the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast all right tom you ready yes wonderful carl you oh crap uh travis and we're actually recording right now, and I'm aware that we're recording, and I have green tea. I'm fully prepared. Oh, good. Where were you last episode? Doesn't matter. Oh. Here we go. We're We're We're We're We're We're We're We're We're We're Triple J. Triple J. Triple J. Not Carl. No, no, no. For all you social Joel warriors out there, let it be known, he's the first one to bully this episode. So take your grievances to Pennside. Just let it be known. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put your hand down. All right. Yep. Okay. So what was it? Two weeks ago? We're like, yeah, let's do it. Let's record. Let's try to – I don't even know why we're so antsy. I don't know. We just wanted to record. We're like, let's do it. And then Travis was like, can't do it. Got my kid's birthday, blah, blah, blah. And so Tom and I were like, well, what do you want to do? You want to just try to do a duo episode? And we're like, let's see. Who would be a good person to get? I don't know. Carl popped into our head. We both thought it was a great idea. Carl jumped right on board. And the feedback was really good. People really liked Carl. So Travis, I loved Carl. Carl was great. He's a smart dude. Great content. Good voice. I mean, everything. The video, the viewers missed out on the video. It looked great. It's true. Travis, did you listen to the episode? Did you have any notes, feedback, anything like that? Yeah, I did. I listened to the episode. I don't believe you. I listened to the first three minutes of it. So you listened to me adding your sound clip. Yeah, I realized I was on the episode. I'm like, I didn't record that. How was I on this all of a sudden? I was like, oh, yeah, Joel with his jokes. Yep. Let me enter that into the Pennside court as well. So I was like, all right, if I'm going to inject Travis in here, I'm going to make him sound like an alcoholic. So it's like, let me find a few clips of him talking about his beer. Sounds like. Yeah. What's funny is how easy it was to find those sound clips. It's all from one episode. All I had to do was look at the waveform and wait for me to stop talking. And then you're like, hold on, let me go. It was easy to find. So well done, Travis. Thanks for being a good sport. I know Monica liked it. She thought it was funny. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I didn't realize it was my turn to talk. I was letting you talk as well, you know, so that way I'm not interrupting anybody or anything like that. Oh, got it, got it, got it. All right. Well, number one on our list was catching up. So, I don't know, caught? I think we're good. I don't know. No, I think Carl did a great job, though. Even if you haven't listened. I haven't listened to him yet. I think he did a great job. I mean, I'm just trying to praise everybody because I'm still waiting for my trade to loser kid. So, I mean, if you guys have a replacement lined up. I rejected you. Yeah. You know what's the best part? That is false propaganda you're feeding out there, Tom Graff. At the end of last episode, I made a comment about Super Bowl Swagging, buy our new merch. I said, Carl, we need to get your shirt. He goes, already got one. He bought his own, like he bought merch for us. That's more than I can say about you, Travis. You haven't bought any of our merch, which is, no, I get it. The hoodie you're wearing right now was essentially. Where's your triple drain hat or shirt right now, Joel? No, I'm saying it didn't. That came from profit. Where's it at right now? Where's it at right now? Joel's wearing a TPN hat. Yes. My triple drain hat, here's the deal. I have a big head. I'm actually a larger individual. I have a larger head. I don't doubt your ego is the size of Indiana. I don't doubt it. It's proportional, okay? But unfortunately, most hats just don't fit me well. And so I tried the generic dad hat, and it's too small on my head. So I'm actually going to send that out. Stalker. I'm just stalked by that. Okay. Sorry my head's large. I don't know what the traffic is. All right. I'm not touching that one. Tom, go ahead. No, thanks. No, Tom, that's another thing. I finished the episode last week, and I walked away, like, feeling good about myself. I felt good. I felt like uplifted, you know, I feel like Tom and Carl and I were very supportive. We did a great job. The three of us, you know, really kind of it's like we're holding hands the whole way. And that's I feel like we're missing something, Travis. You know, Tom and I kind of building ourselves up. And Travis, you're here to tear us back down. It keeps there. You're a humbler. You keep us right where we need to be. He's not David Dennis. Come on. Well, true. Yeah. I didn't say we don't go negative with Travis. We just he keeps us right at a nice neutral. True. No, you just make me sound like I drink beer 24-7. That's what five sound clips will do, man. I don't know what to tell you. All right, so what is going on? The reality is nothing. There's really nothing going on in the news. Well, good night, everybody. It was a great podcast. Joel, there's a new game from Stern that's finally out in the wild. Yeah, I mean, but it's nothing like we're not dropping any new news. We're going to go. We do have stuff to talk about. So, yeah, don't just turn off the podcast. We do have plenty to talk about. So looking ahead. This will be our best episode ever. Best one yet. And Tom Graff is right. But before we go, just keep in mind, like, that's how weird this whole release has been. The fact that the games are literally going out. We're waiting for the launch parties. LEs still aren't out yet. Everybody's showing pictures of it showing up on location. And everybody's just kind of like, you know, I mean, it's weird. It just shows you, like, what happens when you miss that window. Yeah. Because the reveal came out. Well, we'll get to that. It's number four. Sorry. I wasn't here for the pre-production meeting. You were absolutely here for the pre-production meeting. You contributed to the pre-production meeting. I like how you think I was listening to you while you were talking. I was just dealing with your audio BS that you were messing up on before. Tom, thanks for being here and being a professional. Tom, you're lovely. Yeah, I know. We need you, Tom. What an effing beauty over there. If it was just Travis and I, we would have made it about two episodes. All right. So, yes, yes. Number two on our list. Number two on our list. So, Free Play Florida. I know the two of you guys, you guys went down to Florida, participated in that. It looks like, based on pictures, you both brought part of your family, had a great time. There was quite a tournament that went on. I don't know. I just watched from afar and was jealous I wasn't there. So, Tom, if you want to share a little bit about your experience and we'll let Travis tag on to that. I mean, yeah. Tell us about Free Play Florida. Joel, it was a bloodbath. Oh, yeah, that's right. There was a lot of really good players there. I forgot about that. Yeah, it literally was like a small world championship. You had Escher. You had Jason Zahler. You had Eric Stone, Jared August, Travis Murie. Ray Day. Ray Day. Yeah. We'll get to him. Steven Bowden. Steven Bowden. Jeff Teolas. Who else? Dalton. The Rosas. Dalton. Kaylee George. Kaylee George. Now, who are you going to forget that's going to be offended at this point? Bill Mason. Carlos. Carlos was there. Carlos was there. Jason was there. You know who wasn't there? Carl. Carl was not there. Yeah. He was taking a breather. Carl was letting the rest of us have a chance, and I appreciate that about him. He's very kind. Very kind. It was the last stop on the Sturm Pro Circuit Tour, so a lot of people were showing up to the event. Did you even say Zach Sharp? You said that right, Tom? I did not. The Sharps. Both of them were there, right? No, no, no. Just Zach. Just one. Just Zach. The good one was there. The good one? The better one? Okay. And so then, let's see, Jim Belsito, he was there. Who else was? You're going to forget somebody. No, we're not. Trent Augustine was there. We're not going to forget. We're going to sit here for the next hour until we come up with this. I don't want anybody to be mad at me. Well, just think of all the people that beat you, and then you can just start rattling off that list. Oh, really? The main question. Shannon Stafford was there from Florida. Tom, did you retire during this event? No, I actually felt halfway decent playing the games. there. There you go. Neil was there. Except for God's sake. Oh yeah, we forgot. Your son was there. Ken Grant, he was there. Oh, side note, Carter, your son, was there, Travis, and he actually performed really well, right? In the amateur event. But still. He didn't perform well in the main tournament, because he didn't play in it. He didn't play in it. He was fine. Did he win it? Yeah, he took first. He's an up-and-comer. He just now turned 12, but he's figuring it out. He's asking about rules. He plays every day. All those games on Toy Story are really paying off. Yeah. It's actually Rush now. It's all about Rush. He's all about Godzilla, so he's graduated. Wait, how old is he? He just turned 12. You're telling me a 12-year-old can understand Rush code? I mean, I'm there telling him. He's figured it out. It's not that bad. I just wanted Ray Day to hear that and be like, boom! Yeah. No, it's not. No. You can rush his codes. Understandable. All right, Tom. Free play for you. Oh, yeah. Johnny Monica was there. You're looking at a list. Oh, yeah. You're looking at a list. Chef. Sanjay was there. You know what's funny about Johnny? I was literally following him around for a little bit, and I saw him blowing up a game, so I'm like, I'm going to go play that. And then I did well on it. So you're following Johnny around because you're like, if he did good on this, I've got this. I did get the plague after Free Play Florida. I forgot about that. I got sick after Free Play. My whole family got sick. Yeah. I think it seems like a lot of people in pinball recently have gotten sick in some capacity. I know Saturday my kid was thrown up all night, so that was great. I never threw up. I didn't say that. Well, that's good. But you had like the whole, all the fun congestion. No, it was just cold stuff. It wasn't bad, but it literally ran through my whole family. Wonderful. Now my wife's sick. I'm proud to say. She was the long survivor. Oh. And I was in a room with Tom and his whole family, like a small room. Yeah. An escape room, actually. Travis and I were in a jail cell together. Yep. We'll just leave it at that. You don't have to explain it. Please leave it there. But, no, so overall, Free Play Florida, it's, I mean, we've talked a lot about different tournaments. They're all a little different. They're all unique. Obviously you're saying there was a ton of really good players there. Were the games set up well? Were there a lot of variety in games? Anything stand out? Any matches that were kind of crazy? I would say the games were set up very well. I mean, I thought they were set up fair. nothing was like crazy hard but nothing was like super easy either um but it was it's a pump and dump tournament so you have to you know you can play as much as you want as long as you keep paying for it so going into finals where were the two of you or how many people made finals and where were you roughly. Well, let's see. He's looking at a little, yeah. I honestly forgot, Joel. All I remember was... I was 18th going in, and Travis... Was I, Tom? Was 16th. Oh, that's cute. You were sandwiched in between Adam Lefkoff. Oh, you forgot that guy? No, I didn't forget him. No, we just didn't mention him. There you go. Just joking. All right, so how many people made finals? 24. 24. 24 out of 148. Neil made it. He was 11. Nice. Okay, so how far did you guys get then in the overall tournament? That's funny. You mean there was more rounds than one? No, you made finals. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so we all got knocked out. But Neil, Travis, and myself all got knocked out in the first round. Okay. I actually forced a tiebreaker on Mandalorian. Nice. And then we played Godzilla. And I played Godzilla like I forgot how to play Godzilla. No, but I had to play Andrew Rosa and Bill Mason, and they kicked my butt on it. Nice. Nice. but so fast forward then all the way to the finals who are the final four so it was usher lefkoff shaman davidson shocker eric stone shocker and jason zahler okay i don't know jason but good oh you should i'm sorry i'm not the tournament player jason if you listen sorry if you're friended uh travis's camera's out they'll got the new signal hey remember a lot two weeks ago when we recorded Tom and how Carl's camera stayed on the entire time. It stayed on the entire time. It never had one issue. Nothing. It was pretty impressive. Very professional. Very professional. Yeah. I'm not even going to turn it back on. I don't care. So, Jason, sorry, I don't know. I would love to meet you. So Jason's like, what, a top five player in the world? Okay. Sorry. Wow. I know Ray Day from Discord and chatting it up and then X's there. I know. Well, that's great. And then Eric, the weatherman, I know he's insane. So where did we end up? So I know Raymond won. Congratulations, Raymond Davidson. I can't remember how the other three finished. I don't know if it was Escher, Jason, and Stone, or if it was Jason, Escher, and Stone. No, I think it went Raymond, Jason, Escher, and Stone. Okay. Nice. and Travis still hasn't turned his camera back on. So, yes. He said he wasn't going to. He's really not. We need to pay him $20 more. This is my flag and my hill. I'm staying right here. If you could please spare a few dimes so Travis can charge his camera battery. Speaking of which, Patreon, thank you for all of our Patreon supporters. Truly, no, we've gained a few more, and it's way too kind. So thank you for the people that are doing it. Oh, Travis is getting back on. Manual focus is back. He's like, oh, that's right. There are people that throw us a few bucks to buy. So thank you, for real, the Patreon supporters. It allows us to, yeah, we're still paying off our merch bill. We really need to record this live. Like video live. To be honest, I think the plan for next year is we go to video. We go to video podcast. I agree. For sure. Yeah. We have a plan? Not you, Travis. You're in a need to know. kind of position. Great. Okay, stern pinball. I got you guys. Hey, that's later. That's later. Oh, hold on a second. Oh, okay. Perfect timing. I had to change back. Yeah. Anything else, Freeplay Florida? Anything else you guys want to share? It rained a lot, and the show was all right. I mean, overall, it's just I really enjoy the tournament there just because of the location. The people are great. Yes. I enjoy the resort. I like the pinball lounge area that's there. I really like the pool lounge as well. Thanks to the pinball lounge for putting on the tournament. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're all great. It was awesome. And they're listening to the feedback as well, which is great. So it was a tremendous competition there. But I do have one gripe. This is a huge one, Joel. I'm ready. Right. Tom knows what's coming. The freaking rum bar. They did all these things to it, right? They were like, hey. Travis was talking about this for like a week. Yeah, I was like excited about it because it was closed down last year when we went for renovations. Like that's what the big thing was. So we go to this resort, right? And I bring out Monica and I'm just like, hey, it's like 1030. The Rum Bar closes at 12. Let's go ahead and go, you and me. We can have like a mini date night. This was Friday night, right? Yeah, it was Friday night. We were doing some qualifying. Travis was like, I'm going to the rum bar, guys. Yeah, I was, like, so happy about it. I was like, peace out, you D-gens. I'm going here to the rum bar. So we get over there, and these a-holes are like, hey, last call's already happened. And I'm like, you close at midnight. It is 1035. What's going on? And they're, like, closing everything down. And then finally they're just like, well, okay, we'll give you one drink. And then we got to close now. And I'm like, all right, this is excellent. Like, yeah. So it's very much first world problems. But still, we're at a resort on vacation with my wife. We're finally alone away from the four kids, away from Tom Graff. Yeah. And yet the rum bar is closing down an hour and a half before it's supposed to on a Friday night. You can't consume the alcohol. I got it. Can you believe the Yelp review? I'm going to leave my God. Man, I just saw. Yeah. They're going to listen. Let me tell you. I'm sorry, Travis. You had to go through that. Captain Jack would be pissed. Yeah. So what did you do? You just set up the liquor store and survived? Or you just went, I don't know. No, I just sat there and had my drink and talked to Monica. And then we just kind of looked over at the bar and just saw them still cleaning everything up. And they were just kind of staring back at us. So we just stared back at them. And we're like, we're not leaving until midnight. All right, so. Travis is like, and I'm not tipping, you bastard. All right, well, sorry you had to go through that. But, yeah, free play Florida. It sounds like if you guys are considering competing in it, put it on the list. Go to the rum bar by nine if you're considering going. That's the takeaway from this whole segment. Got it. Yeah, I should have. The way that I played on Saturday and Sunday, I should have. All right. Well, that was number two. That was number two on our list. So let's move ahead to number three for all the people keeping track. I have it listed as new games. All three of us have a new game in our possession. Well, Tom's is almost in his possession. Oh, yeah. I'm going to go first. My new game that's here in the house is actually Golden Tee. I did not buy it. This is from Zach. Zach will flip it out, so let me borrow it. He actually has a Golden Tee. No, it's an arcade. Golden Tee the pin. You're talking about no good gophers, Joel. Did I misspeak? Did I say pinball machine or are you just being you? Yeah. All right. So the arcade came. The pedestal. It's Golden Tee. It's 2021. He gave me the update for 2022. But, yeah, Zach has a handful of these in stock. And the reality was Bond still isn't here, or at least it wasn't a few weeks ago when I got this. And I was talking to Zach. I was like, dude, what do you want me to stream, man? And so we're going through the list of the games he has in stock, and every single one of them is a game I've already streamed. So he's like, well, I do have a few golden tees in stock. You want to give that a shot? I was like, let's go. Why not? So I did. I did stream it, and I have a few takeaways from it. And basically, I know my favorite way to play pinball is with other people. I feel like I'm like constantly hunting for a collection of games that keep me entertained, but also are friendly to novice players or friendly to other people to step up to and play. And trying to find that balance is a challenge. And my one takeaway from streaming Golden Tee, I streamed it one night with my brother, was this game is a very good social game. Um, you know, what we find in pinball is like, if, if I step, I'm, I may play from anywhere from 30 seconds to like 15 minutes straight on one ball. And then it's now the second player's turn and just the standing and watching the other play, other person play, unless you're really into pinball, that could get pretty boring, which is one reason my wife never really likes to play down here. Um, but like Golden T's not like that at all. You step up, you hit one shot and then it goes to the other person. And it's just very back and forth. It's a lot of heckling. You know, every shot is either, or at least for us, it was every shot was either awful or it was like surprisingly good. And it was a lot of fun. So do I plan on buying this and adding it to my collection? Not really. I'm not really into golf, but I do, I see it now. I see the value in potentially owning a game like Golden Tee or like Big Buck Hunter, you know, something like that, where it's very, they're very approachable. and accessible and they're fun social games. So, I mean, Travis, I know obviously at the pinball company, you guys stock some of these games. I mean, I assume they sell well. I mean, you've probably, I know you've been doing some content with them. What are your thoughts overall on? Well, I mean, I guess the one question, since you've been playing it for a while, the one question I'd ask, do you think it would be better if it had precision flippers with it? Oh, God, yes. Tom was drinking. I think Tom just spit something on his computer, like for real. I think that actually happened. Why are you the way you are, Travis? It's still in Tom's mouth. No, so it's not out. He's going to choke. It's still in Tom's mouth. Okay. No, his headphones are off, and he has walked away from the computer. So, yeah, golden tea. Yeah. Let's talk about golden tea on a pinball podcast. I like this. I like where this is going. If you can take a side tangent on how a bar closes an hour and a half early, I think I'm allowed to talk about another piece of arcade equipment. No, that's fine. No, we should. You're absolutely right. We need to branch out. We need to talk about different content. You okay, buddy? He's back. Oh, my God, I'm red. Sorry. You all right? Golden Tee's all right. I mean, I don't like it as much as pinball. I mean, I'm not going to lie, but, I mean, you know, it's fine. It's got a track ball. It's got, you know, it's – so you said you had the 2021 version, so it's not the PGA version? No. Okay, because there is two versions. There's the PGA and then the one that you were playing. So, I mean, they're both fun, and it's really popular, and I think it's mainly because you have tournaments and everything. You have money. There's tons of leagues and you're able to play for money at your house as well. So a lot of people are into that. And it's kind of like, I guess the one thing that pinball is wanting to do or a lot of people are asking about, can we compete heads up? And that's kind of what Golden Tee has going for it. You know, and then plus you can I guess you can decorate your golfer or whatever with different stuff and all that. And it has like a seasonal pass. And yeah, I mean, it's pretty popular in bars. with people at homes, I mean, country clubs, you name it. Well, let me ask this question. I mean, both of you guys have a collection at home. I mean, Tom, right behind you, you have an incredible collection of pinball machines, but do either of you guys own any arcade-related equipment besides pinball machines? I mean, I have a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox. I have a gaming PC. No, arcade equipment. I have a couple of arcade one-ups. Arcade one-ups, okay. I have some MAME stuff, and I have one of those, like, touchscreen. Make it touch? Yes, thank you. Yeah. So I have a MAME cabinet, and that thing does get played normally by the kids that come over, our nieces and nephews. And it's just, like, it's super accessible. They understand. It's video games. They understand. But I just, I know, like, Nick and Kevin with Buffalo Pinball, I know, like, Kevin says he always keeps two driving games in his collection. He also has like a Neo Geo cab. So he always wants to have that and Tron. He has a big buck hunter. So even though he has an amazing pinball collection, he tries to keep games in his collection that are for non-pinball people. So it's just I feel like a lot of people in pinball, you either run out of money or space. And I know like that's my problem is I'm out of space. I can have four games and then I have my main cabinet. So it's just one of those, does it warrant losing a spot for a pinball machine to potentially add something that isn't pinball? And I can already tell the answer from you guys is no. No. But there are plenty of listeners that I just, I could see that, trying to find that balance between trying to have, I don't know. I mean, you look on Pinside and there's people that have photos of their game room and they'll have a pool table. And people are like, get rid of that pool table. And that's, you know, three more games or four more games. or there was a couch. It's exactly like eight. Okay, eight games. I know. Oh, you had a pool table and you got rid of it. I had a pool table. Gone. When I was in high school, that's all I did was play pool. Okay. I never touched a pinball machine. So when I finally got a house, I was like, I got to have a pool table. And there it sat forever. Until it was gone. Probably got played ten times. Yeah. Yeah. I know my father-in-law, the house, the last house he lived in, he had a pool table and he played a good bit. But it was, I mean, everybody's different. Everybody has different things. But I was just, I was impressed. I see the appeal now of Golden Tee. And like you were saying, Travis, there is internet connectivity and you do have the ability to do stuff like that where you're saying play games for money or participate in leagues, which is pretty cool. And there's a lot of different courses as well. There's like 100 plus courses. courses. There's a ton of content on there. And I mean, it was fun if that's something you're into, but I just, uh, just seeing like my dad played it, it's just super easy to teach somebody how to play it within the first 30 seconds. And now the two of you guys are playing a very fun kind of social game, which is a hurdle that you have in pinball. I mean, I understand a lot of people when they step up to a pinball machine, they have no idea what's going on. All they're trying to do is keep the ball out of the trough. So they're just, you know, banging on the flippers, hoping And it's, you know, it's just, I don't know, the pinball gets more fun the better you get at it. And it takes a while to get there. While certain games like, yeah, Big Buck Hunter or Golden Tee or Ski Ball, Shuffleboard, you know, all are, I don't know. Those things are really approachable. So, I don't know, just throwing it out there. So great. What you're saying is their hobby is unapproachable. Uh-huh. Yep. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Well, good night, everybody. Thanks for joining us. It's been a great run. Yeah. Good luck in your future hobbies. Yep. Find an easier one, a more approachable one. Find Joel on the Golden Tee podcast. No, I mean, you guys know, though, like pinball, you have to want to learn pinball. Like you've got to want to learn it. You don't have to want. I mean, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to be a tournament player, then you better learn how to play like a tournament player. Okay. Which I still haven't figured out, but. Got it. One day, Tom. One day. Travis is moving. He's like flapping his wings over there. Different strokes for different folks. I mean, it's like. So, for instance, when I was in college, I had it in my head that as soon as I became an adult, I was going to get a game room and I was going to have just like all these different arcade games, a couple of pinball machines and this and that. Right. Because as a kid, that's that's a cool thing. That's what you want to do. You want to have a man cave when you get older. You want to have the home theater. You want to do all that. And once I started playing pinball a little bit more, I realized, wait, for me, this is just so much more fun than simply standing there and mashing on one button and moving a joystick back and forth. Like, honestly, I just felt like a jackass just doing that all the time once I realized what pinball was. So for me personally, I just feel more challenged and more rewarded, and it's just a lot more fun for me to experience pinball on that level and to take the same skill set right and go to a different theme or go to a different manufacturer and try a different era of game And I don necessarily get I not saying you can do that with arcade or whatnot but I just don feel like for me I don get that same feeling of joy or whatever you want to call it I mean, you're preaching to the choir. I get it. I was in the same way. I had multiple arcade cabinets. I actually had a shooting game. and then once I got one pinball machine, I was hooked. Like, it just, I absolutely understand the appeal to a pinball machine and, I don't know, it's just every game's different. Like, every time you plunge that ball, you kind of try to, you're always trying to keep it in control, but you really don't know where that ball's going to go while, you know, when you're playing Mario, Super Mario for the, you know, 900th time, World 1, Level 1 of Super Mario is the exact same every single time you play it. You know, and I get that. Everybody, some people like that, and that's totally fine. But I don't know. I just brought it up. It's just if you're one of those people that has a large game room and you're kind of looking for something different, then, yeah, I could see, you know, try out a Golden Tee or try out a Buck Hunter or something. And what you may find is that that may be the most played game the next time you have a party because some people just want something besides pinball. So I am curious to know, what games did you turn down to get a golden tee? I said it was games I've already – so the games that I got. No, I know. I'm just wondering what games you decided you didn't want to bring back in to play again. Well, I mean, first and foremost, Rush, right? I mean, get that game. No. Oh, boy. No. Rush is actually one I would – The relief comes out. Rush is one that I would actually consider streaming again. Tom, do you hear that? That's Raymond getting in his car, tires screeching, at Joel's house right now. Bring in premium. I'm ready to stream it. No, I mean, I've streamed Avengers. I have a Turtles. It's stuff that he currently has in stock. Led Zeppelin, Rush. What else did he have? Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels I've streamed. What about Legends of Valhalla? Have you done that one yet? I don't know if he has that. That wasn't listed. That wasn't one of the options? He did have Cactus Canyon in stock, and I was curious about it. I was like, well, I'll stream that. And he said, those are actually selling pretty well. So he didn't want to, like, let me borrow one that could sell. I mean, with the holidays rolling around, I get it. So, yeah. Oh, sorry. But, hey, I mean, yeah, it was just the stuff. I mean, check out FlippinOut.com. That was pretty much everything there, and it was all stuff that I touched. But I would – Rush was one that I was considering because he had a premium in stock. So it's like, well, that would be kind of cool to experience how different it was. Let the record show that Joel turned down a Rush premium for a golden tee. Yeah. I would rather play – We're entering that in. I don't – I'm so – I don't want to play pinball anymore. Does that mean Rush is trending down? No, I'm trending down, if anything. It's true. No. Rush is – I will say – Oh, Market Trends. That was really good, Tom. Hey. Oh, you did the voice for that. I did not know that. Tom, you were wide awake tonight, man. I don't know what you ate or drank before that. I had some freaking Mountain Dew before we got on. I did, and then I had some hot cocoa. Ooh. Okay, get this guy some Mountain Dew with hot cocoa. Whipped cream on it. Get some whipped cream on Tom. Settle down, Tom. My God. Next tournament, you're going to look over and he's going to be spraying whipped cream in his mouth to wake himself up. Come on, Tommy boy. Here we go. Another round. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's enough of that. So there's my new game. I still, Travis, you weren't here for this discussion, but we did talk about it with Carl. I got my Godzilla. I got my Godzilla Premium and I'm hooked. I mean, I am playing that thing every single day. and it's just such a fun game. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir. Everybody listening to this podcast already knows this at this point, but having one at home where I can really enjoy the sound and the light show and Keith, I mean, just released a new update that they're continuing to add to the code and tweak things and tweak light shows. What an amazing game and I'm actually going back and watching some other streams. Shout out to like, I think it's Chrome Candy Pinball. They had two really good streams that the guy was talking his way through, his strategy. I've rewatched some of Carl's streams, IU Pinball, and just the complexity of that code and some of the decision-making that you can make is really, I'm just really impressed. I'm super impressed by the game. And some of this code is there that wasn't there when I borrowed the Pro, like when the game was first released. So I'm kind of, I don't know, rediscovering aspects of this game. So I know we did a triple combo on this. and really broke it down. But there's a few things I want to go over real quick, and these are some of the questions that I have. So, I mean, from a real basic standpoint, if you're just trying to get through modes in the game, those are your battles. You hit the ranch, you hit the scoop, boom. You fight a bad guy after you defeat him. You hit the scoop again. You can change cities. Then you can do it all over again, and that's how you work your way through the battles. But what I'm trying to understand is there's clearly a decision of when do you change cities versus when do you stay in the city and try to continue to blow it up? Because I understand if you stay in the city, there's four goals. The four goals are defeating the monster. That's raid. Tank multiball, hitting the ten shots. Hit the scoop. You're in tank. Bridge multiball, switch hits. You hit the magna grab, and you do that a few times. And the last one is power, right? And power deals with the Tesla targets. But it's – I know there's an advantage if you do all four of those in the same ball. It's like you should stay in and try to blow it up. But if you drain out at some point, does it make – I don't know. Do you guys have a – like, I don't know. Do you have a rule of thumb? Like, oh, well, I defeated a monster, but then I drained ball one. So might as well get into another city and then try to do the other things in the other – I don't know. You guys understand my question? So what's the answer? I tend to leave the cities and just try to get to like Planet X but that's just me. Okay. Unless I had something like really juicy going on. Well what do you mean by really juicy? Well like I played like a super huge tank and bridge and I don't know. Okay. So when you change cities, you get, there's the annihilation bonus, and what's the other one? There's two. Carnage? Carnage. So you don't have to, you know, phrase it like I'm a five-year-old. I'm just, I don't need babies first, okay? Shout out to Brady and Dennis Creasel. No, you know what I'm saying? I'm just helping you along. I feel like you're learning this yourself. You're just kind of formulating it, and you're getting it out there. This is like a group therapy session with us and 3,000 other people. So, yeah, let's go ahead. That's underestimating. No, like Carl. So Carl, I know he does everything before he changes cities. I'm not Carl. I know that. So maybe I shouldn't expect to do everything before I change a city. But I just need that basic rule of thumb of like, oh, I've done three things. It's worth staying and trying to do the fourth before I move. Come on, Travis. You got it. He just punched his mic like five feet away from him. What's your strategy, Travis? You have it. You play like every day. Right. So are you wanting to play like me or are you wanting to play like Joel? Like what's your plan here? How about a slightly better Joel? Slightly better. Slightly better Joel. Okay. That's called improve. I'm trying to improve. Okay. The reason why I'm asking this is because whenever I play Godzilla now at home, I'm just aiming to beat the entire game, get to the very end, and then I'm done. And then it's, what is it, King of the Monsters? Yeah. Okay, so you're just blowing through it. Yeah, I want to get to the very end, and, yeah, that's usually my goal. I mean, I might stop and look at the scenery every now and again, but, no, what I enjoy doing about the game is not necessarily going for large carnage bonuses. I've done that before, but my preference is playing, like, Terror of Mechagodzilla, Monster Zero just because those are a lot of fun I love blowing those up and just getting to Planet X playing through that and then getting to the end because the wizard mode on on Godzilla it's just it's a lot of fun okay it's really enjoyable okay so what if I ask then what's the best way to get a billion points uh probably Gigan your jet fighters get them to um 10 pretty quick so you get your extra ball that's worth 50 or if you get a Rodan 2x that's worth 100, then if you can take that into Ebra 2x, you can build everything up pretty quick in a couple of destruction jackpots. You'll be pretty close. So you're just saying, so once again, it's due to battles. You're not trying to focus on one city, do X, Y, and Z, and boom, you're out of battles. No, I mean, the thing about the game, it's pretty well balanced overall. So you don't necessarily have to just pick one thing and just focus on that one thing. You can play through the game and just be strategic with your power-ups. That's the main thing. So are you playing on competition mode or are you playing it on default? No, I'm not. So you're playing on default. Yes. So here's what I want you to do. Here's the way to get to a billion, okay? Right now you need to go change your game to competition mode so that way your power-ups are deterministic. No, this is important, Joel, because it gives you, like, that way you know what's coming up with your power-ups. So you understand what the power-ups are? Yeah. Okay. So the reason why this is important, because the very first one, you can choose to either boost up whichever multiball you want to do. Oh, you're saying the Godzilla power-ups. I'm thinking allies, but the Godzilla power-ups are – we're not going to video. If we got a video, Travis has walked out of his closet, which is all, you know. What do you mean? I was saying power-ups. What do you mean? I thought the allies are power-ups. I know what you're talking about. Of course, I get it. You thought the allies were power-ups? No, I don't think this confusion is so absurd, okay? I was thinking of, I was like, oh, yeah, it's 2X, and then you're, no, okay, I get it. The Godzilla power-ups, level one, I understand. And every time I play, those options change. I get it. But you're in competition mode. Just go back to Golden Tee, Joel. Let's just shut this down. So in competition mode, it's not randomized. They're always the same. You know, Carl would explain this to me in a very nice and polite way. He would have. He would have. Okay, sorry. You're right. Let me go back. Okay. Since you don't want me to explain it like you're five, yet when I say power-ups, you think I'm talking about allies. We've got to figure out how to communicate here, Joel. I found that myself. It's not like I kept you going along and then I caught on, okay? I did see the light bulb go off there. I saw the look of confusion and then this sudden realization that, wait. So, okay, here's why it's important. Power-up number one, right? This is after you get two power-up arrows. You know what those are? Yes. Okay, perfect. So either on the left flipper you have what? It's like Godzilla multiball $250,000 extra, I think is what it is. And then the right one, it's the Mechagodzilla for $500,000 extra. So you can choose that, right? So whichever multiball you want to go to, pick that. And then always for power-up number two, get your Tier 1 battle time bonus 5X, which is on the right-hand side. Yes, because I've definitely been picking give me 20 more seconds in the Tier 1 battles. Do you have that option in competitive? Yes. Yes. And nobody picks it, Joel. You know why nobody picks it? Because you like your points. Yes. And you said you wanted to get to a billion. And it makes sense. Well, I can't get the points if I don't complete the mode, you know? Well, what mode are you playing when you pick that? I play everything but the Groundhog's Day, whatever that guy, the guy that digs around and bounces like Megalon. Megalon? Yeah, I cannot. That guy. Tom, I feel like I'm explaining the rule set to one of my kids at this point. Hey, you know what? The groundhogs mode. No, you guys know. Elwin's weeping somewhere right now. No, he's probably laughing. He's probably laughing, which, you know, that's fine. Okay, so. Just because you guys know the names doesn't mean that the listeners know the names. I fully agree with you. Don't play Megalon. Yeah, that was really freaking hard. Yeah, for you, don't play Megalon. I'm not saying that because you're Joel. I'm saying that because you have to hit a bunch of shots that are combinations. Otherwise, you'll be up Schitt's Creek very fast if you start picking shots. If I have a multiball, I'd consider it. But even then. No. Why do that with a multiball? Because I'm hoping the chaos of the ball just takes care of a few of my shots. Which mode is perfect for chaos with a multiball out of the four? Which one? Perfect would probably be the, yeah, the electricity one. I don't know the name. It's five shots. You don't know. What do you do? Titanosaurus. Yes. Okay, good. The electricity one. Yeah, the blue targets. All right, so you're ignoring the groundhog one, and you're going to do the electricity one. But the electricity one, I'm actually – there are times that I play that with – I've done that before. I know we have, and I'm sorry, but now that I own the game, it's just – I'm actually playing it all the freaking time. That mode, though, I actually feel like I can pick off those five shots pretty well. Like that mode. So when do you play that? I mean, I will play that. That's what I'm saying. Normally, I don't focus on the multiball. Do you want to get to a billion, Joel? I get it now. Do you want to get to a billion? I thought that was the essence of our conversation right now. I understand now. I'm sorry I even brought up the conversation. We're not playing for fun, Joel. We're playing for points. Normally. We're playing for points. This is like the master talking to the student. This is like 70s kung fu movies. This is what I'm trying to figure out, Tom. He had Carl on just last week, right, who is legitimately one of the two best Godzilla players in the entire world. He just destroys the game. He could tell you everything inside and out. So, Tom, you want to get Carl for next week? I get it fine. We don't have to go deeper. But here's what I would say, Joel. I would say just go with Tier 1 Battle, time bonus 5X. Okay? Stack that up because you're on a premium, right? Oh, yeah. This is perfect. This is perfect. Okay. The easiest way, and everybody get your notebooks out and forget my camera. I don't care. I'm getting ahead of this. Write