How do you keep doing this? I wonder if any of them have actually been in on all the other, been in on Skit Bees. I'm sure it could. I mean, but at this point, and this isn't something I've seen in any other community I've been part of. Most of the time, if a company has an issue, people get real gun-shy of stuff. But for some reason, in pinball, it's more like a domestic abuse victim who says, oh, no, don't arrest him. No, he loves me. It's okay. Well, he broke your arm. Well, that's okay. I deserved it. That's what this feels like with pinball anymore, the way people keep going back to these people. And every time they fail, it's like, no, no, no, here's more money. You'll be okay. I love you.
    21:30
    That's what he said. Because, you know, even the earlier stages of Dutch pinball sort of not going well, I just still remember people would say, you know, here's what they've done. Here's this bad news. Here's what's going. But you know what? The guys from Dutch pinball, they're really nice guys. They're really passionate. They're pinball people just like you and me. No, they're pinball people that thought they could get a really complex product off the ground, and it failed, and now they're fleecing you for more money. I would rather have a business guy who doesn't know anything about pinball, but is really good at business or really good at running a business, than just period. I'd have more faith in this guy. But that's Gary's firm. I mean, you ask him what's his favorite pinball machine, it's whatever's currently on the line. Yeah. His passion's for manufacturing. Yeah, it works. It does work. But, yeah, I think some people, they keep coming back to the well here because they're so desperate to see more companies succeed. Either they're unhappy with CERN or they just want to see more diversity. And I think we all would like to see more competition in the hobby, but that doesn't mean you need to keep taking it on the jaw over and over and over. When a boutique tries and fails, at some point you need to cut your loss and just accept that, okay, well, that one didn't work. Let's see someone else come out and maybe they can execute better. Well, this is the thing that I think. I think if you aren't going to be a boutique manufacturer, then behave like and have a model that is a boutique model. And I always come back to Spooky. I think Spooky had the right idea because they weren't shooting for the sky. Their first machine, they said, we are going to build 150 because we know how to build 150. We've got enough capital to be able to ship 150 machines. It's going to be a relatively simple machine. I think America's most haunted. It certainly wasn't the most complicated machine. If you look underneath it, it is actually really quite simple. And they were able to achieve that. So you've either got a boutique that's just behaving like a boutique or you're going to go all in and you've got to have a massive amount of capital to be able to put all the R&D into it and then be able to become a production, manufacturing company to then to be able to deliver and do it over a realistic period of time. You know, obviously I'm using Highway as an example here where they said, we are going to be a major manufacturer. We are going to release, you know, two, three games a year and our first title is going to come out within the next six to 12 months. Unrealistic. You just got it wrong. that sounds real familiar that sounds like somebody else we're going to be talking about here in a little bit except for they haven't failed yet well we'll have to see but before we get to that part let's quickly touch on unfortunately for Martin's sake we're going to talk a little bit on US centric here but we won't spend too much time on it US Supreme Court highest court in the United States court case South Dakota versus Wayfair 5-4 decision reversed the 1992 Quill decision, as it was called. Wayfair's decision means now that states in the U.S. can start requiring online retailers to collect sales taxes directly, even if they don't have a physical presence in the state. That's the big change from Quill.
    24:58
    The reason why we're talking about a tax issue here is because there is a pinball impact, because a lot of people who have been ordering new-in-box pinball machines deliberately do so from out-of-state distributors so that they can try and avoid sales tax. A couple things to note before we discuss this, because there's only one real aspect I think is worth discussing. First, I just want to make clear to people, avoiding sales tax was never legal in the U.S. You still owed that sales tax even if you bought from a distributor. It was just that you were supposed to report it, not the distributor. So in the case of our state, which is Kansas, there's a spot on our income tax form where you're supposed to declare whatever things you bought through catalogs or Internet or whatnot that you didn't pay tax on. Now, how many people use that box? I have no idea. I've always wondered. To me, it's kind of like the WinRAR people. You always wonder how many people actually pay WinRAR. How many people actually fill in the, oh, yeah, I spent $30,000 on stuff I bought from out of state. But I need, and I do need to disclose before we move on, is that I am employed by an organization that backed retail collection of tax-free years on online sales. Yeah, no, I think it's a good thing. I have no problem with that. Oh, well, yeah, yeah. The reasoning by the court, if you read the decision, which it was an interesting decision because it did not split ideologically. There were conservatives and liberals on both sides of that decision, and it just sort of comes down to fairness for the mom-and-pop stores. Competitive advantage was to online, and that was a problem because it's crushing all the brick-and-mortar businesses. So all that said, let's get back to pinball. Just before we do, because it's actually related. So something that's actually happened now in Australia, very similar. So as of the 1st of July, I believe it is, up until that date, anything that was shipped into Australia that was, I think it was below $1,000, didn't attract what we call GST or goods and services tax, which is an additional 10%. Well, that's now changed. And so everything that now comes into Australia now needs to attract a further 10% GST. And similar to what you're saying, I believe it's meant to be up to the person that imports to declare it or to pay it, but they will sort of police that as it comes into the country. And that sort of causes a bit of a problem for us. I mean, obviously, I know why they're doing it, because it makes import products cheaper than buying them local. But, you know, for things like pinball, where really it's going to affect the aftermarket. So, you know, any sort of parts or, you know, plastics or mods or anything like that are now going to attract a further 10%. So I can sort of fall into that same sort of category where that sort of whole online thing has been a problem for many years. There's sort of revenue that's sort of been leaking everywhere, but that's going to affect the end user.
    28:16
    Now, is DST, is that like a VAT? That's what I was wondering. Yeah, I think it is, yeah. But it's 10%. It's based on the particular product, not necessarily the state in which you're located. So it's straight ahead. Okay. And in our state in Kansas, our sales tax, when combined with all local sales taxes, is about 10% at this stage. It's a little over, actually. So the discussion part of this is what everyone's wondering is, will this affect new inbox pinball sales? No. You don't think so? I don't think so. I think it'll affect the distributors because some distributors might have less purchases than they used to. If somebody specifically avoided a distributor, not because they had an issue with the distributor, but because the distributor was local enough that they wanted to dodge the tax, there's no reason to stop them from going to a local distributor. So you're thinking maybe while the total sales would stay the same, we might see some probably mostly distributors in large states will start to see more business, and some in the less populated states will lose business. I think that's what I think is the biggest change. I could see that. But it does mean that on a Stern Pro, especially if someone wasn't declaring whatever they declared, it is going to add like $500 to the bill. We've already seen people will just shovel out money for free to people. That's true. They don't all own the peasant version like me.
    29:46
    That's a good point. What are your thoughts, Martin? Do you think it's going to have a notable impact on total annual sales of machines? Well, certainly not for us because we pay some tax on them. anyway.
    30:01
    Yeah, I personally think it will. I think, you know, you in America have the street price. We don't because we've only really got one distributor. So it's that street price where it really probably does hit the distributor. They probably have to add that money to it. I think time will tell.
    30:23
    Actually, I agree with you, Tony, on it. I don't think it's really going to have a big impact. It's like closing fees on a house. It doesn't matter that it's there. It's basically transparent. When you go and buy a car and they collect the sales tax at the car sale at a dealer, by then you've already gone to get your $14,000 vehicle, and you're almost too late at that point. And they're like, what, they're sales tax? Oh, my. No, no one says that. Yeah, no one does that. So I don't think it's going to be a big deal. Now, I did do that once with a vat because back in the day when I played Eve Online,
    30:57
    the group I played with included several people in Europe and a bunch of us that were here in the Kansas City area. We got together and we bought some stuff and some barbecue sauce and this and that and sent it to one of our buddies that we really liked who lived in Britain. And then we felt bad because we sent so much stuff that he had to pay the equivalent of 50 bucks basically. He had to pay 50 pounds whatever to get it out because of the VAT. So you ruined him financially to give him some barbecue sauce. I didn't ruin him. We sent him a lot more just barbecue sauce. But it was, we felt kind of bad. He's like, oh, I have to pay the tax on this guy. So it's like, what are you talking about? I have to pay the import duties, the VAT and this and that. I'm like, I've never heard of VAT before. What are you talking about? because we sent him like a good sized box and it's just like, oh sorry dude alright well let's hop over to our third pinball topic in the news category and that is deep root pinball an expression that is very popular I know in Australia so a lot more information has been revealed via This Week in Pinball including a new interview with Robert Mueller, the principal behind deep root Pinball. I have a link in the show notes for anyone who wants to read it. We're not going to go through all of it. We're just going to touch on the pieces that I think are the most interesting. So the first thing that I wanted to tackle was the announcement that Steve Bowden, who was a prior guest on this show earlier this year, has joined Deep Root Pinball and will be working as a rule set designer. Martin, do you have any thoughts on that? It's a great move. It's a great move. When we interviewed Steve and we asked him, we said, would you ever want to get into the pinball industry? And he said, yeah, absolutely.
    32:52
    He's a very clever person. He absolutely can go deep into rule sets and understands the nuances of rule sets and what makes a game enhanced through its rules. So I think this is absolutely. And when you think about Deep Root and all the people that they've hired, and they really have hired the AAA people of each of the genres from manufacture to design and now rules. I think it's a great move and good for Steve. Tony, any thoughts? Oh, I think it's great. I think a lot of... I think having high-level players do ruleset design, period, is really good.
    33:39
    But Steve's such a great guy. Yeah. He's just a great guy So going back to Dutch This is the whole same thing He's a great guy I'm glad to see he's moving into something that Will hopefully turn out really well for him I think Deep Root In general As a conversation like we had before Has really They have pulled out all of the stops They're going whole hog On this Hopefully for them successful buy in This is either going to be the most spectacular crash and burn pinball has ever seen, or they might actually succeed.
    34:21
    I know where my actual personal thoughts are, and it involves me getting sticks and marshmallows in a lawn chair.
    34:28
    Oh, yeah. I think Tony and I sort of diverge on this. I think he's much more cynical on its success than I am at this point, given the moves they've made. but they are interesting moves no matter what. And you mentioned that Steve is a nice guy, and Steve does listen to all the podcasts, so I'm sure that he'll send you your $5 in the mail. Is he too nice? You get $5? That's the question no one's asked. You get $5? No, no one asks. I only get 75 dollars. We don't make money at this time.
    34:58
    You're lucky because that shows they care about you more because they have to pay more postage to mail those coins.
    35:04
    This is what I was alluding to before when I said a boutique manufacturer needs to behave like a boutique manufacturer, and if you're going to go all in, you've got to have the capital behind you. Now, I don't know Robert Mueller personally, but from all reports,
    35:22
    this guy's got the backing to be able to do this. So whether they've got the know-how, we don't know. No one's seen a product. No one's seen the quality of the product. But to be able to sink money in to be able to get this off and running at such a large scale, I'd say he's probably got the money to do it. Yeah, and that's where I'm coming from as well, that everything they're indicating is that they have planned for a certain amount of financial upstart money, and nothing that they've done so far suggests to me that it isn't sufficient, whereas everyone else has done things that are very questionable, coupled with that they have brought in industry veterans or pinball veterans. I mean, obviously, Steve is new to working in pinball, but he knows pinball very well. This is following completely in the tradition of, we just saw Spooky pick up Bo and Karen's. Again, top-level player. He's doing rules for them. Jersey Jack's got Kiefer. He's a great player. And Stern's got Lyman Sheets. He's a great player. So this was... And Keith Elwin. And Keith Elwin, that's right. Because not only pinball, playfield design, he's doing his own rules. John Norris for Deep Root, actually, he did rules back in the premiere days. So they've got people, all their moves that they're making seem to indicate that they are, I almost want to call it a Capcom approach where they're understanding we're new, so we're going to bring in experts. We're not going to pull an Atari where we don't know anything about pinball and we just think we got enough money, we'll just figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't work out for them. And I'm not going to say you guys are wrong at all. I just I think of any of the Startup groups, any of that stuff we've seen In the last several years They're the ones who impress me As the most likely to make it But they've got warning signs too So I'm not saying they're perfect Well no The crash and burn aspect I know the one that a lot of people will point to Is this, that they plan to Unveil at least three games simultaneously at TPF next year. Seems to be a pretty aggressive timeline, and three games at once is not something any new startup has done, to my knowledge, ever. Well, if you think about the parallel I'll give to Deep Root, probably, I don't know whether it's on the same scale, but American Pinball, for example. So, you know, they managed to get Houdini designed, built, and shipped within a very, very short period of time. And I think that the difference that American Pinball and Deep Root have is that their pinball division is exactly that. It's just one of many divisions. So they've got three or four other companies that are making a lot more money. So they can afford to have this little offshoot thing that makes them happy because they become famous pinball people. Very valid point. Yeah, I think now an American, I'll fess up. I expected American to be gone by now when they first started. And they're not. And Houdini wasn't a bad game. I actually enjoyed Houdini. Yes, I am. So I consider them a going, I'm not going to say a success, but they are a going item. We'll see what game two has. Now, I'm wondering if Deep Roots' thoughts and how they're designing and how they're punching everything out is to do the, as they say, have at least three games at launch and then enter. And they're not going to keep up that type of schedule. It's going to be, hey, we've got three games at launch when we go public to have people purchase the games. And then they enter into the rotation like Stern uses where they put out, you know, a couple, three, four games a year is what they're aiming for. And having the money to support it with, as you said, everything else they've got. I think they've got a really good chance. I just don't know if it's going to happen. Yeah. We've all been burned. Yeah. Everyone who's paid attention should be gun-shy of any new manufacturer. Yeah, correct. But it's helping that they have not asked for pre-order. Right. And that is a huge plus for me because if anybody asks for pre-orders and they've never kicked out a single machine, I just know they're an instant write-off for me at this point. And that's a very good point to bring up because that takes us into the next part of this information from This Week in Pinball about Deep Root. And that is that they are going to offer pre-order victim help. Yeah. So we've already discussed in the past about the terms that they've offered to the Zidware customers for those that had tried to purchase games that John Papaduke was designing for his startup company that didn't successfully produce anything. But now they have Robert called out in an interview with This Week in Pinball that he's had conversations with Pinball Brothers and with Dutch Pinball and that they have no intention of delivering on their promises without giving up the ability for themselves to profit. So Deep Root Pinball is going to offer some form of relief to those that have pre-ordered or tried to purchase from Highway slash Pinball Brothers, because we're kind of one in the same in that, and Dutch Pinball customers. It's going to run between October, start of October and the end of this year. The nature of the relief is not yet determined.
