you're listening to the head to head people podcast find us on facebook email us at Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 45 and my name's Martin and with me each and every week is... It's Ryan C. Marty, we've got a lot of Stern news to cover today. I think we should get someone from Stern on. What do you think? Oh, who's available from Stern? They're all so busy. Okay. When this guy isn't playing with rare earth magnets, he is hiking the hills of Chicago in his world-famous shorts. He's widely considered one of the greatest competitive pinball players of all time, despite the fact that he's never once played a tournament outside of the US. He's now working for a very small startup company called Stern Pinball. As a game designer, ladies and gentlemen, Keith Elwin. How are you going? Thank you, thank you. Was any of what he just said true? About my world-famous shorts or never competing outside the country? Never being outside the country. I was driving in a car with Marty last night, and I was trying to look up some stats of Keith Elwin, and every single one of your tournaments on the IFA website have been held in the U.S. Yeah, I guess that's true. Do you have a passport? Actually, currently I don't, but legally I can get one. Don't worry. But have you done a lot of travel outside of the U.S., or is it just like that's for tournaments, you just prefer to do it local? Yeah, you know, the tournament, I never really took it that seriously where I would travel to Europe and play in a pinball tournament. So I've always kept it local. But I definitely plan on going to IPA Italy next year. So I've been kind of on a hiatus for the past year, just transitioning to Chicago, transitioning to a new job, and haven't really been competing that much. But now that the game's out, I plan to kind of get back into it. Yeah, I guess I've probably noticed that, you know, you have sort of wound down a little bit in the last few years, probably even before bringing Iron Maiden out. But do those things coincide with you sort of really want to focus on pinball design and not so much on the competitive side? Yeah, a little bit. I kind of grew bored, honestly, and I kind of wanted to focus on making Archer and then whatever became of that. Now that that's all handled, I actually kind of miss the competitive pinball scene. So what is it about competitive pinball after a while that gets boring? Is it the kind of the waiting around, the tournament format, chatting to people while you're waiting? what ends up getting boring after, you know, 20 years of playing football in the pinball? Well, yeah, you hit the nail on the head, 20 years. It's, you know, pretty much since my early 20s I've been doing it. And it's just like, you know, I actually kind of want to start using my vacation for vacation. Kind of kick. So that's kind of where that stems from. You know, so when I started Stern, I didn't get very much vacation. And so I was just like, you know, I'm going to use this for vacation and not to compete. But now that I've been there longer, a little more flexible, I'd like to kind of get back into it. Because I do miss the adrenaline I get playing. So I may be a little rusty, but I think by the time Pinbird rolls around, I should be all right. And we will delve more into the tournament side later. Because I think the main thing that we do really want to talk about is Iron Maiden. and not just because it's a fantastic machine that's coming out. I've got this machine on fucking order, man. Where is my machine? It's in my office. I'm going through it. He's signing it. One of one. The super limited. Keith, it always kind of intrigues me because, you know, people order these machines and, you know, it arrives in a box. and, you know, designed by Keith Elwin. We don't really know kind of the exact story behind it. So what's your job after you design it, right? Like, are you still going into Stern every day and helping out with something, or is your job now done and you just kind of work on the code updates with Rick? So, yeah, before I started working at Stern, I always wondered, what does a game designer do every day? And now that I've been there for a year, I can tell you, if you don't have a game on the assembly line, then you're just in front of the computer working on CAD, making whatever game you want, trying to come up with something unique, original, coming up with a rule set. But if you have a game on the assembly line, you'll be surprised how many little fires come up that you have to take care of. so I'll be in my office working on something and then somebody from the assembly line will come over, hey we're out of this part what do we do and then there are other times where I put this together and it's not working right so every little thing that goes wrong basically they I have to sign off on it so it's really disruptive but you can imagine that it's better than just hey, letting it go. You know, sometimes, you know, sometimes the plastic will get put on backwards or, you know, screw will be missing. That's why something won't work. And it all comes back to me or the mechanical engineer, Harrison, too. One of us has to go sign off on any kind of rework that has to be done. So is that only happening, I guess, during the first stages of production? Like, does it hit a point where everything kind of runs smoothly after, say, like, say, two or three months after production? it gets better as the employees learn to build the games but what people need to understand is we work with vendors and sometimes the tolerances aren't quite the same from one part to the other so they'll bring us over and say what can we do how can we make this work and sometimes we'll just say hey we gotta trash that part it's no good so it's a constant you'd be surprised it's constant back and forth with the production line over the yield. Make your pinballs hard, believe it or not. Now that I've seen it, it's hard. Well, okay, so that's a great segue for me, because we obviously, I think we start probably at Archer, and Archer goes to Iron Maiden, and you're now talking to us, and I think this is the first podcast post it now being revealed, because I know you're on Slam Tilt and you really couldn't talk that much about it, but we all knew, obviously. What? Yeah, I know, What a big surprise, hey? Who would have known? Golden Girls. Those guys found us Golden Girls. I had them sold. They were sold. I had pre-order money down, and now I've lost it. Anyway. So I'm really keen to know that, because obviously I played Archer a couple of years ago, met you back at Indies when that was first launched there. And I'm keen to know a couple of things. Okay. Okay. First of all, did you design Archer wanting a either... Did you want a production machine of some kind, or did you just want to have the one-off that was fun for you, or was that your resume for Stern? That was my resume for Stern. Was it, though? No doubt. Yes, it was. Lyman's been bugging me for years to do a design, and it's like, yeah, that's something I'm totally interested in doing. So when I came up with the design, I kind of came up with something I would enjoy playing that also could be my resume piece. But, you know, if I didn't get the job, then I would still have a game that I would enjoy playing. So it was kind of a win-win. So how much you designed this and kind of built it with your brother, Randy, is that right? Yes, true. So was he mainly doing the software, or, like, what was his involvement, and was he also kind of pitching a resume to Stern, or...? Oh, no, no, he's happy being retired. So his involvement was the software and setting up the system. I kind of let him do all the, you know, the computer, setting up the P-Rock and the skeleton game. He had some rule input, but mostly the design was all me. So what are you doing then? If it is, let's say, the resume, right, are you showing them a really good play field design? Are you showing them a good fun game? Do you also have to show them your ability to understand the engineering that goes into making a pinball machine? Yeah, it's all the above. So anybody can get on a virtual pinball, design a cool table, but then when you realize, hey, these parts have footprints. They aren't going to go together. So my goal was to make the most complicated kind of playfield design possible that also actually works with the flipper plate footprints, the mechanisms, the targets. You know, Archer had a subway And the wiring harness had to go around So all that went into consideration For making this game Hey, I can do this It's a really complicated shooting game I didn't think Stern would ever say Give you the go-ahead to make it But when they did, I was thrilled So was that part of the Kind of, well, their pitch to you Because obviously you're pitching to them Saying I can make a game And then they're saying, well, hey, come work for us Did they say, okay because you had a blog kind of detailing your venture into designing pinball, and then all of that stuff disappeared, and people were like, what's going on? So how does that work? Do they say, we're buying your design, and this will be your first game, so please remove everything online? Okay, this is hilarious. I had a domain name called pinballreviews.com forever, and that's where the Archer blog was. and it just so happened that that domain expired right about the time same time I got hired by Star so uh everyone said oh the blog's gone it's stolen it's actually there somewhere right it's just not nowhere it's just not under uh the same domain yes uh and YouTube there's also some YouTube videos I took down the older ones because I didn't want yeah I didn't want to see I wanted to show the latest progress I didn't I didn't want to get rid of the first whitewood stuff But you can see that we look at that and go, it is absolute conclusive proof. It is Iron Maiden. You can't argue with that logic right there. Yeah, yeah. So, Keith, I mean, there's been a lot of kind of changes from CERN's normal offerings to, I guess, what's in Iron Maiden. And, you know, me and Marty have kind of joked about it that, you know, you've come in and you're like, I want it this way and this way and that way. stuff like the service rails on the pro was that your you know was that one of your things on the list that that must be in your machines or did that just happen to change when you arrived at cern a little of both i definitely pushed for them but um we also realized that if you're going to have a game with uh any kind of assembly in the back panel like uh iron maiden does with the that bullseye target, you need access to that as an operator. So I think it was kind of a combination of both. Yeah, we need it for this game, and then these are so handy, let's just put them back on every game. So every pro game going forward should have them. So what sort of changes then did you need to make from your original Archer layout? I know you've obviously spoken about the fact that the size of the play field was changed, it was reduced in length, But did you really still have a massive learning curve to take that what was ultimately a concept machine to now a production machine? It actually was a pretty smooth transition. So I cheated an inch on Archer, as you know. And once we took that one inch out, everything shifted down. So the original Whitewood still had a scoop on the left-hand side, and it was so close to the flippers, it was just annoying to shoot. the ball would pop out of there most of the time. It just wasn't satisfying to shoot. And it kind of closed off that left side, that left spinner shot. I really liked that shot. And it kind of closed that off. So the first thing I did was I got rid of that, replaced it with a stand-up target for the Newton ball and the LE. And so we're shooting that. It's like, great, now I need something. I was never a huge fan of the very target on Archer because even though it was a very target, it was either you hit it and it went in, you hit it, it didn't go in. It was just frustrating to open it up. Yeah. It would just keep rejecting, kind of like Ripley's does. It was just frustrating. So I was like, I'm going to just pull this mech out, use that money, and put some drop targets in because that's really what I wanted in Archer, and that's what I did. So the other, I guess, new things about Archer, you know, you've got the Shaker on the alley, the Alley being 500 units, all three models, and having different cabs with totally unique art, and little things like the tilt debounce settings, which