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Episode 62 – Roger Sharpe

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 17m·held·Oct 1, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Roger Sharpe reflects on 40 years in pinball: legalizing the game, industry cycles, and the modern manufacturing landscape.

Summary

Roger Sharpe, legendary pinball designer, historian, and founder of PAPA, discusses his 40+ year career in pinball, including his pivotal role in legalizing pinball in New York in the 1970s, the industry's decline in the 1990s-2000s, and the recent resurgence driven by boutique manufacturers. He reflects on how pinball evolved from simple electromechanical games to complex rule-driven machines, the importance of accessibility for casual players, and the viability of modern pinball manufacturing.

Key Claims

  • Roger Sharpe founded PAPA (Professional Amateur Pinball Association)

    high confidence · Martin's introduction and Roger's confirmation during the episode

  • The pinball industry declined in the late 1990s-early 2000s primarily due to DUI laws eliminating happy hours, causing bars to shift to sports TV instead of pinball, combined with generational shift to home gaming (Xbox, PlayStation) and the decline of arcades

    high confidence · Roger Sharpe detailed explanation of the industry downturn

  • Pinball was banned in New York during Roger Sharpe early career, and he played a role in changing that through testimony and writing a book

    high confidence · Martin's introduction and Roger's references to 'testifying in New York, writing the book'

  • Williams/Bally market was historically split 60% domestic (US) and 40% foreign, primarily Europe

    high confidence · Roger Sharpe market analysis: 'which was always the United States followed by Europe, probably 60% to 40% in terms of market share'

  • Total Nuclear Annihilation (by Spooky) succeeded partly because it offers simple, accessible rules on the surface while containing deep gameplay complexity, contrasting with the overly complex games of the previous 20 years

    high confidence · Roger Sharpe analysis: 'I'll mention it. I think it's one of the reasons that Total Nuclear Annihilation has gotten the response that it's gotten. It's a much more, in quotes, on the surface, simplistic game.'

  • Barakara was designed 3 years before its 1982 release because President Mike Stroll believed every game had to be double-level after Black Knight success, which Roger Sharpe views as a strategic mistake

    medium confidence · Roger Sharpe personal account: 'Barakara was designed and developed three years prior to when it was ultimately released in 1982. The reason for it was that then-President Mike Stroll thought, based on the success of Black Knight, that every game had to be a double-level playfield.'

  • Pinball 2000 was designed to make games more operator-friendly by allowing location operators to open machines without keys to access the cash box, addressing a major pain point

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm the father of Josh and Jack. There was a period of time they were my sons, but that's kind of shifted.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Early in conversation — Humorous clarification that his sons are now grown and independent; shows Sharp's wit and self-aware perspective on aging

  • “I think the part that really stands out and maybe why I endured with the industry was meeting all of these incredible people... who at that point in time were old enough to either be my fathers or grandfathers. I felt really totally captivated by them.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Early discussion of career highlights — Reveals the human connection and mentorship that drew Sharp to the industry, beyond the machines themselves

  • “It was the DUI laws. And suddenly there was no happy hour anymore, which used to bring in loads of people.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Discussing industry decline — Key insight into an often-overlooked cause of pinball's 1990s-2000s decline; regulatory change had outsized impact on venue traffic

  • “Pinball was kind of seen as old. You know, we hadn't hit the point of nostalgia. It was just, you know, oh, God, that was something my folks played or my grandfolks played way back when.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Explaining the generational shift away from pinball — Articulates the critical moment when pinball transitioned from current to dated, before nostalgia could rehabilitate it

  • “The problem truthfully was that Pinball had kind of outlived its usefulness for a generation of players who were more focused and entertained by video games.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Industry decline analysis — Clear acknowledgment that pinball didn't fail; rather, video games offered superior entertainment value for a new generation

  • “I think that to the same extent that a game like Dialed In!! can come out at a time when everything is licensed and prove that, guess what, you don't need a license. Steve Ritchie commenting last year at Pinball Expo, my next game is going to be an original. It's not going to be a license anymore.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Discussing modern design diversity — Shows that modern pinball allows for multiple successful design philosophies, both licensed and original themes

Entities

Roger SharpepersonJosh SharppersonJack SharppersonJosh SharpepersonSteven MartinpersonRyan CpersonSteve EpsteinpersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Roger Sharp's role in legalizing pinball in New York during the 1970s through testimony and book writing, overcoming the city's ban on pinball machines

    high · Martin's introduction: 'He founded the Professional Amateur Pinball Association... has also worked as the head of marketing for Williams... moving to New York City and not having any pinball around... testifying in New York, writing the book'

  • $

    market_signal: DUI laws eliminated happy hours at bars, causing venue operators to shift focus to televised sports instead of pinball machines; arcades and family entertainment centers declined due to maintenance costs and video game dominance

    high · Roger Sharp: 'It was the DUI laws. And suddenly there was no happy hour anymore, which used to bring in loads of people... Many of the bars and taverns turned their attention to sports... Arcades wound up disappearing'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball transitioned from current entertainment to perceived as outdated (pre-nostalgia era) during 1990s-2000s decline; new generation viewed it as 'father's/grandfather's' entertainment before video games offered alternatives

    high · Roger Sharp: 'Pinball was kind of seen as old... oh, God, that was something my folks played or my grandfolks played way back when. I'm not going to play pinball... Without having it being around, it became much more intimidating'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Industry-wide tension between depth/complexity demanded by home collectors versus intuitive accessibility needed for casual location players; Total Nuclear Annihilation's success suggests market rewards games that balance both

    high · Roger Sharp: 'It's one thing if what you are looking at is... depth and complexity... for a home... quite a different mindset to have something that is intuitively accessible for just the average person... Total Nuclear Annihilation has gotten the response because it's simplistic on the surface yet deep'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.414

0:00
Music You're listening to the Head to Head Pitball Podcast. Find us on Facebook, email us at headtoheadpitball.com or go to our website at headtoheadpitball.com Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 62 and my name is Martin and with me... It's Ryan C. And Martin, our next guest has designed pinball machines for companies such as Stern, Williams and Gameplan. He founded the Professional Amateur Pinball Association that we call PAPA and has also worked as the head of marketing for Williams during the most successful period. His pinball legacy will live on forever through his work but also through his sons Josh and Zach. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great honor to welcome on the show the one and only Roger Sharp. How are you going, Roger? Greetings. Thank you for that incredible introduction.
1:15
I'm the father of Josh and Jack. There was a period of time they were my sons, but that's kind of shifted. So it's nice testing off the cobwebs and being brought back to life through you guys.
1:28
You're welcome, man. And obviously, everybody should know who Roger Sharp is. You're very well known. And you've obviously been in the industry a long time. What would you say, looking back, would be some of the highlights that you've seen over that time? God, it has been a long time, which is somewhat staggering to me. It's been over 40 years. I think the highlight, and maybe I'll look at it from a couple of different perspectives, if you will, and stop me at any point in time if you want more clarity or what have you. But I think the part that stands out was, and again, some of this you probably know and the listeners probably know, but, you know, I grew up in Chicago, so I really didn't have pinball. It wasn't available to me. And, you know, as the story goes, going to Wisconsin to college, playing pinball, becoming enamored with it, moving to New York to start my professional career, no pinball. And, you know, the net result is testifying in New York, writing the book. And during that process, I think the part that really stands out and maybe why I endured with the industry was meeting all of these incredible people. So, Harry Williams, Sam Stern, Gary's dad, Alvin Gottlieb, Gordon Horlick, Sam Gensberg, Herb Jones, I mean, Norm Clark, Wayne Nines, you know, the list goes on and on. And I think that the genuineness of each of these individuals who, and it's going to sound strange just based on where I am in my life now, who at that point in time were old enough to either be my fathers or grandfathers. I felt really totally captivated by them, their enthusiasm, their youthfulness, and the fact that we could talk on a very similar level when it came to pinball. And I think that that was the part that really held me totally in awe and why the nature of my pinball book was such that I wanted to really pay homage to all these individuals through the interviews and bringing them to the forefront because everybody had been doing it, you know, literally behind closed doors. So I think that that is something that really propelled me to do what I've done over the period of time. And there's been other, I guess, seminal moments that have taken me on the path upon which I have traveled from designing games to, you had mentioned in the intro, you know, starting Papa, being dragged back into the situation with IFPA. When Josh wanted to resurrect it and getting those rights back from the Industry Association, being around an incredible generation of designers in the late 80s through the 90s and the beginning of this century. And seeing the evolution of pinball from, we'll go back to electromechanics, but solid state and now all of the latest and greatest technologies and the fact that pinball unto itself has really remained, and I don't mean this in a negative way, has really remained very much true and pure to the essence of what it provides as an entertainment. Attraction. So I don't know if that totally answers the question, but I guess I go back to the beginning with the individuals. That's the part that drew me in and made me feel I need to do something that is going to celebrate them, that's going to chronicle all of their achievements.

medium confidence · Roger Sharpe: 'Pinball 2000. How do you fix and maintain a game when you don't have the keys to it?'

  • 8 Ball Deluxe (Bally) proved that not every game needed to be double-level, leading to greater design diversity

    medium confidence · Roger Sharpe: 'The company that broke away from that, having done a double level themselves, was Bally with 8 Ball Deluxe.'

  • “Barcades... have been a transformative moment for not only pinball, but for society in large.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Discussing modern venue trends — Positions barcades as culturally significant venues that democratized both pinball and social spaces

  • “My God, it is a pinball machine and you have the ability to imagine almost anything.”

    Roger Sharpe @ Concluding thoughts on design freedom — Philosophical statement about pinball's boundless design potential, encouraging creative risk-taking among manufacturers

    • Williams
    company
    Ballycompany
    Gottliebcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Game Plan Inc.company
    Larry DeMarperson
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Steve Ritchieperson
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Jay Staffordperson
    PAPAorganization
    IFPAorganization
    Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
    Dialed In!game
    Eight Ball Deluxegame
    Black Knightgame
    Barakaragame
  • ?

    design_innovation: Pinball 2000 innovations by Williams/DeMar aimed to make games more operator-friendly, specifically allowing location operators to access machines without keys to the cash box, enabling faster repairs

    medium · Roger Sharp: 'Pinball 2000... How do you fix and maintain a game when you don't have the keys to it?... we have a way where you can open up the game without getting to the cash box'

  • ?

    business_signal: Large publicly-held companies (Atari, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers) entering coin-op/arcade industry in late 1970s-early 1980s with unrealistic profit expectations; video game bubble and subsequent contraction; pinball profit margins insufficient for public company shareholders

    high · Roger Sharp: 'One of the downfalls... happened in the late 70s, early 80s... Suddenly you have large companies... publicly held companies with shareholders... if Atari wasn't turning out fantastic video games every day... you take a hit'

  • ?

    community_signal: Barcades emerging as transformative neutral social spaces for both men and women to play pinball and arcade games; represents cultural shift from male-dominated pinball bars of the 1970s-1980s to inclusive leisure venues

    high · Roger Sharp: 'Barcades... to me has been a transformative moment for not only pinball, but for society in large... you can just as easily see a group of three, four or five gals going in and having a craft brew and playing games'

  • $

    market_signal: Modern pinball market demonstrates viability of multiple design approaches: simple-but-deep games (TNA), original unlicensed themes (Dialed In), and licensed IP; manufacturers no longer need single design philosophy

    high · Roger Sharp: 'Success... is defined differently for any of the manufacturers... to the same extent that a game like Dialed In can come out... prove that you don't need a license... there's room for a little bit of everything'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Strategic decisions by manufacturers to impose design mandates across entire product lines (e.g., Williams requiring double-level playfields after Black Knight success) can lead to missed opportunities and market inefficiencies

    medium · Roger Sharp on Barakara: 'then-President Mike Stroll thought, based on the success of Black Knight, that every game had to be a double-level playfield... I've always felt that if Barakara would have come out right after Black Knight... the game would have been much more successful'

  • ?

    product_concern: Harley-Davidson (Williams) game included shorter flippers that significantly degraded gameplay; issue was not corrected in original Williams version, only later addressed in Stern reissue

    medium · Roger Sharp: 'The unfortunate mistake with that was we also put shorter flippers on it, which killed it... Please put on regular size flippers and you will find that the gameplay is much friendlier'

  • ?

    content_signal: Modern pinball manufacturers benefit from multiple media channels (podcasts, live streams, Pinside, social media) to communicate game features and differentiation; historical pinball relied entirely on word-of-mouth and location discovery

    high · Contrast between eras: 'Now if there's a new game by whoever's Stern, JJP... they can come on a podcast, live stream... transmit the message... Back then, it was a question of... word of mouth... walking in and suddenly finding some game'