    41:03
    Robert did declare it will not be as expensive as what was offered to the Zidware customers. The philosophy is you did take a risk pre-ordering. We're not going to absolve all that risk for you. We don't really have anything to do with these other companies. But it's bad for the hobby that people got burdened with this badly. So it might be credit on games. It might be some sort of arrangement on travel, he mentioned. It might not be to purchase a product at all. It's not going to be free games, though. But they want to try and do something.
    41:34
    So what did you think of that, Martin? because the I mean either about this information about what he indicated coming out of Pinball Brothers in Dutch when he spoke with them or about the relief itself Okay so there a couple of things here I think that obviously it good for him to do It's a bit of a token gesture, I think. But I'm probably moving it on to a different angle as well. But it comes back to their price point, where they're saying that they want to release machines for $3,500 US, I think it is, you know, obviously all the way up to $50,000. But for that price point, I think what he's really saying is that there's still some fat in these machines for them to be able to offer a release. And that's what I think it'll be. It'll just be you get a further discount if you buy a deep root machine, really. So it comes back to their price point and how cheaply he believes that they can manufacture these machines.
    42:31
    Yeah, I would guess that ultimately the nature of the relief would be something like that, like a coupon. lack of a better term, voucher of some sort. But, yeah, I'm not sure. I will go ahead and note the comments that he made in the interview about the indication on not to deliver on promises.
    42:52
    Yeah, that, I don't know. I think that's, again, it's another voice that's saying, don't trust these people. Right. And I had, I did not mention it on the show because it was told to me in an off-the-record format, and now that it's come out as a source on the interview, I will note, I was told about discussions with Pinball Brothers and what their intentions were, and this is in line with what I was informed. Yeah. This was a couple months ago. So given that, it's like, okay, well, it is what it is. But, yeah, I think it's a token gesture. I agree with you, Martin, but a good one from a community perspective. There's no downside to the community. No, it's solid PR. Yeah. It is solid PR. That's exactly what it is. for a company that's somewhat struggled with PR.
    43:38
    Yes. So thinking about the people that are at Deep Root, so they've now got really good designers. They've now got the rules. They've got manufacturing. Who does their art? Right. The things that I think are where we don't know about veterans is we don't have a veteran artist known and we don't have a veteran programmer known. and they've been pretty public about that they're using a different programming approach, a different group. So I don't expect some pinball programmer to be poached away. I think they feel any programmer, as long as the rules are being created by someone like Steve Bowden, can execute on the programming. And my knowledge of programmers would lead me to agree with that philosophy. But I have not heard a single thing about art, actually, and I haven't really thought much about it. Do you have any ideas, Martin? Well, I do know somebody that's possibly free at the moment. Really? Yeah, funny that. We did see, I think, Christopher Franchi announced on Facebook that his pinball career is over.
    44:40
    Over? Maybe. I don't know whether he's hung up his pinball pen for a while or whether, I don't know, whether he's left Kapow or whether he's left Stern or whether his contract is up. But there you go. Franchi, go to Deep Root. They need an artist. Wow. So do you think that surely this must relate to why he wasn't able to launch that podcast he was planning with all the interviews of the legends? I mean, that's my first thing I think of because I was hearing him promote that on a variety of podcasts, and then next thing I see, because I followed the page, was on permanent hiatus.
    45:16
    Yeah, I think, I don't know, I think he wanted to just do a different format. I think the live format was going to be probably a bit of a struggle to get people online, these interviews live and then archived as a podcast.
    45:31
    And then, so now he's come out and said that the, what is it, the super duper mega awesome Yeah, it's about eight words too long.
    45:41
    When he updates his rules for pinball podcasters, have him add one. Don't make your name too long. So I don't know. I think he just wanted a different format. And maybe he did want it to be probably more independent to Stern.
    45:59
    But, yeah, it'd be interesting to see whether we do all of a sudden, you know, this week in pinball, we look next week and new announcement, Christopher Frangie joins Deep Root. I would not be surprised if that happens. Well, that's interesting, yeah.
    46:12
    No background information to suggest that that's the case. I'm now pure speculating. Well, he'd be a great pick. I love his almost photorealistic style that he has. I'd probably name him as my favorite artist in pinball, with Jeremy Packer just behind him.
    46:30
    I would agree with you. I would agree with you because I think his art style, for me, is preferable because I think that even though I do love Zombie Yeti's art and I do Dirty Donnie, that sort of cartoony, very intricate line drawing art. It's a certain style, but I do prefer the flatness, but it's got more of a 3D depth behind it.
    47:00
    Yeah. Yeah, you articulated it a lot better than me. I'm somewhat clumsy with my art term. Franchi's style just visually appeals to me the most, at least for a symbol. Yeah, same. All right. See, Tony, do you agree? You should agree.
    47:17
    You don't. I can tell. I can see his face and it's... I just flip you back. Yes. I just the other way. Oh, you put Zombie Yeti. Not by a lot, just a little bit. But I really enjoy his art style. That's why. Sure. It's not like a major... I have a bear holder and all that. Yes. The summary is we are getting really good pinball art at the moment, except for Star Wars. but everything around it before and after, pinball art is really great at the moment. Yeah, I'd say it's the best it's ever been, actually. Just in terms of the skill level that the artists wield that they're bringing in at this point, I don't even think it's up for debate. No, I agree totally, wholeheartedly. Well, let's see if you agree with this, and that is some elements from the interview with Robert that This Week in Pinball did that we haven't touched on yet. We just have a few of them. beyond those above issues that we talked about. Here are a few other parts that I found interesting in the interview. And again, the interview is linked in the show notes, so if you want to learn all about it, go ahead and read about it. But Deep Root has been looking at four other games from other manufacturers and comparing what their standard is to that. Essentially, they picked games to, as Robert seemed to describe it, that they wanted to look at and say, don't do it like this. And the four games were Ghostbusters, which was what they looked at to understand what a modern Stern build is like. America's Most Haunted, to understand what a boutique build is like. No Good Gophers, for what a classic Bally Williams game is like. And The Hobbit, which was described as for an overkill game.
    49:03
    So, now, Martin, I know you used to own a Hobbit. I don't know if you've owned the others. I've not owned any of these.
    49:12
    I played them all. No, yeah, I played them all as well. Ghostbusters probably, outside of The Hobbit because I owned it, but Ghostbusters probably the most because there's the most of them out, particularly in tournaments, which is one of the most terrible games for a tournament because it's so unfair. But, you know, I kind of looked at that and I understood what he was trying to do. I think what he was saying, you know, really Ghostbusters, most of them really it's all about the build process. I don't think he was necessarily looking at them from a playfield design or art or layout. I think what he was saying is when you are wanting to have a bill of materials for a particular game, the level at which they should go, coming back to what we're saying for a $3,500 machine. and I think what he's referring to with the Hobbit for overkill is if you do lift up the playfield of a Hobbit and see what's underneath it is way too much for what you actually see on top of the machine there's way too much mechanics there and I think what he's saying is that kind of stuff is that overkill is for what's underneath the playfield what's on top doesn't really match all the effort that's gone to underneath.
    50:38
    Overengineered, essentially. Yeah, potentially. And also don't forget that the Hobbit did go through a major revision. It did have two target banks at first, so there was obviously two times that mech and everything to support it. They then had to cut that back and open it up and have a little pop bumper area. but yeah, for what it actually does yeah, I think that's what he's saying is overkill Ghostbusters is probably just from a very solid mid-range Ghostbusters you know, this is a certain machine this is how it's sort of built and the bill of materials it probably is right there as far as the mid-pack of Storm Machines yeah, I think you're right Martin And I think that's what they're really looking at. And with your explanation of what's underneath the Hobbit, because I've not looked underneath the Hobbit before, that would fit with that. Ghostbusters representing just sort of what the, at least at the time, what Stern build quality was much like. And, you know, there are a few things that one could target in on that about there's a lot of complaints. Some people feel Stern's dimple more than others. Ghostbusters, of course, have the whole. Slimermech. Yeah, the Slimermech issue was an interesting one. And a lot of people had to adjust that out of the box mechanically and put in washers and spacers. That was also where the quote-unquote ghost scene, I hate that expression because that's what LEDs do, but the clear coat separation issue was pretty rampant as well with Ghostbusters, more so than any other game, in fact. So there's that. America's Most Haunted, I've heard a lot of people say it's fun, but it's cheap. It feels cheap. It looks cheap. And they do. And we, I think, would acknowledge that they've always improved their build quality as they've gone along with game after game after game. So you'd expect that. So it's a good way to look at, okay, well, what's quality out from the most successful boutique manufacturer? What does that look like? And then no good gophers because it's crap.
    52:38
    What a terrible game. I really dislike it. Well, because it's objectively awful. I mean I would be But from a mechanics perspective That whole upper drop Playfield thing had to be a nightmare For the hole in one and all that So Just trying to do something Visually fancy and what all had to go into it That Dolly Williams was often a fan of Once the mid 90's Arrived and pinball was trying to decline Again would be my guess Yeah but and I also think that It's another example regardless I mean, we really dislike that game, and I'm not a big fan of Pat Lawler's games, which has been well-mentioned. But I think as far as that game goes, it is fairly complex. So if you really wanted to know what an ambitious Bally Williams was, that's a good machine to study.
    53:34
    I agree. Just don't let any of their developers look at it for inspiration on the layout. Yeah, for sure. And I would agree with you, Martin. I wouldn't actually look at any Pat Lawler games. Other than maybe dialed in, I wouldn't look at Pat Lawler games for layout ideas.
    53:51
    Okay, another piece from the interview. A Utah creative studio has been created to focus on programming for the screen. So both the visual effects of what will be displayed on the LCD screens and gaming aspects. So video modes.
    54:09
    I just think it's weird when they just bought a building and they did all this stuff so they could consolidate all their locations into one place, and there's suddenly a place in Utah.
    54:19
    Yeah, Utah, it's not close. So that was, I found, it was weird. I could see them maybe, I could see having the art production, not art, but the visuals, the programming for that. I could see it not needing to be with everything else. I don't know why Utah was chosen. I guess for a collaboration with another entity. That would be my guess. Interesting. I just, I don't know. I don't know anything out there. Deep Root having other companies, they probably do have another, and maybe he actually does own a larger design studio company and this team can fit within them and as you say, they can collaborate with other artists. Yeah, that makes sense. And that would also make sense, they said the studio will soon house tens of artists. Now if you've got, let's say you have got ten artists there and you're doing three machines a year, well that's probably a bit of overkill as well. So maybe when production goes down in between, they can actually work on other companies within that group to work as well. That makes sense. I have worked for an organisation. I was one of six companies that had the one common owner and they had that sort of centralised shared services, which was studio, finance, recruitment, all managed all those different companies. So that makes sense. So you get efficiency that way. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, let's move out of pinball news and let's get into some more discussion-oriented topics. And, Martin, we mentioned in the intro, and you elaborated a bit regarding your streaming of pinball online. Sure. You do regularly stream. Could you talk a little bit about the sort of like what setup you went with and the schedule you sort of try and follow and what your – I mean, you touched on it in the intro, but sort of what the goal is, what you're trying to accomplish when you stream.