weren't available before. How many of those were your ideas, and how many were other people's ideas? The speakers I wanted, the foil cabinet decals I wanted. I don't remember. The Visi-Glass was definitely a sales idea, and it's a good idea in my opinion. Yeah. But I definitely wanted the upgraded speakers because my – so the cabinets we have at work are just cabinets from previous games. So when we drop a Whitewood in, I'm playing it with the Batman Super Elite speaker package. And I was like, this sounds amazing. Yeah. And I was like, I've got to have this in my game. And so, yeah, I pushed for the speakers, and then they approved them, and I was like, awesome. And then they came back a month later. He's like, hey, you know what, we're also going to include a shaker and a visiglass, beard buck, back glass, you know, everything. So, yeah. So, I mean, does that maybe come from the fact that Archer was already designed, so you didn't spend kind of a year or whatever it was, you know, employed at CERN designing that, where they have to kind of pay you for your time? Is that where the cost kind of gets adjusted, or was this just kind of like this is the new CERN going forward possibly where we're going to put more stuff into our LA. No, this has nothing to do with development time. So our development time and our bill of materials are two separate things. Those will never go together. So I was given a bill of material to work with, and on the pro I decided, you know what, I want metal ramps, metal wire forms, I need the drop targets, I need the spinners. And, of course, all that comes at a cost of any kind of major mech, which I was willing to do. So it's all about the physical bomb And the development time and all that Didn't have anything to do with the added features on the LE Okay But you've had a long time, right, to get that layout right Was there much of it that you felt kind of needed to be tweaked Because it was now lost moving from your design to a Stern design Because they've got a completely different look and feel, right? It's a different mix, different rubbers, different everything. So I still have Archer, and it's in my office. And when I play that, it is so slow. The Iron Maiden shoots so much better. The more compact playfield design with the stronger stern flippers, it's just night and day. I probably also like the clear coat in the playfield as well. I played the Whitewood of TNA, and it is not, you know, like that's fast, but you play the production model and it's just, as I said, nine-day, completely different machines. Yeah, because there's no clear coat, the flippers were just not as strong. It just played super slow. And then when we first got our first flipping whitewood with a clear coat on it, it's like, wow, this thing is fast. Got to keep the metal ramps. Was there anything that you wanted to, all that was discussed to be added to the play field that wasn't really thought about at the art stage? No, no, I had to save all my fight for keeping the upper flippers. Was that really the case, though? You would have just been given the green card to go through with all of that, wouldn't you? I pretty much was, but I still had to state my case. It was like, okay, I won't design any major feature around the upper loops that will hinder progress towards the final battle. So that's what I did. Okay. So, I mean, the ball is very fast on Iron Maiden, and it stays at certain places, but there isn't one big mech, like a giant Groot head that swallows the ball, etc. Is that something, moving forward into future possible designs, since the reception of Iron Maiden has been taking so well, So does that kind of second guess, does that make you second guess putting a mech in like that versus kind of having the ball just, you know, making it more about shots than toys? You know, it's going to depend on the license. For Iron Maiden, and it's the same with Archer, I just wanted something super fast. I didn't want the ball constantly stopping, you know, wherever. So I figured with the Iron Maiden LE, with the ball-loading sarcophagus and tomb. That's as much as I want to stop the ball right there. I really like the up-post design to catch the ball because to me that's much more satisfying than shooting a scoop, which is probably, in pinball, one of my least favorite things to shoot at. Is that including older games, like shooting a source that's collected a bonus or something like that? Or is that just like the ball going into a hole? Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah, I just don't find that very, I don't know. I mean, some games, like Adam's Family shooting that vault, yeah, that felt great. But if it's just a scoop where it just holds the ball and kicks it back out, I just don't find that very fun. How about if it's like to end the combo? Say you're in Tron, you get like a four-way combo, and you have to cash in at the scoop. Is that a satisfying shot when you finish it? It is, it is, but I mentioned that that was a stand-up target where not only are you cashing in, but you've got to be on your toes. I don't know. That's just me. Okay. Yeah, no, I find it interesting because shot satisfaction is something that a lot of people have in pinball, but they don't actually know what's happening. Like, they hit a ramp or they hit a combo and they're like, oh, wow, that feels good, but they don't know why. It's just, you know, it's just what happens. You know, the spinners. So, I don't know. Do you want to rank? You know, you said you love spinners. Is hitting a spinner your favorite thing to do in pinball, or is it loops? It is. Spinners and loops are both my favorite. I grew up playing games from the early to mid-'80s. I can tell you my favorite games are anything. You can hit a spinner. If it has a great sound attached to it, even better. Like, you know, 8-Ball Champ is always one of my favorite spinners to hit because the longer it spins, the deeper the sound gets. And to me, that was just so satisfying. And that was something I wanted to bring back. Same with the bonus meltdown. The bigger the bonus, you know, the higher the pitch goes and the more excited you get. So there were two things I wanted to bring back, and Iron Maiden was the vessel for that. And probably one of the other things that stands out there as well, and I think you've said this as well, is that when you walk up to the machine, everything that you need to do is there on the playfield. Like, you probably still do need to look at the rule card, but you've actually spelled everything out. Yeah, I tried to as best as I could, because, yeah, if a playfield is nothing but colored arrows, how do you explain this to somebody? So I tried to put, it's like for the loop value, I put actual physical printed values on those loop combos, and that's like, and people were telling me, no, because what if there's a scoring imbalance? It's like, no, I just got to balance the rest of the game around these printed values, and it wasn't a problem. Yeah, I was about to say that. Isn't that a scary thing when you kind of can't adjust it? But I guess they're your constants, and then, yeah, you make everything else a variable. You mentioned kind of in one of your interviews, I think, or maybe when you had the glass off and you're doing the Stern Live video, that there's a hidden wizard mode. So that one, that's the only thing, I guess, that doesn't have an insert. Am I correct in saying that? You are correct. Run to the hills. Okay. So is that in the current firmware, or is that, like, coming on 1.0 firmware or something? That's coming on 0.99. 1999, okay. So that is my Bowen slash Carl D'Python Anghelo, Robert Gagno challenge to make it there. But you won't say what it is. Will it be in, like, the Instant Info menu, or is it literally just you might just arrive there? It's Tomb Award 10. I'll give you that. Tomb Awards are when you finish, is that like the Shard thing, where you finish, like, a mode and then you class the Tomb Awards? or is that Tumel wards are so you get one for a loop jackpot if you collect a soul shard you get one if you collect you get a super jackpot on mummy or trooper you get one and then there's a hidden tenth one that you have to unlock I'll leave it at that okay so it's like the gifts from the case pretty much yeah yeah it's not hard to figure out I don't want to give it away but it's pretty easy to figure out because there are inserts on a play field that behave differently when you're working your way there. Have you gotten there without taking the glass off? Close. I've gotten to two more word eight. That's my highest. Thank you. One of the things that we remember hearing before you were saying that you didn't like games that had too many modes. We kind of thought you might have been referring to Star Trek at the time. Maybe not. And you put that... Oh, Marty. Come on. It's meant to be a secret. And you put five modes Do you think you've got that balance right? Are you happy with what you've put in there? And do you think no more, no less? So, okay, here's my thing Mode-based games are great If all you are doing are modes The game's going to get boring So that's how I designed this game So it's not that easy To light and start a mode on Iron Maiden So, you know, in exchange You only have a handful of modes But there are other things to explore and do so you got the loop jackpots you got the trooper uh you got the combo system you got the tumor there are other things to do such as you know lighting your playfield multiplier and all the power features every single shot you do builds this power feature so that was my goal to make something is like what do i do oh i can do anything and make progress towards you know the end goal of the game it's not like no now i gotta do this mode now i gotta do this mode that's what I don't like did you have that in your mind at the Archer stage or was that when you said right now I've got to make Iron Maiden for Stern did you have to sit down and think about the rule set at that stage or did you just have all this stuff already in your mind ready to go so Rick was hired in I believe June or July of last year so I had no idea who my software guy was going to be so George said hey we got this guy he's really great but he doesn't know pinball and I was like, yeah, yeah, it's coming by. He's like, well, you realize you're going to have to come up with the rules. And I was like, yeah, yeah, fine, no problem. So I just sat down and kind of came up with the rule set. The only thing I did have in mind were the power features because those are inserts on the play field. So I was like, these have to be here. Every shot's going to work towards this. I don't know what any of it's going to do, but we'll figure it out. So pretty much I designed the game fairly quickly, and then the last four or five months of the project, I was just, you know, we have to make these rule guides. So, you know, I was on Microsoft Word every day for hours just coming up with these rules. So is that something that you would like to do moving forward? Like, you know, design the physical layout of these pinball machines but then also have a really big hand in creating the rule structure around it? Or would you like to kind of just concentrate on the hardware side and let someone else finish off your work? No, no, I definitely want to do both. If my programmer has ideas, I totally want to listen to what they have to say. But I'm willing to do both because I think I know pinball just as well as pretty much anyone there. If it makes the game better, great. So when the machine was revealed, right, we all got to see it, and we all were shocked that it was Iron Maiden because we obviously hadn't been to... Yeah, you thought it was Golden Girls. We had you, we had you. And the reaction we know has been, for the most part, positive. For those people that don't really like it, I think the biggest criticism they have is that they don't like the band. Well, that's not really your call, and you pretty much didn't like them either. I'm probably exaggerating there a little bit, but... What? Surely you'd come to love them now. But the question I have for you is, with all the feedback, and surely you would have seen what people have been saying about it. Do you think even some of the criticism has been fair or do you think people have sort of missed the mark or have you actually been surprised at all by how people have reacted to it? I was surprised initially about how almost unanimous people were positive about it. Now I'm starting to see