    • 5:27
    And hopefully the test of time has proven that I was able to do that. Yeah, cool. One thing I'm kind of really interested in is, and obviously, you know, famously, you saved Pinball, so thank you, that's amazing. But I guess that 70s period where, almost like the before and after, because the before, when it was banned, was it like this secret society where you had to go to certain places where you only heard about it and they couldn't really advertise the fact, almost like, you know, a bit of a speakeasy type thing. And second of all, I'm curious to know what it was like after that when it was legalized again because we see a lot of video footage of this crazy wild time. I'm curious to know what that was like in the 70s before and after. Well, it's interesting.
    6:16
    Admittedly, in Chicago, there was no pinball. I never encountered a pinball machine other than I had an older sister who went to the University of Illinois and we traveled down for different family weekends. And I played pinball down there. And as I had in the beginning of my book, yes, as a small little child, I took an orange crate, was with my family in California at a hot springs and played pinball for the first time and then literally forgot about it. Going to Wisconsin for school, suddenly pinball was everywhere. So it wasn't a question of this as if it was hidden behind the scenes. To get to your point, moving to New York City and not having any pinball around was somewhat of a motivational part for everything that I've subsequently done, which was selfishly wanting to get my own pinball machine. But did I find some corners and some nooks? Yes. I did find some places. I remember a record store slash head shop in the village in New York City that had pinball machines. It had three of them. In fact, one of them was the inspiration for what eventually became Sharpshooter. So, yes, they were kind of hidden in various places. I've talked in the past about encountering pinball machines in New York City in an adult bookstore.
    7:44
    So they were hidden away and, you know, didn't give too much thought to it other than the fact that selfishly I didn't want to have to travel down to New Jersey Or to, you know, the outer reaches of New York outside the city proper to potentially maybe encounter a pinball machine. So for me, it was a situation of, I guess, being very lucky and fortunate to have encountered some of these places where I was like, oh, my God, there's a pinball machine there. Or, oh, wait, what was that sound that I just heard? Oh, let me go back and enter into, you know, to that store. So I think that the hidden aspect of it to what you were asking I think was there and I think for people who were not really looking for pinball the ignorance was bliss was the aspect and I'll use myself as an example. I didn't know any better growing up in Chicago. To me it was okay that was something I played when I went to visit my sister but there was no real connection. And so I went away to school and suddenly, you know, pinball machines were in the bars. They were in the local burger joint. There was in the bowling alley. You know, pinball machines were kind of like everywhere, which is like, awesome. Wow, I kind of like this. And became much more of, I guess, a student of playing the game and realizing that there was absolutely skill involved because I was horrifically terrible when I first started playing. Right, but was Pinball in the 70s, was it still like a macho thing? Like, was it mainly the males playing and, you know, you can't see movies in the 70s and I didn't live through the 70s at all. And, you know, the girls are watching the guys play bowling and the guy gets a strike and he's the hero. Was it like that at all for Pinball or was it mainly just guys playing with their mates? Basically guys playing with their mates, I guess. You know, and again, I'm thinking of my experiences when I was in college, which was, you know, the formative time for me playing pinball.
    10:00
    You know, we'd go to a local bar and get a pitcher of beer and we'd play pinball. It wasn't as if there were a lot of gals hanging out of the bars. You know, you might meet up with them in class, walking to class in the library, maybe a fraternity or sorority party. But it wasn't like all the girls were heading over to the pub to kick back and have some brewskis. So I think that the fact that you're saying that most of, whether it was television shows, Happy Days, I always had the Fonz playing pinball with his friends around, movies that portrayed pinball in some way, shape, or form as a backdrop, etc. It tended to be much more male-dominated, and I think that the reason for that was that, by and large, and on some levels it still somewhat exists, guys hang out. Girls back then, and I don't want to sound totally racist, didn't really hang out. So, you know, maybe they went to the mall together, and I don't want to downplay that in any way, shape, or form or offend any of the gals that are out there. But it wasn't like, you know, they were going to go grab a bat and a ball and go play baseball in the field. That's changed remarkably, in all honesty, and I think all of us have witnessed that with the surge in leagues and tournaments and specifically ladies' competitions. And more importantly, barcades, which I don't know if that has happened down your neck of the woods. But that to me has been a transformative moment for not only pinball, but for society in large. You know, back in the day, and we'll go back to the 70s before I was born, you know, you'd go to dance clubs and things to hang out and potentially pick up somebody, a friend. If you will. But now it is the barcades and you can just as easily see a group of three, four or five gals going in and having a craft brew and playing games, pinball or some vintage video games, along with guys doing the same. And I think it's become a very nice neutral ground, if you will, for people to encounter each other outside of whether you're working, still in school. You know, how do you really meet somebody? And I think that, you know, pinball for me has always been that kind of universal quality where you can, you know, interact with somebody else as the course of play goes on. As opposed to a video game where you're probably both, or at least the person playing, is totally transfixed on the screen. There's not a lot of interactivity going on. For sure. And so what do you think are the major differences between now and back then when it comes to designing and manufacturing pinball?
    13:08
    God, it's become, I think, much more arduous. You know, if you go back and prior to my involvement in the industry, and I don't want to oversimplify things, But, you know, you're looking at the electromechanical games, very simple and designed by and large, hitting banks of targets that might be different colors, different suits of cards, whatever the case might be. It wasn't a question of there being a major component of sophistication, if you will, and depth of rules. If you walked up to a game, you kind of knew what you had to do. The question was whether or not you could do it and if you could do it on a repeated basis. As you move forward and really, you know, the turning point for pinball was eight ball with recall and memory.
    14:07
    Suddenly you had a game that could remember from ball to ball what you were doing as a multiplayer game. You can have some rules and some depth. And as you go forward in looking at that, suddenly it's not just the mechanical aspects of what's on top of the playfield. It's what's either underneath the playfield, behind the back glass. Suddenly it's the power of all of the memory that you can put in where now you can drive different devices mechanically or otherwise. You can have more depth of rules. You can have more. You can now have speech where before there wasn't. You can now have music where before there wasn't other than sounds. So I think that with all of those various disciplines, if you will, all those various elements, it has become a much more arduous challenge to create pinball. Look, back in the day, I could lay out a game on a Mylar.
    15:12
    Well, now you have computers and people are doing, you know, AutoCAD and, you know, measuring and doing things and it can do multiple levels. You know, I didn't have that capability way back when, when I was doing design. Just on those improvements that you mentioned before, Now if there's a new game by whoever's CERN, JJP, and it has a new feature, they can come on a podcast, they can do a live stream, there's Pinside, they can transmit the message of what is new in the game and how it's different than other games. How did they do it back then? There was no media like that, so is it literally word of mouth where someone calls you up or says, hey Roger, let's go down to the arcade because there's this brand new game and you won't believe it? It has more than one ball. How did it work back then?
    16:09
    Back then, it was a question of finding your place. That was your sweet spot for me in New York City. It was the Broadway Arcade, second in Broadway, run and owned by my dear friend Steve Epstein. And you went in on a regular basis.
    16:24
    And, you know, fortunately, the number of new machines that Steve was able to get as a test location made it fantastic. But sometimes you would hear things and, oh, wait, there's a new game where? So it absolutely was word of mouth.
    16:41
    It was the happenstance occurrence of going past someplace, walking in and suddenly finding some game. I remember doing that, traveling down to New Jersey, and for the first time I encountered a pinball machine from a company called Playmatic out of Spain. And he's like, wow, where the heck did that come from? Who's this? And feeling very excited about it and telling people and saying, look, I have a car, but I'm not driving anybody. But if you want to go down to New Jersey, you can find this game from this company that, you know, nobody's ever heard of before. So much of it was just by, you know, sheer coincidence of being in the right place at the right time or to the point that you had asked, basically word of mouth. You know, getting together with folks on a frequent basis who are either friends, pinball acquaintances, whatever the case might be, and you kind of exchange ideas and exchange different discoveries that you've made. And it might not even be a new machine. It might be like, oh, have you gone down to, you know, I don't know, Fifth Avenue and 14th Street? Wait, there's a new bar that opened up and they have three games in it. Really? Okay, let me go down there. So, yeah, without the Internet and without the type of communication and the community that exists today, and let's face it, everything was really isolated to wherever you were. It wasn't as if we were communicating with people internationally in any way, shape, or form, or even bi-coastally. If you're in New York, I don't know what's going on in Los Angeles unless I'm there. And vice versa. So everybody was kind of, I guess, isolated in some ways, segregated in some ways when it came to the pinball experience. Okay. So over the years, obviously, it's come in and out of favor and popularity. I guess I want to ask you about probably the most recent downturn that we sort of talk about, which is, you know, the end of the 90s and early 2000s. And many people have given their opinions on what they think was the cause of it. You were obviously right there in all of that. What do you think was the reason for, and I'm not just talking about William shutting down, I'm talking about overall Pinball kind of losing its popularity before it came back. A couple of things. One, truthfully, was, and there's been a lot of conversation and discussion within the coin-operated music game industry about it, It was the DUI laws. And suddenly there was no happy hour anymore, which used to bring in loads of people. Suddenly without happy hour, many of the bars and taverns, when we're talking about street locations, turned their attention to sports. We have this large screen TV in here, and we're now hooked up. And we have cable. And come on in and watch, you know, Monday Night Football. Come in and watch the World Series. Hang out with your friends. So the places where pinball could go suddenly diminished. The problem as well was that we had an audience generationally that was changing what their tastes were for leisure time entertainment. They were either playing home systems, Xbox, PlayStation. We're talking, you know, pre the iPhone. And I think that there was a drifting away from the arcade experience, if you will. Most of the arcades tended to be running video games because of their ability to maintain those games much easier than it was to service and maintain a pinball machine. There was a great deal of resistance for places to actually have technical support. Some repair person on call are actually working there. Arcades wound up disappearing.
    20:55
    They just couldn't hold enough interest. Family entertainment centers tended to lessen as well. Maybe being kept alive because of birthday parties or other special events. Bowling centers suddenly didn't have room anymore, couldn't handle that. And changed over, I guess, their business philosophy so that the accessibility to pinball became less and less as a result with those kinds of conditions. And again, looking at where the lion's share of business had been, which was always the United States followed by Europe, probably 60% to 40% in terms of market share when it came to the Williams Valley line of pinball machines, 60% domestic, 40% foreign. You can't really exist on a 40% market anymore. So the amount of your production winds up lessening. As a result, the amount of parts that you're buying increase because your price per part increases because your quantities are unfair.
    22:10
    You know, I've said it in the past, and again, more specifically in terms of Williams, looking to do something that would make Pinball more operator-friendly, Which was really fundamental to Pinball 2000.
    22:28
    How do you fix and maintain a game when you don't have the keys to it? As a location and you're in a business relationship with an operator who doesn't come around often enough other than to collect money and you have a ball that's stuck, well the game is down. You know, we came up with a design through Larry DeMar and others, truly wonderful and brilliant people, To say here we have a way where you can open up the game without getting to the cash box so you can fix your game.
    22:57
    So that there were some very valid improvements back then to try to change the landscape. The problem truthfully was that Pinball had kind of outlived its usefulness for a generation of players who were more focused and entertained by video games. You know, pinball was kind of seen as, you know, there's an old advertising phrase, it's not your father's Oldsmobile. It was seen as old. You know, we hadn't hit the point of nostalgia. It was just, you know, oh, God, that was something my folks played or my grandfolks played way back when. I'm not going to play pinball. And without having it being around, it became much more intimidating for somebody to venture in and play a pinball machine. Oh, I don't want to be stupid and play that. You know, I played that a long time ago. That's okay. You guys do it. So with the lack of interest, enthusiasm, and excitement, suddenly locations abandoned pinball. It became easier for them just to say, the heck with this. It costs too much to buy them and operate them and maintain them. I'm not getting enough return on my investment. This video game I can put in and, you know, two players play simultaneously. I can get, you know, X amount of money per play from them and, you know, maybe once a month I'll spray the glass with some Windex and I don't have to worry about it. It's basically just a plug-in. So I think that that was really what happened and why, you know, the industry kind of fell on its heels when it came to pinball. And we didn't have the ability that exists now through all of the various forms of media, if you will, to reach out to the end customer.
    24:50