    56:16
    Okay, so what I'm trying to accomplish when I stream now is very simple. I have a maximum of four machines in my house, and I do work relatively long hours, and I'm in a location where noise can sometimes be a problem. And so as a result, I just wasn't playing my machines. And sometimes I'd walk past them, and I'd actually see a film of Dusk over the top. And I realised that was a bit of a problem. So I had been, you know, streaming probably once a month for the Melbourne Silver Ball League competitions. So when that finished, I thought, two things, I'll start the podcast and I'll also start regular streaming. So in Australia, that's Wednesday nights and Sunday nights. And it's usually a single machine.
    57:03
    And my setup is pretty basic and it's got all the common elements that people have in that. I've got a camcorder for my playfield, mainly because the camcorders are very good at handling sudden bright lights and also manages low light volumes as well. So you don't get sudden glare that happens when flashes go off, particularly in some stern machines.
    57:33
    That feeds into a capture card. I use an Energeny capture card, which is very good quality. Two webcams, sometimes three webcams. They're usually just Logitech's 920s or 922s, all going into a laptop. So I want to be able to have it portable. So I do have, there's a network of people that I know that have got machines, so I can go to other locations. and during the week we actually did stream one of our monthly tournaments and it was the second time that we had streamed this particular tournament and it was done a lot better than the first time and that's what I like to do is learn. And the good thing about streaming this particular one from the beginning to the end, I actually won this tournament, which was good. I had a bit of a dry spell, so I was glad that that happened. And it went so late that it was then morning in the US. So, you know, it was quite unnerving having someone like Colin McAlpine watching me play.
    58:34
    So the streaming really is for me to now play my machines at home. And as has been mentioned before subtly, I do like to have a bit of a drink as I'm playing. And sometimes that does go a little bit overboard, not too often. I thought that was a rule for streaming. no you're watching jack danger is why you think that yeah yeah yeah so look i i've often said that i'm a big fan of gin i i didn't drink my entire life i i only started drinking about three years ago and i'm of a certain vintage um and so sometimes it can go down really really well and before i know it i've had too much and that's what happens but um the aim for the stream really is for me to play my machines, interact with people. If I get people watching, that's great. If I get people subscribing, that's great. It really is just for me to enjoy the hobby in a non-competitive aspect because, you know, we mentioned before that I do play tournaments and I've played a lot of tournaments. I don't necessarily love playing tournaments all the time.
    59:54
    That makes sense. Yep. Even when I, I mean, back in May, I think we had an event every weekend, and by the end of it, I was like, I'm not going to the next non-regular monthly, because it was just, I was tired of it, tired of driving. Yeah, I wasn't even doing bad, but it was just like, it was just a little too much in that environment for that sort of thing. So let's say that there's someone, we'll use someone like, we'll use they need. And I'm like, okay, you've convinced me, Martin, I need to play my machines more. Streaming would help me. How easy is it for someone to start streaming pinball in what I'll call a casual rig sort of setup? Well, first you need to find a good bar. Yeah. Or a good liquor store. Okay. Well, we're surrounded by those. So that's not a problem. I got the gin. I got, I mean, like laptop power. Whenever I've tried to stream anything, it seems like the number of cores or threads or something is critical to that. So is that the bottleneck? Is the power of the computer? Yeah, it really is. And it really depends on whether you're going to go full webcams. So you would have three webcams, one for the play field, one for the score, one for you as the player. And then that really then comes down to USB, like your bus speed as well. Sometimes you can get bottlenecks there. So you want either a tower or a portable laptop that's got a lot of USB ports and obviously USB 3, which is pretty standard these days, and powered if you're going to have a hub. It's probably better to have a powered one if you can. But really easy. It's actually really easy to set up a streaming rig these days. And, you know, you then got to use, there's two main software programs that people use. One's called XSplit and the other one is called OBS.
    61:54
    I think OBS, Open Broadcast Software, I think it is. And I've used XSplit for the last two years and mainly because the interface is really user friendly. You click, you drag, you add, and it's all done.
    62:12
    But recently, it started crashing on me, and I was streaming Batman 66 at a friend's place. I got there early, and for some reason, it just kept crashing, and I tried all these different things. I was half an hour late. I was into the stream, and I went, you know what? I've got to try something different. drastically, I downloaded and installed OBS, and OBS has a very different interface. It's probably a lot harder to get into. There's probably a steeper learning curve, but once I got it done, I actually found a much better software to use now, so I'm now on OBS. If you know how to use, let's say, a Microsoft PowerPoint, you'll know how to use one of these programs.
    63:02
    I've played around with OBS. I have as well, actually. I've never streamed on Twitch or anything live using it. I actually have the equipment to do streaming, I just don't.
    63:15
    I've used it to do recordings of games. If I'm working on a game for someone like my brother-in-law, I think before I gave him the laser where my dad got him for his birthday, once it was all put together and working, I used that to record and that way I could have the scores on one screen in the play field and basically throw together gameplay video was the idea.
    63:37
    OBS is a little... It's not bad. It's a little intimidating because it doesn't hold your hand very well. But there are a lot of guides online which is nice.
    63:50
    OBS is when I was trying to put together some video streaming and the problem with my bottleneck is the computer. The processor. I don't have the processor for it. Yeah. Not to play a game and stream on the same machine. I can do one or the other. I've proven that. I just need another machine. Right. And this laptop I'm recording the podcast with, I got, and I tried to look at things that were, it's probably, it's still, it probably should be higher end to actually do the video streaming. But the issue was the last one was struggling even with integrating multiple USB mics. Right. which is normally you don't have to do that, but we're doing it. So I got a new system so that it would handle that better, and it did handle the streaming a lot better, but I really had to pay attention to those threads on that processor and make sure I had enough RAM and all. Oh, gosh. Yeah, it's like that. Because really with Big Pinball, for me,
    64:44
    having it locked in at 60 frames per second is a much better experience for the viewer, just particularly with the ball sometimes going so fast. you want to see where it is quite smoothly. And it's recommended that, you know, you don't stream anything higher than 720p. Anything more than that's probably a bit of overkill for what people need to see. And that's usually good for most cameras. And particularly the, you know, if you wanted to just get a Logitech, what is it, the C922, that does 60 frames now, but only when you've got a maximum of 720p. So that works out well there. But that night that I used OBS, you know, I think 15, 20 minutes later from downloading it for the first time and getting a fairly rudimentary multi-camera stream up and running, that was about 15, 20 minutes. That's very fast. Yeah. A lot of trial and error. And, you know, I was actually adding screens and resizing things live on the stream because it just... And having to change audio sources because I just didn't know what I was doing. But by the time the stream was done, it looked good. And OBS uses a lot less resources on your machine as well. Nice.
    65:56
    Okay, well, let's go ahead and pivot to another pinball discussion topic. As you noted, actually, during that streaming segment, that you're really known for your involvement in the competitive pinball scene. I would say that you're who I would describe as deeply involved. You're a high-level player. Given all these different comps, as you often call them, that you've been to, What formats do you think people find the most enjoyable overall?
    66:25
    That's interesting. It's a balance between how much and how often you're playing a machine on a night. So the original format that we used to have was best game on two machines with then finals. and so if you had 40 people turn up and there were only two machines playing and it was best game, you'd play one game on each of those machines and the top eight would then go into 30 finals and then finals you could be there for three hours and play two games and that's not fun but it's not fun if you're there to play pinball and you're serious about pinball but if you're there to meet pinball people have, and these are at pubs, so if you're there to meet pinball people, have a bit of a chat, have a drink, have something to eat, that's fine. Those three hours can go very quickly. But it also can turn a lot of people off that are going for the first time who are standing around that don't know anybody, and they play their game, play the second game, come last, and never come back.
    67:37
    The complete opposite to that, and it's a format that we've spoken about, and a lot of people have reached out to us to get more details about it. And this is the Flip Frenzy format, which originally came out of Japan, I believe. So one of our country directors, Luke Marburg,
    67:56
    introduced that format to the Australian community. And it's the most fun you can have playing pinball. Are you aware of the Flip Frenzy format? I played one last year, October. Yeah, I did not. We were at a private party, and around here they tend to call it pinball, pinball, pinball, but it's that format.
    68:20
    And Tony said afterwards, I was just like, I wanted to go around and just play games for once and not enter the tournament, and then apparently I missed the best format they ever did. It worked really well. There was a little tiny bit of confusion at the very beginning, but once the confusion got figured out and once everybody knew exactly what was going on, it was fast, it was fun, quite enjoyable. Yeah, and so for those people that don't know, it effectively is a certain period of time, and you play head-to-head as much pinball as you can over a certain period of time, and whoever has the highest win-loss, not necessarily ratio, but the most amount of wins, is the winner. And it becomes really quite strategic because you're trying to get through each game as quick as you can whilst winning. So you might be the first player on ball three and you're absolutely smashing the machine. And you've got to think to yourself, well, how far in front of this person do I need to be so they don't catch up? But I don't play this game for an hour because that could be three other games that I could win in that time.
    69:27
    Yeah. So it's got a nice strategic element to it, but keeps you playing, which even the lowest skilled player will enjoy because they'll actually be busy doing something. Well, absolutely. And it's usually good value for money. You know, you pay your $10 or your $5 and you'll play 14 to 15 games over that period of time. And it's quite frenetic. You don't know who you're going to be paired up with. It's a bit like speed dating.
    69:54
    But it's just really fun. but the format does require a lot of management. You need specific software to be able to manage it and usually you need two people to run it, one to manage the scores and where people are going and then there's one person that manages the queue and also directs people to which machines they're going to. Right, and that was where we had our stumbling block because we didn't have a specific director set up at first.
    70:23
    But as I said, it was a lot of fun and when you were talking about the strategic point, I know at least once I played a match where my opponent on ball one scored more points than my highest total ever on the machine, and I just drained. I just drained everything because I wanted off the machine as fast as possible. That's right. I didn't want him to play out for the next 20 minutes blowing huge scores up. I just drained. I know I can't catch up on that realistically unless I have the most amazing game of my career, and it's not worth my time. So I just drained out on one of those just in life. But, I mean, I beat players in that just from the way everybody was moving this and that. I had wins against people I've never beaten before.
    71:06
    And it worked out. It worked out. Once the flow got going, I enjoyed it a lot. It is one of my favorite competition types. Yeah. And so my now favorite competition format is the heads-up format where you've got two machines that are the same machines, obviously not identical because they play differently, and you set an objective, and it's the first person to get to that objective. So it's like pin golf on steroids. So do you all have locations that are able... I mean, I don't have any place around here where anyone has two of the same games. Yeah. That would be our big struggle is finding that, because it sounds like I love that idea. I love the idea, not just because I think it sounds like it's fun to play, but it's one of the few formats of pinball that I think a layperson could watch and understand. Yes, absolutely. So, you know, eSport it. Yeah, you really could, because it is a race to the clock, and it's a simple objective, and everybody that's watched it has probably found it the most enjoyable to watch. we're lucky I guess, lucky and unlucky in some ways in that at a time Ryan and I well Ryan's got about 15, 16 machines and I've only ever had a maximum of 4 machines and I think 3 of the 4 machines were the machines that he had so I took my Star Trek Limited Edition and my Wizard of Oz Emerald City Edition over to his place and we had heads up there on those 2 machines and it was the first time I'd played it. And what's really interesting about that format is that you are playing your machine, watching your game, but at the same time you're looking over at your opponent to see where they are. Because you can't take your time. You have got to do it as quick as you can, but the person next to you dictates the pace at which you're going as well. So it really is like a car race, where you are just looking at your opponent and you're pacing yourself depending on what they're doing.
    73:11
    It's intense, It's fun. We had probably the biggest moment that we had was one of the objectives was to start Rescue Multiball in Wizard of Oz, and it happened almost split second. It would have been either a second difference or less than a second difference between these two opponents getting Rescue starting, and it just had massive cheers. Everybody was on the edge of their seat. It was just a fantastic moment, and that's what this format does. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I really want to try it. I've been hearing only good things.
    73:48
    But no one wants to bring a game over that I already have. Maybe you should make yours to them. No, come on, please. We've got to have some. I'm the one with the big microphone. They can come here.
    74:02
    What is it you're going to show? I've heard it's not really the size of the microphone. Hey. Oh, my. so what I know, so Tony you don't have machines that's right I still don't have any machines as of yet one of these days what would change that is there a particular machine that you would think I would have to have that in my collection if I could when my debt was paid off yep, yep, yep, that game that is literally the only thing that has held me back from a machine at this point is every time I build up money it's always like ah, there's this. I specifically saved money up when we went to Texas last time, and I took a good chunk of money. And there were several machines that were in my price point that I had some interest in, but every time I looked at it, it was like, I've got enough money to finally pay off that hospital bill. And that's what I ended up doing, is I ended up taking all that money back home and paying off the hospital bill with it instead of paying it over time. That's the only thing that's held me back from machines. It's I always have something that makes more financial sense to take care of. Sure. Otherwise, I have plenty of machines that at times it's like, I would have that in my house right now. And that's one of the, well, I would love for Tony to get machines. I also love that this also, this is a perspective, this is a situation that a lot of people who like pinball are in. And I think people lose sight of that, especially on a place like Pennside, which is very collector-oriented. That is a very sizable segment of this hobby that is not out there buying new in-box machines all the time. And they want to play, too.