people say, oh, you know, the ball times are long. Yeah, that's by design. I wanted so when I was first approached with this project I was like I want to make, this is going to be a home collector game so I kind of went about having a fairly, it's not a complicated rule set but it's steep, there's a lot of strategies to the rule set so I wanted a game with longer ball times and of course when people play and set up at a show where they're flat and floaty, it's like wow this game plays forever. It's like, yeah, it's true. It might. But it's still going to take you at least a half an hour to beat the game. So it shouldn't play any longer to beat than, say, Walking Dead. Because I pretty much structured the rule set verbatim after Walking Dead. Well, you say half an hour at your skill level, or is that half an hour at anyone's skill level? Half an hour at anyone's skill level to battle the beast. And like I said, if you want to get run to the hills, that's probably going to take you another 10-15 minutes But that's for Like I said That's for That's the carrot For the Podcaster The You know People like Carl Who you know It's a challenge Hey go ahead Beat everything in a game And see what happens That's a challenge To anyone out there Well so that's what I came to know About the release Who were you Who were you pitching this to As far as The end user Were you really trying to to factor in everybody. So it's Iron Maiden, so it's going to attract people that are Iron Maiden fans but not necessarily pinball fans. Then you've got the middle pack, those people that will go along to competitions and not necessarily the top. Then you've got the elite players like yourself. Where do you think this was meant to fit in with the player base? So I wanted to make a game that was accessible to a novice player. they can kind of figure out what's going on right away. That bullseye target in the back, you know, I see a lot of people complain about that. Oh, it's not that interesting. But you know what? Put a six-year-old kid in front of that. What are they going to shoot for? That's what they're going to shoot for. So, you know, we put a little interesting light show on it. If you hit the red section, it lights up red. If you hit the blue, it lights up blue. If you hit a bullseye, it does this little light show. So I definitely designed this game for the average player. But there are enough things for the expert players, such as the loop jackpots, the stack-in-the-multipliers, the soul charge stuff, for the professional player to keep busy for quite a while. Okay. And so you've pretty much got a relatively new team, right? So you've also got Tommy Soxton. He's part of your team as well. And obviously your coders as well. Do you think that that's kind of helped to deliver a machine that you don't have to worry about what's been done in the past? You can do just whatever you guys want to do right now. Yeah, so the great thing was that when Rick started, he had no code base. So he started from scratch. So anything he does, he wrote himself. It wasn't a copy and paste from anything else. When Tim came on, he was on our project for about a month. And he did the placement of the call-outs, and he did a few of the light shows before he moved on to greener pastures. And our mechanical engineer, Harrison Drake, is fresh out of Purdue, and so he tackled the project like no problem. So just before you were kind of touching on, you know, you want people to battle the beast, first of all, congratulations on the sound package in the machine because that beast, you know, the beast call-outs are absolutely amazing. Oh, isn't he? Did you get to meet that guy or coach him, or was it literally like, you know, saying, hey, we need these call-outs. Let's get a company to do them. And it just came back amazing. So Jerry Thompson, our sound guy, I told him, hey, this is what I'm looking for. We need a clairvoyant British accent woman, and we need a beast. And he's like, oh, I know the perfect beast. He does the voice of Tom and Jerry, and he did the voices for Batman 66. He was the announcer. So I'm thinking, the announcer? What? Okay. Yeah. And the guy says, on a wonderful day, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that's him. He's the same guy. Gotham City. No way. Yeah, so, yeah, when his demo came back, I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. So we sent that to the licensor, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's great. Thumbs up. For the Claire boy, we had a little more trouble. We had, like, three or four auditions before they finally, like, yeah, she's good. But, yeah, for the Beast, we nailed it first time. Licensor loved it. And, yeah, I was shocked that it was the same guy. This is my thing. I mean, you know, sounds are so important in pinball, but there's all these kind of like these great voice people, but they never – are they kind of being hidden on purpose or like, you know, you're trying to hide them from working for other companies or, you know, there's the designer, the art person, you know, Zombie Eddie, Keith Elwin, bang, and then there's this guy who's an amazing part of the pinball machine and no one really knows who he is? Well, yeah, because basically we work with Jerry Thompson, our sound guy, and then he has his own subcontractors. So, you know, there's this kind of insulation. I don't know if it's we're trying to hide it or it's just the fact that I've never met the guy. But he did an amazing job, I think. Yeah, amazing. I'm going to definitely try to work with him again. He's been a fine, just devil-based guy. He did these two dynamically different games with those two voices. He can do anything. Oh, 100%. 100%. And so I think people thought that it might have been Brian Blessed, if people know who that is. He's a very well-known British sort of thespian and actually a comedy actor as well. It does sound very similar to him anyway. Did you just Google that, Marty? No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. You've heard about that, haven't you, surely? No, I have not. Really? Okay. I read it on one of the forums as well. I mean, obviously people were talking about the Game of Thrones girl as well, and it's not at all. It's not, no. No. But speaking of the licenses then, did you have to have much to do with either the band or the person that manages the license for the band? I didn't, but Jody, that's his job. So basically I approached Jody, this is what I want to do, and he's like, all right, I'll see if they'll go for it, and he'll come back, yeah, but make these changes. That's kind of how that works. All right, so it all goes through him. But do you get feedback from him that says, yeah, the band love it and you're an amazing person? I'll accept the amazing person, but I'm just a nobody. I'm just a nobody in their world. But, yes, they were... When it came to letting me have creative freedom with the game itself, the game rules, they were great. They didn't care. They worried about their art assets, so that wasn't my problem. so if you're wondering why Jeremy was so depressed, there's your answer he did a phenomenal job I still don't know how he managed to create three totally different art packages for the three versions it was amazing I know he spent a lot of time he was really stressed he had to make a bunch of changes but given the amount of time he had to do it I think he knocked it out of the park yeah and it's great that you got to work with him because as he kind of said in the interview with us he can't mold his art around every license. You know, there's certain licenses where Christopher Franchi would be way better because, you know, people that are a lot more protective of their licenses would like, you know, his art style versus, you know, Jeremy doing a kind of like a total custom line art kind of package, right? Yeah, so, you know, Jeremy's obviously under a lot of stress because people are expecting, you know, these Derek Riggs art covers, which that wasn't the license. That's not the direction the band wants to go. They want to go to Legacy of the Beast to support their tour. They want to go to their comic books. I read their comic books, and I said, yes, this is perfect. This is way easier to make a pinball machine around than just random album covers and song lyrics. So it was actually a real easy call for me. The Fear of the Dark animation, has that been changing from one different style of animation to another? Like one, it's kind of like a first-person view, and the other one, it's kind of like a guy running from the beast. Well, you're thinking about the placeholder. Yeah. Our team is funny. So, yeah, they put a guy that looks like me in there as the placeholder. So the latest code, the latest, latest code, that's actually an Easter egg now. But for a while, I was completely out of there. Well, before we move on from this, I've actually got a little bit of feedback. I know Marley loves this. someone wrote in about Fear of the Darks. Let me just, it's a little voice clip. Let me just go ahead and play this. Everybody loves Iron Maiden. But if you ever talk to Keith Elwin, you should tell him not to make fun of Fear of the Dark. It's a real fear. He thinks you're so funny. I'm surprised that you just put your ball animation that you made it come out of his chest and not his pants. Oh, and one last thing, Ryan and Martin. Fuck off! Oh, my God, that extra ball animation, that was, so that came out really early in the project before most of the other animations were done. And I remember seeing that, and the whole design team was like, what just happened? So, yeah, apparently the, yeah, the Book of Souls Eddie just rips his heart out and hands it out to people. I was like, wow, that is freaking awesome. So can you walk, I mean, it's one of our news pieces, you know, certain releases Iron Maiden, you know, 0.98. You know, since you're on the show, do you want to kind of step us through quickly what's changed from the previous version to this version? Oh, man. I'm so bad because the version in my office is always way different than whatever's released. This is old code, right? Yeah. I think we had some Tomb Awards. Can I Play Miss Madness for the LE Premium Owners, which is its own mode A bunch of There a special mode just for Alley and Premium owners Yes there is It two more word three Basically, you're using the center up-down ramp a lot in this mode. It just didn't work on the Pro, so we scrapped it. What else? That hasn't happened in a while. That's like, what, is it Tron Alley, the last time that there's been a totally separate mode in a different model? possibly yeah yeah it just didn't work as well because you need to lock the ball in that center ramp to yeah because when you're moving you're flipping the flippers you're moving the shots you need to hit and it's just too frustrating I'm not a pro a lot of bug fixes a couple new animations some score balancing definitely I made Hallowed Be Thy Name worth more because at the New York City Pinball Championships people were pretty much just ignoring that mode and I was like Yeah, it's kind of worthless. Give that a huge scoring boost. We nerfed loop jackpots a little bit. Off you go, the loop jackpots and non-stop in the New York City Pimble Championships. That's pretty funny. Yeah, but it kind of burned me in the final round, though, because if you miss, it's deadly. So it was a good risk-reward, but we kind of made it so after a while, holding up the left flipper to shoot that loop will no longer advance your multiplier. You'll still score the jackpot, you just won't advance the multiplier. So when you're doing all the code revisions at the moment, what's the sort of thing that you're working on? And I could imagine it's probably situational, depends on what needs to be fixed or added. But are you looking at game enhancements? Are you looking at balancing? But do you also have to do things about sort of some of the base code that actually, you know, makes sure that the mechanics of the machine are also preserved as well? Yeah, especially on the L8 because, you know, you can have an airball go into the sarcophagus and then the game won't know what to do. So it's just all kinds of things that, yeah, we're constantly finding out about. We get these bug reports. Hey, you know, if this switch doesn't work, the game just kind of sits there. And we're like, oh, yeah, you're right. So we got to, you know, Rick has to figure out a way around that. And so there's a lot of stuff that we need to take into