this shit down. Yeah. The easiest way on a premium, in my opinion, is get your multiball lit, your Godzilla multiball. The reason why? Because that building drops down, right? So now you turn the right ramp into returning back to the left ramp. Yeah, Geigen. Okay. Boom, boom, boom. Right. Just get Gigan done, get it out of the way. Plus, you stack your jet fighters as well, right? So you complete your jet fighters, you light an ally. Does that make sense? So a little along the way, too, you could try to build up your heat ray. You could try to build up your bridge. You could do some other stuff along the way as well to get your power-ups going. Because once you get to a certain point, you get the power-up number two, and you have your Godzilla multiball power-up as well, right? And you have your 2X running at the same time. that's where a lot of points will pile up quick with titanosaurus okay but how do you get to titanosaurus though what do you have to do with your first city you have to beat the guy and then change cities then leave it yep exactly so that's why you just want to get out of it as soon as possible get just stack up all that and you will see points to start piling up for yourself see there's my that's been my problem because i've been very focused on like i want to try to compete complete as much as I can within a city because it's like, I'll defeat the guy. I'm all over the guy can train. I mean, that makes sense. You get that building to pop down one level and then boom, eight shots on guy. Again, you feel like a boss. It's awesome. You get, you get through that. But then I'm like, okay, I got him knocked out. I'm a few shots away from whatever, like tank. I only have two more tanks. So let me go ahead and do tank while I'm in the city. And then I drain. I'm like, well, crap, I didn't go to the four. Should I keep doing them? Should I change? You're saying just, just change. Well, for your goal, too, why play a naked multiball? How did you say that word? Naked. Naked. Nope, naked. Naked. Naked. There's an A. Stop playing a nude multiball. Naked. Naked. I pronounce it like an Oklahoman. That's how I roll. Wow. Okay. Okay. All right. We were naked. So you're saying, yes, only don't play a multiball unless you're in a battle. That's what I'm hearing. Did I hear that right? Sometimes. Sometimes. For you. Don't play your naked, your naked multiple. Sorry. Naked. There you go. There you go. You guys happy? Welcome to America. But that's what I'll give you for the beginning. I don't want to like just lose everybody in the weeds getting to the mid game and end game of this, but that will be your early opener right there. Like start experimenting with that. Try to put that puzzle together. and that's probably going to be the best way for you to go about it. Now, somebody else might have a different opinion on how they would approach it. That's just for what your goal is and for what your setup is and for what the situation is, I promise you that's going to be the easiest way for you to get out of the gate and go in the right direction. No, I mean, the truth is I'm having a blast. I'm having a blast with the game. And the fact that I have these decisions, it's like, I don't know, I just, yeah, I want to see it blow up. But then there's other games where I just play, you know, and it's like, and then points, you know, I get it. The more of the game you see, the more of the points you're going to find along the way. But it's just, I really enjoy that. Like, I've really had a ton of fun with this game so far because there's so much to see. Every time I hit start, it's like, oh, what do I want to, do I want to focus on whatever, bridge, or I want to focus on tank, do I want to do a different battle? You know, I've done Gigan two games in a row. Let me go ahead and go to Eberron instead and rip some spinners. Like, Eberron? I don't know. Whatever. What's the crab dude? Eberra? Eberra. See? Yeah. Nailed it. Yeah. Very close. If the words that I'm struggling to pronounce happen to be whatever, kaijus, I mean, like, I'll take it. Okay? At least I can say naked. Naked. What did you say earlier? You said, like, folk? No. Folk? Naked? Do we really need to go into Oklahoma speak? No. Do we got to do this? Everybody listening from Oklahoma knows exactly what I'm saying. Forget the other 49 states. It's whatever. All right. But seriously, though, Joel, pay attention to your power-ups as well. Got it. Because that is important getting through. So basically, know your city combos. That will help you. understand how, I guess, just understand your path. I will tell you right now, I do not know the best path to get the power-ups as quickly as possible. So your best path to get the power-ups as quickly as possible is get a city combo. That'll give you one. Is there a place you can see what the city combos are? On the LCD screen. It'll be there. you like push and hold to look at the menu or it's on the main yep okay got it so you'll want to get at least one you want to make sure that you conquer your first city which you'll do after basically getting your tier one battle and switching cities right so you'll get a few right there you want to dial in your loop because if you get three consecutive loops that gives you one as well and let's see i'm trying to think of anything else off the top of my head because i'm starting jet fighter attack too will give you some as well so that's why it's important to do both uh gigan and your uh jet fighters at the same time just inlanes like just keep the inlanes coming i will say the first it was either the first or second game day i owned the game i leveled up to five and i got to what is it um x not x terror terror it was one of the i lit one of the things like one of the mini wizard modes in the middle and terror mecha godzilla or something I don't know. I think it was that. And it was great. It was great. And I was like, oh, sweet. And I haven't seen it since. Well, and that's your power-up four as well. And, I mean, obviously you've got to play your multiball well too. Yeah, you have to score a super in one of the multi-balls to award it. But as long as you understand how the power-ups work and just basically putting your pieces on the board exactly where you need them, then that'll open up the game big time for you come the mid game. So this is just all early game stuff. Got it. So let's go over the power-ups and see what Joel would pick here. So number three, Joel, destruction jackpot plus three seconds or tier two battle timer plus 20 seconds. What would you pick? So this is on competition mode. This is on competition mode. Yeah, I haven't had those two. You've never seen this, have you? No, no, I have. I have, and depending on, like, if I'm on ball three, I'm not taking tier two because I'm like, I'm probably not going to see those. Like, I'm already on ball three. I'm not going to see them. So I take destruction jackpot. No. But that's what I would do if I, okay, that's wrong. But it is Joel, though, Tom. Like, he could use the extra three seconds. I could, yeah, because I'll miss that shot. I mean, there are times I could use the three seconds. But are you going to build up your destruction jackpot, though, Joel? No, I have not purposely, I mean. Do you know how to build it up? No. Like, how do I, I see it's lit, and there's plenty of times where I'm like, crap, I can't start the multiple because I have to hit my destruction jackpot and give that a shot. Tom's right. Go with tier two battle. No, I mean, you know, you just explain how to build it up. If you get to tier two battle, you can get a lot of points in those tier two battles. I have gotten to tier two battles before, But normally I just pick the middle one, which is a multiball. Yeah, which is a safe way to play, but. Apparently there's no points in it. Yeah, there's not a lot. Unless you get, like, really deep into it. Yeah, you know me. Like you're crushing the multiball. Just crushing it. So take, like, the first one or the second one where, like, you. What's the one where you build up the switches and then you shoot the scoop? Is that the third one? Yeah, I believe so. Because the first one is Ghidorah, right? Where you got to just build everything up and fight or flee. I like switch hitting modes. Like, give me those. Then you should be playing Bridge Attack early on. Yeah, I like Bridge. Bridge is fun. There you go. But no, so what's the, you're saying Destruction Jackpot. What am I doing wrong? Because sometimes it's worth a lot of points and other times it's not worth anything. So what am I, how do I build up the Destruction Jackpot? It just depends on how you do in those modes and multiples. So, okay, so if I go straight into Gigan and I just, boom, eight ramps, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, blew it up, the destruction jackpot for Gigan would be pretty big? Around $25 million or so, $22, $25, because you'll have your 2X destruction jackpot at that point and whatever value that you're bringing into it. So why do I have a 2X? Because you beat the moat. Okay. So you get plus one X for every Kaiju battle that you complete. So you can do that. You can do saucers. You can do rage combos. You could do tail whips. You could do trains. You could do loops. If I finish tanks, is Destruction Jackpot lit then? Or no? Destruction Jackpot's only lit. I think it is. I think so. You got me thinking hard now because. I'm sorry. I'm trying to think. I'm pretty sure you do. I usually save tanks for the mid-game. So, quite typically, it is lit right after. I'm living in the early game. I'm going to say yes and then have somebody correct me, like Carl or Keith. Okay, so this rambling that we're doing, if this is helpful or harmful to any of the listeners, feel free to email us at tripledrain at gmail.com. We have given the exact way to at least get to 400, 500 million early on. I have no problem. I think my – I don't know. What's your DC right now? I'd have to look it up on Insider Connected and let me know. But it's less than a billion. It's over – it's definitely over $500 million for sure. So it's like $510 million. I don't know. I can pull it up here, but talk amongst yourselves. Okay. We've got time. We can edit this out. Tom, what's up? Oh, you're going to edit it? Yeah, right. You're right. Do you know Joel got a golden tee and turned down Rush Premium? That's kind of an insult to both Raymond, Tim Sexton, and myself. He's on board, too. I've been getting really pissed right now. Tom, you're including yourself? Who could I offend? Just being a huge Rush fan, that's all. Yeah, I'm just offended. And a friend of Joel. In that order, right, eh? It's like a fucking slap in the face. I'm so sorry, Tom. You deserve better. Well, here I feel, okay, my high score, suck it, Travis, is 791,000. Travis, what's your high score? I don't care. Nobody cares about Travis. No, I care. So almost 800, okay? I'm not, that's what I, but I feel like I got that score within, like, the first two days of owning the game where I wasn't really trying to think too much. I was just playing the game. And I was like, oh, shoot, getting a billion won't be that bad at all. And now that I'm actually trying to strategize, I clearly am overthinking. Are you regressing? Is that what's happening? Yes. Something's going wrong. My high on the premium is $16,300,000. Let's move on. We're still on .3. Godzilla Tangent was not on the list, but I appreciate you guys. Thanks for sticking with me, even though Travis did leave the room at least once. Are we supposed to talk about our new games too or something, Tom? Joel just monopolized the whole combo here. No, we'll go to point four then. New games. So that was my new experience. Those are my new games or what I've been experiencing. Tom has a new game coming very, very soon. No, no. It was delivered today. Oh, but you haven't. But I have not yet to see it. Oh, well, thank you for prioritizing the podcast over going to open your new game. Well, it's already been opened. No, you just haven't played it. I just haven't played it because it's on route. It's James Bond Pro. Ooh, okay. And then, Travis, the pinball company obviously got theirs in, and you've unboxed it, and you've started making content on it. So I'm going to shut up because I have nothing to contribute. I have yet to touch a pro – sorry, I have yet to touch a Bond. So, I don't know, first impressions. First impressions, Travis. What are your thoughts? Well, after unboxing it twice. Oh, thank you, Tom. I appreciate that. Yeah, it was kind of nutty. We got one in and literally took the glass off, got it all set up, testing things out, seeing how it plays. And then somebody got one play on it, and then the node board just went kaput. So that's exactly what happened. way it felt yes which node board does it matter one of them um i want to say is node board four whatever went to the flippers and the start button i think it was the fourth one that's an important one yeah so it's like you're seeing that it was set on free play you're hitting the button and nothing's happening so yeah but um yeah so it this is my first time to be able to just be alone with the game test things out see how it plays like we've we've seen it at expo and i i think it's minutes some other shows as well in the past couple of months because I know obviously it was revealed what about a little over two months ago now on Death Flip I think and of course everybody's known about Bond for quite some time now and we're all still waiting on L160th to come out as well so it's just for me whenever whenever I heard about the theme I'm not a huge fan of James Bond but I did finally watch the very first movie Doctor No. What did you think? It was so unintentionally hilarious Like Monica and I were just laughing throughout the whole movie And I don know if that obviously they weren going for that but just seeing it now And I don want to give away spoilers if nobody watched it before because obviously you're going to see some of the scenes on the game or whatever, but yeah, do yourself a favor. Watch it. If you have time that way, it'll give you, I guess, perspective of what's going on in the play field, but I can see why people like it. Quick question. Have you seen any of the doctor no scenes on the LCD screen? So on the pro with the Dr. No. No. Dr. No. Dr. No is not coded in currently, no. Oh, okay. Just checking. Dr. No, that would be a no. The Dr. No pro, which you have in your