    75:49
    But I do want to get a machine. I want to get a machine. And I still, I bought a new car. And when I drove home from picking up my new car, I came home, parked in the driveway, all happy with my new car. And I walked inside and I sat down and I fired up Facebook to post the thing about my new car. And there was literally a beautiful meteor for sale that had been on sale for five minutes. And it wasn't more than 15 miles from the house.
    76:23
    And I could have easily paid for it if I hadn't just paid for a car. And I was just like, if I hadn't bought this car, I would have bought this Meteor. It was just the situation. It's just everything worked out just right, wrong, either way, really. It was just how the cushion crumbled. All a matter of perspective. Yeah. Good game, though. Yeah. No, I really wanted it. I was like, oh, no. It was a good spin again. Oh, yeah. Oh, those classic Stearns. They sure love their spinners. They really do. so one other piece on the competitive side I wanted to get at was Martin what your thoughts might be on the what do you think are the best ways to recruit new people into the competitive scene so either people who have no background in pinball whatsoever or maybe they are collectors or casual players and just trying to I don't know if you've worked at that we have these discussions with some of the regular tournament people here in the Kansas City area and that's always been the sort of struggle as we go and we'll go to a competition and our comps, they usually have somewhere on the order of 20 to 30 people at the regular monthlies, but you know, 95% of the faces are the same. Right.
    77:37
    So we want to grow. But we still love you guys. All two of them that listen, yeah. Okay, so there's two things to think about here. There's the before and then there's the after. Before meaning how do you get people to come and the after is how do you get people to enjoy.
    77:56
    And look, I think we found, and really only recently as well, social media plays a massive part in promoting.
    78:07
    And the after is obviously word of mouth brings more people in. But to get people in first, we actually just started up a new Facebook group called, I think it's Melbourne Competitions or Melbourne Tournament Group or something like that. And ever since that's been added, we've seen new people start.
    78:25
    I, particularly with Melbourne Silver Bowl League, you know, towards the end, 50% of people each night were new. Wow. And that was because I was actually doing paid Facebook advertising.
    78:41
    Oh, wow. To my Facebook page. And I would do a lot of promotion of it. I would do, you know, I created a brand for Melbourne Silver Ball. I then, you know, did advertising. Also, the venue as well. They started advertising the tournaments as well. So that's really important if you've got a well-known venue. And the one in Melbourne is called Pinball Paradise. And so on their Facebook page, they were advertising the tournaments that I was doing.
    79:12
    And so, you know, it got a lot of reach. and a lot of people turned up. So the most important thing is the after, which is have a format that's fun. So we had a three-strike knockout format, which was great because everybody gets to play at least a minimum of three games and they're pretty much back-to-back. But I also made sure that I had, as part of the Melbourne Silver Bowl League, and the league really was a group of people, it wasn't just me, I formed it, but I had about three or four originally people that were part of Melbourne Silver Bowl League, and that sort of branched out to about seven or eight people. So it meant that as soon as somebody walked in the door, there was somebody that would greet that person and introduce them to everybody, talk to them about the format, tell them about how much fun they're going to have, manage their expectations, so they didn't feel that they were walking into this really weird, exclusive group that everybody knew each other. You know, when you turn up to an AA meeting. Not that I have yet.
    80:25
    But you know what I mean? Waiting until the stack of gin bottles hit the ceiling. But that kind of... I remember the first tournament that I ever went to and a friend of mine said, well, you're into pinball, I'm into pinball, did you know that there's these pinball tournaments happening? you should go along and I was kind of I was really scared I was like I don't know whether I can I don't know these people and what are pinball people like I don't know what they're like and so you know when I walked in and the tournament director at the time and this is a guy called Jimmy who now runs one of the most successful pinball locations in Australia up in Brisbane just all I remember was this smile This person that smiled, greeted me, and was as excited from me being there as I was being there. And that was it. And as soon as that happened, I felt comfortable and I met a lot of other people. So I wanted to emulate that same experience that when people walk in the door,
    81:28
    they don't feel any intimidation within 10 to 15 seconds. I think that's the key. and then throughout the night have a format where you are playing a bit of pinball, but also the group itself is interacting together. And as a result, we've grown pinball certainly in Melbourne that way. No, it makes a lot of sense. Most of our, in our case, the regular stuff is all, I guess, regular two-person match play. I mean, it's a two-strike elimination sort of. Best of three. Yeah, best of three. Yeah, best of three format and a double elimination. That's the term, double elimination format. My first tournament, and I was terrified to go to my first tournament because I read about it in the newspaper, actually, from an article a few years before, and then I saw, oh, it's still going. And I thought, oh, I'll go ahead and try it. And I remember the reason I did it, I went in February because in January I saw there were only six people who had played in it, And I thought, I can handle a group that size. When I went, it was 20-some. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no. This is a terrible mess. My hands were shaking because I don't do good in those situations. But the tournament director was very nice. And after I went to and out quite rapidly, thank you, Iron Man.
    82:52
    Afterwards, he talked to me and sort of other people, but just sort of like, oh, well, what do you like about pinball? Do you have any games? What games are you familiar with? Are you new to competitive? And then it was like, okay. And so a couple months later, I went back, and then I started to get more regular in it. Later, I went to the other area tournament, which is at the, I guess, what you might consider the more hardcore location for the top competitive players in our area. And I think it was really good I started at the other place because while I know everyone there now I always feel when I go in if I didn that it would be colder Yeah it very Sharks Den type of Yeah and it more loose in the sense that the tournament director might not yet be there The director doesn't own the games. It's all... it's just a different format. And I know others in our area who have told me that they are more, I guess, intimidated to go to that one versus to the more, what I guess you might think of as more casual, though they're worth about the same amount of points no matter what.
    83:58
    That's sort of the reps. But they all run the game approach the same, and that's often been my big concern, or just in terms of my time, is I'm waiting around an awful lot. I hate waiting. But it got better when I started to know people because then we would talk. But before then, it was just like, okay, well, if you're losing really quick, it's great. But if it's in between, it's like three hours to play three games is a long time. Yeah. We had Bo and Keren's on our show. And one of the questions that I asked him was, you know, what makes or what advice would you give to somebody starting or what makes a successful tournament? And he said something that I absolutely subscribe to. And that is it should be as fun and enjoyable as somebody that's playing for the first time as to somebody that's the top player that always wins.
    84:48
    Yeah. I remember we had a talk with him about setting up a league because I think they finally started up another league here in Kansas City, but we normally, we often don't have leagues, often just have tournaments. And so we had a discussion with Bowen about leagues and how the New England Pinball League worked. And that, yeah, that was a big core part is he said, someone like me is always going to have fun. I'm a top-level player. I'm going to have fun no matter what. I love pinball. I do pinball all the time. You have to make it fun for the worst players. Yeah. And then everyone else should follow because the good players are going to get to go on. They're the ones that win more often than they lose. So as long as you can make it fun for the people that aren't going to win all the time. And I think that's where Pinbird comes in, where it's like up until the finals, it's just more and more and more pinball. pinball, so it doesn't matter if you're terrible and you end up in E division or I guess D now, it doesn't matter so but we've had difficulty actually implementing that in our area ultimately what you're really wanting is not just for people to come back but you're wanting people to understand that they will get better by coming back my entrance into competitive pinball was Dennis goes, hey, I'll pay for your ticket in and I'll buy you food. And as a fat guy, I'm like, sure, why not? And I spent a lot of time not getting better, and eventually I started getting better, and I stopped going because, hey, Dennis is buying me dinner, and it's the time to hang out with my buddies that I don't get nearly as much time to hang out with anymore. And it became a thing where it's like, well, I'm going because I actually want to play pinball, and hang out with a whole bunch of people that I see a couple times a month. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. But I ran out of friends to bring. I don't have any friends.
    86:53
    So, all right, well, that's all I want to talk about on pinball. So let's go ahead and transition over to video games. Sure. And VR, or virtual reality. Let's go ahead and start with that. Let's talk a little bit about VR.
    87:05
    Martin, you mentioned this as a topic idea. I have a lot of ignorance on VR. So I guess let's just get the ball rolling here on the tech. What do you think of it in terms of the current state of VR tech? Because I have some familiarity with the Oculus. There's the Vive. The Vive and the PlayStation VR. The PlayStation VR setup, yeah, which I probably know the most about. But, Martin, I guess what's your initial take on the technology as it stands at this point? Okay. So I'll give a bit of background and then sort of talk about that now. So as a young, very young child back in the early 80s, I was obsessed with 3D movies. Absolutely loved them. And I didn't care where it was a good or a bad movie. If it was in 3D, I was there and I would watch them repeatedly. I would go to the cinema. So I loved 3D. Then cutting to the first experience I had with VR It was sort of an arcade machine But it was more so in sort of family venues I think the game was called Pterodactyl Nightmare I think it was Which was the first sort of you stand You walk into this circular area And this helmet gets placed on top of your head And it's 3D Very early 3D I actually think I played something like that Yeah. They had a lot of fun. And I had a lot of fun because for me, again, it was 3D, but now I could look around and it was 3D. And it was fairly rudimentary.
    88:42
    And really all I remember at the time, because it was years later, obviously now we're looking at the next generation of VR, that really the head tracking was the problem. The quicker it was, the more realistic. There was always a lag back then. So I think what they've done now, they've got the technology really up to a place where head tracking is really quite quick now, so you're actually getting that really good sense of movement. When it comes to the resolution of the games and the detail,
    89:15
    I think, obviously, user experience may vary. And most of the gaming that I do is on my PSVR, mainly because my actual computer, my rig here, hasn't been updated for a few years. and that's part of this conversation as well, right? So I'm kind of curious to know what would I do next. But I think the technology right now,
    89:40
    there's two things that are holding it back. Probably the main one is that it's still a corded environment rather than it's not wireless and you've got free roaming. You've always, from my experience, got something that's anchoring you back to your seat or where you're standing, and you are conscious of the fact that you've got this physical thing around you that takes you out of the moment.
    90:07
    We agree, actually. Yeah. I think on our E3. Yeah. I think it was just on the last episode. We did touch on a couple of VR games, and I remember, for me, yeah, I think that's the big obstacle on the tech right now. It's just that it needs to get to the wireless place for a lot of people is my sense. I know it's probably the barrier at this point for me. I do have a PC that would be, it's Oculus ready, but, you know, it's in my bedroom. I'm thinking, I don't want to put all this stuff. I mean, I already got the microphone and the headset and the game pad all on my desk in there, piled up, wires tangled, and it's just like, I don't think so. But visually, I think it's at a point where people are willing to embrace it as something fairly immersive. What do you think? Do you think the price is a big barrier still? It doesn't matter about price if the experience is worthy of the price. And I think probably the biggest problem that I've got at the moment is I don't think it's got a killer app just yet. I don't think there's anything right now that has really, really understood the VR experience from a gamer's perspective.