consideration when making the software. Where do these bug reports come from? Either I'll read them or we have a bug report, bug.report at Stern Pinball. We'll get emails. Okay. So was Archer always going to go to Iron Maiden? Was that always the plan for it? Or did that license sort of get thrown on you at a later stage, I guess is what I'm trying to ask? Definitely a later stage because when I originally was going to move out here, I couldn't So I had to take An extra two months And So yeah George was like Hey how about Iron Maiden I was like Oh I'll think about it He said you can work with Jeremy I was like Alright Sold And obviously Jeremy wanted to work with you Yeah He's weird right He's very weird Are we recording When he does come in Which is very rare When he does come in He has everybody in stitches So Yeah I wasn't expecting him to be as funny as he was. I know Ryan had heard other interviews, but I kind of don't like to listen to previous interviews that people have done, so it's kind of fresh for me. So I didn't know what to expect when we interviewed him, but he's very funny, but obviously very talented. But obviously, as well, we got through that he doesn't sort of... He's probably a bit too humble. He doesn't realise that what he actually does is great football. He's the worst. He's the worst, man. He's just like, man, that's great. Nah, it sucks. People are going to love this. People are going to love this. No, they're just going to be different levels of hate. I was like, oh, okay. Different levels of hate. He is so humble, yes. He is amazing. So, have you played the Supreme? You know, you've played a lot of pinball machines that are made by Stern. Have you played the Supreme pinball machine, Keith? Oh, yes. That was an office favorite for a long time. it's kind of it's got a lot of hype at the moment and I want to play I know none of them will probably ever come to Australia but are the sounds in the machine like the same as the sounds in the video like if it's all that Jerry Thompson did the sound for that as well there's a ton of 80s beeps boops you know electronic sounds in there so I'm sure whatever you've heard that's what it is But for the longest time, me, Tommy Soxton, and Zach were just super competitive on that game. We'd be like, hey, beat this score right now. So Zach would try to beat it, and then Tommy would put up a score. It was a ton of fun playing that. So you obviously play the Spider-Man Home Edition as well. So as a high-level player that you are, do you kind of look at it and go, yeah, you know what? It's still a great game. Or do you look at it and think, oh, it's not really as complicated or as challenging as other games? Yeah, I did not play a ton of the Spider-Man. If it's anything like Supreme, then it's just, it shoots really well. It's surprisingly still for, you know, kind of a home game, as it were. But you won't be disappointed. No, that's what I found. As I said, I did play it. And really what you can notice is there's almost like the start button sort of looks a bit different. and, you know, the back dot matrix is quite basic. But what you actually see under the glass is a full-stone pinball machine. And I love that captive ball slash Newton ball lock release shot. Yes, that was brilliant. That's great. Yes, yes. Well, Keith, would you like to play Slam the Top 100? Ooh, yeah, let's do it. All right. Well, you've got options. So you can either go it alone, so Keith versus Ryan and Marty, or I can generate a number and you can get slapped on one of our teams. So which one would you rather? Yeah, let's go on your team. No, you won't. Okay, I'm going to generate a number from one to two. One, he's on my team, Marty, and two, he's on your team. Sure, for sure. Please generate a number from zero to two. Okay. No whammies. Yes. All right, so you're on my team. So I'm excited. I'm not hearing your level of excitement is all I'm saying. Keeps on silent. He's dropped out of the call. Just like a land of pins out here, guys. All right, so I'll generate the numbers. The first will be my one, and then the second will be yours. and then Keith, you can choose if you want to go first or second on Marty's team. Okay. Please generate a number from zero to 100. Okay. 36. Oh, whirlwind. Whirlwind. I know. Close to nothing about this game. Okay. Oh, my God. I know one person that has one. That's it. Okay. please generate a number from zero to 100. All right. 18. Simpsons Kimball Party. I was going to say, how can I try to get it to... Yeah, let's do Simpsons Kimball Party. I think, you know, we're on our 45th episode, and I think everybody is aware of my thoughts. However, I think there was a bit of a giveaway just a second ago when Keith in the background just went, Ugh. It's a great game. Oh, did you hear that? You got a very sensitive mic. Oh, all right. If there's ever a game I never have to play again So I think it's only fair As you being a special guest of the show To do the opening argument Do you have two hours to kill? I got the game for you That should be on the block. All right. Just to recap, so I'll go first. Oh, wait, no, you guys have to go first. You have the lower number. So Keith's going to talk for... We're going to change it up. We're going to do one minute, all right? Just in case. Because it's going to be double the length of everything else. Double the time. Yeah. Time extension. So you can talk for a minute, or you can stop at any time you want. and talk about how good the Simpsons Thin Wall Party is. Then I'll talk about how good Whirlwind is, and then Marley's going to try and trash Whirlwind, and I will try and trash Simpsons. So let me know when you're ready, Keith. Can I go second? You want to trash Whirlwind? No. No, I would never trash Whirlwind. All right. Pretend you're a lawyer. It doesn't matter what you do. Am I defending Simpsons or am I trashy and whirlwind? Ah, so you want to stop teams now, do you? No, no, no. Because your opening argument is only about the merits of the machine. You only get to bag out the other machine in your reboot. So you've got to talk for a minute about how amazing an entity Simpsons Pinball is. We are going to win this. Okay. So let's do it. Okay. All right. Ready, set, go, Keith. Simpsons Pinball Party by Stern Pinball, 2003. Lots of shots. The game has tons of shots. Cool little right ramp. A garage door that sometimes works. What else? Yeah, rules. Got tons of rules. It's got, what, five flippers and another flipper mech on the homer head. So that's six flipper mechs. So good bomb value there. Sound and call outs. Sure It's not the worst Could be a little better Mini playfield actually I think is kind of fun You know, it's small, tight Tiny little flippers I think that works pretty well Tons of flow The game's just a flow monster Cool lock target Or lock saucer behind the drop targets All right. Right here. I'll put you out of your misery. Thank you. A slow monster. This is more funny. I mean, you can get a five-way combo. It just takes about, like, 30 seconds. But you get a six-eyed fish, right? It's awesome. Exactly. All right. Whirlwind. You chose the wrong game. I did. I know. Whirlwind. one of Pat Lawler's best creations. His first, or his second, disaster theme, you've got the three spinning discs in the middle. You've got that beautiful side ramp, which, hey, it is steep, but guess what? Rebuild your flippers, and you'll have no problems making that shot. You spell north, south, east, west to get everything going. It's just a classic. System 11, I believe it's System 11. I'm just, yeah, it is. They made 7,000 of these. The artwork is of its time. You know, J.J.P. couldn't, you know, pull off the three spinning discs. This is how you do it, guys. This is the crazy disc with the three separate circles. You've got it. And let's not forget, it has an interactive popper. So when you start the whirlwind, right, this breaks the fourth wall. This is like, you know, 3D or 4D pinball. It blows air in your face. absolutely amazing on a hot day whirlwind in the field and we should have seen it. But what if a piece of dust gets you in your eye? Is there a potential lawsuit? Yep. That's right. All right. You ready for the rebuttal? So should we limit this to 30 seconds or do you want to go for a minute, Marty? No, I'm happy to go. Okay, 30 seconds. Okay, so look, it was an interesting game of its time. It's a patroller design which is not for everybody. I don't think it really has aged all that well. I don't think the art has aged that well. I don't think the rule set has aged that well either. Probably a good tournament machine, but not a good home game at all. And as for that interactive topper, nobody wants to be blown in the face while playing Pimble. Can I re-burp my teammate? Do you want to add anything in there, Keith? Just as a last little burn What's the worst thing about Whirlwind? I don't own one I love that game Wrong team I mean Yeah, it's terrible It's terrible It's too blue Yeah, too many flippers, too many shots Too much wind. The game's too windy. Okay. Simpsons Pinball Party. Where do I start? This game is a super long player, and it is known to cause people to sleep. If you make the game hard, it is too hard. If you make the game easy, it is too easy. It's very hard to find a balance. The game consists of shooting the right orbit, starting a mode, shooting the right orbit, starting a mode. as Bowen says in his puppet show, you don't actually need to finish the modes, you just need to keep on starting modes, and eventually you start to get double shots. Adding Invasion, horrible mode. Horrible. Horrible. What are you thinking? Keep trying. It's a football party. You'll think that a game that you... I really like this football party. We're both on the wrong side, so... You know, it's not that I hate it, it's just for like five years, It was in every single tournament ever. It was just like, oh, I'm so sick of it. Isn't that what people are doing? You know, isn't that what's happened to kind of Metallica? Like, Metallica's such a kind of a good game, but it's just... No, no, I think people realize that you can make Metallica really fun by making the crank it up requirements fewer. So you're actually doing other things other than bashing Sparky, whereas Simpsons, like you said, there's nothing you can do. You're shooting right orbit mode, right orbit mode, upper playfield lock. I think our equivalent to that really was actually ACDC We used to find that on location everywhere And in just about every tournament And it was kind of like, come on, I'm done with ACDC Let's get something new Yeah, yeah Tron too Tron was in every tournament for five years straight It's such a linear game that there offers no strategy variety So what's the point? So what are some of the games that you do like when you're playing in tournaments? E-Buck Hunter. Actually, yes. That game is super hard, and you have to know the mode codes for the right orbit mode. It's definitely not a favorite one of mine. I didn't end up reading the rule sheet. Is it actually a way to know what you're going to get in bonus round when you shoot the right orbit? Yes, yes, it depends on the blink code. The blink code? Yeah, you notice the insert. Yeah, the insert will blink a certain number of times, and you want to forget the mode. There's a multiball in there. It's the one you really want. The ball's gone wild, I think it is, possibly, or no. I don't think that's it. Yeah, one of them's overpowered, because, yeah, it's a multiball where everything's a jackpot. I love Iron Man in tournaments. What else? I just played. Let me ask, just whilst you're talking about Iron Man, and this is, I just want some, either some validation or some understanding. So, Iron Man came out, wasn't necessarily really popular at the time. It was a bit of a sleeper hit. It came back a few years later, everyone went, hang on, this is actually a really good tournament game, and it breathes new life. But around the same time, Avatar was released, and it has, I won't say it's got exactly the same rules, but it's got a very similar rules framework. Why does Iron Man get all the kudos and Avatar not? What do you think? Well, Avatar, you're basically going for your triple, whatever the lock shutters on the left, you're going for that triple 12 million super, and that kind of trumps everything else in the game. So it's, I don't know, to me that gets repetitive, whereas Iron Man, there's not one thing you want to do. You can either sit there and go after mongers, or you can sit there, you can