    You know, we were selling games to distributors who turned around and sold games to location owners and operators. If anybody were to ask me, you know, where can I play Cyclone? I don't know unless I encountered one somewhere. We never knew where the end product was. And I think that it's very difficult to try to mount an advertising campaign to the public, whether it's in print or broadcast, saying, hi, go out and play the latest and greatest pinball machine, Adams Family, and you'll find it here. Well, you can't list here. And to put in a phone number, and again, this is before there were websites and whatever else, to put in some kind of extra step for a person to figure out where they could go, So to experience this pinball machine becomes somewhat counterintuitive.
    25:44
    So I think that that's really what happened. That's a much more simplified answer than I've probably ever given in the past. It's your question.
    25:53
    Well, we talk about ways and sizes of popularity. Let me interrupt you for a second because you're coming from a totally different part of the world. So how have things been as we've talked, and we won't go back into the early days before you guys were born, but in the last 20 years, how has it been in Australia when it comes to pinball? Have you had the same types of peaks and valleys, or has it been several kinds of things? Yeah, we have, but what's been really sort of interesting, what we sort of mentioned a number of times is that, and I know that outside of the US, Australia is a really strong market. For some reason, maybe it's our culture, maybe it's our climate, but Pimball played a huge part in our histories. I lived it through the 70s and 80s and it was absolutely huge, but again, we had the same downturn. And I think it was the same reason that you're saying is that people just found other forms of entertainment probably more accessible. And you're probably right. It did become a little bit, I don't know, uncool, but, yeah, also old-fashioned and just a thing of the past, almost becoming a bit of a relic.
    27:10
    Right. I think there's the other part to it, and it's interesting. I was just thinking about it when you were talking. I think we also hit a period of time, hopefully we'll never get back to it, where the games became much more complex.
    27:24
    Number one, more complex in design, which made them more difficult to service, and much more difficult to understand, what the heck should I be doing?
    27:36
    And there's all these modes, and there's all these things going on, and I just don't get it. God, you know, I want something basic. Yeah, well, it's interesting you say that because, you know, we as being the bubble of the pinball world, you know, everyone talks about the virtues of having, you know, modes and complicated rule sets. But, you know, when you're looking at that through the lens of the general public wanting to get into pinball for the first time, that kind of stuff is a bit daunting. Oh, no, it is. And I think that, you know, it's one thing if what you are looking at is to have enough depth and dimensionality and enough complexity in a given machine because it's going to go into a home. And you don't want that person to get tired of it after the first month. You want it to remain challenging. It's quite a different mindset to have something that is more intuitively accessible for just the average person walking in. And I'll mention it. I think it's one of the reasons that Total Nuclear Annihilation has gotten the response that it's gotten. It's a much more, in quotes, on the surface, simplistic game. If you start playing it, you realize, oh my God, there's subtleties, it's a very deep game, there's a heck of a lot of stuff going on, but just walking up to it as a single level play field, it's something that is out of the ordinary compared to anything that's been produced in the last 20 years. Well, do you think the market then slightly shifts towards that now? Do you think there's bigger companies out there that will look at the success of Total Nuclear Annihilation as an operator Pinball but also as a home Pinball and say, well, we should do something like that? The market has been tested. It has been successful for Spooky. Let's try and make a more simple game that has simple rules but has nuances to it as well. It's interesting when you ask. We'll go back in history a little bit, and I guess for some folks, please feel free, because Jay Stafford does a great job with the Internet Pinball database. I'm going to make reference to some games.
    29:57
    Gottlieb came out, or Premier, but Gottlieb, came out with a game called Silver Slugger. Yeah, that's right. That did incredibly well. Surprised all of us. And I'm still at Williams Valley Midway back then. The net result was Bailey Osler doing the design on Harley-Davidson. Much more simplistic design, single level.
    30:23
    The unfortunate mistake with that was we also put shorter flippers on it, which killed it. For anybody that may have encountered a Harley-Davidson, we're talking about the Williams Valley version And not the stern one that came out many years after.
    30:42
    Please put on regular size flippers and you will find that the gameplay is much friendlier and nicer. The same can be said admittedly for Fishtails. Anyway, all that aside, Bad Girls was another game that Gottlieb had done because we saw, oh my God, there's a market. Let's go do this. And I think that if nothing else, what TNA proves is that there is the ability to bring to life a variety of different, I'll call them platforms or design approaches that can ultimately be successful. And success, admittedly, is defined differently for any of the manufacturers, boutiques or otherwise, as to, you know, what pays the bills, what turns a profit. But I think that to the same extent that a game like Dialed In can come out at a time when everything is licensed and prove that, guess what, you don't need a license. And Steve Ritchie commenting last year at Pinball Expo, my next game is going to be an original. It's not going to be a license anymore.
    31:57
    So I think that, you know, there's room for a little bit of everything. Look, I lived through a situation, and I'll share it, because it still stings. Barakara was designed and developed three years prior to when it was ultimately released in 1982.
    32:22
    The reason for it was that then-President Mike Stroll thought, based on the success of Black Knight, that every game had to be a double-level playfield. And he kind of shunted Barakara off to the side. And the company that broke away from that, having done a double level themselves, was Pally with 8 Ball Deluxe. And suddenly 8 Ball Deluxe was successful and it was like, oh wait, everything doesn't have to be a double level. Or in some cases like Haunted House and Black Haunted House, it doesn't have to be a triple level. Oh, we can have a mix and a match. We can do a little bit of everything. And I've always felt that if Barakor would have come out right after Black Knight, which is what it was scheduled for, instead of Jungle Lord coming out after, that the game would have been much more successful and popular and whatever else. But having said that, I think that there is room for any and all of the manufacturers to look at things in a way where it doesn't have to be just X.
    33:31
    It can be anything that you want it to be. My God, it is a pinball machine and you have the ability to imagine almost anything. Let those imaginations take root and give us some spectacular and wonderful things. Well then, it leads us to, when we talk about manufacturing and companies today, is there money to be made in making pinball machines? Like good money. Now, please define good money. Everybody's going to have a different definition. Let me answer it this way.
    34:10
    One of the downfalls of the coin-operated amusement game industry happened, admittedly, in the late 70s, early 80s. And the reason I say that is that, oh my God, but Roger, everything was so successful. Well it wasn I mean pinball kind of fell on hard times because it wasn capable of earning as much money as video games And video games kind of had a bubble burst And the reason for it was suddenly you have large companies, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, Companies that suddenly were publicly held companies with shareholders and you needed to turn a profit.
    34:55
    And if Atari wasn't turning out fantastic video games every day, whether in the home through the 2600 and the subsequent home systems and home computers that they did, or in the arcades, well then you take a hit. And I think that, you know, to answer your question in terms of, you know, is there money to be made? There was always money to be made. Whether it was sufficient enough for publicly held companies, I think that was a ruination for that period of time where everybody thought, oh, my God, this is the next new entertainment category. We have to jump on this. In the same way that many of the larger companies in entertainment are now jumping on sites like Hulu and looking at Netflix and Sky TV and all the rest of it to bring all those in so that they can cover their bases. It's why AT&T merges with Warner Brothers. It's why Disney winds up buying Fox. I mean, you have all these conglomerates, if you will, that are just absorbing each other so that they make sure that they can cover any and every way to reach an audience. And I think that when it comes to Pinball today, let's face it, the scope and profit margins for, you mentioned Charlie before, for Spooky is going to be far different than Stern, which is going to be far different than Dutch Pinball, which is going to be far different than American Pinball or DEEP ROOT that's coming and some of the others. And I'm sure that you guys will want to start talking about those companies as well. But I think to answer the question, yes, there is money to be made. Is there significant money to be made? It is a very, very difficult process. You know, I've mentioned in the past that we built and sold over 11,000 Revenge for Mars pinball machines. It was the largest production run that we had had on any model for about three years at Williams Valley. Is that number, I thought it was about 7,000 or so, is that the number of both the Pimball 2000s together? Nope. 11,000 was Avenged for Mars. The 7,000 you mentioned was the ill-fated Star Wars Episode I. Okay. Together, both of those machines outdid any of our video product. Did we make money on those games? Yes. Did we make enough? No. I was going to think about slots.
    37:41
    Right. Well, not compared not only to the slot machines, because we were still trying to get into that marketplace, but not compared to home sales for video.
    37:52
    And, you know, suddenly it's like, hi, it's not successful enough. How is it that in a short period of time when you guys are making Pimball 2000 that you were able to kind of radically change Pimball and also you're talking about all that operator stuff where you've got a different menu, you've got the separate keys for the operator to fix suck balls. How is it that all that stuff kind of happened so quickly versus what's going on now where things are kind of like very slow and that, you know, do you think there's a resistance to progress things forward now because of how much it costs or did Williams throw crazy money towards that? I think that there are two ways to approach business. Sometimes it's out of necessity.
    38:40
    Yeah. Sometimes it's out of desperation. When the mandate is, and I'm going to shut this down unless we can change things from upper management, suddenly you wind up pulling out all the stops to create something. If you're going along and business is okay, all right, doesn't necessarily have to be great, but it's okay. Things are kind of going, and we know that there's cycles. You know, we're going to have some ups and downs. Sometimes you blame it on the game, the design or some other factor, if you will. So it's easy to kind of not necessarily look as precisely and as deeply and as completely to come up with solutions. You talk about them and you try to do service rules and you see what you can do as a manufacturer, But it becomes more or less the path of least resistance.
    39:36
    And I think that that's where we found ourselves, which was, all right, unless we do something different, Neil's going to shut us down. Let's just do that. We're going to put everything in here. This is the entire kitchen sink, taking nothing away from Chunkyard.
    39:53
    This is all of it. We're going to do it from top to bottom. And, you know, there were many, many discussions through engineering and design and such to come up with a hit list of, all right, what are the things that we need to do?
    40:08
    Well, and you start listing them out, whether it was ease of access, maintenance, menu driven, as you just mentioned, to spot different problems, different ways and backups for things that might have faltered or failed, Where suddenly, you know, that switch is going to be red regardless. All of these things came into play. For other companies who are doing business and everything is kind of fine and dandy, there's less of a sense of urgency to say, well, God, let's, I'll use this phrase, and I don't mean it necessarily in totality, we don't have to upset the apple cart. And we don't have to do anything other than what we've been doing because it's kind of working. There's not a motivation to it. And I think what's fascinating to me in the context of things, and we'll talk just superficially, look at what Jersey Jack Pinball has done to pinball by putting a display in the back box. Suddenly now everybody has displays of some way, shape, or form. You know, that matrix is seen as, you know, kind of like old-fashioned in some way, shape, or form.
    41:37
    So I think that, you know, there are times where you wind up doing things in a way where it sparks, I won't say imitation necessarily so much as unique innovation unto itself where maybe you wouldn't have done it before. Look, one of the reasons and motivations for Pat Lawler to create a form factor with Twilight Zone was a differentiator.
    42:05
    If we come out with a game that looks different, it's going to be wider, bigger. Huh. Maybe that way we can obsolete the older games, and I won't say forced, but encourage location owners and operators to buy the new equipment.
    42:23
    So you come up with something different. Look, automobile manufacturers for years never did really anything more than subtle changes. Maybe it was a front grill.
    42:34
    Most of the stuff was done under the hood. And for many people, you know, you can't tell if it's a 2016 or a 2014 or a brand-new 2018. And automobile manufacturers can get away with that just because, again, of a car and however it survives out there. So do you think the onus then is kind of on the market to dictate what manufacturers can get away with? And I hate to use Batman 66 as an example, but that machine sold out of their super limited and limited editions without anything but the name and numbers being announced. And I think it actually sold out before the price was announced. And what kind of message do you think that sends to a manufacturer that we can sell out of something before our price is even announced? So do we even need to propel things forward? Do you think that kind of leads to certain complacencies in the marketplace?
    43:40
    I think it can. I have personal issues with the nature of where we are in the pinball marketplace where you're buying new machines that may not necessarily be totally complete. There are code updates that can now be brought to you via your computer or to update rules that weren't completed.
    44:10
    So I think to the point of, you know, buying something or committing to something sight unseen, which we've now seen in the past as well, not just with Batman, but with some other companies, with announcing and getting people to put down deposits and such in the likelihood that maybe they'll get a machine in before their life expectancy is over.
    44:37