possession, certainly has no Dr. No content within the game besides the translate. Correct. All right. All right. So here's the thing. When I got this pen, I knew that they were still behind on the code, but I went in with a clear mind. I did not watch any other videos. I just played it at Expo a couple of times, not really thinking about what the code was because, just like we talked about, I didn't judge it because I knew the code wasn't there, right? Yeah. So it was just judging the layout, which the layout's fun enough. It has a lot of flow to it. It plays fast. It definitely feels like a Gomez and plays like a Gomez. but yeah so this was my first time to really sit down with the code and see what all's there and just quite frankly just like joel pointed out you know with dr no not even being in the game for the dr no pro there's just there's no code there i mean i got one game and i pretty much got through everything that there was and yeah i hopefully they come out with more code pretty soon i will say in its state right now, it's disappointing. I mean, it is. If you're going to play this on location and you're not sure what you're getting into, just be prepared. There's just a lot missing right now. Is Dr. No like a selectable villain then? And then he's murdered and nothing happens? No, it's not selectable at all. It will be eventually. Of course, of course. Yeah, and there's six villains total, and that's on the right ramp. And the only two that are in there right now is like, how do you pronounce this? Like Specter Island, I guess, is what it is, and then the Incredible Laser Ray. So the second and the third one, those are the only two that are in there right now. And I think I was adding it all up because you have villains, you have henchmen, you have the Specter weapons, you have, I guess, the Taker multipliers. Yeah, with the women, you have the Q branch and gadgets to the right-hand side. And I can't remember the number off the top of my head. I think it was like 29 different possibilities overall with the inserts, and I think maybe 10 are in the game, so around 35% or so, somewhere right around there. Yeah, I remember, yeah, you said 35%. The numbers you just said don't add up, but it's 35% is roughly. When it comes to all the crap that will be coded in, you're saying like 30-ish percent of it is currently in the game. I'm sorry. I overshot it. It's 0.34, 0.4 percent. No, I'm just saying you said 29 things, and there are 10 in the game. That's not 35 percent. No, that is. I just did it. 29 divided by 10? Oh, wait. Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. I did say 29, didn't I? Yes. That's 29%, right? My understanding, there would be no math. No, 29, I'm an idiot. It's like roughly 30. It's like roughly 30%. No, that's 35. That's like 34. There's no way that's 35. Why are you convincing me I'm wrong here? No, I know I'm right. Maybe you're right. Maybe Oklahoma math is better than I thought. Maybe you're right. Get your calculator out. I'm on it. You're making me second guess myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. 29. Somebody check schools, you know, how they rank in Indiana and Oklahoma. Crap, it's 34%. You're right. You're right. Okay. Jeez. My bad. You had me convinced I wasn't. You need to go on Big Brother. You had me fully convinced. I was wrong. Look at him. He's like, he's all red. Well, yeah, make an Oklahoma math joke. All right. So you're playing the game. Obviously, everybody that has reviewed the game so far, all they're talking about is the shots. You're saying it plays well enough. Nothing's changed there. The right side was a lot of fun. the left side you're saying is, I remember that was a quote from you before, but the code, the code is what do you remember when you flip on the game? It's like 0.6. It's 0.7 right now, but it's a little bit, it's a little bit jarring because at the very beginning, there is a disclaimer, even before you hit start, that's letting you know right quick that there's things not in the game that they're waiting for certain approval approvals from the licensor. And then even when you hit start, it's still on there. And I've never seen that on a game before. I don't know if it's been done in the past, maybe before I got into pinball. I've just never seen that. Well, I've got to give credit to the Super Awesome Pinball Show. So they had George Gomez on recently, and I think it's going to be a two-part interview, so it's only like the first part that's currently been released. But George talked a lot about this, and he has mentioned that of the different licensors that they work with, they take a ton of pride in this. You know, licensing departments, they'll have an office and everything they've ever licensed is probably in that office. So whether it's like James Bond Monopoly or a James Bond lunchbox, they're doing that. But when it comes to a pinball machine like that is, in George's words, like one of the best things, you know, a license could really ever have because it's such an amazing display of the license. So I think there are certain licensors like Marvel that Stern's worked with them enough. Whoever he's working with has probably gotten to the point of like, okay, we may not need to scrutinize so much. Like Stern clearly has this figured out. While I think there are other licensors like Led Zeppelin, which was like, this is all you get, period. And it sounds like James Bond, they're giving him, they're giving them a lot. Like they actually have access to a lot of music and a lot of assets. but I think they're being extremely controlling or picky on what they're actually going to allow will be in the game basically. And George says that approval process is, it's almost like they're streaming the game. They have to show, you know, throw the ball around or flip the ball around and like, well, once we do this, then this is going to display. And if they have to do that for literally every single call out and sound and video that they want to put in the game and then you're waiting for somebody at the licensor to approve it that could take forever and so i don't know it just depends on i'm just assuming some licensors are like just make what you want and then send us a you know send us a big long video at the end or this one may be like no we want to see everything well my hope is is that and this is kind of what i'm assuming i don't know this for a fact this is just in my head canon right now that there's a bunch of modes that are already done. They're just not in the game because the lacking of approvals. So I personally don't think it's so much that it's just not done. I think they're just not allowed to put it in the game yet. Well, would you rather have the mode in the game and a blank screen or like with no video and no sound? Would you rather that or would you rather have what you have? It's funny that you point that out because I was just talking to Monica about this other day that I was just like, you know, I wonder if they had these types of issues that were anywhere close to this back in the DMD era before they had to mess with LCD, before video clips and everything like that. But I don't know. I owned X-Men when it first came out. That game was like terrible. Yeah, there's I mean, and this is it's happened before where games are put out, you know, for public consumption, for people to buy, for people to coin drop in. And they're just, it's not a complete game. Well, Batman 66, right? Yeah. And that was, and even Stranger Things, when it first came out. And that's Stranger Things as Lonnie, just like this is Lonnie. We were going over it that I think Stranger Things had something like 19 or 20 code updates in one year or something like that. I mean, it was just like an insane amount of code updates. I mean, yeah, it's a fun game now. It's just, yeah, going back to Bond, what worries me is that there's so many launch parties that are coming up. in about a week and a half as of this recording. And, of course, it's probably going to be a lot of people's first time experiencing this game. And you have to believe that people at Stern don't want necessarily potential customers or people discovering the Stern brand or even people that know about the Stern brand. You don't necessarily want them having that type of experience because at the end of the day, everybody wants somebody to have fun playing pinball. And so I'm kind of curious how that will play out. And I'm also curious since the LEs, they're scheduled to go out here in just a few weeks. I think it's like, what, two weeks, two and a half weeks or so. I'm very curious to see if they're able to get code updates before those go out. Because my biggest fear is, is what, a $13,000 game going to somebody's home that's at .7 code. Yeah. So I have to believe there's a couple more updates that they'll probably get in before then. But, yeah, there's just – I think as of right now, there's two villain modes in. There's, I think, two henchmen modes that are in. Four out of the six specters are in. And I think two out of six Q branch gadgets are in right now. So I hear what you're saying. And the Playfield X doesn't work either. I mean, it says that it's lit on the LCD, but you hit the action button and nothing happens with it. What, I mean, I get it. You know, and I noticed that when we were playing Freeplay Florida. Sorry, go. Oh, you're fine. You only get one first impression. I totally get that. And I know, like, Stranger Things was that situation. So many people played it at launch parties or went out on location and hated it. And they went on Pinside and reviewed it as such. as such and it was like the hole was dug and that game had to dig its way out slowly over time to the point now where people love stranger things and want to own it and they're trying to hunt one down so i don't know i mean i i'm glad that you know there are other games that we've discussed on this podcast that we don't like the layout and you can't change that with code that late the layout's not going to improve over time um so at least the good thing is i mean it's a good theme Bond is a good theme. We know they have assets. They're just not there yet. And the layout is good. People are enjoying the layout. So this game really can only go up from here, but it is hard. It's hard to have patience. It's hard to have patience for that, especially when you're putting this type of money into potentially owning the game or even routing a game. I mean, normally I've never routed games, but from the little bit that I've, the conversation I've had with operators, I mean, normally it's the first few weeks is typically like the best time for a new game. and I hope that's not a problem from Coindrop. You know, people just be immediately turned off by the game. Yeah, and a big thing is, too, is that, I mean, with what Borg and Sexton and Raymond have done with Rush and with what Elwin and their entire crew have done with Godzilla, I mean, the bar has been set so high now for anything that's coming out of Stern. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, there was, and we've talked about this before off podcast, there's always bound to be dips, you know, in certain aspects of quality, whether it's design, whether it's software, whether it's code, not everything can be a home run. Sometimes you're going to have a single. Sometimes you're going to have a double. That's just the way it goes at times. I mean, even Jersey Jack, prime example of that. Guns N' Roses comes out. You know, everybody loves it. Sound like hotcakes. Toy Story comes out. It's a little bit different story. So, you know, there's just always that ebb and flow when it comes with pinball. But, you know, I don't know. Hopefully, it seems like that just judging off the inserts of the game, that there should be a lot in this game. So now it's just going to boil down to will everything be cohesive once it comes together? Like, will I care about these modes? And oddly enough, when I was playing the game, I found myself not really caring about, I guess, just the theme integration of the shots, if that makes sense. So, like, if you play Rush, because all of us have played Rush, and Tom will know this more than anybody, the theme integration with the modes is excellent on that game. It really makes total sense when you're playing. When you're playing Spirited Radio, when you're playing Working Man, when you're playing all those modes, it just, in limelight, it all really blends in well together. And that's very difficult to do with a pinball machine, to make it kind of just be cohesive with the type of theme that you're wanting to go with. Let alone a music pin. Right, exactly, exactly, because you're very much at the mercy of what the design is. And so with something like this, I almost feel like James Bond has to heavily rely on call outs. It has to heavily rely on video assets. And without that there, it just it feels bare. Like I didn't really feel anything out of playing the modes that were there. And even the what was it? You heard that a lot. I don't think any other songs are in there right now. It was just that song over and over and over again. So I'm going to feel like, yeah. You're going to feel like Toy Story with the, I'm going to learn to hate the. You know what? Admittedly, I was playing through Bond, and I told you guys this, too. I was just like, I was thinking of the Thanos meme where he's like, perhaps I treat you too harshly. But you're saying about Toy Story? Well, at least the Toy Story modes that were there. I mean, I felt like I was playing a full game. You know, with Bond, it's obvious. We can't BS people. It's obvious that a full game's not there right now. and everybody knows that, so you've got to call a spade a spade, and hopefully something comes out. I'm anticipating that there should be an update prior to the launch party, though. Hopefully. I mean, imagine a world where there is a launch party to where you only have two of the main modes available in the game for villains, and one of them's not Dr. No, and everybody's playing on the Dr. No version. But unfortunately, it might be out of Stern's control. Well, yeah, that's what I mean. It's not like they're withholding it and throwing up a middle finger to all of us. I mean, obviously, it's the licensor. It's a bad situation. It's frustrating for everybody. I imagine they're probably very frustrated by this. Could it be something that they recommend people not do launch parties, or