    91:26
    Yeah, and I know that there's... I was actually talking to somebody that develops in VR recently, and it's a real challenge between providing a gaming experience where you can control either your avatar, if it's first person, you know, who you are, whilst not having too much motion sickness is one of them, but also being able to then have as much processing required to have everything so detailed that your brain forgets that it's in a VR environment completely. Right. Yeah, I was, in terms of the killer app thing, yeah, that's a, and it's hard. I think it's challenging when you have a new medium like that developing in the sense of going in and saying, I will make the killer app and it will come true sort of scenario. I was listening to Game Informer's podcast, which Don had mentioned on the E3 episode, so I subscribed to it. It's a good podcast, by the way, for those wanting more video game content. And they mentioned that based off of the Steam Spy, the concurrent play on the VR information that was being able to be gathered, Beat Saber is the most popular game. Well, yeah, for obvious reasons. Fruit Ninja for VR. Yep. Here's the thing. I think VR is, I would consider it beta, mid-beta, maybe even high beta, where it's at. Because, like you said, you're still courted. That's an issue. The other thing is, with the current setup and the current limitations due to movement and everything, The games most likely to Work really well And to be a successful A very successful Breakout type Game for VR are Cockpit type simulations And they're not a popular game format anymore They're not like they were In the early 90's when that's what Everybody wanted And we're not there anymore Until they can form Until they are both A, good, and B, affordable, some sort of movement rig, I don't think it's going to take off nearly as much. Be it an omnidirectional treadmill thing, I've seen several of them, a couple of which looked like they worked okay, or something that somebody hasn't even come up with. I think that's going to be one of the big, important things for it, because the immersion factor and the sheer amount of space taken up unless you've got an enormous room is problematic. But then that comes down to, you know, accessibility via price point because, you know, like not everyone's going to be able to afford, you know, the Oculus plus an omnidirectional, what is it? What do you call it? Treadmill. Omnidirectional treadmill. Yeah. That then means there's really only a handful of people that can really then. And so what it comes back to for me is, so, okay, I'll tell you for me that the game that absolutely screamed for a VR mode and it finally got one is Wipeout. So Wipeout, you know, you'll hear the theme. There's a constant theme about space racing games. I love them. And Wipeout is just a phenomenal game. And for ages I was wanting them to have VR enabled, and it came a couple of months ago. And I've got to tell you, it didn't disappoint. It did not disappoint. It is phenomenal to play Wipeout in VR. But it's got to be more of an incentive for me to play that in VR rather than sit on the couch, watch it on my screen, and be satisfied that that's still a great experience. Another one is Drive Club, which is a solid driving game. And in VR, it is phenomenal. But I would still probably play it more so just on my screen than in VR, just for the convenience. Well, here's a thought. And it's something that would make me go kind of crazy to get something in VR. I can guarantee you if it came to like a PlayStation or if it came to PlayStation 4, I would be getting a PlayStation 4 and PSVR. But what if they had like a solid licensed version of, say, a modern version of one of the old Star Wars X-Wing games? Something like that. Oh, for sure. something that had a broader appeal but was still worked within the system, so it was still a cockpit style game. Something like that, I would go nuts trying to get into something like that. Everything I've heard about the VR availability of the Star Wars thing they had on PSVR was that it was amazing. It was a tech demo, I guess. everybody I talked to who actually played it thought it was amazing but it had limitations as everything is going to but I mean that's I just think until they get the right thing to make people spend the money on it or they bring the price point down and the movement thinks always going to be a problem and that's where my and sort of this where we are all basically talking now about this going mainstream or not and that sit-on-the-couch syndrome sort of thing, any time I've seen things try and buck that trend, they lose. Right. Last gen, and at the start of this gen, in fact, that PF move and the Kinect, that's what those were. They weren't VR, but they were the idea of using body motion to play games. But it was very difficult, and eventually games came out, at least on the Kinect, and I know, well, on the Move as well, I played some of that. where you could do it from a seated position, but most of the games weren't like that. It's like, here, you're going to do mountain climbs. You're going to simulate that you're climbing a mountain, but you know what? After 30 minutes, my arms are tired. I'm out of shape. I just want to sit down and be a quote-unquote real gamer with a controller and pop some headshots. Not stand here and waddle around in front of the camera.
    98:03
    Tell me the other thing about VR as well. So this comes back to this discussion that I had with someone that develops in VR. And I asked him this question. I said, why is it that I can play VR for 15 to 20 minutes, and once done, I take the headset off, and I am literally drenched in sweat, and I am physically exhausted from VR? And his explanation was this. and I'll try and see if I can explain this well enough. So effectively, your brain in VR, you've got this world. You sort of lose your boundaries. I may be in my study that I'm in right now, but as soon as I put the VR helmet on, those dimensions are gone and you are having movement, but your body is stationary. So what's actually happening is every microsecond, Your brain is having to compensate for the fact that your body isn't moving, but your brain thinks it is moving. So every muscle in your body is having these micro-corrections to try and stabilize itself. And as a result, you are just having a workout even though you don't know you're having a workout. So again, when I'm sitting here or I'm coming up to my room and I think I'm going to play a game, it's like, do I want to sit on the couch and play for an hour to two hours? Or do I want to put the helmet on and 15, 20 minutes unspent?
    99:35
    Wow. I'd never thought about that. That's interesting, though. Yeah. The brain science of it. Yeah. Let's go ahead and transition to something. We'll look back now. We've been looking at the future. But now we must turn to the past. Because that's the only way to truly understand the future. Sure. So, Martin, you mentioned that you are, we're a big console gamer. So let's start talking about best games from the various consoles. And as I thought about this, I decided that the best way to go about this would just be to go through the eight generations. Don't worry, you don't have to know them all by heart. I've got cliff notes here. So I'll say what the generations were. We'll do that. I'll say some of the big systems that were in that generation. And then if you have a favorite game from any of those particular consoles, let's just throw it out there and get the logic behind it. And Tony, I know, especially as we get to some of the later generations You're more of a PC gamer But a lot of the games were cross-platform So I think you'll be able to And I always say that, but when I actually was going through the list And looking at it At this point, thanks to your modification Of the Generation 8 I've actually owned a machine from every generation Except the first So let's start with the first Because actually, yeah, I don't I have no meaningful time on any of the first But maybe Martin does The first generation was the generation that started in 1972. These are sort of the pre-cartridge systems, so it's things like the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari's Pong system, and the Coloco Telstar. Did you play any of those, Martin? Look, I did play the Coloco Telstar. I didn't own it. It was my neighbor growing up had it, but I may have played it once, possibly twice. So no strong feelings on it? No feelings either way. Okay. All right. So we'll move right into the second generation. I think that's where we're going to start having some content. Yeah. So that began in 1976. I'm not putting in dates because it was – Oh, yeah. Oh, it was – well, here's the problem. It's a big crossover, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was the crossover, and then you'd see, like, second generation, 1976 to 1990. I thought someone had gone in and edited Wikipedia and put in wrong information because I've seen that before. But it was because, for example, the Atari 2600 was made and sold until 1990 because it was that popular. And so they did it until they weren't being sold anymore. And I saw all the generations were corrupted that way. So I was like, this is worthless. Our listeners will hate this. It'll sound like a bunch of crap. So I threw it out. So 1976 was the start of the second gen. So that's going to be things like the Atari 2600 and 5200. The Magnavox Odyssey, again, shows up here. Intellivision and Colloquial Vision.
    102:19
    Martin, any of these that you had? One thing I just wanted to point out here, I find this funny because for me, this was first generation console wars. In Australia, it was Atari versus Intellivision. You were either Atari or you were Intellivision and you would argue till you were blue in the face that your console was better than the other. The television was better. Period.
    102:49
    Wow. Shots fired. I don't think Tom's going to agree with you. I think he's going to agree with me. I didn't own the television. Of this generation, I owned the Atari 2600, or the VCS, we called it. Right. And I owned a Vectrex. Oh.
    103:08
    Okay. So, best game in your view on either of them, I guess? Well, I actually do. I did a lot of research for this chat today, so I've actually got a lot of... I do. My favourite game on the Atari 2600, and I'll probably go back to the one that I played the most, and there was really two. Missile Command was my favourite game. Okay. Absolutely. I loved it in the arcade. Yeah, I loved it in the arcade. I played so much of that in the arcade. Yep. But the other one, which was probably a lesser-known one, but I played it to death, and particularly because it was multiplayer, four-player, and it was called Maze Craze. And it was just this very basic... It was almost like a maze that you would find in a newspaper, you know, where you've got to get your pen. And you would have a little block that you were, and you would all just race around trying to get to the exit. It was fun. Four-player at that generation is kind of an impressive little thing. Yeah, for sure.
    104:08
    But again, one thing I think that that particular console is really known, for, besides obviously ET, is just some of the worst ports, like Asteroids and Pac-Man and Space and Space. They're really bad, but you could play them at home. Right. Which is so much cheaper. Or in theory.
    104:29
    They won't last long at Asteroids and the Arcade. No. And then obviously, with the Vectrex, there was only really one game that was decent, and that was Mindstorm, which was an Asteroids clone itself. And Scramble was pretty good as well, but I'd rather play that in the archive. Tony, you mentioned a television. It was the right answer. Yeah. I had an Intellivision. Okay. There were a bunch of games that I played on it that were fun, and most of them were pretty much the exact same games on 2600 with different names. Okay. There was a tank game that was called Tanks, as I recall. You're probably right. And it was basically combat. All right. Not my favorite game. Really good game, though. Now, one of the things that Intellivision had that always kind of weirded me out is the controllers. The way the controller was is it had a big flat disc that you put your thumb on and move the disc. And then on the face of the controller, there were side buttons, but then there were like six or nine buttons across the front, and every single game came with a little plastic card that you would slide on top of those buttons. Yeah, it had an overlay, and it would tell you what the buttons did. So you sit there with your thumb with one finger and your other hand hitting the buttons.
    105:47
    Great controller. I mean, nowadays it would be terrible nowadays. But I liked it, and I had problems when I played Friends' Ataris because I was so used to that.
    105:58
    But the best game on Intellivision is a game that I've played again recently, and even on modern systems. And I played it in the arcade when we were in Texas two years ago. And it's still a ton of fun. Burger Time. The music to Burger Time is still, as soon as the music started, I was just, it was like I was a kid again. I smiled. I was so happy. And I played. And that game is bloody hard. But I enjoyed it so much. And playing it again recently, I still enjoy that game. And that is the game that I love more than anything on Intellivision. Wow. My sister had a Burger Time. One of those little portable ones where it's just black and they have those little LCD games. She had that for her time because I play it more than she did.
    106:46
    All right. Well, for me, I only own the 2600. It's the only one I really had any time on. I did not own my favorite game, but Pitfall.
    106:57
    Yeah. I don't know why I didn't own Pitfall, but I just like the idea of it. I liked how it looked for that generation. I thought it was challenging but still approachable. Of the games I owned The one I probably played the most was Combat For the two player tank battles And that's almost exclusively The only mode in it I played That's the only mode we played on the tank one we had Which like I said was basically Combat Club But yeah Combat was a real great 2600's controller was terrible That joystick was terrible It's interesting to do, I think it's even discussed in that Book The Art of Atari Which I have a copy of It's great if you ever want to look at all the painted artwork that they did for the cartridges and the pinballs in the arcade games. But that, just as an aside, that controller design was originally for what was going to be basically a Gen 1, Generation 1 style game where it was a tank, well, it's like combat, and you just plug in that whole console, and that was to look like a little command thing, and the controllers sat in it when you weren't playing it. And they kept that design when they brought out the 2600, but I believe the designers said, you know, if we knew this console was going to be popular and people are actually going to buy and play these things for years, we would have come up with something more comfortable than that because it's only that square, so it would fit in the original casing, which had nothing to do with the Darth Vader console type, which the one I had was the Vader-designed all-black one. Yeah. You didn't have the wood grain? No. I had the wood grain. Oh, you were one of the early ones. Yeah. It looked better. It did. I agree. I started my cheap black and white one. Actually, I used to have my black one. I used to have it hooked up here in the kitchen area where we're recording. I put it and tested it. I do own E.T.
    108:38
    It is not on my list. Yeah, I did own it too, yeah. Yeah. It's just terrible to play. Okay, let's go to the third generation. This starts in 1983. It's also commonly just referred to as the 8-bit era. So this will be systems like the Commodore 64, the Atari 7800, the Sega Master System, and, of course, the NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System, or Famicom, as it was also called. So, Tony, you want to lead us off this time? I went with the one that I think everybody did. I had the NES. That was the only system I had from this generation. I played a fair amount of Sega Master System because I had a neighbor who had it, but NES is the one I played pretty much all the time. I had so many games for that system. I mean, Mega Man, Mega Man 2, all the original Legends of Zelda, every Super Mario that came out on it, I had all of them, and I played them all. And this one was probably the hardest category I looked at for games that I really liked. Because there are some really popular, well-known games for that system that was really good. There were some games that I don't know if anybody else had even heard of that I enjoyed, like Gunsmoke. I think it was called Gunsmoke. Oh, I had Gunsmoke. Gunsmoke was a great little top vertical scrolling shooter game where you were a cowboy. Enjoyed it a lot. But in the end, I kind of went back to what I think is one of the games pretty much everyone will think about when they see it as Super Mario 3. Yeah, good pick. It took what started with Mario and evolved it in such a way that you could see what it was, but it was even more, and it was even more fun. And I know I played it more than anything else would have been Super Mario 3. Okay.
    110:41
    It's a great pick. Martin, what systems were you familiar with with this gen? Okay, I'm glad you said what systems was I familiar with, because I did not, nor have I ever owned, a third-generation console.
    110:59
    Abomination. No, but let me tell you, in my defense, this is why. Because that was when I went to school, and that was boarding school. So I didn't spend a lot of time at home, so therefore didn't need to have a console. But also in my defense, I had pinball machines at school. Oh, wow. There you go. I went to the Farm Superlance Academy.
    111:26
    It was like that. So, whilst George was playing Black Knight, I was playing Black Knight and, you know, Black Hole and all those kinds of things. Anyway. Awesome. Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense. But my closest friend had a Commodore 64, so whenever I would go to his place, we would play the Commodore 64. And so there really is one game that absolutely stood out amongst that, and that was Impossible Mission. I don't think I'm familiar with it. No.