    I think that, you know, it becomes somewhat problematic. So to answer your question, and again, my own personal belief, I think it hurts the quality of what it is that we can expect to see when there's not a discerning marketplace. Or either by word of mouth, I never played it, but my friends have all talked about it, or I saw something on the internet. I saw something on Pinside, or I saw something here or there or whatever else. So I'm going to make that, I want to buy this, right brand new in the box. Never played it, never touched it, never saw it, but I'm buying this. I'm astounded by that. And that's just me. I mean, I can't find myself buying clothing on Amazon without going into a store and feeling the fabric, trying it on, seeing if it fits. You know, my son, Josh, has been on me to get a, we won't call it a new car, a different car than what I have. And it's like, hi, there's one that's, I don't know, however many miles away, it would be a two and a half hour drive to get there. And I said, so you want me to drive two and a half hours, do a test drive, and then come back? No, no, no, no, you go with mom and you drive two and a half hours, you buy the car, and you, no. I want to touch it. I've got to feel it. I want to do a test drive. I can't make that kind of commitment. But I think that there is a different mentality from my generation or my world to what there is now. And I think that to further answer your question, I think it is a very difficult line to cross if that becomes more commonplace. I think that the ability to have product out there, whether it's pinball machines or anything else, where you can get a pretty good sense as to whether or not it's going to be successful, if it's going to be well received, before you go any further, we used to call that a test program. Yeah. You know, we put games out on tests for a period of weeks and do some tweaking if necessary and modifications. It was basically a finished game, but, you know, sometimes you'd bring it back in and make some modifications. Maybe there were ball hangups or some other, you know, things that we wound up seeing on a percentage basis where features weren't being hit to the level that they should have or scoring thresholds and such. Now those kind of refinements and modifications, I guess, are kind of falling by the wayside. And, you know, I'm sad for it because if somebody gets burned either by personally buying or running out in anticipation and knowing the game's on location and you've heard some incredible things about it, And for some reason it's just not functioning correctly or your expectations are so high.
    47:42
    I think it leaves a bad taste and that bad taste can become something bigger. The example that I'll use is Solo. It's a Star Wars movie. It's going to be incredible, amazing. It's going to be a blockbuster. Well, Disney took a beating on it because the initial word of mouth of people who saw it suddenly spread like wildfire and the people who might have been lined up to see it, maybe not necessarily on the first weekend, decided, oh, you know what? I'll pass.
    48:16
    Everybody says that it's terrible. I'll pass. Well, what's that going to do to the next Star Wars film? There's going to be a level of hesitancy. And that word of mouth is going to have to carry it over that hump because the people who were, in quotes, the early adopters, if you will, are not going to be so early this time. And I think that, you know, Pimball runs that same risk of going out and thinking, you know what, whatever we build, whatever we develop, it doesn't really matter. People will line up and they'll buy it. It's kind of like Apple with iPhones and the Apple, you know, Apple 15X. Yeah, I understand that. And look, you know, you've said it before that, you know, ultimately with all the advances that we've had, Pinball has pretty much stayed its core and that really is, it's a mechanical device with balls going around. You can put your bells and whistles on it but it's still the same. Are you okay with that? And should Pinball evolve further? And, you know, because we've seen like companies like, let's say, Multimorphic with their P3 where it's really tried to revolutionize the pinball experience and people are a little bit cool on that.
    49:29
    And, you know, if you did want it to evolve, how would you want it to evolve? I've often said, because people have said, you know, what are you going to do when there isn't any pinball anymore? And I said, well, there's always going to be pinball. I said, until you can deliver me an entertainment attraction that works on all my senses, gives me tactile feedback, immerses me, that has in effect mechanical action of some sort. I hit something and something happens to that thing that I hit. It goes down, it spins, it turns, it disappears or reappears. Until that sense of wonder and discovery exists somehow else, and I'm not talking about in a virtual world, taking nothing away from farsight and zen. I think both have done exceptionally well in bringing a new generation to pinball in a different way. But I think that there's a physicality to pinball that can't be replicated. And I guess to that end, to what you're saying, it is true. I mean, strip everything away. All it is is a little silver ball rolling around. And, you know, what can be done with it that's going to make it different? I have some issues with some games that try to incorporate a video play field. And suddenly the ball is going over it and it senses that you've destroyed the gorilla or whatever else. It's just not the same for me anyway.
    51:09
    I think that you wind up taking up so much real estate that everything, it's kind of like moving into an apartment or a house and you get into a room and it's like, oh, okay, I have four walls. The couch is going to go against that wall. The table is going to go against that wall and everything is on the perimeter. There's, you know, and maybe you'll put something in the middle somewhere. But the first thought is to have it all be linear. And I think that you wind up finding some designs, if you will, where you have a video surface that takes up the majority of a play field and everything is on the outskirts. And maybe there's some other, you know, mechanical things or what have you up toward the back box. But by and large, you know, you can't block anything otherwise. Isn't that most Pimball machines though? Isn't that most, besides the ones that have a lower play field like ACDC for example, I mean isn't that most Pimball machines? Stuff on the side, stuff at the back?
    52:09
    Well, but think about what you just said. Don't I have drop holes? Don't I have target banks? Yeah. And again, most of those components we see over and over and over again, And every once in a while there's something that is deliciously new and different where we've never seen that before.
    52:26
    Or as Steve Kordak once said, God, we've done it like everything. There were rails before. We did have an upper playfield or what have you, little areas, you know, back during certain points in time. So I think that to that point, it's a question of how you populate the geometry of a game design. You can have blockage in the middle. I mean, it comes to mind as Medieval Madness. Suddenly two trolls pop up, and the shots that you had are now somewhat blocked, if you will, but you have this interactive feature. Hit them, let them go down, and now you can get easier access to the castle. Or easier access to kick out whole. So I think that, you know, again, to assume that everything is like on the sides, if you look at any of the newer games, and I know you mentioned ACDC with that lower play field, I think that there's room for that. I'm talking about things and I don't want to, you know, cast any kind of negative vibe toward it. But I think, you know, what Jerry had with the first, you know, multimorphic games left me less than enthusiastic. I like the concept. I just didn't like the fact that suddenly, oh, there's a little small little ramp thing all the way back there.
    53:56
    And there's some stuff on the sides. But the majority of the play field was all this video activity that was going on. And I think that it took away some of the essence of what pinball is. So if you look at games, look, every designer has their own signature.
    54:13
    All right, Steve Ritchie we know is going to be fast, smooth, and evil. Pat Lawler we know is going to have all sorts of little bells and whistles and trinkets and what have you. Dennis Norman tends to have a lot of stop and start. It's not to say that he doesn't have flow in his designs, but again, you go through each of these types of people. Well, John Borg has his own particular type of signature in regard to some longer shots with some other things that are close in. And you look at the angles of what they wind up bringing to bear.
    54:45
    Keith, with his first game with Iron Maiden, has some intriguing little areas as well as different scoring thresholds geared to a variety of different what one would think of as being simple shots. So if I go around here once, I get 2,000. I go, oh, now it's doubled, now it's tripled, now it's quadrupled. Wow, okay, so there's stuff that's going on that's alive and active. And I think that, you know, if you start taking a look at the different dimensionality in each of the types of games that are out there, even with, I mentioned it before, total nuclear annihilation. I mean, you have to kick butt on targets that are right in your face to get reactors going. And multiball is easy, but it's not because of all these other things that you need to be doing. So how do you split whatever your focus is to maximize what you're doing, whether it's playing competitively or just playing casually for fun? And I think that, you know, getting off target a little bit, my apologies, but to go back to the question about, you know, where Pinball is and where it might go, I think that the continuing evolution of it shows that there's much more that can still be done. And I think some of what we're going to see is going to be predicated on some technologies. Do I like the idea that on, and I forget which game it was, it might have been on Havid. No, it was on Dialed In. I can flip the flippers with my phone? Seriously?
    56:31
    I mean, I think that's wonderful. Don't get me wrong. But for an old fart like me, it's like, no. That's not necessarily the future of Pinball. It's just showing the technology. But look, I guess this is my point I'm sort of really getting with this is that we all want pinball to be a lot more popular than it is today. Obviously we're seeing there's a resurgence and it's growing, but we all want to do it and there's a number of different angles. Either you make the machines themselves evolve so they are more appealing, or you promote it differently, you get different themes, or, you know, we're all just wanting to see how do we get it into, I guess, probably more mainstream. And, you know, people have talked about how do we get it on TV and whether that could work. How do we really just get this now? Because I remember, you know, you were in the Pinball magazine and, you know, you were talking about that we still need to have a lot of grassroots promotion where we go into venues and we try to get machines in there or we do it via tournaments. And obviously IPA and PAPA have all done their part as well. And I think that since you did make those statements, it has grown significantly. But what is that next level? What is it that we've got to do? Is it the machines? Is it the promotion of the PR? Or is it still grassroots that's going to make that happen? Grassroots? Absolutely. Look, the problem that you have is that operating a pinball machine commercially is very difficult. So you have to know your audience. You have to have some level of familiarity with having a machine be serviced, maintain it. Because the biggest challenge today, which is different than 30 years ago, accessibility. I could be in Chicago and literally walk down any street past any bar, And they would absolutely have a pinball machine next to a dart and a pool table. Pinball machines were everywhere. I'm not suggesting that they were always well maintained, but pinball was kind of like, hi, I have to have bathrooms in my bar.
    58:46
    I have to have a, I definitely have to have a pinball machine. I mean, it was a necessity. Well, when it becomes more of a hurdle, and we mentioned before about barcades, embracing pinball, Well, when you have the ability for somebody to encounter a pinball machine literally around every corner, now you're starting to grow that audience. Look, at one point in time, and this is true, there were over 2 million pinball machines in active operation worldwide. 2 million. Now, I think you'd be lucky if there's like 200,000 in total. And I'm not talking about all new equipment, obviously. I'm talking about older, too. With that type of loss of locations, I'm now left to know that Johnny down the street has a pinball machine in his basement. Let's go over to his house. You know, I had probably four or five places within a five mile radius from where I live here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
    59:50
    Those don't exist anymore. The Chicagoland Pinball League exists in people's basements. You know, we have Level 257, which supports us for our pinball tournament league, if you will, that takes place once a month. But down from where they are, about a mile away or less, was a GameWorks that was great. They didn't have really any success with pinball. Suddenly they did. We worked with them. We had tournaments going on there on a weekly basis and suddenly they let go of two of their technicians. The games fell into disrepair and the decision was, oh, we've got to find another place. So I think truthfully it's the accessibility. If I don't know that it exists and I can't find it easily, how do I make it more successful and more popular? So I think that it does become a grassroots. Look, the success that has been generated by IFPA as well as Papa, but IFPA in particular with I think we're now at over 60,000 players that are ranked. There's over 3,500 tournaments, events taking place annually. There's over two and a half million dollars being awarded worldwide annually in cash and prizes.
    61:18
    It's growing, but it's going to take time. I'd like to think it'll happen in my lifetime. But I think to your point, I'm saddened by the fact that there isn't more that's being done to get machines into the marketplace. I wish that there were places where putting in a pinball machine is not going to, in quotes, make money. But this is a Midas muffler shop and this person is going to be sitting here for an hour waiting for their muffler to be fixed. Instead of just watching TV and a talk show, why don't we have a pinball machine in here? And I think that there are things where you have a captive audience and yes, there can be some room made for an older game. Not talking about new investment. Just to say, here is something for you to have while you're sitting and waiting. You know, we used to joke years ago about putting pinball machines in doctor's offices. We're sitting and we're waiting. What's going on? You know, it's only probably within the last 20 years or so where going into a doctor's office, now you have a TV mounted on a wall. Well, before you'd go in, there'd be some old magazines and newspapers, and there was nothing left for you to do except wait.
    62:38