at least at this point, and postpone them? I mean anymore there's been so many postponements with this already it's like maybe they just got to get the show on the road and get ready for the next pin coming out have launch parties been postponed before maybe because of like COVID but because of like just straight up because the game is just not ready for it I'm not sure I mean I think that trains left the station for this because there's so many different postings on Facebook and everything and everybody's showing off like I saw was a Helicon brewery had five of them on the floor and so yeah it's just but there's we did discover one very specific way though just if you want to win your launch party and the code stays the same there's one very specific way to just absolutely annihilate it well yeah let's go into that because that's what I was going to ask you I was one sure if you want to how do you how do you blow up the game as of right now. And then two, you know what there's after playing this, there has to be stuff that you're seeing that you're seeing, you know, that you're enjoying or potential of like, Oh, this is kind of, I see what, I see what they're trying to do here. Um, what, I don't know what, if you want to answer both those questions. Yeah. Yeah. So I will say when it comes to the code, there's a couple of things that I'm intrigued by. So there seems to be something to do with the pops that gives you awards after so many switch hits and you hit a certain threshold. So I think the first threshold's at 20, which gives you a playfield multiplier, and I think it resets to zero. Then you go back up to 25, and it gives you, I think it's like super pops, resets. Then you go back up to 30, and it lights the Q branch, right? And then, yep, there goes my camera. Forget it. Forget it. We'll just keep going. And then you go to 30, and then it just repeats this process and goes in by increments of five all the way up to 50. And so that type of mechanic I do like. I'm intrigued by that. There seems to be that same type of mechanics with the spinner on the left. So you're saying that you like the fact that the pops are always counting towards something. It gives a reason. Yeah. But I will say as of right now, it's way overpowered. Okay. Way overpowered. Yeah. The scoring is very unbalanced towards that. And we'll get to that meta here in just a few. But, yeah, the spinner, there's something there. I need to look into it a little bit more. But there was certain count-ups going on. but you can't tell because it's not on the LCD screen either, but it's obvious that there is something there. And the same thing was happening with the – I want to say it was with the rocket ship. I forget if it was the Spectre targets or if it was the rocket ship. That's similar to, like, Iron Maiden, right, with the – Yeah, yeah. I mean, just the difference was instead of it being complete after once, it would reset, and then you'd do it again, and you'd get a new award. Okay. So I did like that because it gave you a reason to hit different shots. Okay. So that part's intriguing to me. I mean, obviously the shots are fun. The game plays super fast. The left eject, I mean, it is what it is. It's not my favorite, but the left orbit is a fun shot to hit. The shot between the ramps on the right side, that's a lot of fun to hit. But that's the one that will drop it into the pops sometimes and also will whip all the way around other times? Well, so what we discovered during a multiball, than pretty much hearing a single ball. It was going to the pops every single time. And so our meta became get into multiball and ignore everything else and just send it to the pops over and over and over again. And then when you get back down to your flippers, send it back to the pops again. Because you'll just keep collecting your 20 million. The awards become worth 20 million after you get to, I think it's 35, 40, 45, 50, and it maxes out at 50 hits. up there, and you'll just get 20 million points. Every pop? Not every pop, but every threshold. And how do you get the multiball? So there's two multi-balls right now. I'm probably going to get them mixed up. There's one on the left orbit, and then you got one at the ship where you drop down the target. The left orbit you're saying is the left orbit that goes up and comes down on the ramps. That's supposed to be the jet pack, but on the probe it doesn't have the magnet. Right, right. It comes back to the left flipper. Yeah. So, I mean, and that's a fun shot. It's fun watching that ball whip around right there, rip and spinner. So I really do like that shot. And, yeah, then the bird one, you could play that as well. But, yeah, that's, I mean, legitimately, if the code stays the way it is and you're playing to win at your launch party, not your lunch party, but at your launch party, that would be the way to go. So just crush in the left orbit, and then once you're in a multiball, keep throwing it up in the pops. Yep. But you have to hit between the two ramps. Or you can even take a direct shot at it. There was a few times I was able to sneak the ball. There's like a little switch. How's the upper flipper shot? Now that you've spent more time on it, are you fine? Yeah, upper flipper. It felt way different, way different. So it's interesting because the ball feeds perfectly to it. Every single time you go into, you know, the specter target area of the rocket ship, it'll feed it pretty well. Right up the middle, right? Yeah, pretty much. Off the middle, offset to the left, like an 11 a.m. shot. But, yeah, going around the loop, it's on the copy that I have, it was going around pretty quick. The most I could loop was two. So it screams around there pretty quick. And then the side ramp is a lot later on the flipper than what you would think. Can you hit that ramp from the left flipper? Yep. I did it a couple times on purpose, too, on the copy that I had. So if you were in a critical situation and had to hit that ramp, are you going for the left flipper or are you going to try to feed the upper flipper? You know, you could feed the upper flipper so easily. It's pretty safe hitting the ship. There's probably no real reason to hit it from the left besides you're just doing it for shits and giggles. But you competitive players, you don't like your side-to-side action. You know, I feel like you're scared of upper flippers. Well, the thing that does scare me about the upper flipper, there was probably at least 25% of the time the ball was coming back down the right ramp. It wasn't making it all the way around. Oh. So it drove up the side ramp and then back down the right ramp. Huh. Interesting, because I know people were worried about the left orbit shot, that if those flippers start getting weak, that's a long shot to go all the way around and up. No. But you're saying that's no problem. No, I think even if you have weak flippers, that would still be an easy shot to hit because it's not a steep shot to get around. It's really not. All right. Yeah, I mean, you said, like, yeah, I've seen everything in the game. And that's not abnormal for you, though, Travis. I mean, you said the same thing, what, on, like, game seven of Toy Story? I mean, you are obviously a good player, and you're good at dissecting a game and working your way through it. But this, you will see a lot of the game early on as is. Probably the only thing you won't see is maybe all the Spectre stuff because that's the way it was set on ours. You had to basically hit all the targets in the back and spell out Spectre every single time, every single letter. And then you'd have to hit the target to light it or to begin the mode. Okay. And then it's like a hurry up, basically. Yeah. That can be worth decent points as well, but, yeah. If you want to win and you can repeat a shot, get in the multiball, send it to the Pops. All right. If it's on .7 code, Joel, if they update it, I hope they update it. I hope they do because that wouldn't be fun if just four players, that's all they're doing while trying to win a launch party. Yeah, I get it. I am going to, this weekend is Cincinnati. Cincinnati, Chuck Wirt and his friends or crew kind of host that. It's in Cincinnati, Ohio. So that's a pretty close drive. I'm going to that. And Zach is going to have a big old flipping out booth. So I know he's bringing a bunch of games, and he'll actually have some Stern – sorry, some Bond Pros there. There may even be some premiums there as well. So I know for a fact this weekend I will have my first opportunity to play the game, and I'm really looking forward to that. But I think the plan as of right now is actually when the show ends for me to bring one of those home. So hopefully I'll be streaming this next week. That would be the goal. I am a little, I mean, it's weird, though. I love that I can stream some of these games, you know, right after they come out, or in this case two months after they come out. But to be able to stream them, it's awesome. But at the same time, even like what we just talked about with Godzilla, like now that I have the game, whatever, a year plus later and the game and the code is really fleshed itself out. Like there's so much more here to the game. And I felt like, you know, Ray Day and Timmy's done so much to rush since I've, you know, the games left my home. Or even I know I experienced it with Stranger Things, like Stranger Things, the whole what is it like? There's like a whole like note card or like card system that you get when you complete different things. I don't know, like that wasn't in the game. So, I mean, I've experienced this with a lot of games, that there's stuff added to the games after it's left my collection. So I feel like I'm, I don't know, I would just say for potential buyers, like, yeah, I think one of the smartest things that people suggest is, you know, buy a game that you know is good. You know, it's like, should I buy a Deadpool or should I wait for this? And it's like, well, we have no idea what that's going to be like, but you know Deadpool's a good game or you know Godzilla, you know, like, I don't know. It's just kind of how patient are you? Or if it's a team team. Buying a Bond right now is like buying Dogecoin. Like, you're just hoping it pops at some point. And it might, yeah. Well, a Bond LE, but like a pro and premium, like, fine. Wait a year if you want, right? Unfortunately, it is what it is. I would say if this podcast gets out before Cincinnati, anybody listening to this that has games there, I would highly recommend, and hopefully, I don't know if this is in the game or not, if you can make the Spectre weapons easily accessible, like make the letters much shorter, that will allow people to see more parts of the game, to light that mode a lot faster. Because otherwise, that's going to be a slog to get through for people. And that will just give people the opportunity to start modes, too, even if they're chimp-flipping. It will give them a chance to see parts of the game. Well, it's a good first initial impression I mean, Tom, it sounds like you'll have a chance to play yours within the next few days, so we'll have to get your hot take on that Are you playing tomorrow, Tom? No, I have tennis Don't sound too excited I know Are this lessons? Are this doubles? Are you single player? Doubles Do you play with your wife or do you have somebody else? No, no, just random people Oh, okay You play like pickup tennis? Kind of. I mean, it's all scheduled out, but it's not really. Have you branched into pickleball yet? No, I haven't. I've heard a lot. A lot of players have gotten into that, which is funny. That sounds dangerous. Pickleball? Yeah. Do you not know what pickleball is? No. That's why I said it sounds dangerous. I had no clue what it was. So on one end of the spectrum, you have ping pong, right? And the other end of the spectrum, you have tennis. Kind of imagine a game that's right in the middle. So it's badmint. No. There's no shuttlecock in pickleball. You just said cock. I don't get it. How is it in between ping pong and tennis? Pickleball is like instead of like a strong racket with strings, it's like a big ping pong paddle. It's a big – and it's on a much smaller court than a tennis court. It's like on a four-square court. Yeah. So it's a much smaller court. This sounds like some Nintendo Wii sports bullshit or something like that. It's a thing. I've never played it, and I know it's a very, like, it's a challenge. More popular than pinball, let's put it that way. Is this real? Hang on. Pickle ball. Pickle ball. Do I need to spell it for you? What you need to know about pickle ball. All right. If anybody likes pickle ball, most people are pretty obsessed with it. If they get in, they're in. So feel free to write us at TripleDragon.com and tell us if Travis needs to try pickle Do you think there's a pickle ball? Pickleball podcast? Oh, God, there's got to be. Look at us. If there is, we need to get them on the show. I mean, no. I mean, no. That's a great idea, Joel. A pickle. Watch Carl. Carl probably likes Pickleball. He's coming on next week. Right, Tom? Maybe we should just make our own Pickleball podcast. I can talk about this. If any podcaster or media creator plays Pickleball, feel free to mention it on your next show because I'm curious to hear about it. But, yeah, I'm glad you just now learned about pickleball. I want to stick to tennis. That looks boring, Joel. Come on. I don't know. I can't advocate for it. But, all right. Well, I think that's about it for Bond. I don't know. I mean, we're still kind of in a holding pattern. I'm glad. Hey, there's one more Bond that we're waiting on. Can I do that? Yeah, that kind of scares me. You said that's it for Bond. There's still one more Bond. For that one. Oh, for the Dr. No Bond. The 60th? So, yes. So I am glad that there are now Dr. No Bonds on location. At least we're moving forward. But, yes, I think the code, I don't think that's going to magically happen, you know, within the next three weeks that, boom, we're at 1.0. It may be a while, and, you know, maybe we'll be talking about this in six, eight months and be like, holy crap, this game is amazing. By the time the Goldfinger Bonds will roll out, the code will be done. Yeah, the Super LE. The Super Vault. well we can talk about it we can talk about 60th which still isn't here it still isn't here all I do know is so I know on the flip in the script Amanda Hamilton interviewed Keith Elwin and at that time this