try to stack War Machine of the Monger with Bogie. There are different avenues to take with Iron Man as opposed to Avatar. Fair enough. Is that what, like, you know, kind of having this argument kind of recently with a friend about Big Buck Hunter because, you know, everyone calls it, you know, they might say it's a turd, right? Big Buck Hunter, yeah. I mean, if that game came out in the 90s, it'd be, you know, wow, it's amazing, this, this, and that. But, you know, as like a person like yourself that plays a lot of tournament pinball, a lot of competitive play, do you judge games on the time they were released or just kind of like their layout and their rule set? You know, will you say, you know, Steve, which is better than this game because it's not unbalanced? Like, you know, you can't just kind of like do one thing versus Avatar where you just hit that super jackpot you're talking about. Yeah, you definitely take the time of release into consideration. One of my favorite games is Dirty Harry If that came out today, would I think it's particularly fun? No But for its time, yeah, it has some cool stuff in it Do you, sort of, when you are playing Are you still really focusing on scoring strategies? Or are you just really playing for fun to get to the Wizard Mode they says? Kind of depends on the game They got a Total Nuclear Annihilation and Logan here So I've been going there, not so much for score But just to figure out how the game works blow up Reactor 9, just have fun with it. If I'm going to play in a tournament, then I need to find out what the actual best scoring strategy is because I think going straight to Reactor 9 is not the best scoring strategy. It's, like I said, totally dependent on the game. My Aerosmith ruleset knowledge is a little weak, so that's something I need to figure out. I know how to get to the wizard mode, but do I know how to score a lot of points on it? No, I really don't. Okay. So then, you know, let's continue really with sort of your tournament history. You have, you know, over 200, you know, tournament results that we've seen. I think dating back to like 94. And in fact, again, when we were looking up last night, Ryan, is it true that you're IFPA player number one? Yes. Wow. So you were the first person that ever put their name down on a bit of paper? So all that was Was I was the top ranked player In 2004 Or whenever they came around So that's how everybody's That number came about Okay So they just went down the list And assigned numbers So So Such a basic question to ask How did you become Such a good player? I think there's something to be said About growing up Playing pinball I mean look at Escher Lefkos Yeah It's just kind of Natural for him when you're in that stage. So, you know, I was the same as him. I pretty much spent my entire childhood playing pinball. From the time I was eight, you know, I was just hanging out at arcades because pinball was everywhere where I lived. I could walk down to the pizza place and play Spider-Man. And it was just natural for me. And 1993 or so, I went to my first tournament. I placed very well. It was a Twilight Zone in qualifying, and I was the top qualifier. and then we had to play some old crappy game called Cover Girl for the final, and it didn't do well. But the next year was on World Cup Soccer, and I blew that up, and I won that, and I've been playing ever since. So what – sorry, I lost it. I'm Googling pictures of Cover Girl. Oh, God. It was a malfunctioning Cover Girl, too. The gobble hole would score anywhere between 50 to 1,000 points. Is this like a ripoff of Playboy? Playboy? Like, they've got the cover girls on the front. Yes. It's like month, you know. Yes, yes, yes. One to six. Then one to six again. Where's one to 12? Like, it's the cover girl for each month. I didn't get it. They didn't want to get the Playboy license, so they made their own. Oh, this is a Gottlieb, is it? It's a Gottlieb. 1962 Gottlieb. Yeah. Wow. So you can imagine all these high-level competitive players playing this thing. It was... If Papa TV existed then, it would be cherished. How much of that do you think has been You actually playing in tournaments Versus you actually Practicing When you're leading up to a tournament Are you just constantly playing so much pinball that it doesn't matter Or do you actually stop And go into A training regime No, I don't really practice Do you watch your pinball 101 videos? Yes, yes I do Let's see if I learn anything new No, I really don't practice that much. If there's a rule set I need to learn, I will go play that game. Like at 257 here, there's a Houdini, there's a Pirates. You know, there's all the new games. So if I need to learn a rule set, I can go play it. So, like I said, I'll... So you don't watch videos online or, like, read a rule set? You prefer to get your own strategy by playing the game? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, if I have to watch a Bowen video, I will. but obviously it's going to be one in here, out the other, if I don't have any physical application of the tips I'm getting. Do you play virtual pinball at all? I know there's some competitive players that have a virtual pinball table set up so that they can at least kind of like flip some version of the game to gain rule knowledge on some EM they've never played before that they can't play on site. No, if it comes to an EM, if I don't master that, if I put in a couple of balls, then I'm an idiot. So pretty much every game between 1998 and 1980, I've played extensively in tournaments. Occasionally, the one will pop up where I haven't, but if it does, the rule set's generally not that complex. So you said before that you sort of started getting a little bit bored of it, of tournaments. and I can understand if, you know, you're doing... And these are major tournaments, so these are not like, you know, your monthly down to the pub that we do. These are sort of pretty major tournaments where they might go for a couple of days. There's lots of... There's stress, there's anxiety, there's fatigue. What do you think would need to change for you to get it more exciting, or is it just time to leave it for other people to get that excited about it? No, I had my break. Like I said, it was just – so when I was in California, I worked for myself. I had plenty of time to go, you know, say, hey, I want to go to this show here and play in this tournament. Fine, I'll go do it. This show here, I'll go do it. Then when I moved to Chicago, I no longer had that freedom. It's like so I had to decide, do I want to use all my vacation time to go to some mom and pop tournament somewhere or do I actually want to get out of Chicago somewhere nice? You know, it was a catch-22. So I decided – I was like, you know, I'm just going to kind of take a year off. I'll do Pinberg, I'll do Papa, and I did Expo. And, you know, it was a nice little break. But now that I, you know, the game's out the door, I got, you know, a lot more time on my hands now, I plan to start going back out there. Because I do miss the adrenaline. I miss the fun. I miss the camaraderie of, you know, everyone. But if you don't win, let's say you come third or fourth or whatever it is, right, do you kind of go, I'm really, really kicking myself and reliving those moments where you get it wrong? You sort of walk away guy. I don't care anymore. So when I was competing a lot, you know, I'd come back, I'd go back, I'd come back, and it was like, oh, how'd you do? Oh, I got third. Oh, wow, you're really losing it. Just like, wow, okay. I guess I take that as a compliment. So like in the New York tournament, I got third. Bowen just kind of blew that up at the last second. And it's like, you know what? It depends how I play. I played fine. I didn't do bad on any one game, but everyone else did better, so that's when you're just like, hey, I did my best. Is that annoying? Because I was talking to someone about that on the weekend, that, you know, once you hit a certain point, there's an expectation. And, I mean, if you win, it's like, oh, you know, Keith Elwin won again, like, la-di-da. And if you lose, it's like, oh, my gosh, like, Keith Elwin came fifth, like, you know, he's crumbling. Is that annoying that you can't, like, you can't satisfy people regardless of your result, you know? Like, you just want to kind of go there and have fun? It is a little bit, but you know what? I don't take them that seriously. You know, when I first started competing, if I didn't win, oh, I'd be pissed. I can't wait until next year. And this is like, yeah, I got enough left to prove. I do this because I enjoy it. If I get first, great. If I get fifth, okay. It's just I'm not going to, like, bow my head in shame. Did I have fun? Yes. Did I not have fun? No. Then I probably won't be back at this tournament. But is that the same when you're thinking about, you know, Pinburgh that's coming up, which is going to be absolutely massive? Do you still have that sort of, I guess it's pressure, but that sort of understanding that this is a big tournament, all eyes are going to be on you, it matters. Does it matter? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Look, and it's kind of what we sort of talked about, we do. You are a very focused player. And what I love about watching you, and it's similar to what you said about Bowen, you could be, you know, fourth player, last ball, people are on 50 to 100 million, and you're sitting there on 1 million. You could never, ever count you out. Is that because you've got all the years of experience to just be able to calm your nerves, know what you need to do, and just go for it anyway? Yes. Once you've been up on that stage playing in front of all those people, It's just going back up there, you don't feel it. Nobody is there. It's just you and the machine. And that just comes from experience. I know a lot of people, my friend Adam Lefkoppel, he'll commonly say, you're in a group of so-and-so and they're winning, but they're going to pretty soon realize where they are and drop off. He's right 90% of the time. They're suddenly going to realize, I'm up on stage on Papa TV playing in front of these people. Then they get really nervous. It's like for me, it's like, yeah, I've done this so many times. It's like, yeah, hi. I'm here again. What does make you nervous, though? Is it just, I mean, you said you kind of like, you want to feel that excitement and stuff. So I guess the excitement kind of comes hand-in-hand with nerves. At what point do you feel that kind of that adrenaline rush? Is it when you're blowing up a game? You know, when a song jackpot is lit? What gets you excited when you're playing Pimels? My biggest thing is getting warmed up. So if I go into a match cold, I'm not hitting my shots, I'm not doing anything right, it's frustrating. as hell, but all it takes is one good ball, you get the adrenaline going, you get your confidence. For me, I'll start sweating a little bit, I get really hot, and it's just like, once I'm in that groove, I really come out of it. It's just getting to that point. So give me one good ball. It was like the Pembroke Finals last year. I barely got to flip the first two games, but then going into game three on Andromeda, I put up like four million, and it's just like, okay, after that, everything else was easy. It was just too late, yeah. Yeah, it was just too late. It's just finding that groove at the right time and just staying in that groove. Well, it's like that with any tournament. Those people that are consistently the best players, if they get knocked out, if you don't make it to the final round, it's literally the moment happens, there's all these whispers like, oh my god, did you hear that? Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Are you kind of like aware that that's really what happens when people sort of just expect it to happen and when it doesn't, it's a big deal. Well, people need to realize that when you're playing in groups of four, only two people are going to go through. And so, like, the circuit final was me, Bowen, Trent, and Jeff Teolis. And so it's like, hey, you know what? Two of us are going home. And as it turned out, it was Jeff and Bowen. It's like, okay, has Bowen watched that? No, obviously he's not. But he didn't get in a groove in time to play. And then once I got through that round, which I barely did, I got through the next seven or eight rounds before I finally got knocked out in the final. So, like I said, it's all about finding your groove before you get knocked out. I remember having a very... I actually had a face-to-face conversation with our own one, Jordan Treadway, where he... I can't remember which one it was, but he'd make the finals and I went, oh, man, you didn't make it into the finals. What happened? And he goes, Martin, I'm not a robot. I'm human. Yes. That's profoundly shut me down. That's what it is. You are human. Yeah. Yeah. And it's pinball. You need a certain amount of luck to go with your skill. For sure. So if I'm shooting, if I'm by an arrow, Smith, and I'm shooting the toy box, that ball could go anywhere. It could go right back to my flipper or it could get flung down the outlay. So it's just, if I step up to that game, it happens to me three times in a row. Did I play a bad game? No. It's just I didn't have any luck. But would you say, therefore, your... Like, you know, some people say their strength is either shot accuracy, rules, knowledge, or recovery skills. Where would you say that you think that your strength is in those things? I think both knowledge and recovery skills. Okay. Yeah, probably if I watch someone like Daniel Asherari, who never misses a shot, I mean, I'm amazed by that. But I would say that was probably the weakest of the three you just brought up. Okay. So, I mean, you kind of mentioned in a video recently, I'm not sure if it was a Stern promo video or a news piece and everyone was kind of talking about how, you know, what's important to becoming a good player and you said, you know, rules knowledge but also an understanding of geometry. So, geometry, you know, it's a word that means money all the time with, you know, playful design But in terms of playing, do you think that's one of the biggest hurdles that a lot of kind of, you know, medium-ranked players struggle with, with knowing where to hit the ball on the flipper or where the ball is going to go so you can react before it's too late? Absolutely. Absolutely. So a good example is that. How do you get better at that? How do you get better at that? You just got to figure out. So like an Iron Maiden, if you want that power jackpot, do I want to directly shoot that stand-up target, or do I just want to graze it? It's just, yeah, it's all understanding about how the ball is going to react where you want to hit it. I'm not saying you're going to hit it that way every time, but a great game to learn skills like this is Stars, the old Stern classic, because I think Steve Kirk did an incredible job of, oh, you want to hit this target? Great. Where do you think the ball is going to go? It's going to get funneled down the middle. So you've got to learn to hit that target at just the right angle or it doesn't do that. And for the modern games, you have to take that into consideration. Is it rubber? Is it metal? Is it plastic? What am I hitting here? So there is a lot that goes into figuring out the geometry of a shot. Well, that's the thing. I mean, you know, you talk about stars, but every star is going to be different based on the flipper strength. And, you know, we talk about, like, the millimeters. And you said yourself, you know, when something goes wrong on the line with Iron Maiden, you know, like this little thing is off. It affects the game in a deep way. So, you know, Attack from Mars versus Attack from Mars Remake. How do you, I guess you can't just say in your head, like on every Iron Man, you hit the side of the manga and the ball's, you know, going to go here. So it doesn't throw it straight down the middle. How do you adjust, I guess, based on the game? Do you always use the first ball as a kind of like a learning strategy for the rest of the game? Yeah, see, that's huge. There are things you want to learn on ball one, such as the plunger for a skill shot if there is one, a safe way to hit anything with a magnet, like you said, the iron monger. Is it safer grazing the left side or the right side? So these are all things you really want to find out early. And the problem is if you have a house ball, if you don't get that far, then you have to find out in a ball two or ball three and by then oftentimes it's too late. So what would you say historically has been like your moment in pinball, in tournaments where you've either, you know, had the win that you really wanted or whether you've come back or just some, I don't know, and whether it's been sort of further in the past or more recent where you've actually had a great moment. I don't know, probably my top moment was, I don't remember which Papa it was, but I got by through the first round with four points, which is incredible, that I made it to the finals. And we got to the final game in Adams family, and it was me, Lyman, Bowen, and Josh Sharpe. And the only chance I had to win was I took first, Josh took second, Bowen took first, and Lyman took last. And so, of course, I'm player four, ball three. I had a terrible score. Josh was way ahead of everybody. So I needed like $200 million on fall three. And I just sat there and chopped wood, chopped wood, finally got there. And then I made that last shot and I realized, wow, that improbable thing just happened. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, thank you, Josh. How are you at dinner? So when you get your name up on the rafters, right, at Papa, is that like a pretty important thing to you? Oh, yeah. I love that. I don't know what those are now, but that's definitely important. Yeah, you had quite a few up there, right? Yeah, I think I had 10 or 11, yeah. Because I had a couple... That's a casual 10 or 11. What do I got? Six Papas, three Pinbergs and two Circuit Finals, I think. Yeah, 11. Okay. And so what am I going to be expecting? I've asked this before, but it's going to be my first Pinberg in... Oh, geez, two months away from just about now, right? We would be in the middle of Pinberg. what am I going to expect from this event? So you're going to expect a great time. The great thing about Pinburgh is you know exactly when you're playing. It's not like Papa where you're standing around waiting for your turn. Pinburgh is like, okay, show up at 11, you're playing this group of four games. When you're done with this group of four games, be back at this time. So you're like, hey, I got 45 minutes to kill. I can go to the bar. I can go talk to my friends. I can go back to the hotel. The structure of Pinburgh is so great. It's the best tournament by far. And you play a lot of pinball. You do play a lot of pinball. You have to be good at every generic game. You know, solid state, EM, modern, dot matrix, and LCD or modern DMD. So every round you need to figure out every round It like okay I going to win this game I going to win this game I probably get third on this one and I be lucky if I get second on this one That's kind of how you have to approach it. Okay. So it's pretty much with me, if it's an EM with, like, two-inch flippers, I'm just like, okay, if I can get more than a third on this, I'll be happy. So is there a genre that you feel is a real stand-up for you? Anything after 1980, pretty much. There are some exceptions. Like, I had to play City Slicker last year. Right. I had no idea how to play that. It was just frustrating. What does Keith Elwin do when he doesn't know, you know, because I'm guessing a lot of people walk up to you and say, hey, Keith, I'm going to be on this game. So what does Keith Elwin do when he doesn't know how to play a game? I get that constantly. I actually don't mind. But, yeah, if you're asking me about some obscure game, I'm probably not going to be much help. But basically I try to watch what the other player is doing. And in a case of city slicker, all the inserts are just blank, and I had no idea what I'm shooting at or why I'm shooting it, and the points are just happening. And it was just frustrating because nobody in our group knew what we were doing. It's just, okay, just keep the ball in play. It's like, oh, okay, well, I got some score here. But surely you've played so much pinball That you could kind of Just by feeling it out Know kind of the structure of the rule set That you know I could probably look at a playfield and say This is safe to shoot You just know what they do That doesn't mean it's worth points Right So I take these experiences And I try to incorporate it in any game I'm designing If I'm a novice player walking up to this And I'm looking at this If I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing and I failed as a designer. So what, you know, some top-level players have like a spreadsheet, some people use pin tips. Is this all just stored in your head? Like do you have a Word document or an Excel sheet where you write some tips on games or is it you're just relying on your brain to just kind of remember everything? No, so the only thing, if I were going to an IFPA tournament, which I'm not next week, which I'm bummed about, But if I was and they have these practice times, especially on the old EMs or the early solid states, I'll find out where the skill shot is. I'll take a picture of the shooter lane of where the skill shot is, and then I'll bank that. So if I have to play that game in the actual tournament, I'll go through my phone and say, okay, the skill shot is here. That's pretty much the closest I come to any kind of organized spreadsheet, as it were. so your phone is just full of like just oh yeah literally hundreds of pictures of shooter lanes people are like wow you got a shooter lane fetish no that's what this kill shot is for fireball in IFPA 11 you know this is how it works yeah because I have noticed that you do use the plunger guide to plunge a ball so I'll either use the whatever I can see either the shooter tip or like the the spacer, anything that I can see, I'll line it up and I'll use my knuckles against the cabinet and use my fingertip. I'm pretty good at finding out where the skill shot is, especially on an old VM. And they generally don't change. So once you find where it is, take that picture and you've got that banked. So Ryan and I, we went to a pinball meet last night. Yes. I got stuck in a ditch. We're going to talk about that later. We'll also talk about pants. But there was a machine that we played, which I always loved because I loved the sounds and the look of it. And this was called Time Fantasy, right? So it's... It's the sale time. It's the sale time, right? That's what the giant... I stole rules from that game. What? Did you? What did you steal? Yes. On the second round of Mummy Multiball, the letters scroll just like... Oh, yeah. Time letters. Yeah. How many games did you lend? Going back to Iron Maiden quickly, Are there other little rule features that you borrowed from other games or got inspiration from? That one definitely. I was trying to say. I mean, actually, Mummy is similar to Well Walker and Mummy on Walking Dead, but not quite. So I wanted to make round two a little different. So, yeah, that's why I changed the mode by shooting the spinner. Is that? No, I just wanted to make the left spinner more important. walking the mode in once you spell it I was just yeah that way you'd actually put some thought before you spelled Eddie he's like do I want to spell Eddie or do I want to shoot that left spinner so the reason why I brought it up is that not just because we are going to talk about the pants obviously exploding later but but also because I remember playing that game a couple of years ago at Indus and Banning. And I loved the sound. You know, it's that very sort of Defender and Firepower sound. And it's, you know, very Williams of its time. And then when I went to play it last night, Ryan said to me, well, do you know about The Thing? And I was like, yeah. The Thing that ruins the game for you forever. Don't tell him. So by the time we got it to the machine, I did The Thing. And he was like, oh, you do know. and I went, well, I just went to Pintips. It was Ron Howard's fault. I sent a message to Ron during the weekend from Slant Marc Silk Podcast, and I was like, I can't remember what he was asking me about, and I showed him a picture of that time fantasy that my friend bought. He was like, oh, yeah, you know, do this. I'm like, is that it? He's like, yeah. No, no, no, you're going to ruin the game forever. He said, that's the entire game. He's like, what's his puppet video where, you know, Steven Bowden didn't know about this thing until ball, like, two or three, and then he did the thing. The thing. The thing. It's kind of like... Yeah. It's kind of like... What is that? Cosmic Gunfight. Oh, wow. It's such a great game. Such a great game. Oh, have you done the thing? What's