    Wait for the doctor to come and say, hi, we're ready to see you. Do you think a Pinball machine can compete against a mobile phone having access to YouTube? Well, I guess my overarching question is, do you think that we're just in a wave at the moment where everyone that was interested in Pinball back in the day now has enough money to purchase these machines and support the industry? And do you think it is kind of inevitable that we're on another decline eventually? When that's going to happen, I don't know. because there doesn't seem to be any push to bring a newer generation into Pinball. I mean, there are, yes, there are young competitors and they're amazing, but all these themes that are coming out of Pinball machines are geared towards, you know, the older generation. And these machines still don't connect online. There's no online leaderboards. There's nothing bringing the community together in a digital form that's on the Pinball machine. Well, I agree. I think that some of the themes definitely don't work for a younger audience. I think that some of the family entertainment centers that exist out there, Chuck E. Cheese being one, Dave and Buster's being another, and so many others, don't even operate pinball. Well, if my audience for Dave and Busters is, you know, over 18 and up and there's no pinball, well, I'm missing out on that opportunity. For a Chuck E. Cheese, as a family entertainment center that is geared probably five-year-olds on up to maybe 12, I'm totally missing it. The old mall game rooms that used to exist and shopping malls, those have gone by the wayside. They used to be located either where the movie theaters were or near the food court. Nice babysitting place, a nice stopping point for the children who just survived walking with mom or dad or whatever through a department store. So to stop them from being cranky, let's go into this place. I think that that becomes a problem. The problem is the nature of where the business establishments are today. I go to a pizza place. I'm going to have time on my hands to order my pizza. Why isn't there a Pinball machine? Why isn't there some distributor salesperson going in and saying, Hi, we're going to put this in here and we'll support it. We're going to give you, you know, 50% of the cash box and you don't have to do anything. I mean, yes, it's grassroots, and yes, it's a pain in the butt, and yes, it's a very arduous task, but I think that that's how you have to build things up. And when you ask about, you know, everybody having, you know, tablets and iPhones and whatever else, it becomes somewhat boring and repetitive. I find it interesting that the first wave of iPhone types of games were games comparable to what existed back in 1980.
    65:48
    Slide and shoot. God, this is exciting. Oh, my God, this is wonderful. And it's all variations on the same theme. Which direction do I have to run or jump to pick up gold coins? And I think that having a pinball machine somewhere, and I don't know if you guys have experienced this or seen this, to see a child encounter a pinball machine for the first time, it's eye-opening. It's like, wow, I want to touch this. I want to feel that. I mean, obviously I see this now and I know that Joshua tends to post pictures every once in a while of Charlotte and Colin.
    66:31
    They play pinball because it's there. And if they saw it somewhere in a local venue, movie theater lobby or whatever else, I guarantee you that they would gravitate and run toward it because they've already had the ability to touch and feel and experience it. And they would also run up to it even more if it was a particular theme that they were familiar with. Oh, absolutely. Don't get me wrong. Absolutely. I think that there has to be something compelling. There has to be something that is eye-catching, and there has to be something that has a connectivity to that child. And I think that the problem that you have right now is that marketplace is so splintered that it doesn't make sense for some. And I know that Charlie wound up doing something with the Jetsons through, I guess, a couple that had secured that license.
    67:30
    And I don't know what happened with that game necessarily, but, you know, it seems to be an adequate game. Yeah, it does what it needs to do. But I was just going to say, but I think that the theme itself was good. It's a great thing. It was something that worked not necessarily for a bar and tavern, but would work in a family entertainment centre.
    67:53
    Alright, so that was the first half of the interview with Roger Sharp. Ryan, can you remember what we learned in that first half? He does like to talk, Mr. Sharp. Good conversation. Yep, he knows a lot. I did get a warning from his two sons. But it just kind of started to get really heated and interesting in the second half. So everyone will have to tune in next week to find out the filling conclusion of the Watchtrap interview. We are such teasers, but it's quite a long interview. I think we're just shy of about three hours in total. So we figured we'd sort of break it up. So, yeah, we're going to licensing in the next match. I guarantee you'll want to listen because he lets loose a bit of information that apparently he has never told anyone. Drops a bomb right at the end. And pretty much like it one of those things that would change the entire Pinball landscape if it had happened And anyway we said too much Listen next week to find out what it is So shall we get to the news of the week What's new this week, Marty? There is massive code for Batman 66. Yep, 1.5. Yep, 0.95. Yep. Yep, 5 more to go. Yep.
    69:16
    Cool. Congratulations, Batman. You know what? And it's coming out one month at a time, so it might actually be exciting for those people because they get new code every single month. Yeah, that's right. They just had to suffer for almost a year without code or whatever it was.
    69:32
    And also, well, we didn't talk about it last week, but there's somebody that started, I guess, documenting or making sort of weekly documentary about building a pinball machine from scratch. And this is Haggis Pinball. We'll link it in the show notes. What do we know about this, Ryan?
    69:55
    I don't know anything because, as I've explained, I can't listen to the video because for some reason my ears hear a high-pitched squeal that gives me an absolute splitting headache. So I'm relying on you to watch every single one of their blog posts and update me. Well, I've watched a bit of it. I sort of really do need to sit down and watch both of those two episodes that have come out now in their entirety. But effectively, it's a bit of a task that they've set themselves to do, which is effectively build a pinball machine from scratch and have it shown at TPF next year. So about six months to build and have a working machine, prototype machine, at Texas next year.
    70:42
    Good luck. Is that possible? If they were a retheming machine, maybe, but if they're building one from scratch, I mean, even with like P-Rock and everything, surely it's harder than that. Unless they're doing a mafia style, you know, EM, you know, with no bells and chimes. Yeah. I don't know. And look, one of the guys, he was at Pinfest last week and I didn't get a chance to catch up with him. So, because I just want to know, you know, really what the credentials are to be able to claim that you can make a machine in six months. And, you know, if they can, fantastic. I'd be very impressed. But I think that's a pretty tall order. If we didn't have Roger on, we could definitely give him a quick interview, right?
    71:30
    I'm pretty sure they're in Melbourne. They're in Australia. So, this is our neck of the woods. So if anything does actually happen, we'll be right there. But, I mean, do we know if they actually want to... Are they building it as a hobby or are they building it as someone now make this and this is a pinball company? Yeah, so you're going to be highlighting the fact that I really haven't watched the videos. Okay.
    71:55
    Another slow news week. I'll watch them. But, you know what, good luck to them. We never wish anyone any ill will in creating pinball machines, right? Well, we used to. Well, we will constantly remind them that it's harder than they think. Yeah, for sure. So, there you go.
    72:19
    So, speaking of expos, the Pinball Expo, it's not far away. It's only a couple of weeks now. It's pretty close, and there's going to be a lot of news there, and I'm not going, Marty. I did ask the missus and she just gave me the look and it didn't happen.
    72:34
    I'm not going. No, that's right. Not a big enough tournament there for you. So we need a roving reporter. We need someone on our side to be our... Was it the eyes on the ground?
    72:48
    Anyway, eyes on the field, whatever. Yeah, whatever it is, something like that. Yeah. Send your resume in. Yeah, absolutely. We want to hook up with someone that will talk to us about the Expo experience that we can do a podcast pretty much on the Sunday the Expo finishes and talk to someone who actually experienced playing those new games that are going to be revealed there. And also speaking of contributors, let's talk about our Patreon. So we talked about it last week. It was hilarious. Yeah. And we have hit the big time run. How big, buddy? Six people. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. You know what? That's six more than I thought was going to discuss.
    73:29
    That's a win. And we're not going to give our numbers or anything, but we were very pleased with the contributions of individual people. And as a thank you to them, they got a bonus episode this week.
    73:44
    Yeah. I was really excited and I found out some news and I called you super late at night. And you didn't actually know what it was, so it was a very candid kind of episode. Not rehearsed, nothing, just raw tapes. And we were going to upload it, but we thought this might be too sensitive, it might be an absolute bullshit rumour. But it was basically kind of detailing what we might see at Expo from a certain manufacturer.
    74:13
    We're not going to say it's done, and we're not going to say the name of the machine. But it was to do with the next title being released. A bit of a surprise. We thought it was one title, it's going to be another. And in particular, we were surprised at the pricing of said machine, which I still think, Ryan, is bullshit.
    74:39
    The entire thing might be bullshit, but it kind of makes sense. But anyway, we just, with the Patreon thing, I don't want it to become a thing where we're withholding information from certain people, but Jeff from This Week in Pinball does something similar where he has this kind of weekly email he sends out of things that he's heard, but he doesn't want to kind of put it out there on This Week in Pinball because you can trust a small group of people. If the information that we put out there ends up on the forums, then I know it's one of six people, right? Yeah, right, exactly. And I can ban them from donating money to us. I don't know, that sounds so stupid.
    75:18
    But you know what I mean, right? Like if you tell a group of people that are in this kind of exclusive club, then it can kind of stay there. But it's not something we plan on kind of continuously doing, but I wouldn't do that. I think what it highlights is that even though it may be bullshit, it's something that we do where we just, you know, get on Skype with each other, Riff about a certain topic and think, let's just put it out there rather than having it as part of the weekly podcast. Yeah, we've never done a podcast midweek because there's never been breaking news. Like, we don't feel that the world needs to know what we think of the Deadpool reveal date that it gets revealed. We're like, okay, we'll wait till Monday and let it sink in for three days. I don't think people really need to hear it. But if I call you up for five minutes and you let me do the editing because I'm such a horrible editor, then I can quickly chuck that up on Patreon for the sake of it.
    76:17
    Anyway, that's Patreon. As I said, we're really happy. We'll link it in the show notes again. Someone mentioned to me today, like, you know, you don't want me to do it. I'm like, no, like, just if you would like to, that's the whole Patreon thing. And if you would like to support financially, you can. If you don't want to, we still love you to bits. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Not bothered. Yeah. Hey, Marty. Yes. Christmas is coming up pretty soon, right? Do you know how I know that Christmas is coming? How? Because, like, major shops in Australia have now got all their Christmas decorations on display for you to buy. You've got to get in there early, Marty. The early bird catches the worm. Do they? Maybe. Well, they just piss off people. Yeah, exactly. So, I'm not sure.
    77:13
    I don't know how to add it to this segment. Okay. When I was a kid, Marty, and I used to watch a lot of TV, around Christmas time there used to be these ads. And it's from a company in Australia. I'm not sure if it's an international company or if there's like a US equivalent. It's called Crisco. Yep. And Crisco, they would say there would be this curly-haired lady that kind of looks like Mrs. Claus, and she would say stuff like, you know, you're struggling to bring a hamper for your family? Like, you know, it costs so much to have your family over on Christmas Day. Come to Crisco, and we'll give you a hamper that you can open up on Christmas Day, and you basically pay it off during the year. So it's almost like getting a loan from the bank, but instead of getting your goods straight away, you get them at the end. Yeah, you get a giant hamper. And what are some of the items that you would expect to find in a hamper, Brian? Tintams, Miss Crinkle Chips, ham, turkey, all that shit. And this was around, I totally forgotten about Crisco because this was literally when I was a little kid, right? And I don't really watch TV anymore, so I'm a bit out of the loop. and I always thought, like, who the hell does, who takes a year to pay off for some turkey, like, just put saving money in the bank? Anyway, obviously they're doing well because it's still around.
    78:41
    That's why I asked you, what sort of items? So, so if you, okay, let me ask you this question. Yes. Because what you do, you get to build a hamper. You get to choose all the products that you would want to go into a hamper. So if you were to build a hamper because for some reason you're bad with money and you need to pay off a hamper in 52 weekly installments. 56, 56. 56, that's right. What sort of items would you want in your hamper?
    79:12
    I'm a pinball guy, Marty. I'm not sure if you've noticed. I'm really into pinball. I talked to Roger Sharp today for three freaking hours, okay? Yeah. They're just hanging out with my family. So I would want a pinball machine in my hamper, Marty. And not just any pinball machine. I would want the best of the best, Marty. Who would want the best pinball machine that money can buy but not have delivered? No.
    79:35
    What we're getting at, guys, the five-minute intro to this segment is that Crisco, okay, they not only will give you a hamper with pointless items like Tim Tams and Miss Crinkle Chips and your turkey, you can also put a Thunderbirds pinball machine in your Christmas hamper, Marty. Hey, what the fucking spot is going on? What have I missed in the last 20 years with Crisco that this has happened?
    80:05
    What is going on? I didn't actually believe it. I saw someone comment on it on Facebook. Why is it in the Crisco hamper? I'm like, what do you mean it's in the Crisco hamper?
    80:16
    We'll link that in the show notes, but it's just absolutely, hey, it's a new way to sell Pinball machines. It's just, you have to actually pay more for it, right? I think the weekly installments adds up to $7,500 Australian dollars and I think the price in Australia for some of the birds is $1,000 less. So what a bad investment. If you can't afford Miss Crinkle Chips, right, I think they call them Lay's in the US. If you can't afford to buy that chip for your family, don't buy Pimball Chips. Like this is the whole, this is, we were laughing about this last night because, you know, maybe this company's trying to branch out but, you know, ultimately if people are saving up for, I think the hambers are about $600, $700, right? If someone's having to do that in 56 installments, I'm not sure that they really should be clicking on Add to Cart Thunderbirds Pinball Machine $7,500. They have a number money. Should we call them?
    81:24
    I'm serious, I'm going to call them. I want to ask them what they know about Thunderbirds Pinball Machine.
    81:31
    They're probably going to be closed right now, right? We're recording pretty late. Yeah, they won't be open now, but you never know, they may have a 24-hour contact. I'm fucking calling them. Are you really? Yeah, A30-A30-C. Can you call 800 numbers? Call number. You have reached us outside our office hours. Our current operating hours are 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Don't forget you can still place your order by visiting our website, www.crisco.com.au. We look forward to speaking with you soon. Alright. There we go. There's not a rouse on a Saturday night.