was back at Expo Keith was like oh yeah we did the photo shoot two weeks ago like this game should be out any moment it's not it isn't yet so I don't know if they had to redo it or what but I and just based on I mean it the same licensor as the regular bond so maybe they tied up in licensing things There are they have said they have confirmed that this i mean it a single level game but there going to be an lcd screen in the playfield so there will be video assets so they're probably uh like in the actual place in the day or like above like star wars i don't know they're i don't know i'd have to look if it's on the playfield or in the play field it's probably on the play field i doubt that i feel like it's like a nightmare like the uh multi-morphic no i don't think like that no it's more like well like kelts you know how or the first alien you know i don't know if it's like that shit joel no i don't maybe i misread it's either on the play field or in the play field um i have no idea somebody somebody google this So my keys are clicky. What am I Googling right now? What do you need me to Google? Stern.com. Sternpinball.com. And then click on, I don't know, click on Bond. And then if you look, there's four models. And the one on the far right, there is a little blurb. But it's something. Even Gomez on his Super Awesome Pinball Show, he mentioned it again, that there is a mini display. It's the same display that's in the Home Pin games. But I don't know if it's mounted. Yes, I don't know if it's mounted on the play field like a – Joel, hopefully this is not the artwork for the 60th. Oh, because it's white with a big question mark? No, there's no question mark. It just says Rebuild coming soon. No, it's not. And then it says 60th. We have talked about this before. Maybe it was this or maybe it was on one of the after-hours streams, but there was a leaked rendering of the 60th anniversary game, and Gomez confirmed that was real because he said he made it. He made the rendering. and so there's a leaked rendering out there right now of the 60th anniversary game and Gomez on the interview did confirm it's like 13 movie posters on one side and 12 movie posters on the other. I mean that's the artwork. That is the artwork on the cabinet which is what we saw in the rendering. So I don't know. So what's the odds that this game gets rebuilt before 2023? well I would assume a percentage of odds since you're so awesome at that I don't know Carl was so nice he was so nice he was so nice did you tell Carl he was wrong 20% chance I don't know obviously they announced Bond two months ago and they just started shipping him so if they want to go into the end of the year Christmas season with some hype then sure, announce it. But I don't think it's going to get made until next year. Here's my thing. Just judging off where the code's at for the current bond that's out, I just don't feel like you can announce this game until you're for sure that all the assets are there. Because this is supposed to be like the huge, expensive game that everybody wants. Do you expect this 60th anniversary game to be nearly as deep as the regular bond? are you expecting like a super deep? No. No, I'm not expecting that, but I'm definitely not expecting like to only have like 30% of the modes in there. You know, I mean, for that much money, for what they're asking for, or for what it probably will be? I don't know. I have such a weird feeling towards this game. It must be 21%, Joel. 21, so you're going over, Tom, so I'll be 22. Yeah, I don't know. It's like the prices, right? The reality is I don't, like, it doesn't, it would just be nice to have it out there. That's the thing. If they announce it sooner than later, I don't care if it's announced today or if it's announced in January. I don't think it's getting made until next year. And the truth is I'm not buying one. They're going to be $30,000, whatever they are. So when is my first opportunity to maybe touch one of these? Never! It would probably be, like, TPS. Like, hopefully. but it just this is one of those games where i almost look at it like the supreme home pin or something where it's like i know it's out there but am i really ever going to have a chance to experience it or enjoy it probably not like is it going to be like a batman super le maybe one i'll never see in person but you can still experience the batman game though yeah with all the other versions like this is it's only supposed to be 500 of them correct yeah and i mean your tournament players is anybody ever going to put one of these in a tournament probably not i mean slim chance neil mccray uk open there you go 2023 we're counting on it so it's just that's that's the thing i mean it was kind of i kind of felt it the same way with like uh when alien or big lebowski first came out it's like i'm never going to see those and now they're being mass produced enough that that you can run into them but when it's when this game is as expensive as it is and it's going to be limited to 500. For me, the common man in pinball, when am I ever going to see it? Which is a shame because I'd love to flip it because I'm not. Sell your golden tee, Joel. Yeah, the golden tee is going to really get me there. Zach, I'm selling this, man. Screw you, Zach. But, no, that's my issue is I want to play it. If it's a Keith Elwin layout, it's going to shoot amazingly well. And George did confirm it. He said there's kind of like a figure eight kind of layout. It's a shot that he's yet to ever see in pinball that he's really excited about, that he's looking forward to people playing. Ten drop targets, like what is it, four or five opto spinners. I mean, it's going to be fun to shoot. Keith makes a fun whitewood. Maybe it's like a figure eight through spinners, and then it brings it back into targets that you can't hit unless you hit the figure eight. I don't know. But to me, am I ever going to hit it? Probably not because I don't know if I'll ever touch the game. And that's why. Maybe we just need to, you know, pull all the Patreon subscriber money and we just all buy a 60th anniversary and then we invite everybody to go play it. There's always visual pinball. I think we need every one of our listeners to be a Patreon. I think we need every single one of our listeners to become a Patreon member for us to potentially buy a Bond 60th anniversary. So, I don't know. Just for the sake of Keith Elwin, I want them to release the game sooner and later. Everybody says this is Keith's Bond. You know, I want him to be able to talk about it. I want it to be out there. I know people are excited about it. But Gomez already said he's not doing the rules, though, right? It's somebody from, like, the Bally Williams day. Which is funny because that popped into my head that I'm like, huh, this isn't, like, it's Keith's game, but it's not Keith's game. Like, this is what I was thinking in my head. Like it's Keith's game because it's his layout, but it's not his game. And then I think Travis, you were the one that pointed out, like, that's like every other designer. Like every other designer makes the layout, but they don't make the game. Like there's a coder that makes the game or this or that. But like, and it's funny that in my head, like a Keith game is Keith's game. You know, like it is his entire game, but not this one. You know, like this one. This is like a partial Keith's game. Yeah. So I don't know. it'll happen when it happens. Um, and yep, that's that. I mean, I mean, the thing is too, though, everybody was so hyped up when that, you know, when that first was announced and now it's just kind of like, okay, we're all just sitting and waiting and I'm hoping that the hype comes back. Yeah. Whenever it is announced. I mean, hopefully that they come out with like an excellent trailer and, you know, great press releases and yeah. Great price, I guess, for everybody. I mean, hopefully people, hopefully the Bond fans are happy with what they see. I mean, that's the main thing, because we've all seen how happy Tom is with Rush. Yeah, going to Rush, when was Rush released? Do you remember, Travis? I think it was in January. Yeah, January or February. When have they, I mean, there's no even mention of any accessories. We're talking about the rust topper. You're talking about the rust topper and the expression lights, the side blades if you had a pro. Why do you care? They fell off the truck getting this turned into the manufacturer. Your shooter rod. So that's the problem. You got your LE, which has everything but the topper and the shooter rod. That's why you're – yeah. There's a lot of people that like toppers, Joel. I know. No, I'm right out there. I have the Deadpool topper and the Turtle Stopper. That's a good question, Tom. We're asking the hard-hitting questions now because I really want Expression Lights for the Rush. I've seen it on Tom's LE and another LE, and, I mean, it's excellent. I had the Expression Lights on the Zeppelin I borrowed, and it was a game-changer, huge. So, I mean, I'm assuming they're just trying to stock up. I don't know. I mean, I remember when I installed the Expression Light kits into the Led Zeppelin I had, there wasn't a ton to them. So you'd think putting them together wouldn't be that bad, but it probably just all comes down to resources or the people that would make those. They'd rather people make toppers, you know, Mando toppers right now. I don't know. And this will be a good segue, Joel. But, I mean, if you're a mod guy. Oh, look at you. You're a mod guy. If you have the expression lights for Rush and Led Zeppelin, you have to get the expression light speakers by Ninja Camp. Those things are amazing. I mean, absolutely amazing. So it's a speaker light kit, but all the RGBs are accessible or whatever, so it mimics the expression lighting kit lights around your speakers. To a T. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And you bought them for both Led Zeppelin and Rush, I assume? I did. And it's one of the best mods I've ever seen. Do you know if they will work if you don't have the Expression Light Kit? No, they won't. Okay, so you have to, like, plug into the Expression Light Kit to pull that. Okay, all right. Well, yeah, so I'm assuming as soon as CERN releases the official Expression Light Kit for Rush, then a whole bunch of people are going to be buying them from Ninja Camp. So that's awesome. It's a fantastic segue. I'm going to take it with a quick question. Tom, do you have your Mando topper yet? Yes. And how is it? It's a topper. You don't just sit there and stare at it? Do you, I mean. That's the hard thing about toppers. Like, you know, it's more like if you're watching somebody else play and you're just looking around. But, no, I don't – yeah, it's cool. Don't get me wrong. But – It's a flex item. Yeah. It's a flex item. So, yeah, it's fine. You're not forcing Neil to come down and play. It's really hard to play a game and look at the topper. That's what I'm saying. You don't try to get Neil to come down and play just so you can watch the topper. I mean, it's such a fraud, but I haven't thought about it. Have you done Best Car Madness yet? I have not. you know i think i was so sick of playing at a free play florida i haven't i put like maybe five games on it are there i mean props to dwight because this is a topper that does have a video screen and does have like there are there are valuable things to look at on that screen while you're playing right i mean it looks sweet unless you have it in competition install because all that it'll show as the scores on the topper display. Interesting. Yeah. I was like, this is what it is? Oh, because, yeah, it's all the video and showing your power-ups and all that. And then I did a factory reset. I'm like, oh, okay. Interesting. Okay. Well, I'm glad you got it. This is much cooler. Yeah. So now you're just waiting on Rush and Godzilla for your other toppers, and then you're topped out. yeah I think I'll be topped out in both toppers and money oh there you go go back perfect timing stellar you're right there Tom right I mean I think I set the ball on the tee and we all just stared at it for about 30 seconds for free 300 year drive so the segue that you gave was a mod and I will mention this quick because I know I feel like I've been Win Schilling a lot recently. I know our last TP and after hours was the entire point of the episode was just to talk about what are things you could buy for, you know, Black Friday and for Christmas and for pinball people. And so we talked about mods for two hours straight. Don't buy porn. Travis wrote that down. All right. Got it. Okay. Got it. Don't get credit cards stolen. So a recent mod that I put in my game is actually Penwoofer, a Penwoofer kit. So the truth is this all came down to Buffalo Pinball. Buffalo Pinball, Nick Lane on Buffalo Pinball, he's expressed that he really doesn't mod his games. And so there are things that he now feels if a mod goes in a game, it's like a big deal. It's a big deal if it makes – if Nick approves, that's saying something. And Nick has been talking about these Penwoofer kits. He has a Led Zeppelin, and he wanted it to sound as good as possible. So he decided, I'm going to give this a shot. And he was blown away, blown away by the product. And then he recently did one with Rush. And then they actually had, his name's Dan, the main creator of Pinwoofer. They had him on his podcast, on their podcast, the Buffalo Pinball Podcast. And I listened to that, and I was really impressed with what I heard. Well, I've never been a big audio guy for pinball machines. To me, you add in a headphone adapter. If you really want to hear the game well, plug in a pair of headphones. You can hear everything. I mean, there's no doubt to me that there are sounds that these designers put in the games that on standard Stern speakers you're not hearing. Like, it's just the clarity is just not there. Now, maybe an LE, that comes standard with some of the Kenwood speakers and some of the improved audio speakers, you may hear stuff better. But on at least the pros or premiums that I'm playing, I mean, the speakers that are in the game aren't that great. Now, I know, Travis, you've been a big fan of adding a sub. So you get a sub out adapter, and you're connecting a sub to all your games to really give you that rumble that you want to feel. He's nodding his head for all the podcasts. Well, the problem is the sub I used to get on Amazon has gone from $99 to $250 MSRP. But it was on sale for $1.99 recently, so I guess there's that. Yeah. Well, I've never thought about getting a sub because normally when I'm playing my games, I'm playing them at night, and I really don't want to wake up my children. So I just haven't pursued it. But Nick, the way that he was talking about this, I was really curious about it, but I didn't want to do anything that would potentially interfere with how I stream games. So I reached out to Dan, the creator of Penwoofer, had a really good conversation with him. Long story short, he sent me a kit. So full disclosure, he sent this to me. And I am really impressed. I'm very, very impressed by this kit. I have replaced the speakers in both Deadpool and Turtles with just the same speakers that the LE comes with, the Kenwood speakers. And the whole reason I did that was just for visual, the visual side of it. I wanted it to look like the LE's look, and I wanted to add speaker-like kits from speakerlikekit.com. Those things, I love the way those look. so that was my plan when I got a Godzilla was to do the same thing but Godzilla to me is like a keeper pin so I don't mind spending extra or going a little overboard and like making it as cool as it can be because I just don't see it ever leaving my collection so I that's why I was curious about investigating this with this with audio and so the pinwoofer kit that that Dan sent me it was so it's so professional the speakers are custom they are like he custom designed those speakers specifically for a pinball backbox. The cabinet speaker is custom designed specifically for this. The entire wiring harness, the amp is custom. Every board that you plug in there is custom. The power supply that you're pulling off, it's like this intercept board. Everything's there. And the install was painless. I mean, it was just, I will tell you, there was one, when I went to plug in one of the speakers, the little spade connector came off. I was like, oh no and then I look in the box and he had put extra spade connectors in there and I just slid another one on crimped it on it's like that's awesome um and I will say once I fired the system up the clarity is amazing like I've never turned my games up loud at all because I didn't want to you know blow any of the speakers I didn't want it to sound bad or do anything like this I feel like I I there's I don't think I could blow these speakers um and it's made me want to play the game's louder just because it just increases the overall immersion. And this is Godzilla, so, like, hearing the destruction and even feeling the game rumble a little bit when the shaker motor's not going off but, like, just the sub's going off. Super impressed. So anybody listening to this podcast, you two fools included, you guys both have Rush. Like, why you wouldn't buy one of these for Rush? Like, if you want to rock out to a game, like, I don't know. It's just, to me, I really am a big fan. I'm a big, big fan. And if anybody has any questions, feel free to email us at tripledrain.gmail.com. Otherwise, reach out to Dan, the actual creator. He will answer the phone and answer any questions you have. But, I don't know, as I'm chilling this, guys, I mean, do you guys have any thoughts or questions? Or have you considered upgrading the speakers in any of your games? Well, Tom's already, you know, really, so. They're kind of looking at each other. I would like, I like my sound. Yes. I would, if, if I had the ability to switch it out, I would, but that means I got to take it all apart. Right. Well, yeah, but it's like the, the install itself. Yes. You remove the, you remove the, the speakers that are in the backbox, but then he has these adapter rings and you're putting in bigger speakers or you can get new metal plates. If you don't want it to be a four inch speaker, you can put in a five and a quarter inch speaker, the cabinet speaker. You just unbolt the old one, put in the new one. It's just comical. Like you pull out the old one and it weighs like a pound and you put in the new speaker and it's like 10 pounds. I mean, it's just the drivers on these things are massive, but just such a, it's very clear, but there are plenty of people on pin side that that's all they do is they replace the speakers. But the big component here is the fact that the amp, it's a separated amp where you can dial in the cabinet speaker, which is your base compared to the backbox speakers, which is more of your treble and your mids and really fine-tune that to your liking. I don't know. The wiring harness is really nice. It's right there. You open the coin door. You can adjust everything you want. And he actually has plans to do more. He has other boards that he's planning on adding that I'm looking forward to test out for him because he has some thoughts when it comes to headphones or streaming and what we can do with that. But there's a line out, so you could run an external sub if you really want to. There's a lot. There's a lot you can do with this system. I would like to upgrade for the music pens the sound, do it as much as possible, because before I was considering just bringing a sound person in and looking at my pen or any of the pens and just saying, hey, here's what I would do a little bit differently. Here's how you can get it, the acoustic sounding better. I mean, just because like something like TNA, right, sounds excellent. So I'm just like, I want my Stern pen to sound like that with the Rush music or with whatever music, the Godzilla music. So, yeah, that's definitely something I've considered before. And if there's an easier option compared to bringing somebody in and consulting, yeah. I mean, I might trust you on this one, Joel. You should try it. You should try it. And if you hate it, then I'll be the fall guy. Why not? But it's – I don't know. That's the biggest argument because some people are like, oh, you can buy good speakers, you know, Polk or this or that online and swap the speakers pretty easily. And there's even already, like, you know, like Pinball Life has a whole line of – like, there's already brands that that's all they make is speakers. speakers, just the speakers to swap out. But the big, the big difference here is the amp and the separate amp and, um, adding that extra power and clean power and being able to dial everything in and adjust everything separately. Um, I don't, to me, I, I'm really truly blown away from it. Um, so I know I sound like a shill, I totally get it. And I know I didn't pay for the kit, but it's $370, uh, which is a lot. I mean, there's no denying that, but if you actually start to price out what it would cost for all the components individually. It's, you're not like saving a ton of money if you tried to do it all yourself. And that's what I'm saying. This whole kit, the install starts, finish was like half hour. There's an amazing video. I think it's hooked, hooked on pinball or something. The guy's Craig. He does, he does streaming on YouTube. He made an awesome video. Awesome video. I really, no, hurry up, hurry up pinball. Ignore that. Hurry up pinball is who did it. Made an awesome video. So just, you could go watch the install video and just see all the components that you're getting to really make this system. So give it a shot. If you have a music pin, there's no way you'd regret it because that's the whole point of the music pin. But it's one of those mods where now that I have it in Godzilla, it's really making me wonder, like, crap, do I need to get one of these for Deadpool? Because I freaking love the sound in Deadpool, too, you know. and I have TNA right next to it and like Scott totally designed the entire audio package in TNA with some killer back rock speakers and he actually has the sub in the cabinet completely enclosed in a box and it's pretty insane but I don't know that's the end of that but yeah I'd be more than happy to discuss this with any of the listeners or if either of you guys get one I'd love to hear your thoughts on it I will be more than happy to get one and if you agree to come to my house and install it for me. Okay. I'll even let you play the first game too. I forgot how lazy you are. It's truly, it's really sad, but sure. If I ever, why are you asking me to do manual labor? It's pinball man. You could make your, it's even more fun. I want to play the game. That's what I like to do. Well, believe it or not, that's the end of our list. That's the end of our list. So any other thoughts or anything else that you guys want to bring up? we're pushing two hours, you know, we have a guy that reached out to us. One of our patron guys is like a marathon runner. So he's like, give me the longest podcast you got. Like you got it. Yeah. I can't have enough. And then other people, it's like two hours. Yeah. Right. You know, I'm just sad. We didn't do a triple combo. I really wanted to do one. Yeah. A little faulty about that. We got to do one next time. We do. I actually have some thoughts and, and looking, looking ahead at next, next year. Um, there, yeah, there's a lot with this podcast. so we could probably do better even if it was just more triple combos. We definitely need to bring video into this at some point. And it surprised me, like on YouTube, our last podcast, Zach uploaded it as a video, and it has like 150 listens, and that's just – there's no video. It's just looking at our logo for the whole time. Well, why do we need – the camera just went out. So everybody's going to be looking at that logo the whole time anyways, yeah. So I'm glad people enjoy this. I really do. I love it. I love that people enjoy it, and I'm glad, you know, that there are people that support us. They're thankful for our listeners. Exactly. They're either listening or reaching out to us on email or Facebook and coming up to us at shows. And merch, Silver Ball Swag, people are buying that. So definitely check out the merch store and then the Patreon supporters that we have. I mean, I don't know. It's awesome that people enjoy listening to the three of us just rant. or I don't know what you'd call what we're doing. I have no idea what Travis is doing because the camera's still off. Podcasting, Joel. Is that a bear? Podcasting. I'm getting ready for, oh, shit, what am I getting ready for? What's that show that's coming up? Oh, my God. Gone to Blank. The pinball show. Bachelor? Not the actual pinball show. No, the thing that's at CPF. I cannot think of the name. Whippies? Yeah. That thing, yeah. That's here, right? Is that a thing? The Twippies are going on. Pre-voting has already happened. I don't know when it ends. It's probably in today. Oh, there's already voting. Oh, tomorrow. So people, I don't know if this will be up tomorrow, but people nominated us. Awesome. I mean, that would be awesome to make the top ten, but I don't think we have any chance of winning. But I appreciate it. Even if we don't, I'm glad. What are we winning? I'm confused. But what's going on? PIAs, though. I hope the PIAs happen. So we'll see about that. You know what? I want to be nominated for, what was it, Newcomer of the Year. Can we get that? Oh, yeah. Is that still a thing? Hey, your company has to nominate you. My company? Yeah. That's an internal nomination. So, like, the pinball company. You can't nominate me? Why can't you nominate me? That's, like, an actual industry award. It's an industry award within the Twinkies. In the industry. And he is. You work for the pinball company. Oh, shit. I can. I can. You could actually be nominated for that. But I will say, have you produced anything for that company? One or two things. Okay. Do you even qualify? I know you've been earning money from them, but have you actually done anything for them? I do one or two things, yeah. Okay. All right. It stays busy. I get to play James Bond and see where the roles are at. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Well, maybe it's time to plug in. I do not want to be nominated. I changed my mind. I don't want it. Okay. I just want to hang out here and be on a podcast with Tom. Thanks. Yep. Well, let's do plugs. And Joel. Oh, thanks. Yep. Go ahead, Tom. I'm Tom Graff. I like cheese. Also. That Mountain Dew is worn off. Get this guy some whipped cream. Get the guys some whipped cream. I need to go to bed. I occasionally do some pinball streaming on Fox Cities Pinball. A lot of tournaments. If you like pinball tournaments, that's the place to go. There it is. Fox City Spinball. Well, I appreciate you, Tom. Got some tournaments coming up, Joel. What do you got? We got the Frosty Flippers. Ooh. That's coming up. We got a Friday knockout before that. And then there's going to be a New Year's Eve tournament. Mmm. Fancy. Okay. Nice. All at District 82. Of course. Pinball. Of course. Yeah. Well, thank you, Tom. Thanks for being here, like always. I'm glad I could be here. that whipped cream really is worn out it's really weird I get it I know it's getting late Travis plug away man yeah you guys can find me right here on the triple drain pinball podcast and yeah I appreciate you guys listening and big hello to my beautiful wife Monica who is not here since she's on a work trip for literally the next month so it's just me and four crazy kids and you two apparently Exactly Yeah, yeah, yeah Those poor kids Yeah, I know I feel like your overall cleanliness is just going to plummet Well, I'm hopeful that they're all in bed It's a school night, it's 1040 Hopeful I think they're in bed They're playing Call of Duty What's Dad doing? Is Dad in his closet talking to his friends? Yeah, yeah, I get it You make it sound like that Jesus, can you imagine if that's the way that they're actually thinking? If they view this as podcasting, like dad's just in the closet talking to his friends. Dad's just talking to his friends. I don't know. It's like it's for pinball. Does Monica actually listen to this show? Does Monica come out of the closet? Yeah. No, she listens to it. Oh. Well, hi, Monica. She gives me feedback and everything. Yeah. Yeah, and I bet you listen to it for sure. I am a great listener, Joel. You should know that about me. All right. I want to end this before two hours. So, yeah. Too late. Yeah. I'm Joel. I do the, I stream for the pinball network every Wednesday from 10 to midnight Eastern standard time. Feel free to check that out. And then every other Thursday for flipping out and yeah, this was a good time. So thanks for being here. Thanks for the support. And Tom, you have the last words. Good sleep people.