    111:58
    Oh, my God. I just remember, you know, we would start playing this game at 7 o'clock at night, and we'd still be up 5 o'clock in the morning still trying to play this. It's a side-scrolling platformer and puzzle where you are in someone's high-tech underground lair and all these robots are after you and you just go from room to room and each room is an individual puzzle. Some of them are simple, some of them are hard. You pick up little clues and then you've got to go to the side of the screen where you get all these different shapes that you've got to try and combine into a puzzle to overload the main and then kill the robot man at the end. Impossible Mission. And it is one of the more popular titles on Commodore 64. So check that one out. Yeah, I didn't get to play the Commodore 64.
    112:51
    Growing up, everyone I knew in the third gen had NES, and that's it. They didn't have any. I think maybe I knew someone who said he had a Sega Master, but he never let me play it, so that didn't count. Yeah, I had a neighbor, and they moved after like a year. So in terms of the NES, I almost went Super Mario Bros. 3, but I went Super Mario Bros. 2. I know a game that wasn't originally even going to be a Mario game but I just, I think ultimately I probably put more time on it than any other game I don't know, it's close with Contra Oh yeah, Contra I played a lot of Contra Contra, generally I didn't like to play it alone I liked to play it two player and so Super Mario Bros. 2 though was for single player so I would go in, I just liked that you got to pick between Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad and they played different They had different speeds, and they had different jump capabilities. And so what was ideal actually varied quite a bit depending on what the level was. So I just, the music to it, it was so colorful, and all of the levels looked really different, more different than Super Mario Brothers ever looked. So I just, overall, it had almost these RPG-lite elements with character selection and stuff that are lacking in Super 3 that made Super 3 not quite as high on my list. That was when I, the store like sold that one Super 3 I got early. Before it was publicly available, I got early. Due to an accident. It was a birthday present. So I have really fond memories of Super Mario Brothers 3, but 2 would be my favorite from the generation. Which is just impressive because of the fact that Super Mario 2 wasn't a Super Mario Brothers game until it came to the U.S. Yep. But that's... What won me over wasn't that it's Mario. What wins me, just like in pinball, is gameplay. Yeah. that's what matters one thing that none of us mentioned that was pretty high on my list was Final Fantasy which one first? the first one just because that was a game type that I'd never really touch until that game yeah I think until that you could argue RPGs were mostly text based on computers They weren't on the system. Because everything I'd done before that was text based on a computer. That and Dragon Warrior. I played a lot of both of those games.
    115:22
    I did a lot of Final Fantasy. I had Dragon Warrior and didn't play as much. It was too hard for me to enjoy, I think was the issue. Yeah. So let's go fourth gen. That starts 1987 and, unsurprisingly, was commonly just called the 16-bit era. So these are the Sega Genesis, Neo Geo and the Super Nintendo. I'll go ahead and start. I did have some time on Sega Genesis, but I don't really have a favorite game from it. I was friends who had them. So we'd play Sonic. There was that when they had the CD drive come out. What was the stupid game with the people are invading the house, the ninja, how all these live action. Night Trap. Oh, I remember Night Trap.
    116:06
    I played, was it Sewer Sharks? Okay. I don't think I've played that one so what I'll say is I owned the Super Nintendo didn't own nearly as many games as I did as on the Nintendo because I started to do more PC gaming during this time period but the game I will pick on Super Nintendo that I felt was the best was one of the early ones Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past I've mentioned it before this was the game where you go in and then it just started to rain and that was when I knew I was in the new generation. To me, it was amazing. It was a deep game. They still speed run it to this day. It could be argued as one of the best pre-3D Zelda games that was ever created. But honorable mention, because I'm all in honorable mentions as well, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.
    117:01
    You remember that one, Tony? Tony and I were roommates our first year in college, along with two weather, guys, and we lived off campus and we did not have cable initially. We didn't have any TV. So, it was a Super Nintendo hooked up to the television in the living room and all we did were Street Fighter tournaments. Yep, constantly, non-stop. Wow. So,
    117:25
    Martin, your thoughts on good 4th Gen? Okay, so, you'll see a thing, you were Nintendo, I was Sega through a lot of these generations. So I did have what we call here the Sega Mega Drive, which you call the Genesis. I also had the Sega CD, and I also had the Sega 32X, if you remember that. Oh, I never knew anyone who owned one.
    117:53
    I'm that one person. I think they actually released something I think it was called the Neptune, which was all three in one. I remember hearing about the Neptune, but I don't know anything about its specs. No, neither do I. But that's like out there with having somebody who actually had a Neo Geo. It's like you always heard somebody, oh, I've got a cousin who has a Neo Geo, but nobody actually knew them. Yeah.
    118:20
    We'll get to fifth generation. I can tell you about my Neo Geo. But also, okay, so this generation was really interesting. There was really only two things that stood out. I was either playing platformers or I was playing RPGs, and it's really where I got into RPGs. I've got so many games I could talk about now but really what I'll say is I think my favourite Sega game was actually Luna Eternal Blue the first game was called The Silver Star which was an RPG and it was the first RPG that I played that I just I got the storyline it had a lot of animation so it was using the CD format it then got remade in subsequent I think like on the Saturn and all that kind of stuff and maybe even on Playstation but it was just the first real sprawling turn based RPG that I absolutely loved but also at this same time as far as platformers go I think Earthworm Jim was just one of the best fresh remember how good that was yeah Yeah. So that was on Sega.
    119:35
    SNES, for me, I'm going to go down RPG territory again. And then as much as Final Fantasy III was fantastic, Chrono Trigger, for me, was the best RPG. Yeah. People are probably going to contact me for not naming Chrono Trigger. That is an all-time classic. And I feel well ahead of its time. It was way ahead of its time. and I never owned it. That's part of the reason I didn't include it because the first time I actually played it was a port on another system. Yeah, I played it on the PS1 as a port. Right. And I was like, where was this game all my life? Right. In the shadows of history. It was amazing. It was just incredible at the time. It was, how did I hate you? It was just fresh. It was just, how can they make this genre just completely amazing? And they did it. And again, it was story. I mean, it was 16-bit, so you got these little sprites there, but somehow you get connected to those characters, and that's what a good RPG should do. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Tony, your fourth-gen stuff. Thoughts? I had a SNES, which, no surprise. Now, this was, until extremely recently, my last Nintendo console.
    120:53
    Right. because at this point I was primarily a computer gamer, and I had Game Boys, and I've had all the flavors of Game Boy.
    121:03
    But there are so many good games, and just out of curiosity, I pulled up a top 100 list and looked at it, and every single one of these games I'm looking at, I'm just like, I love that game, I love that game, I love that game. This is going to be hard. And then I realized that every time I think of SNES, The game I think of, while it's on the top 100, it's at 37.
    121:29
    UN Squadron. I don't think I ever played UN Squadron. UN Squadron was Capcom. It was a very early Capcom game. And it is basically a, it is based upon an anime that I didn't see until like the mid-2000s. So I played the game 10, 15 years before I ever knew anything about or saw the anime.
    121:57
    But it is basically a side-scrolling shooter. It's like Gradius, except for you're flying actual real-life military jets. And the first boss, I think it was the first boss, it might have been the second boss, was a giant land-based aircraft carrier. It was a giant tank aircraft carrier that you had to blow up all the little parts on this and that. But it was very much a Gradius side-scroller type game. I still love that game type. But this one is the one that entered me into the thing. And it's the one that I fell in love with the most. And it's the game that I regret not still having more than Link, more than Mario World, more than the Final Fantasies. that's the one that I most regret not having because when I think of SNES, that's the game I think of. One time, they also made it for arcade. And when we were doing a thing in high school, when we went ice skating, the school, we went to the ice skating rink up there. It was for some party. It might have been eighth grade graduation. It was some party thing. We were at the ice rink, and they had the UN Squadron Arcade there. And I plugged like $20 into that game Even though I had it at home And I could have just gone home and plugged it in and played it Because I loved that game so much So yeah A little unknown little side Capcom thing That was my favorite game That's what I think of when I think SNES Okay, awesome Well let's move to the fifth generation I think this is probably the most complicated Complicated as far as the generation went Right So it starts in 1993, but it gets called the 32-bit era, it gets called the 64-bit era, and it also gets called the 3D era, all depending on which particular system we're talking about. So some of the key example systems were the Atari Jaguar, the PlayStation, often now called the PS1, the Sega Saturn would fall in this category, and so would the Nintendo 64. So, Martin, you mentioned having a lot of thoughts about the fifth generation, so I'll let you lead off on this one. Okay, so I owned five consoles in this generation. Four in a row. Wow. So I had a 3DO, I had a PlayStation, I had a Saturn, I had a Nintendo 64, and I had a Neo Geo. Neo Geo, I'll just talk about very quickly, ridiculously expensive, giant cartridges. you'd be spending $150 or $200 for a decent game. King of Fighters was the only decent one. That's it. Yep.
    124:43
    So King of Fighters, if you end up buying any idea, that is the one you need. Yeah. Or main it. Yeah. Or any variation. There was a lot of different ones that came out. Yeah.
    124:55
    Again, so this was really hard for me with this because through this generation, I played a lot. And I played a lot of gaming on this. It was really hard for me to pull out. And I sort of did the same thing. I was pulling up all these lists and I was looking at these games going oh my God I love that I love that It just reminded me of such good gaming I mean it really was where 3D came into the home right Yeah.
    125:27
    3DO, it was terrible. Gex was probably the only decent one there. I also got into PGA Tour on that one. That's my only golf game I've ever played. The PlayStation was really hard to really narrow it down. There were some great fighting games. I remember Toshinden, if you remember that. When that first came out, that was amazing.
    125:47
    Great platformers as well. My favourite platformer of that time was Pandemonium. But another really clever platformer came out, which was Oddworld. If you remember Abe's Odyssey. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great RPGs like Final Fantasy VII came out, which was amazing. my favourite RPG for that console was Xenogears, have you played that one? I haven't played it but I've heard of it yeah and Sukoden was also another one but my favourite game for the Playstation was what you called Wipeout XL we called Wipeout 2097 futuristic racing Sega Saturn again, that was my console of choice was Sega Saturn for this era so many different amazing games like Nice Into Dreams, played that. I played a port of that. Yeah, great game. Great fighting game. So it was really known about the fighting game. So two games stood out for me, Fighting Vipers and Last Bronx. But I also loved the Virtual Series, the Virtual Fighter, Virtual Cup, Virtual Racing. They were great. Sega Rally was a great port on that as well. But for me, and I'll say Wipeout was my game of this generation, but my close second was Panzer Dragoon. Oh yeah That was very good Yeah Again it was just this new Experience And I'm probably Cutting to one of the topics later but I reckon if you ported Panzer Dragoon Into VR you'd have my money Tony Your thoughts on Gen 5 Was when I was primarily Playing PC games and there was a lot Of them but when it came to consoles, I did own one. I owned a PlayStation.
    127:38
    And I remember a bunch of games like Bushido Blade. My favorite fighting game of the PlayStation. One hit could win. I really wish that style would come back. We've seen a little bit with like Divekick on PC. Right.
    127:59
    There's a lot of good games, but like with the SNES, when I think of PlayStation, I only think of one game. Final Fantasy 7. Because it changed everything. For me. It had a magic system that I loved. It had characters that I actually cared about. Correct. And the way it all put together, the way it all was assembled was the game I played probably the most. It was the game when I got the PlayStation, I got it for Christmas,
    128:38
    and I got Final Fantasy VII and a couple of other games. I honestly don't remember what the other games I got with it were. I just remember I got Final Fantasy VII because when I came home from Christmas, that's what I played, and that's what I played continually. And as I recall, I got that, I don't remember what year it was, that game. That's the game from PlayStation.
    129:08
    Just everything about that game. Now that I've stolen Dennis' thunder. No, it's fine. Yeah, because he's seen my notes on the OneNote, so he knows that that was my pick.
    129:22
    And so, yeah, there's not really a lot to elaborate on. I'd seen Final Fantasy VII. It made me want the PlayStation. In fact, this is probably the only time I can think of where I got a console explicitly to play one particular game. And so I got that. So Final Fantasy VII, it was just, I hadn't really played Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy. In the U.S., it was called Final Fantasy II. It's actually Final Fantasy IV. And so beyond that, I hadn't really played a lot of RPGs since then on console. And that brought me back into it. And then later on I picked up things like Bushido Blade, which I really liked. And I got some of the ports to the older Final Fantasy. So I played Final Fantasy V and VI. And VI is a real, in some ways I think VI is an even better story. But in terms of just making me want this generation, it was Final Fantasy VII. Now I think I played more ports on PlayStation. Because that's where I played Chrono Trigger. That's where I played a lot of that older. the old previous generation stuff when they started coming out on PlayStation.