    82:11
    Wow. We're going to ring him next week, Marty. Yep. Let's find out. Do you know you can actually get a fridge that looks like a Rubik's Cube?
    82:22
    That's definitely a family necessity come Christmas time. Basically, it's like this company now turns from Christmas hampers into reverse financial loans. Usually you go to the bank and you get a loan and you get this thing straight away. I need a car and you start paying off the car but you get the car straight away. This is literally, there's a hamper here called Barbecue Meat.
    82:50
    Barbecue Meat, you want $351 worth of meat, you pay it off in 13 months. Who the fuck? I just don't get it. I never got it as a kid. I don't get it now. Why are you buying $300 worth of meat and paying it off over a year?
    83:07
    Well, there is also the plenty of pizza pack. It's to bring the family together with a quick and convenient mouth-watering McCain pizza and a side of La Familia garlic bread. So it literally is microwave pizzas and garlic bread. Yep. For how much? How much is this pack, Marty?
    83:31
    $161. Of pizza? Of pizza. Plenty of pizza, I can see it. For $2.88 a week? Yep. Oh my gosh, Everest freezer. It's literally just fucking chicken nuggets and snack packs.
    83:47
    Trolley, trolley lolly. You save up for a year for $106 worth of sugar, like candy lollies. What has the world come to, Marty?
    84:00
    $111 worth of Arnest crackers. There's also the Maxi Meat package, which is $455 worth of meat, which is bone and rolled pork leg roast, 2 kilos, Edgar's beef sausages, there's 500 grams there, lamb chops, lamb roast, pork loin steak. You know what? I will have that. My egg roast, my sausages, my chops, my steak, and my chicken breast fillets, and my Thunderbirds pinball machine. I'm going to ring up about Thunderbirds and ask me if they can chuck in plenty of pizza as a pizza.
    84:38
    Come on, man. I'm ordering a $7,000 pinball machine. The least you can do is chuck in $160 of microwave pizza. So, that's enough. That's enough on Crisco. People in the US are like, what the hell are these people talking about? Okay.
    84:52
    Oh, my God. Anyway. Okay. So, let's talk about events, Ryan. Yes. What kind of events, Ryan? Well, there is... Look, we don't have these, what we would call... You know, we don't categorise them as majors in Australia like they do in the US, but we do have major tournaments each year, like the Brisbane Masters that we talked about. Melbourne's effectively got its, probably its major tournament of the year called Melbourne Match Play. What does it entail, Manny? Well, it actually entails five events. So, are you ready for this? Event number one is called Keefer Strikes. Ooh, that sounds familiar. Also known as? Shit strikes.
    85:39
    So it's on Thursday. So on Friday the Argonauts Pinball Open is on, so the Argonauts is the monthly tournament that's on at this location, which is the place that it's at. This is a cool format, Marty.
    85:56
    Now I've gone blank. What is this place? It's in South Melbourne. It is South Melbourne. I could probably just click on the event and it'll tell me. Golden Fleece. That's right. So this is a cool event. It's the best game format and the top 15 people or 20 people get through, but it then turns into a strikes tournament based on your position. So if you finish top 3 or 4, whatever it is, 1, 2, 3, 4, you get 5 strikes, but if you just scrape in you get 2 strikes. So it kind of favours those who did well in qualifying. And I'm not sure if anyone else runs a competition like that, but I didn't even make it in last year, so I have no idea what it's like. Fair enough. So then on Saturday you've got the main event which is the Melbourne Match Play Championship. Now this is also interesting because it is four player match play but qualifying it's the first 16 players to reach or surpass 50 points will qualify for the finals. And basically when you reach 50 points you're out of the comp so the insane players kind of leave and you're not battling them to make it in. So that's another interesting twist on it. I kind of like that as well. Yep.
    87:15
    Then also on Saturday there is a stall ball competition as well, which I've not done before, so that'll be interesting. This is going to be like an IFPA stall ball. I think it's going to be in small groups of four. Yes. And the person who gets knocked out first gets, you know, like zero. The first person who gets knocked out second gets like third place, second place, and then first place. And then it's like a proper match play using solo. So that'll be a really fun night. Yeah, okay. And then each year they have the Greg Berry Junior Cup. So that is for under 16 players.
    87:52
    My kids will be there. Will they? Yeah, 100%. Valentine, yeah, she wants a trophy, man. Mine won't because they don't like pinball. Give a shit. Very disappointed in them. Anyway, so it's coming up, so we will link the Facebook page for those people in Australia, all those people that want to travel overseas, it is definitely one of our majors.
    88:17
    You know, I think there's usually, what, 30 or 40 machines to play on. It's a good event. So yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, maybe around 30. It's going to be mid-October, so pretty soon. I'm running a FlipFrendy two days before it started, thinking that people would like to join in on that since there's no FlipFrendy during the comp. So I will also have a plan to show notes. So it is October 11 to 14, so come on down for that. Cool. Alright, is it time for social media watch?
    88:52
    Marty, have you heard of McGritty? McGritty, sorry. I hadn't heard of it until it was announced on Facebook and now I've not been able to look away. Is this the mascot? Yeah. Yep, yep. The really scary mascot? The mascot that's turned into a massive meme.
    89:20
    Do you know who created the images for this mascot, Marty? I do. It was Brian Allen. Ah, I thought I was going to say, okay. No, you think I don't know this stuff? Like, it's been all over social media. Hence, social media watch. And what I loved about this story was I first saw it when Brian Allen posted up and said, you know, it can finally be revealed. I've been working on this and, you know, they've created my mascot, McGritty. And I went, oh, that's kind of cool. It looks kind of funky. You know, I kind of get it. But within, I would say, 24, 48 hours, things took a turn, Ryan. Oh, sorry, he just called Gritty. I called him Mick Gritty. Sorry, it's just Gritty.
    90:07
    I'm hungry for my dance. Yep. So what happened after that reveal, Ryan? Well, they unveiled him and they made the costume and they kind of did a bit more tweaks to make him pretty much the thing of Children's Nightmare.
    90:23
    It's hilarious though because the internet's the best. The people have just photoshopped it onto a million different movie posters and things like that. But yeah, the only reason why I'm mentioning it is because Brian Allen, the guy who did the alternative alien art, and it's yet to be seen if he will make his second splash in the Pimball world. I think the rumors are he might be. Yes, maybe. I believe he's working on something Pimball related, but we've been in touch with Brian. He's a great guy. And so, you know, we've sort of got a standing invitation that when he's ready to reveal he'll come on the show. But, yeah, that's what he did. I kind of like it. I think it looks better in drawing form than it does in a live action form. I mean, the beautiful thing about the internet, though, is that the more ridiculous it is, the more fun that people have with it. Because that's the day and age that we live in, right? Yeah, I don't think anybody has actually been particularly nasty about it. I think they've actually turned it into a humorous meme. Yes. That's what the Pinball community needs to do with WWE. Bruce said it on Slamt.podcast. WWE is so bad that he's actually good. People need to celebrate WWE for being what it is.
    91:41
    I don't mind WWE. Charlie Emery, Marty, has a passport. Yes, I saw that. Where's he going? I don't know. Let's take bets. Where's he going first? He's never been overseas, I don't think. So if you come into Australia for a flip out, Marty, do you think Wayne has... No? Okay. He shut that down pretty quickly. I would... I don't... Actually, that's a fact. I don't know. But I would imagine that Wayne has reached out to him. Wouldn't it be cool if you could bring in Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle? Because Wayne's got America's Most Haunted, we've got TNA, I'm sure someone could bring Rob Zombie. He could have all four games there. Yeah. Come on, Charlie, come to Australia. Yep. We welcome you with open arms. No, but I think, not that I want to ruin the mystery surroundings, but I think somebody did post up as well a list of all the shows that he might be attending, and I think some of them were European.
    92:33
    Okay. So maybe he's going to Europe. Well done, Charlie. Cool. We got new Pirates of the Caribbean codes. I have no idea why this is in the social media segment. Maybe because I probably saw it on Facebook. Well, I saw it. Well, you know, let's call Twitch social media as well, can't we? I don't know. So it has come out. And I was watching the Brody Even Pimball or Buffalo Pimball stream and I had not seen really any Pirates of the Caribbean streaming or footage for a very, very long time. Like, I would say six months, if not more. And I even, I sort of like sent you a note and I said, holy crap, this looks really good now.
    93:18
    Yeah. Like, really good. It's an illusion that just because the game, I'm going to bring it back to The Hobbit again. We talk about The Hobbit way too much, but I remember how excited I was for The Hobbit. And I used to post on the Aussie Arcade thread all the time, posting updates. I just saw an interview and this has happened and people would write like, who cares? The Hobbits old news.
    93:41
    And maybe I'd be like that in that kind of frame of mind now, but back then I was just like, I was so excited by it. I was just like, no it's not. The game isn't even out yet. If Medieval Madness was delayed by a year, do you think people would care now? A good game is a good game regardless of whether or not someone tells you that they fumbled the release of the Pimball machine And took the spinning discs out. That doesn't mean that the game sucks and that it needs to get trashed now. It just means that they had a shitty marketing release for it. That's what we need to say. Right, yeah. Well, I think the main things that I really saw on this was... One thing that really stood out is that I think that the LCD screen on this is beautiful. And it actually... I think they're now really getting the hang of it and letting you know what you need to do very easily.
    94:35
    Who's the guy who does all the animations, Manny? Um, I can't remember his name. Is it JP something? Yep. John Baldwin. That's him? Yeah. Yes. We should totally get him on the show, Manny. We should absolutely get him on the show because the animations are beautiful. Like it actually is, and it's not just like some of the film that they use is quite pretty as well, but just the animations are great, but it doesn't, I don't know, it just, it has all come together really well. Just how, what you're seeing on the play field and what you're seeing on the screen are just incredibly well integrated. You know what's hilarious? The code, the number is .96, so they are .01 in front of Batman, Marty.
    95:24
    And it's only just been shipped. Fight, fight, fight, fight. This week from Stern, we got the thriller in, is it Sternilla or Sternzilla? Sternilla.
    95:36
    Stern Godzilla. Yeah, did you watch it, Marty? Just a little bit. No, I watched quite a bit of it, but I didn't get to watch the end until about 15 minutes before we started recording tonight. Yeah, congratulations to, I should say, I actually became a show notes and let people watch it because it went down to the wire, didn't it, Marty? It really did. It was good fun to watch. I mean, a lot of people were sort of saying that they are sort of a bit cool on the head-to-head format on streaming because they didn't know which play field to concentrate on, and you really couldn't concentrate on both. If you had to pick one and maybe swap to the other, you couldn't do two things at once. I'm sure there's people out there that can, but yeah, it looks great.
    96:19
    People with lazy eyes. Did you see the smack talking that Keith and Zach had a day before on the Papa YouTube channel hosted by friends of the show, Jeff Teors? Yes, I did. Man, those guys just smacked up like crazy. It was just, it was fierce, Marty. It was nasty. It wasn't. They're not good smack talkers. They're too kind. They're too nice.
    96:52
    Hey, Jack Danger admitted on that, I think it was that proper thing, that he returns all of the costumes that he buys. So this dude is naked with his schlongs slopping all over the Deadpool costume. I'm pretty sure he'd have underpants on underneath. No, I saw the dick, no.
    97:16
    Don't watch his videos in 1080p, Marty. Yeah, I'll try not to. I know, Jack's Secret. And lastly in Social Media Watch, we had the World's Greatest Game Room. Yes, indeed. Yes, this guy, you know, when these videos come up, you know, come up, World's Greatest, this, World's Greatest, that, you're like, No, they're not the world's greatest, but this guy has, yeah. He's got a really good collection, though, of everything, including Pimball machines that he kind of whiffed through.
    97:48
    We'll link it in the show notes, and apparently this guy lives about half an hour away from us, Marty. So, whoever you are, Joel, we need to come over there and either have a tour, have a flip of your machines, Have a, you know, go up some of your games, but we could also stream from there. Let's do it.
    98:08
    Or we could run a tournament and just make sure that everyone gets kicked out early and we all get to play on your awesome arcade machines afterwards. Exactly. So it looks amazing. And the pinball collection, I think there would have been, you know, maybe 20 machines, something around that number, all in immaculate condition. Yeah. The best of the best machines. They would be in the pin side top 100, Marty, had you liked that for a transition? Oh, I do like that.
    98:36
    What happened last week, Marty? Well, we didn't do Slam the Top 100, Ryan. Well, I'd like to still call it Slam the Top 100 because Slam the Top 100 to 200 doesn't have the same ring to it. We can call it Slam the Top 200 if you want, but I don't want to say two numbers in the Slam title. We just call it Slam the Top.
    98:56
    I don't know. Slam Pinslams. Pin Slam. Yeah. All right, there we go. So last week it was Black Knight versus Starship Troopers. And as we do, like blah, blah, blah, I won, I was always kidding when I had 69% of the vote. But as we always do, once it's over, what do you actually think of Starship Troopers, Ryan?
    99:23
    I've never played it. No, I know. That was engaging. No, I know. That's why you were reading out the IPDB listing of people that were completely irrelevant. I remember someone telling me, I remember a conversation with someone saying that they, when they were selling it, saying that it was actually a really good game, they just got bored of it after a while. And if you look at the people who voted for me, there's some decent tournament plays in there, so it can't be that bad, can it?
    99:50
    It's pretty bad. It's just pretty uninspiring. It's like, you know, those eager games of that era. Things like, you know... Twister, yeah, Twister and, what was it, Independence Day. Like, they're games. You walk up to it and you go, okay, there's two flippers, there's some toys and all that kind of stuff. Surely this would be fun. And for some reason they're not fun. Yeah. And Starship Flippers is one of those. And as I said, the worst thing about it is you've got that little tiny gimp flipper that you need to control with the second flipper button. You just, it's, nah. Why do they do another separate button for that money? I think they're trying to simulate the bugs from the show.