that? Well, you just keep shooting the right orbit over and over. Oh. Well, that sucks. Yeah. And what was that? What was that other... God, what was that other Williams as well which has got the left ramp? Oh, God, I wish I could tell you. It's a two-ball, multiball. And that's all everybody was doing. It's like left-ramp. Oh, it's sorcerer, right? There's a game. There's a game there. But if everybody just goes for that or then they go for the five times, multiply, whatever it is. But the reason I'm bringing that up is you have, I would say, been responsible for finding exploits. Well, I say scoring exploits or ways to turn a game from you've got to do all this stuff to just do the thing. Like all game at France code? Yeah. Right. So does that go through your mind when you're doing the rules for Iron Maiden? Are you thinking, I've got to make sure that this is really balanced and those people like me aren't going to break it? Yeah, yeah. So it's stupid because I have to literally short plunge and see, well, how many shots can I take before the ball saver actually kicks in? Or, you know, it is so much that goes into score balancing that for someone like Kaylee George, who's infamous for short plunging on Congo and spelling gray and doing all that lower play field stuff before the ball saver even kicks in. So that's all stuff that you have to take in consideration. So I told Rick, the programmer, he's like, hey, first switch, we're active, we're live, valid ball. Right Yeah okay And that's kind of what we've been saying You know We talk to people about You know you doing Iron Maiden People go Oh you know it's because He's a tournament player It's like well actually In order for him to be a tournament player He's played a fuck ton of pinball So you've seen what works well And what doesn't work well right? Yeah Yeah So I know I saw it when I When I first got hired as Turner And someone was like Oh he's going to make the most complicated rule set ever And I was like no because that's not what appeals to me. Well, I was surprised. I honestly was surprised because I thought that's what it was going to be, and that's obviously just a misconception. And what actually really came out, which I'm really pleased about, is it's quite an accessible rule set, but it's also a very situational rule set. Yes. As I said, there's something for the novice player and there's something for the expert player. The expert player is going to learn, hey, I need to stack my multiplier with the loop jackpot or I have to get my multiplier build up before I go into Cyborg multiball because I can't light it during Cyborg multiball. So there's tons of strategy there for the expert player, but the novice player can come up, at least for the first part of the game, they can just shoot the ball at the middle of the bullseye target, light their modes, play their modes, and they're going to get some fun out of it. So I know a lot of the criticism I see is just like, well, everything's up the middle. No, it's like that at the beginning of the game on purpose. But the further in the game you go, these metal shots start disappearing. You've got to start shooting the outside shots if you want to make any progress. Right, okay. So I've intentionally not tried to watch too much footage because I don't like spoilers, right? So I want my machine to arrive, unbox it, and then turn it on. And I know this is counterintuitive, what I just said, but, you know, when I do start, what am I really doing? Am I trying to go into mode? Am I trying to go into... You've got to make Keith do the 35-minute explanation. of the music in AMA. No, no, I'm absolutely not. No, no, we already saw how much joy he had in doing it the second time. We won't make him do a third. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, like, if you think about, it comes back to the whole time fantasy break thing. Are you going, well, it's just all about multiball, or is it about stacking multipliers? Is it, I don't know, what is it? What do you think is what you would really be wanting to do when you first start the machine? There is no one thing. That's why I think that's what's great about it. Yeah. So if I'm walking up to the machine, knowing what I know about the game, I'm going to try to get that first loop jackpot round out of the way. And once I do that, I should almost have my Eddie letters, if not have my Eddie letters, play the mode. Hopefully it's one of the multiball modes because, you know, Ace is high in Mariner. even though they're not high scoring, all the power features accumulate during these multiballs. So, you know, even though if I only come away with 5 million out of aces high, you know, maybe I've knocked out a few ramps, a few orbits, pop bumper hits, stuff I need to get this cyborg multiball, which is huge. Yeah, I can work on the X targets. Pretty much everything you need to advance in a game you can get during one of the easy multiballs, you know, like mummy. Trooper is not that hard. The first trooper is not that hard. People who say the game is multiball heavy also need to realize that's on purpose. I put all the multi-balls in the front of the game, because once you get through your first mummy, your first trooper, maybe your ace is high and you're a mariner, they become much harder to get later in the game. Because trooper, you need to sit through nine drop target bank completions to get to your next trooper. Mummy hits, you need like 15 mummy hits to get back into it. And so definitely take advantage of this early multiballs to get all your power stuff ready. Yeah, we talked about that, Marty, with the whole Houdini thing. I know it's a different manufacturer, but you've got to make things easy to begin with. Otherwise, it's a grind from the get-go. And if you make things easy, it splits people up into two sections. Everyone's having fun to start with, but then if you want to get deep into the game, show us your skills. Exactly. It's like if you were to set up all your machines on an incredibly difficult for a tournament. And also the Shats target on Iron Maiden, it's very situational and very rewarding if you know how to do it. Did anyone do that in the New York City Championship? It's a risky ride. That was because the Inland Outland Post were gone. but yeah but if I if I need that last X target for a multiplier and it's the the super jackpot shot I'm going to try to shats that shot alright let's let's see it at at Pinberg at Pinberg up on the stairs yes so if I have a huge if I have a huge power jackpot I mean Zach and I do this all the time we'll have a huge power jackpot and he's like I'm going to shats this and get my multiplier before I cash that in or a tomb award so you know it's definitely comes in play as well as like it spots jackpots and whatnot during whatever mode you're in so I hope that I kind of wanted to be mysterious that's why there's no insert or anything there I wanted you to kind of figure out what it did but it's actually more important than you might realize yeah all right okay you know it's time to flex your pinball knowledge muscle and we're going to we're going to do a new age legends cracked wine awesome puzzle because Marty's been studying his, uh, he's gonna, he's gonna, he's gonna forfeit his handicap, okay? So, ten questions, alright? Marty, what's your buzzer sound? Go for the wall. Go for the wall. Keith, what's your buzzer sound? Something from Iron Maiden, maybe, or any game you want. Up the irons? Sure. Up the irons. Alright. I'll have no way to end up. World under glass. We get it. Oh, Jesus. All right. Here we go. All right. I'm changing the rules. We haven't played in a while, but some people in the past have buzzed in and then ums and ahs for like, you know, 10 seconds to get it. I'm giving you guys five seconds to answer it. Otherwise, it goes to the next person. This is very serious, okay? Oh, my God. All right. All right. So, first question. Finish the sentence. No time for tea. Go for the wall. World under glass. Marty. Blast those Martians. Yeah, well, Marty off to a good start. One for Marty. That's going to be the only one, Keith. Just relax. Damn it, I'm nervous. In Big Buck Hunter, okay, ignoring the shotgun shells, okay, how many inserts are there in the middle of the play field that are related to Big Buck Multi Bowl? Stupid question. They're all stupid. All right, go for the wall. I'm just going to say four, just because, why not? Wrong. Wrong. Zero. Zero. Is it not called Big Buck Multi Bowl? There's five. There's the Big Buck Multi Bowl. Oh, that's close. Jackpot, super jackpot, and monster duck. When I think of these questions, they're all pretty much the difference between the two machines in my house. Okay, in Sea Witch, okay, you're playing Sea Witch, right? You've hit two targets in that little pop bumper area, right? So there's two lights that lit on the spinner. How much is every spin worth? Go for the wall. You can have my call-out. What? The word on the glass. Oh! World of the Glass. One point to Marty. I didn't start drinking. Marty, you sound like a like-eater. All right. After round three, the score is 1-0. Okay. In NBA Fast Break, amazing game by George Gomez, there is a question in the trivia section. The answer to the question is Australia. What is the question? You've got to know this, Keith. Come on. It's going to be... Yeah, that should be where some player come from. Games I haven't played in 20 years. All right. I'm just throwing weird ones out. Who is Luke? Luke something's hometown. I don't know. Yeah, okay. I'll give it to you. It's who is Luke Longley's... Oh, okay. See, I partially remembered. You know who's this ridiculous, that buddy mode with the trivia? What machine is this quote from? Finally, you've learned to control the pinball. World under glass. Shadow. Ooh, good job, Keith. Keith, three. Marty, one. I think that's after you complete the wizard mode, Marty. See, you've never seen that. No. Okay. Hitting the gem shot in Tron advances your progress towards the gem hurry-up mode. What else is the progress? World under glass. Bonus multiplier. Yes. Okay. Keith, four. Marty, one. How much is the super secret skill shot worth in total nuclear annihilation? Go for the wall. Yes, buddy. 100,000. Yes, you fucking guessed that. You didn't sound too confident there, buddy. I knew it was, in my head I was going, is it 50,000, 100,000 or 200,000? I thought, I'll just go the middle one. Get to it. This might be a trick question. All right. So what is the maximum, okay, the maximum, not the minimum, amount of modes you can play before getting into Enterprise and Mock on Super Star Trek? World Under Glass. Yes, Keith. I believe that's 17. Yes, that is right. Keith 5, might be 2. How many of Pat Lawler's games are classed as disaster games? Go for the wall. Yes, Marty. Four. I think it's three, but am I wrong? The first shaker will win, dulled in. What's the fourth one? I don't know. I could only think of three in my head, and I thought, well, there must be a fourth one that I've tapped. Knowing my knowledge base, I'm thinking there's got to be one that I'm going to miss. I'll give you a point, Marty. It's a pity point because you can't win. Okay, last question. Last question, okay. Don't forget to buzz in. When Randy Allen was demoing out Archer a couple of years ago, he was wearing sandals or flip-flops or thongs as we call them. What else was he wearing on his feet? Rolling a glass. Sucks. The most heinous of fashion crimes. Sorry, Marty's three, Keith's six. What did I say? Not too bad. I've done better than I normally do. Exactly The questions are getting weirder and weirder They are And so shall we also do a bit of Aussie slang Whilst we're here Ryan Let's do a couple of them I don't know It's important for you to be You know Indoctrinated as an honorary Aussie But also you know These are the fun segments That we want our guests to go through And this is the mega Aussie slang test all basic Australian terms explained. Now, before we do this, can I get a prize of a new Kangstack? Because I really miss mine. Okay. Money will bring one. Thanks. Because I don't even know if my brother uses it anymore, but I want it back. But you've, honestly, you've got to, and I know we've talked about it on the podcast before, you've got to understand how hilarious I thought I was, literally walking up to you out of the blue going, hi, I'm Martin, here's Roo's testicle slap. And you've just gone, sure, yeah, I love you guys. What's happened to you? That was the highlight of my trip, I've got to