    130:29
    Okay. Well, let's move into the sixth generation. So that's 1998 is our start date, sometimes called the 128-bit era, but usually it's just called the sixth gen. These are the systems like PS2, the GameCube, the original Xbox, and the Sega Dreamcast. I'm not actually going to weigh in on this one because I did not play much of anything in this generation. I was almost exclusively PC gaming. I did not own any of these systems. I mean, like, I played Grand Theft Auto 3 on PlayStation 2. I played Soul Calibur on Dreamcast. I've tried a couple of the Zelda games on GameCube. So I've tried, other than the original Xbox, which I've never played, I've played a few games on these, but not enough to have a favorite. So, Tony, go ahead and lead off this time, if you wouldn't mind. I owned two consoles from this generation. I had the PlayStation 2 and the Dreamcast I'll start with the PlayStation 2 which I think was the better machine it was the more popular machine at least this was where we started to see console wars that were being clearly won by a single company and it was definitely Sony they really made a name for themselves with the PS1 but it wasn't arguably the most powerful system but when the PS2 came out they had all the good games and they did Now, on the PS2, I played a lot of games, but there are two that come to mind.
    131:58
    That's when I first started playing MMOs because, unlike nowadays, you could plug a keyboard in and play games. And I played Final Fantasy XI. Right. And I played a lot of Final Fantasy XI, as did Dennis, but he was on PC. And that was the great thing is we played together. even though I was sitting in one room on my PS2 and he was in a different room on his PC we were able to play and it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it until I burned out on it because man that game was hard that was before though that was so hard obviously we're not diving into MMOs specifically but that was the big breakthrough that World of Warcraft had they cracked the formula on how to make an MMO approachable, but still have an end game that would keep people coming back and playing. And Final Fantasy XI was still following this old model of you have to group up and it takes forever to level. You finally get into the end game, which if you bother doing is a bunch of bots competing for claims, people hacking the games to try and figure out ways to get, because things weren't instanced, so you were competing with other people just for the opportunity to fight monsters. I remember. And they never wanted to upgear, they didn't want to, I hear they changed it eventually, but they never wanted to make a piece of gear at end game obsolete. So you just kept slicing like a tiny cucumber, these little thin layers like a baklava you're making. Right. Like, I don't know why I'm doing these food analogies. Sure. You're hungry. And it was just and it was just like, what is this? It just wasn't, it had some great ideas. I really enjoyed it, but Warcraft was a better MMO. Yes. I have wonderful memories Final Fantasy XI was my first MMO that I played As well And I probably played it for a month And gave it up because I After a month I had gotten nowhere And still didn't understand the game Now I did Endgame in XI It wasn't my first I actually did Ultima Online Back in college very briefly Only like two months but Yeah no I liked a lot about XI But I hated it far more And then when I knew I had friends that were jumping ship for Warcraft, and I was like, okay, I'll jump. That was me. I was the only guy who jumped ship for Warcraft. Someone in my in-game guild on Final Fantasy XI went as well. And so, that's also why I ended up getting a 7th Gen console. But we're not at 7th Gen. Right. So, all of that said, that's not my favorite game on PS2. My favorite game on PS2 is Naval Ops Warship Gunner. A boat game. Are you noticing something? I like boats. Yes. Naval Ops Worship Gunner is a game that is basically, it's set in a, it does for naval games what Ace Combat does for flying games. I know Ace Combat. So it's an alternate world where everything is crazy. And there's crazy super weapons and there's this and that. Now, it starts out very normal with like World War II era ships. and you start out in a destroyer. And it's like Ace Combat. You drive your ship around, you shoot your guns, but you can build and modify your ship to make it exactly how you want with the exact weapons you want. And the ships just keep getting bigger and bigger and crazier. You know, you're sitting here, two whole battle ships. It's basically an enormous catamaran that you cover in so many guns. And it's just sheer insanity. And that game I played so much of, and I was so disappointed. it was a series that never really continued. There was a second one, and then there was a third similar game, but it was more of an Admiralty Command RTS-ish type game. None of them were as good as that first one, though the second one came close. So much fun. And I played a ton of it. And as the response would be,
    136:03
    in pretty much all of these, like in PlayStation and PlayStation 2 and a lot of these that we're going to talk about, Ace Combat games for those games are pretty much always in my top five. Okay. None of them quite break to the number one spot ever. But I just love the Ace Combat games. The super arcade-y, crazy. The one Ace Combat I don't like is the one that got rid of all the craziness, and that was Assault?
    136:32
    I can't remember. I played it. Or Assault Horizon. Ace Combat and Assault Horizon. Yeah. And that was in the Xbox era. Yes. So, but then on Dreamcast, I had a ton of Dreamcast games, and none of it mattered, because the only game that ever got played was Soul Calibur.
    136:53
    Yeah. Soul Calibur was played just, I mean, Mike, who's been hosted on us, with us in the past, and me, would play that game. It would literally, we'd start playing at like 5 o'clock in the evening. we would stop long enough to get food, and then we would play until we both passed out. And it got to the point on that game where we had the round timers turned off because it'd be a draw, because we'd put down the round timer, and neither of us had even gotten a hit in yet, because we'd gotten so good at blocking. We each had a character, and that's pretty much the only character we played. We started playing random characters just because it took so long to get a match done, because we were playing the same characters we were always good with. and that game led to my love of Soul Calibur that game led, that was probably, if I had to sit down Soul Calibur is my favorite fighting game of all time and it's because of the memories and while this is a slight side trip Soul Calibur, we played so much Soul Calibur and we loved Soul Calibur so much that for my birthday one year We found out that the Cowboy Bebop movie was going to be aired in a theater in St. Louis. And we found right, like, real quickly after it first came to America, only a couple months out, there was a Soul Calibur II machine in St. Louis. So we drove the four hours to St. Louis and spent hours playing Soul Calibur II until it was time to go to the theater and watch the Cowboy Bebop movie. and then drove four hours home. And then I'm pretty sure I passed out on the floor of the townhouse hallway, as I recall, when we got home. Because I want to say I went upstairs and I sat down on the floor and was talking to I think you, Dennis, and me and Mike were talking, and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep on the floor because I recall waking up and moving to the bed at some point in the night. Yeah, you fall asleep a lot. Yeah.
    138:59
    Okay. Martin, 610. So I owned a PlayStation 2, a Dreamcast, a GameCube, and an Xbox. Wow. Yeah, that's enough. So, like all of them. Let go on. All that matters.
    139:16
    But again, I just want to call out some, I guess, franchises that started this generation as well. So you've got things like Devil May Cry, Ratchet & Clank. Kingdom Hearts started this one. Oh, I did. I did actually play a little bit of that on the PS2. I liked it, but I didn't finish it. Yeah. Animal Crossing started this generation. My sister loves Animal Crossing. Yeah, I loved Animal Crossing. Burnout. Oh, the Burnout games. I completely forgot about them. Halo started this generation as well.
    139:50
    I played it and mastered it. I didn't play it originally, though. Yeah, I did. Launch. But for the four consoles, I'll give you my top and my second pick. for the Playstation 2 my favourite game was Final Fantasy 10 hands down it was a good game, I enjoyed it I loved the storyline I loved the graphics, I loved the combat system, I loved that crazy underwater basketball polo game that was awesome but my honourable mention for Playstation 2 goes to Ico whatever you call it Okay, do you have another one? I remember the name, but I never played it. Oh, spectacular. For its time, really innovative platforming mechanics. Visually, it was beautiful. Storyline was just really interesting. Not so much a lot of speech, but just very atmospheric.
    140:52
    It was a great game. Dreamcast is interesting. For that, again, Sega, I was a Dreamcast fanboy. it was really hard to say what was my favourite, but the one that I probably played the most was Fantasy Star Online.
    141:09
    And I played it an extraordinary amount, only to be superseded with World of Warcraft as far as online game time goes.
    141:20
    But Shenmue. Shenmue 1 and 2. Yeah. Dreamcast. Absolutely loved it. Just something that added a new sort of, I don't know whether you'd say it was a new genre, but it was just a whole new level to that particular genre.
    141:37
    GameCube, I sort of mentioned Animal Crossing was my second favourite game. My favourite game was Eternal Darkness. I played that. I didn't have one, but I played some of that game, and I watched a lot of that gameplay. That's a solid game. Yeah.
    141:51
    If I finish a game, that's it. I will never play it again. Honestly, as a rule. This is the only game I've ever played through twice. And in fact, I played it three times because there was three different endings. That's how much I loved it. Wow. Absolutely. And I don't know if you remember, this was the one that tried to mess with your head with some of the things that it would do where it would look like the game was glitching.
    142:21
    Okay, that's very cool. Yeah. As you would go more down into psychosis or chaos, the actual game would physically start tricking you, like your sprite would reduce in size or it would fall through walls. And I won't say it because I hope that people do play it, but there is actually one thing that it does, which was the most frightening thing that a game could ever do, where it tricks you. And I won't say it because I just want people to experience it, but for that alone, it's not a favorite game. And Xbox, wow, obviously Halo was fantastic and Burnout, but there was a particular game that I loved and I played the most, and it was called Quantum Redshift. I'm not familiar with it. It's effectively a Wipeout clone, and it's actually from one of the original developers that left, formed their own studio, and that's what they produced. And it was fantastic. The graphics were absolutely superb. it was very fast it was another futuristic racer but just one of my favourite genres so Quantum Redshift for me awesome but my favourite game for this genre easily Final Fantasy X ok yeah I did play that and win it yep me too it's a good game not my I preferred the systems of 7 and even you know I actually even liked 8 the draw system I liked 9 better than 8 I didn't play 9 I just found 9 But the main character in 9 was just too angry Like just mild Yeah no that's He needs to understand it's his final fantasy He needs to cheer up Yeah JRPGs often have that problem though That of giving you the annoying uber little kid Who's in the party I'm gonna make something of myself Yeah He's like no Go through puberty and then come back from the Christ Absolutely 7th gen So now we're talking, the herd's thin. This is the Xbox 360, the Wii, the original Wii, and the PS3. So since I didn't say anything in the last one, I will go ahead and kick us off here. I owned a 360, and I did play a number of Wii games. I can't say, oh, well, for Wii, Wii Sports. It's a derivative answer. Everyone loved Wii Sports, but that was the thing. Wii was really gimmicky, but it worked for Wii Sports. It was a great party game. The bowling was a lot of fun. That was my favorite sport in it. So for Wii, I'm going to go ahead and say Wii Sports. On the Xbox 360, I got a couple honorable mentions, but I'll start with my overall pick, which is Fallout New Vegas. So I loved Fallout 3 when it came out, and that's one of the honorable mentions. Fallout was a game I played on PC. I briefly played Fallout 1. I played a lot of Fallout 2 in college. and just, I think I only won the game once, but I go and I make a new character and just experience parts of the game as this, and it was a turn-based strategy game. That was the Fallout, sort of like how XCOM was and is now. Yeah. But it was so scary to me as a fan of the franchise when I learned in the seventh generation that Fallout was going to come back, but they were going to do it as a first-person slash third-person shooter where you could choose the viewpoint. I was like, I don't know if this is going to work. Not only did it work, it is a better game than those original games. Fallout 3, I feel, is better than Fallout or Fallout 2. And Fallout New Vegas is better than Fallout 3, with one exception. It was much buggier. It was not as well polished as a set of code. And it's such a big world in both cases. I ran into bugs in both. But Fallout New Vegas had a better story. I think the combat felt a little bit better but it really just comes down to the narrative experience. I just thought the world felt more lived in and the adventures you went on just more meaningful but both of them were stellar games on the 360.
    146:27
    And my other honorable mention I just want to throw out there in terms of online multiplayer, while I did play some Halo 3 online as everyone did my multiplayer game was Battlefield Bad Company 2 and I played the first Battlefield Bad Company and the game was good, the multiplayer was not. Bad Company 2 was a new engine, the combat felt a lot more fluid, and unlike Call of Duty, which was just the constant deathmatch, this really prioritized working as a team and vehicular combat being incorporated. And so I probably, I played every Battlefield since then that was a major release. I didn't do Hardline because, no. I played 3, 4, and 1 And Bad Company 2 is still my favorite Nice So, Tony, you can go next for 7th Gen I had an Xbox 360 It was the only console I had in the 7th Gen You didn't have a Wii? My wife had a Wii Oh, okay She wasn't my wife at the time She's my wife now Because of the Wii? Did you marry her for the Wii? No. Okay. Because I was going to say they were inexpensive. Yeah, no, it wasn't for the Wii. I married her for other reasons. Okay.