    100:38
    I think that having two separate buttons for anything is a mistake in Pimball. Even with the one on the lockdown bar, if it's successfully used like Star Wars,
    100:51
    with an exception made for, say, something like The Shadow, where you're using it to divert something. Yeah, sure. If you have a set of flipper button for a flipper, I think that segregates the noobs and people on site with the average player. Yeah, fair enough. It also just makes for a shit experience. I don't know of that many. The other one, we talked about Haunted House. Haunted House has the same thing, where the upper play field is actually controlled by other flippers. We're looking at the top 100 to 200, Marty, and Demolition Man is at 115. If I get Demolition Man, I'm absolutely destroying you, Marty. I can't wait for it to happen. Yeah, well, we'll see how that goes.
    101:37
    You ready? I'm ready. Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Coming right up. 180. Cosmic Gunfight. Okay. That's yours, right? That's yours? That is yours. You've never played that. It's yours. No, you know it's yours first. Fuck. Come on, man. This is the nature of slam the pin slam. Pin slam. Slam the pin slam. Done. Okay.
    102:12
    Please generate a number from 100 to 200. Coming right up. 126. Frontier. Awesome. Alright, so let's talk about Frontier. This is an amazing Bally machine from 1980, and I think this is when, I think Bally in particular were just on a roll with great machines. And it's designed by George Christian who is a designer please we need to bring him back because he just designed some of the best games like 8 Ball Deluxe, Black Pyramid, Mystic, those kinds of games. And so this is of that era of 8 Ball Deluxe where the layout was everything. It just flowed well, it's got the inline targets on the left hand side, spin them on the right, great targets, nice open playfield. Great sounds on this as well, so you can hear this one everywhere because it makes these weird sort of forest noises. But this is a great game Art by Greg Faresk so there you go And Margaret Hudson and Kevin O so can go wrong with that How the 3D world on the glass Marty on it Hmm. It's there. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I have Cosmic Gunfight, made in 1982. So this was two years after Frontier, so similar era, but this is by Williams, the leading manufacturer of the time. I mean, they bought out Bally because Bally wasn't as good.
    103:52
    Now, the cool thing about Cosmic Gunfight is that operators at the time were asking for a smaller Pinball machine, Marty, apparently. And the tagline of Cosmic Gunfight is that everything you want in Pimball and less because it was cheaper, less complicated, and easier to understand for the average player. So you've got no spinners money, but to make up for that, you have six targets that just present themselves in front of you to... Fuck, this is a shit layout.
    104:27
    You wait till I get to talk about it. You've got two of those holes, you know, the saucers, you chuck a ball in the saucer and it does shit. You've got four pop-upers. You only have three pop-upers on yours. Cosmic Gunfight, you've got really cool art. They're on like fucking like space robotic horses. You don't have that. You've got a naked guy.
    104:52
    Cosmic Gunfight. Yeah. So having played this quite a bit when it came out and having played it recently, I was reminded by how terrible this is. So effectively I think the lock shot's right up the centre and you can just never get in there. The way the game has actually been built, like the physicality of it, just makes none of these shots findable.
    105:25
    I'm looking at a screenshot of this on IPDB and already you can just see the wear everywhere. This machine was poorly built, poorly realised. It's actually an awful, awful machine, right? The thing, I'll tell you what it's got going for it. It's got the very typical Williams sounds of the day, which I love.
    105:49
    But this one, this one's a bit of a myth and this is, you know, this is a Barry Osler game. I don't think when people ask him, hey, what games did you do, he will ever mention Cosmic Gunfight.
    106:05
    Frontier. Okay, the artwork on this machine is pretty, but what it depicts is... I'm giving a compliment to then tear it down. The colour scheme is nice, but basically you've got a dude who looks like the classic American cowboy dude. Chris the Adam? Yeah.
    106:31
    No one has a body like that, Marty, and has that much white hair, okay? It's impossible. So they're depicting an unrealistic future. And once again, this is the Pinball machine that encourages the mindless slaughter of beautiful animals such as the majestic brown bear and the American bald eagle.
    106:55
    Really? It looks like an eagle on there. I don't know. Such a long photo. So the thing to note, you know, you were saying this unrealistic depiction of a person. Yes. I mean, surely you know that Greg Frears said that Frontier was loosely based on the lifestyle and appearance of the husband of a ballet executive.
    107:17
    The husband? Yep. So Greg Frears has got the hearts for this chick that works in the thing. This guy rocks up to the Christmas event. He's sizing up his body and like, I don't want to draw him naked. Is that what you're saying, Martin? Yeah, pretty much. Okay.
    107:34
    A bit deserving. Yeah. Well, he's in the wild, Ryan. So, he's not... Put on your shirt, what are you doing naked? He's not naked, he's got jeans on.
    107:47
    Yeah? Okay. What's your business that you're talking about? Why are you trying to take on a bear with a knife, Marty? Because he's freaking tough, man. Literally, what would have happened, his bear would have come along. He would have... No, no, no, go with me on this. He would have been chopping wood, alright? Just picture it. He would have just been chopping wood. Sweat would have been dripping. And he was just like, you know, I've got to get this campfire done by, you know, sundown. And all of a sudden he hears some rustling and, oh, what's that? Looks up and there's a giant bear. So what's the man to do? Rip the fucking shirt off, bear with your chest, pick up what looks like a stick of some kind, a fire maybe, and go, get out of here bear, fuck off, I've got bonus to collect.
    108:36
    You in. I'm so bad at this game, I'm looking at this frontier and I want to play it, it looks so freaking cool. It's a really cool game, the layout is awesome. Okay, so you know how you've got this, I don't know, let's call it a little, I was going to say obsession, but let's call it a fascination at the moment with Stern Games of the 70s and 80s, right? Yes. I think you've now got three of them, is that right? Four.
    109:04
    Fuck. Yes. Really? Yes. Well, no, I haven't bought one recently. I've got four. But what have you got? Meteor. Quicksilver. Oh, you've got stars. That's right. Yep, cool.
    109:17
    These ballys of this time, I personally think shit all over those stands. Yeah. And I just think you'd love this. The problem is, like, the two that really stand out as the ballys of this time are Eightball Deluxe and Centaur. And good luck for getting those at a good price.
    109:40
    Well, I mean, there's only 1,800 frontiers. Wow, look at the estimated value. The estimated value in the US is 2.6 to 3.1. That means in Australia that's like 5 plus. Yep, there you go. Who has one? No one I know.
    109:58
    Okay. Oh, Batman, it's such a fun game. I really like this game. This is fun. I'm learning more than slamming the top 100. It's more of a journey for me than trying to argue that Cosmic Gunfight is better.
    110:15
    Oh, look, I just... Tell us next week. No, I just wish Cosmic Gunfight was a better game. It's from a really good era of Williams, but it's such a myth. Anyway, there you go. The fly is nice. Yeah.
    110:36
    Alright, Marty. This week in Pinball. Indeed. So what did we do together this week, Ryan? There is a Pinball meet. I posted a video on Facebook, but basically once a year a regular monthly meet cannot be held at the location it's held at, which is like a public, like a pub. So they get a bunch of machines and everyone kind of donates their machines and they have it at a warehouse and because it's a public holiday the next day everyone comes. And by everyone I mean like 90-95% of the Melbourne pinball playing tournament community is there. Yeah, and I think there was 22 machines there and 6 of the machines were for the tournament and there was I think 67 people in the tournament. But there would have been 20, 30 other people that weren't in the tournament just playing machines because you could. Yeah, Battle Pini was there. Oh, I finally got to play Battle Pini.
    111:39
    Just quickly, Battle Pini is like Joust, but it's made by a guy who lives locally to us, who's been working on it for the last four or five years. And it's kind of like Halo, it's based off like Halo the... Like Red vs. Blue, yeah. Red vs. Blue, but it looks simple. If you saw a picture of it, you'd be kind of like, ah, you know, Joust kind of had more stuff on it, but there's a lot more under the hood than you would think. Yep, absolutely. And you're right, and I actually said to Grant who made it that I thought when I first looked at it that it just looked really simple and maybe it was going to be a bit boring. But it's everything but because, oh, again, you've got two sets of flipper buttons.
    112:25
    You know, the top flipper buttons are standard for your flippers, but the bottom buttons are, the left one is a magnet near your flippers and the right one is a magnet on the other person's flippers. So you can actually start messing with the ball either to save it on your side or to try and catch it and throw it down the middle on their side. Basically attack and defend. So if you use the magnet, you get magnet credits. It's kind of like perks. If you use the perk when the ball's on their side, if you do it at the right time, it'll grab the ball and chuck it straight down the middle of their flippers. If you use it when it's on your side, it'll grab the ball and chuck it to the side. Yes. So, yeah, that's just one of the things. And then there's star rollovers on the playfield and they'll activate certain features like reverse flippers and... Dead flippers, blackout mode. Yeah, with no lights and there's a whole bunch of other stuff. I mean, we can talk about it for ages, but there's a laser show that plays when you win that the colour depends on red versus blue. There's two webcams that are pretty much streaming these high things people can see. It's cool, man. I'm very impressed. It's really, really impressive. So, I don't know. I don't know what the future of this would be. Well, he said a bunch of people wanted to order it off him, but, you know, is it a commercially viable product? That's what I mean. I don't know, but I've got to say, for just out-and-out fun, it had it all.
    113:59
    Yeah. I love those games, man. I've played so much of Joust at Texas Kimball Festival with Ron and Dr. John. Anyway, the tournament was great. The format was, because there were so many people, just six machines were allocated to the comp, so it was three game qualifying, which is brutal. The top eight, only the top eight get through, so you really had to have good games.
    114:24
    And then the finals was, whatever, the finals were the more Bayside finals. The machines that were in the comp were ACDC, Sketsdiff, Houdini, Houdini made an appearance, one of the only Houdinis in the country kind of publicly available to play.
    114:43
    Walking Dead, Aerosmith and Paragon. Paragon, oh Paragon right. But one of the best looking Paragons I think I've seen in a long long long time. Yeah. It's the best playing, I think. The best looking because, yes, he's done it up with LEDs and he's got a nice thing, but it just... The cool thing about this Paragon is just that everything worked exactly the way you would think that a Paragon would work out of the box whenever it came out. Just perfect. And that's... The guy who donated it was Luke DiNato and he's known for that. He cares so much about how people machines play versus how they look.
    115:27
    But it also looks great. And the highlight of the night for me, Marty, was just watching people play Paragon and being disappointed in their efforts because we don't get to play old machines in competition except for once a year at a Microsoft event, right? No other comps in all of Melbourne have even solid state machines, even like Sysman 11s. It's literally Barry Williams, DMD era onwards for comps in our city. So it was just amazing to have it there and just watch people just get Sysman all night. I know. Do you know I actually had Lazarus from the Sysman. The Sysman. Yep. Amazing. You left him up. Ricking cool. But I still only got 47,000 points. It played so brutal. It's almost like you get used to the other Paragons being a little bit spongy and that becomes a bit more forgiving. These flippers were so freaking snappy and the rubbers were so fresh. It was just sudden death all the time. Yeah, and you can't, once the ball decides, once Paragon decides that your game is over, there is nothing that you can be done. I hurt my, I hurt myself so much, Mardy. Just, you know. A bit of self-harm. No, you can't move the machine, it's just a brick. Yeah, it is. Mardy, how did you go in qualifying?
    116:56
    I qualified second. I think I had a couple of dollars, it might have been maybe 250 mil on Walking Dead and I think one other person maybe got over 100,000. It was a bit of a runaway score and that pretty much lasted me. Yeah, I had a really good game on Aerosmith, but unfortunately every single person that got put on Aerosmith had an amazing game, so that meant shit using the formula they use and averaging one on ACDC, and I was begging for Scare Stiff or anything other than Paragon for the last game, but because this game had such a quick turnover, pretty much everyone that night played Paragon because it was always available. Yeah. No save, three balls. So the last game was on Paragon. I think I needed probably like 150,000 to qualify and I got 30,000. Yeah. If Paragon decides that it doesn't want to let you have a good game, you're not having a game. The funny thing, it was money that I could relax, like qualify, I'd finished like 20th or something pretty bad. The best thing about it was then I could just play Paragon.
    118:03
    It was still in the comp. No one was going to pick it. Okay, this is how many games of Paragon were played. During one of the finals, Marty, and I'm sure you're going to talk about it in a second, but you had a really long ball on Houdini. You made Houdini your bitch. The ball was so long, Marty, that I played, I think, seven three-player games on Paragon, okay, of three balls each, each person. So I'm not sure how many, 21 games times three. So, yep, 63 balls on Paragon was how long it took you to play one ball on Houdini.
    118:40
    Admittedly, I had a monster ball on Houdini. Yeah, so much so. So this was in the semifinals. I was up against a good friend of the show, David. Hello, David.
    118:54
    And what people, I think people did know, but I sort of heard people talking around me, was that they didn't realise that the night before I streamed Houdini for three hours. Unfair advantage, Marty. Yeah, how's it unfair? Like, you know. And so I, on my second ball was Houdini.
    119:17
    This, it went for so long and they had extra balls turned on and you could play them. So I was... Why did they do that? Seventy person comes. I know. But the person I was against, I think they were on maybe 6,000 points and I finished on over a million points and I had three extra balls.
    119:42
    So I ended up draining my ball, like I just went, look guys, I've hit a mill, I think I'm going to be safe, drained my ball, then just plunged three extra balls and then plunged my last ball. And David did really well. And we ended up getting over 200,000, but I literally on my game plunged four balls away. And what Houdini does, it actually times your game. So my game went for 25 minutes.
    120:08
    And that was throwing away four balls. Yeah, it was a bit of a long play that night. But how did you go on the rest of the company since I was just sitting there playing Paragon and talking to people? Right, so then in the finals my first game was Walking Dead and I got 150 mil and I think the next heist was maybe 80 mil.
    120:34
    Then played Paragon and I came second on that by a very, very small margin. So Luke Marburg who's the IFBA country director, he just didn't quite catch me sadly. So I got a first and a second. Johnny Crabtree, he actually had a second and a first. So we were equal going into the last game and the last game being ACDC.
    121:03
    Yeah. And he owns an ACDC and I hate ACDC. So, you know, I was first player and going on to third ball, I had maybe two million points and everybody else had, you know, maybe eight, nine mil.
    121:20
    It was set up pretty brutal. It was very brutal. But I managed to get Jamm Multiball and got quite a few Jack Pins. I can't remember my final score, but let's just say it was 25 mil.
    121:36
    And then so Johnny Trapp Crabtree, he had to catch that, and for argument's sake, he got 24.5 mil. The funny thing was is that he was in Alba Multiball and he had everyone leave the party and everything drained at the same time. All of his balls. And he pretty much walked away and then came back quickly and slammed his VIP button and then like three balls came back. I'm not sure if you saw it. And he was drinking as well, so he was like, he was doing this kind of like this drunken dance and I was like, okay, Marty's finished, he's coming back with a multiple and it didn't last much longer than that and yeah, he didn't catch you on bonus. So you ended up winning a 70 person comp, Marty, is that your biggest win ever in terms of like people? Have you ever beaten that many people before? Well, as incoming first, probably not, no. I mean, look, yeah, there's others where I've come second where there's been a lot more people to beat. Yeah. But, yeah, this was a good win. I was very pleased with it. But what was really funny was that, you know, I think it finished at, what, one o'clock in the morning or something? Yeah. And people come up to me, and because, you know, it was tense and, you know, I'd had a few shit weeks and all that kind of stuff, I just wanted to play a game. So I played World Cup soccer just there sitting in the corner just playing. People were like, why aren't you celebrating? You won. I'm like, oh, because I just kind of want to relax. So it was a really, really good night. So Lucas puts on a fantastic event and it was really cool. So Nick and Brad, who come along regulars to the Baseball Pinball Club, it's their company's factory that they let us put all these machines into. And it's actually my favourite event of the year in Melbourne.
    123:34
    Yeah, I went to it last year. I think you're the one who kind of told me to come along and I just didn't think it was going to be that big. And I thought, is it a fluke that there were listening people here? But there was even more this year and I love it. It's an amazing event because of all those games on free play. You're never sitting around twiddling your thumbs. You can go and play all the other machines. And every other tournament in Melbourne doesn't have that really because they use all the machines or you have to pay $2 a game to play the other game. So thank you for everyone involved. Right now, Marty, while this podcast has been released, we are actually playing another tournament at the Hashman's Super Secret Competition.
    124:20
    And it's going really good. Are you enjoying your night? Yep. I think I'm going to win this one as well. Okay. We'll talk about it next week, but in preparation for this, and I just saw people suffering through Paragon, and it must be sadistic, is that the word? Yeah. Was it masochistic? Yeah, sadistic. I enjoyed it so much that I would like to see people suffer more, because as much as you probably enjoyed just destroying everyone on Houdini. Loved it. It's, yeah. If I was playing with you, like, hey, let's play a game of Fiddy together. It's not fun to watch you, anyone, anyone. The rest of your flipper skills, it's not fun to watch someone play for half an hour. I would say, though, in my defence, I was about ten minutes in and I cradled the ball and I looked around and I said, guys, this game's going to go forever. Do you want me to stop? And they said, no, no, no, we actually want to see how far you can go. So, yes. I'm just, no, no, no. I'm not giving you a shit about that. What I'm, I'm just trying to say, I'm overruling my overall story. I know where you're going, that's. No, is that I, I like Tron. The shorter the game, yes, Tron. The shorter the game is, the shorter the game is, the more fun it is to play with friends. Tron. So, as a side tournament with this event that we are currently at, because this is pre-recorded, I have put mini slippers on my Tron just like Carl D'Angelo did at the Pimball at the Lake. I saw, you know, this is not an original idea. I copied this off Carl D'Angelo and I did a quick couple of games, a quick couple of 20 games to test it out and it's impossible to play.
    126:07
    I haven't shown the outlanes, you know, I haven't done anything to make it really easier. If you start multiple, you've won the game. I've set up the coin neck money so it's automatic. People literally bring your $1 coins and they'll be shoving money in there and you try and qualify. The top four qualifiers go into a four-person final. Whoever wins, wins all the cash. There will be more money in there, Marty, than winning the entire main tournament. There's going to be no whoppers, but you will win over $100 if you can master the Mini for Patron.
    126:40
    There's going to be fun, man. I hope so. I hope people don't play it once and go, that is so shit, you're not getting any more of my money.
    126:49
    I don't understand yet. I don't understand at the moment people not enjoying playing short games. And I can't remember how long I've been into short games, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't been my entire, you know, four years I've been into pinball. Because I bought Wizard of Oz and I was like, hey, I want to own all of these games. I want to own Sins of Pinball Party. I've never played it, I won it. Lord of the Rings, never played it, I won it because of that long playing game. But now I'm like, give me the shortest, most impossible game ever and I will have fun playing it. Yeah, fair enough. Cool.
    127:24
    Cool. That's about it? Oh, yeah, I'm bored of Adam's Family so if anyone wants to swap me a cool game for that. Yep, I told you. I've been saying it for so long, it's a terrible game. I bought a whole bunch of Flipper Rebuild kits and I rebuilt the Flippers on it and the side shot for the jackpot is now beautiful.
    127:45
    But yeah, if you learn... Well, okay, I'll sell it unless someone emails me. Email headtoheadpinball.com and tell me, how do I make Adam's family hard without ruining the game? because the game consists of controlling the ball, hitting the ramp and hitting the scoop. Now, I can hit the ramp and hit the scoop and post-pass all over, so it's about the feeds. It's the feeds from the right scoop and the feeds from the left scoop.
    128:16
    Or the feed coming down the ramp. Well, you know that most people just really put a thick rubber next to the scoop, so it makes it harder to get the modes. Ah, but the scoop is so close. I mean, if it's a thicker rubber on a faraway shot, then that's kind of like... But when it's a... Yeah, but if you miss it, it bounces, it goes everywhere. So, that's... anyway, that's what they do in tournaments, and it doesn't ruin the game. It actually makes it hard.
    128:49
    Do you know what? It makes it less easy, I guess is what I want to say. Do you know what the problem with mine is?
    128:56
    We've talked about cliffy protectors and stuff before. This has no cliffy on there, and the game is, the play field is so warm that it's like, it's almost made the hole into like a South Park style.
    129:08
    I can't miss that shot, so I'm guessing putting a rubber on there, yeah, will, maybe that's a problem. Alright, I want to try that. I'm going to put a big fat rubber on there. Okay, and so that's the rest of your week? I think so. Well. Unless you know something that I've done that I don't know. Well, there is. And it's something that I did and you did as well.
    129:31
    Okay. So, Ryan, get ready. Yes? I bought a pinball machine this week. Ah, yeah. I forgot. Oh, fuck. Before you tell your story, after the Roger Farp interview, my wife was complaining about My Pinball involvement versus family time and work time and that kind of stuff. And I'm sitting there arguing with her and she must be fucking right because I took time out of my day to do that and I don't even, I must be doing so much Pinball stuff that I actually forget. I can't believe I forgot. No, I don't. Okay, go. So you're sorry. Okay. So basically, so Gumtree, which is our version of Craigslist for those people overseas, and I have alerts. So if anything's in Victoria that is Pinball related, I get an immediate alert that comes through in an email. I was in a client meeting.
    130:24
    I was up on the whiteboard doing all my stuff and, you know, projection figures and all this kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah. Brand new client, big meeting. And then I was at one end of the room and the other people started talking. And I thought, oh, well, whilst they're talking, I'll check my email. This notification comes through and this particular machine and I'm like, shit, this is a machine at a fantastic price that I'd want but I'm in a meeting. So what I did was I took a screenshot of it, sent it to you and went, uh-huh, damn, I'm in a meeting.
    130:56
    And what did you do? Yeah. You did something amazing is what you did. You fell for my bait, basically, which was, okay, well, do you want me to contact him? I went, yes, please. You could just ask somebody. I'm not that type of person. Just be straight out. Like, I'm going to say yes regardless, so don't be around the bush. Well, no, it was just, you know, I was just hoping that you would. Anyway, so you did. You then went and organized to go and see this at one o'clock. So I messaged you at, like, I don't know, ten o'clock in the morning. You were there at one o'clock, rang me and said, here's the condition of the machine. And I think we probably agreed it is probably more of a player's condition than a collector's condition, would you say?
    131:37
    Yeah, I mean, cabinet-wise, but the machine had been on site and recently shopped, as people call it, so it does play perfectly. You need to do nothing mechanical to the C, K, M, M, M, M, M. So, I haven't had it delivered yet, so hopefully that will happen this week, but I bought a Lord of the Rings. Can you believe that we have this same collection now?
    132:03
    It really is another one that you've got. But it's just one of these machines that it was on, like, you've seen my list of all the machines that I wanted, and there's some shit machines on that list. We all agree that I've got terrible taste. Lord of the Rings was always, oh, look, I'd love one, but I would never really be able to afford it. But this one just came at such a good price.
    132:28
    Oh, silly not to get it. Yeah, and our friends at Straight Down the Middle, Grack at Grack. I combine their names. Grack now. They're like Grandelina. Grack. Grandelina, Grack.
    132:43
    Grack reviewed The Pimball Machine and Grack as a whole liked The Pimball Machine very much. I love their reviews. They're very thorough. Not as good as Indiana Jones and Houdini and some other games that Grack like more, But a very good review and it's, hey, it's a classic. It's a classic and it still feels kind of modern. So you will enjoy that. So there you go. Your journey to Valinor begins here, Mark. I know. And as I sort of alluded to before, I did, I went to Mr. Pinball and streamed Houdini for three hours and you know why it was a very special occasion, don't you, Ryan? Yeah, your name isn't crossed out on the credits list. Correct. So I am. I heard it for the first time, my voice in a pinball machine. And it was really funny because Wayne, who's Mr. Pinball, I don't think he really knew that my voice was in there. And I'm playing the machine, I finally got up to the Sydney jail escape. And, you know, it says, you know, the Sydney jail is now open. And Wayne looked up and went, is that your voice? Oh shit, yeah. That's my voice. So even he recognised it, even though I thought I was trying to disguise my voice as a gruff policeman. So I didn't tune into most of it, but I jumped on the chat and you just got into that mode and Marty, I saw you, when your voice came out, I saw you grinning like a fox, Marty.
    134:11
    So as a lot of people out there, how do you actually get into the Marty mode? Okay, so what you've got to do is you've got to spell the... You've got to spell the... International Rescue.
    134:25
    No, so you've got to spell escape. There are three stand-up targets that are angled but facing you, and then there are three stand-up targets that are facing away from you, above, near the stage. So it bounces around from the pops to get on there. So you do escape. And also there's a magic stand up on the left and on the right near the slings. If you do those that'll spot a letter as well. So you light escape and then you get it into the hole that's just in front of the stage. And the way this one was set up it was actually the third jail. So I think it went Chicago, London, then Australia. Yeah. But when we played at Bayside the other night, it was on the previous code, so I got to hear the other person's voice doing the Sydney Jail.
    135:20
    What would you give your score out of 10 and his score out of 10 money? Okay. If you're talking about authenticity, I would give mine 10 because I'm Australian. You're an Australian cop, mate. Yeah. I'm an Australian, so therefore the Australian part of it, I would give myself a 10. He sounded like a British person, so it didn't really sound Australian that much. As far as my rating on impersonating a cop, I'd probably give it a five or six.
    135:54
    He needs this. Okay, cool. So, anyway, there you go. That's it. Done. Are we done, Marty? Oh, sorry. I also, I appeared on the Slam Tilt podcast. I was on there a couple of months ago and we did an impropitude rip-off of every single podcast. And for some reason I really love ripping podcasts off, so I joined them again and we ripped off every single podcast out there. So I will link that in the show notes, but I'm sure everyone has already listened to the Slam Selt podcast. Yep, I'm sure they all have, except me. I didn't know you were on it. You serious? Yeah, I haven't listened to it yet. Okay.
    136:36
    Hilarious. You know, I had so much fun doing it, Marty, I almost felt like guilty. I'm like, we should have done that. We should have had the Riffel episode because it's so much fun. Maybe one day. I'm pretty sure every episode of ours is a Riffel episode. Yes, it is. Slam the top 100. Okay.
    136:55
    All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. And stay tuned next week as well for part two of the Roger Schraff interview where it gets juicy.
    137:04
    Don't forget to email us. Your questions and your resume if you want to be a roving reporter. I'm joking about the resume a bit. Just let us know if you want to do it and we'll pick some around in person.
    137:16
    Headtoheadpinball.com is where you find all the links to all of our shows. If you're new to this, you can go back and listen to 61 episodes, at least like 120 hours of podcast material, riveting stuff.
    137:29
    Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I post funny stuff on Instagram like Luke being impressed by the program. And yes, send us all of your Patreon dollars and you will get exclusive content. You will. It's a paywall. It's a podcast paywall.
    137:48
    All right, everybody. We will speak to you soon. Bye.