    147:50
    But the Xbox 360 for me was new. I did play again way more Playstation or not Playstation, way more PC games than even console games but there were two games that really stick out to me on the Xbox 360 the one that is my favorite, you've already mentioned it's Fallout 3 now there's a reason it's not Fallout New Vegas the reason it's not Fallout New Vegas is because as much as I love Fallout 3, as much as I was amazed by how they changed it and how well it was. It was like, man, this will be better on the PC. So when New Vegas came out, I got New Vegas on the PC, not on the Xbox. Sure. And that's where I played New Vegas because New Vegas is the best Fallout game to date. Okay. I don't disagree. But Fallout 3, I mean, everything that I loved about it is what makes you love Fallout in the first place. It's the ambiance. It's the slightly off feel of the game. It's the music, especially the music.
    149:05
    And I remember in Fallout 3 going through, when you had to go through the subways in that first subway section, being just amazing to me playing it as first person. It was so awesome.
    149:19
    Fallout 3 I played two or three times. I, Fallout 3, I had all of the DLC on the Xbox, and it is also the game that I have a perfect on. I have every achievement in that game. There's a few others I have, but most of them don't have nearly as many achievements as Fallout 3 did. Now, the other one that, it wasn't a great game. It was fun as a group, and that's why I remember it. was 1 vs. 100. Oh, okay. Yeah. And what makes me remember 1 vs. 100 was I had back surgery in 2009, as I recall.
    150:06
    I think it was around there. But while I was laid up at home recovering from my back surgery, Dennis and all of our other friends would come over, and I'd be sitting there in my Lazy Boy in front of the TV on the side of the house. And we played one versus 100, and we would do, I mean, we'd play it on game nights, and we'd play it otherwise. But that's what I remember playing that game, and the dumbest stuff, and how I don't think any of us made it. I think once or twice we made it, got picked into the 100. Most of the time it was just being, just the insane funds of it. Yeah, and Martin, if you don't know, it was actually, it was a live game where you'd go in, and it was, you had to do it in real time. And the 100 people were actual real gamers who were participating. And there was an audience portion that could play. And then there was a one. I've never heard of it. It's kind of like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire crossed with some other game shows. It was all like an online game show. And, yeah, they only did it for one season. They had a live host and everything. Yeah, they had a live host. The comedian was the live host. Anyway, yeah, they only did it once. And then they pulled the plug.
    151:13
    Understandable. It wasn't, like, great. But for me, it was part of the situation. The concurrent user count was like 100,000 people or something playing it. It was pretty big for Xbox Live. I never really learned why they decided not to bother anymore. I don't know. Because of the whole situation, it felt it was just, it has a special place because of the situation. Okay.
    151:33
    Martin, what were your thoughts on 7th Gen? Okay, so I owned a PlayStation 3, an Xbox 360, and a Wii. No surprise there. Yeah, except with the Wii, I probably, I think I bought a lot of launch titles and probably had it for a few months later. And then I gave it, well, I actually sold it to a friend because, like you said before, I just probably found it a bit too gimmicky. And I'd call that Wii Sports. I thought that was a lot of fun.
    152:04
    Yeah. But as far as the other consoles, again, some great games came out this genre. like Heavy Rain for example I loved that game probably one of the most disturbing games because I felt that this game really connected you using the controller to what your character was doing I'd not seen that integration and probably not even since where the motions that you do on the controller are what you would do in real life I don't know if you've played Heavy Rain, but... I've seen... You're actually named a fairly controversial pick, because some people really love that gaming experience, and then I know a lot of other people, because of how that was, felt it was really more of a narrative than an actual real game, and they didn't feel like they were playing. So it's very polarizing. I've not played it. I've seen scenes from it and some gameplay from it, and so I know it's very polarizing. Yeah. And I can see with that because I never actually felt like I was playing a game. I felt like I was in the game. And I know that sounds probably a bit too far-fetched. Wow, that's hard.
    153:19
    That's how I felt. And in fact, again, I won't say it because I don't want to spoil it for those people that haven't played it. But there was one thing in the game it was asking you to do to your character involving the controller. and I remember just going, no, I can't do this. I actually, I can't do this. And I had to actually put the controller down and walk out of the room and I couldn't go back into the room for two hours because the thing that it was asking me to do just felt like I was doing it to myself.
    153:56
    Wow. That was how powerful that game was for me. They were successful then. Wow. Yeah, yeah, seriously. Look, I have a game, Little Big Planet. came out this genre as well, which I love. One of my favourite RPGs was called Ni No Kuni. Then if you played that. Bayonetta came out this genre as well, which I loved.
    154:19
    Dead Space, Fallout 3, of course, you've talked about one of my favourite games. For each of the consoles, probably PlayStation 3, my favourite was the Uncharted series when that came out. Absolutely loved it. but my game of this generation is Elder Scrolls Oblivion very good I enjoyed it more than Skyrim yeah well yeah we'll get to Skyrim Oblivion absolutely loved it and actually because I love the game as well but there was a particular event that was happening in my life one of my children was extraordinarily sick and was in hospital. And it was the worst of times. And this game just absolutely sucked me in and got me through that period of time. So it was great to have this really well-constructed game in a really good universe with a really good storyline to allow me to escape from the s*** that was going on. So, yeah, absolutely loved that game. All right.
    155:25
    Well, we're going into the final generation. 8th gen, current gen Wii U, PS4 Xbox One I will note that we'll include the Nintendo Switch here. That one was it was a little odd because it's portable and it integrates people like the whoever the people are who assign things to being console generations, it's confused as to whether it should truly count as a console it's recognized as a hybrid but if you were to clump it as a console, I agree So I clumped it in here Regardless, it would be in the 8th gen If it were not portable for sure So that's where it belongs Tony, I know you have a Switch Right, that's why I was I didn't do it for you It's not about you It's about the science So Tony can talk about the last gen Because I want to hear about another boat game Yeah, go ahead Go ahead Is there a boat game out on How would I know? I haven't found a boat game Probably not The last boat game was Wind Waker Yeah I got it I got the Switch For Zelda Breath of the Wild It's fun It's a great game But
    156:56
    It's not actually my favorite game on the system that's out. I mean, there's not a whole lot of games. I don't have very many. There's not a whole lot overall. But it's not my favorite. My favorite is Mario Rabbids. Oh, okay. As embarrassing as it is for me to think of it. I've heard good things. Fans of XCOM. That's why. It is amazingly fun. When I first heard about it, when I first saw the trailers for it and this and that, I thought it was a joke. I was like, how can this be? It is an amazingly fun game. And a lot of it has to do with its whole squad-based XCOM-like fighting. Because I love the XCOM games. I have from the very first XCOM UFO Defense back in the 90s on the computer that I played forever.
    157:46
    I've always loved XCOM games. So This plays enough similar With enough fun and Interesting twists in this I love it It's not the game I have the most time in On Switch That's either Probably still Zelda But it could be Stardew Valley I don't include Stardew Valley Because Stardew Valley is a computer game that's been ported to Switch You can include it But Yeah, no Rabbids, Mario Rabbids Somehow Well, for me, the only console I have As you'll notice, I only ever buy one console Per generation, apparently it's my pattern I'm like a reverse Martin And So it's Xbox One for me Overall game is easily the one That we get told to quit talking about Because we talk about it too much And that would be Overwatch And I was a late adopter to it I just didn't think it would appeal to me As I noted with the 7th gen discussion I like Battlefield with the vehicles and the larger scale battles. But the hero class stuff gets at that class mechanic, and it works really well for me. So, unsurprisingly, Overwatch has been my favorite of the gen so far. I'll name a few honorable mentions. Bethesda has been gangbusters this gen. I love both of the Wolfenstein games. Not so much the little one that they wrote, but the two full retail ones. Very, very good reboots of the Wolfenstein 3D franchise. in survival horror, Evil Within 1, excellent game. Resident Evil 7, excellent game, both for very different reasons, they're very different experiences, but if you like survival horror, those are both, can do no wrong. They're really good experiences to go with, and I would probably, I don't really do a lot of sports games, so I don't really have anything in that category that stands out, but if you consider car racing as a sport, Forza Horizon 3 is incredible. and I haven't enjoyed a game so much since Burnout Revenge, I suppose. So those would be my picks for the current gen. And Martin, you get the last word on the last gen. Okay, so I have owned, or currently do own,
    160:04
    let's see if this surprises you, a PlayStation 4, an Xbox One, a Wii U, a PS, and a Switch as well. I'm shocked. But I don't now have in my possession an Xbox One or a Switch. Already done with a Switch. Wow.
    160:22
    Well, Switch is actually on loan, but I have no desire to get it back. Okay. Xbox One, I did actually sell off. Well, the way they handled it. It's a gem. I'm not surprised. Yeah.
    160:37
    I don't know what it was. I think it was because, well, probably because I was getting more and more into pinball. Okay? So there's that. Sure. But I just found that with the Xbox One, I didn't necessarily find that I was getting games that were making me think. Okay. Lots of, you know, Forza, for sure, would be my absolute game on it. But, you know, it's a racing game. There was combat games. There's first-person shooters, all that kind of stuff. But I wasn't really finding anything that was doing anything beyond that. So I really kept my... My PlayStation 4 really is the console of choice now that I really play the most.
    161:25
    And I will just mention a couple of games really from that. Dragon Age Inquisition was one of my favourite games that I played. Fallout 4 would have been up there Except I put about 40 hours into it And then got a bug in the game Where it would feel like I was over-encumbered Like I would actually move at a snail's pace And I put a ticket in They said they couldn't resolve it I've been waiting and waiting for a patch I don't know, I can't bring myself to come back Go back to the start and play 40 hours that I've already done So it would have been higher had I got to play it. Far Cry 4, absolutely loved, but actually enjoyed Primal even more. Oh, yeah. I did too. Yeah. Just, I love what they did to make that just go down to its roots effectively.
    162:22
    My second favourite game, again, you can see when I talk about that whole I want a game to make me think, Life is Strange. Yes. You know, they just released a free little standalone.
    162:37
    Yes. With a 10-year-old boy. I know that there is a sequel called, or maybe it's a prequel called Before the Storm. I haven't actually played that yet.
    162:48
    And again, what I really don't like is playing a game, absolutely loving it, and then a sequel being bad, that it ruins my thoughts on the original. so I often don't play games with sequels.
    163:05
    An example is Assassin's Creed. Absolutely loved the first one and actually probably enjoyed the second one as well but subsequently I've not really enjoyed it because it doesn't take me forward. It's just another story or more of the same. So I'm a bit reluctant to do Life is Strange anymore because I just found that game amazing. But so far for me, the game of this generation is Horizon. on PlayStation 4.
    163:32
    Yeah, one of the reasons that I considered getting a PlayStation 4 is to play that game. It's worth it. Do it. I'm telling you, do it. Because it is, you know, it's that open world, and it's kind of like the whole Far Cry model.
    163:47
    But again, there's something that really works on this over and above the Far Cries, which after a while... So I started playing Far Cry 5 recently, where you're killing the Christian cults. But after a while, it just becomes another Far Cry game. You're practically just doing the same map, the same combat, the same liberating this zone and opening up this, but it's now just the... You even forget that you're battling Christian cults. It's just more rednecks that you're trying to get, right?
    164:21
    That's kind of what it is, right? Horizon takes that genre and does two things differently. One, it adds an amazing storyline where you are absolutely connected to the characters, involving a really strong but feminine lead character, which they have just absolutely got that absolutely right.
    164:46
    But then they've also created this really interesting world where you've got... It's a beautiful world to be in where you've got all these animals that are robots that look like animals. And they explain that. Because when I first looked at it, I went, that makes no sense. You're in this really organic environment. You look like you're a tribal person, and yet there's these animals out there that look like robots. How does that even work? And within the first half an hour to 45 minutes of explaining the story, you absolutely get it, and you are absolutely bought into the main character's story. something happens early on that makes you emotionally connected to her and what's happening and as they drip feed you this story it just gets even more interesting as you go along and more of what's happening around you makes sense just for me best game this generation for sure alright I've only heard good things the name of the free Life is Strange. It's almost a teaser game for the upcoming one. It doesn't involve the characters from the first one. It's called The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit.
    166:00
    Okay. Go to the PlayStation Store. It's free to download. I hear it's probably about a three to five hour game. I haven't tried it yet, but the reviews have been good. It's in the universe of Life is Strange. It's not the same people or anything, though. Okay, cool. Alright, well, Martin, I want to thank you again for taking time out of your very, very early morning and sending it with us to talk about pinball and extensively about video games and suggesting to go through about best console games because this was a lot of fun. I have a lot of reminisce about this stuff. Yeah, I know.
    166:33
    Let's close out the show, Tony. Folks, if you want to write to us, we're not encouraging it, but if you want to, it's eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or reach out to us on social media, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. Eclectic underscore gamers on the Twitter and the Instagram. And until, I guess, in two weeks where we're angling to have another guest host on as well. I'm Dennis. That's Tony. That was Martin. See you guys later.