tell you. I regret giving it away because I miss it. They're limited edition now. And Martin's only going to bring one for you and no one else because there were so many handed out at TPF. We don't have to be a special thing, even though you can just order them online. It's not the same. It's not the same. Without an actual order handling them. Yes. Okay, Keith, I'm going to start you off, right? And you need to get your passport and start travelling around the world because, you know, it's important to see kangaroos and wallabies. If you're in Australia, mate, and someone asked you to slip, slop, slap, what would they be asking you to do? Hmm. Slip, slop, slap. I don't know. That's going to be your answer to every single question. This is a weird one. So, slip, slop, slap, it was a massive advertising campaign in Australia. I can't remember what it was a couple of decades ago. It's basically about being sun smart. So you slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat. And that's how you get some cancer. So there you go. Yeah, that was on tip of my tongue. Yeah, you really were. So if you were going to hit the frog and toad, what would you do? Frog and toad. Hmm. The frog and toad. Yep. Hit the frog and toad. Is this some kind of aquatic trivia? You could also say, hit the toad. Hit the toad. Hit the toad or hit the frog and toad. Well, I'm going to get it back. You've got to use it in a sentence, right? That's the obvious one, right? Yeah, use it in a sentence, please. Yeah, okay. So, all right, guys, it's getting really late, so I'm going to have to hit the frog and toad. Hit the dish and... Has something to do with going home? Yeah, I've got to go, I've got to drive, I've got to drive home. As in, I've got to hit the road or hit the frog and toad. Horrible. Horrible. We are not proud of these things. It's not like we've put these together going, yeah, I say that all the time. I don't think I've ever said hit the frog and toad. And I certainly, Ryan, I've certainly never said bangs like a dunny door. Ah, they're not doing this one. Have you ever had a shandy? A shandy? A sentence? What would you like to drink today? I love I'll have a shandy. It's not a beer. Well, it kind of is. It's one of the ingredients. Yes. Mixing beer with something. A beer with something. It's mixing beer with lemonade and apparently... Oh, God! You guys are sick and twisted. Who does such a thing? It's the old baby boomers. Oh, man. Okay. It's just to either water it down or it also sweetens it as well. Huh. Do you know what a lacquer band is? It's your night. I don't even know how to use this sentence, Ryan. I've got a bunch of envelopes. I need to put them somehow together. I'm going to use a lacquer band. A rubber band? Yeah. Elastic band. Lacquer. We say lacquer instead of elastic. I don't get why. All right. Two more. What would I be... I don't know how to use this. I'm just going to use this sentence. Marty, you're a skip. Yeah, I'll take that as a compliment. A drunk? I can understand why that would come as your first answer, but... You're a skip. You're hilarious. Yeah, same here. Nice comeback. All right. Okay, there was an old show called Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and it was just like one of the most Aussie TV shows out there. So when Aussies call someone from the Europeans, something that isn't derogatory towards their race, the comeback is you're a skiff. So it's an Aussie. It's like a true blue Aussie is a skiff. Basically a bush kangaroo. So one more. I'm not sure if it's Aussie slang or talking a bit. Aussies are porkies. Yes So you're telling porkies Lies Yeah As in porky pies Done Done We are not proud of these things It's just We don't We don't use them It's still Kangsack But I don't think it is I much prefer to hear the I much prefer to hear the Ditch and split pants story Oh Oh, you may even see a photo of it. Anyway, this is out of control. All right. Have you got any more questions, Marty? No, I'm done. All right. Keith? We thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it. I can't wait to play Iron Maiden. There are a couple in Australia. They were air freighted down recently, and it was featured in a competition up in Queensland. and no one in Melbourne has played it. I've got six or seven friends that have ordered the Iron Maiden LE, so there'll be no shortage of unboxing parties. We can't wait to see how the code finishes up because it's not at 1.0 yet. And yeah, thank you for coming on. We look forward to seeing your future designs at CERN as well. Thank you. Did you ever get your LE or no? I did, yes. So I've got one. So we believe... You thought that one coming. No, just me. So, Ryan doesn't like your design enough, but I clearly do. You know what? I talked Bruce Nightingale into getting one. He's like the cheapest bastard ever. Yeah, he's also a bit of a pushover. Yeah. So, July 9, I believe, is the date I've got circled in my calendar. That's when I'm expecting it to arrive here. And honestly, I can't wait. Yeah, I know. It takes that long because they were put on the boat on Friday, your time, and, you know, it takes six to eight weeks to ship them out here, so that's how long. Wow. Yeah. So just by the time you guys get the newest game, it's not the newest game anymore. We've got a very small window to brag about hair resistance until... Well, hey, Marnie, you know, Star Trek Vault Edition has come out, So you don't even have the newest game to begin with anyway, right? Well, already, right? Exactly. It's like an iPhone, man. You ship that iPhone out in a boat and it's already obsolete. That's exactly right. So that's what's happened. But anyway, I'm very much looking forward to it. I've got very limited space, so the machine that I need to put in there has to be fantastic. I was going to buy this game anyway, so I was on record saying it's Iron Maiden, therefore I'm going to get it. I was just really... So it's not even a compliment to Keith. I know. So I was like, Joe Shannon, how do you think of it? It has to be fantastic, but I was going to buy it anyway. I hadn't finished. I hadn't finished. And then I said, when I did... Obviously, I played Archer, so when it was confirmed, we knew before that it was going to be your layout. Even better, what I think you've done is been able to integrate all those elements into, obviously, what people are calling a fantastic machine. Except for one person who said, He said it feels like Stern took a great design and slapped a quick theme and software onto it. Seems like they're also using cheaper production methods, which makes it seem their pins feel cheap compared to what they were producing just a few years ago. The entire machine is very light. If you have the game on a hard core, it's going to be sliding all over the place. I moved the machine over six inches with a slap save at one point. So with our next game, we're including a cinder block signed by their designers and put in the bottom of your sandwich to make up for no transformer. With the Supreme logo on it. Nice heavy, nice heavy fuel. Six inches with this last day. If you know who that was, Nani? Lou Frico. Everyone knows that he's an asshole. All right, Keith. I'll buy you next game, okay? No matter what it is, I'll buy you next game, okay? There you go. Pretty well done. All right. All right. All right. Make sure that ramp is nice and unique. All right, Keith. I really understand. All right. Thanks, guys. Yeah. So there we go, Ryan. That was Keith Elwin. That was pretty good. Yeah. Ever since we did it, I've kind of thought of about another 20 questions. So I'll have to get them again one time. We'll have to do part two with Keith. Yeah. Yeah. That was good. I mean, obviously, the thing I was kind of keen to know about was really that the transition from Archer to Iron Maiden. and I thought it was quite funny that he pretty much said that Archer was his resume, and that's a lot of effort to go to for a resume. Yeah, I didn't know that at all. I mean, I'm not sure if that was common knowledge, but I thought he was just kind of making it for fun like Scott Benici, and then it just kind of happened. But, yeah, that was his resume. Yeah, and the other interesting thing about that, you know, when we said, you know, a lot of people can make good layouts, they can put them all in digital people's, But actually mechanically and engineering, putting these things together, that's a whole new level that you've got to understand as well. Yeah. I saw a really cool digital version of this Playboy thing the other day, and I hope they can make that into a real film one day. Maybe not. Maybe not. Okay. So, what did we miss out on? We forgot to talk about the results for the Slam the Top 100 last week. Now, Marty, you got off to a blistering start, and it was because I always post the Facebook vote for Slams of 100 really early. Like, you know, a lot of Aussies have listened to the show. Probably before people realise that I've read my thing off the fly. Exactly. So it was like 30 votes to like eight. You know, you were going to win, and then I made a comeback. Well, you did a comeback, but you didn't win. It was even. It was 50-50. so it was an exact draw but I'm going to count it as a win are you? well okay Marty which one would you rather have Wizard of Oz or Monster Bash for real this time the vote's over to be honest either I've got a Wizard of Oz I don't have a Monster Bash so therefore right now I'd want a Monster Bash because it's what I don't have I think they're both great games yeah Monster Bash is a super fun game for pretty much anyone except, I don't know, I don't think tournament players like it and I don't like it that much either. I don't like it in that scoring sense, but everything else is amazing. It's a fun pin and that's what pinball machines are meant to be, right? Yeah, exactly. All right, shall we head to the news? I mean, there's a lot of news and it is mostly about Stern, as we joked about in the interview. Guardian's Code 1.0 came out, so I guess everything that they want in there is kind of in there. I still haven't played it that much since the last couple of updates I don't understand all the changes with the modes That is a multiplayer bug, Marty where if you're player 2 or player 4 you will get magical bonus points, I think from player 1 and player 3, possibly Yeah, because what they've added now is that you get as part of your end of ball bonus you actually now get additional bonus from the modes that you've completed. So that was one of the things that they added. And it carries on. Yes. Kind of like Demolition Man, your combos will kind of carry on and BSD, the rats and... Yes, like that, yes. Exactly. But it's not quite working yet, so maybe there'll be a 1.01. Oh, no, there you go. It has already been released. Oh, since when? May 25th. So, fix an issue with bonus awards across multiplayer games. There you go. So, 1.01 is out. Okay. What else has turned you this week? Well, there was the, we joked about the, we didn't joke about it, it's a real thing, the Supreme Pimmel Machine. There was no way that thing was going to sell out. Absolutely not, said everybody. And then what happened, Ryan? I believe it's sold out in under 10 seconds. Good idea. I'm pretty sure all these people that are buying them are just reselling them. Reselling them. Yeah, and they have, you know, and then they kind of resell them to the elite, the super-duper rich. And there was one that sold on eBay for, I think it was about $23,000 or $25,000, like US. Right. Who knows if that was a real option. Didn't someone put one up there for like $70,000 or something? There's one up there now for just $1 below $100,000. It's a bargain. It's a mind trick. It looks like it's under $100,000, but it pretty much is $100,000. That is crazy. I wonder if that will actually sell, though. Well, who knows? As I say, I mean, people buy watches that are worth like $200,000. Yeah, fair enough. It's a little thing that tells the time. So, okay, is Stern doing the Supreme pinball a good or a bad thing for pinball? It's 100% good for pinball. Yeah. I can't believe the people that are getting mad about this. Well, this is what I'm asking, because a lot of people are really aggro about saying that, you know, it's a real cheap thing and it's, you know... You know who's always angry? Angry people. People that don't have money are always angry. It's the whole rich dad, poor dad thing. Have you read that book, Marty? No, I haven't. Okay. This is the entire book in one sentence. If you're poor, okay, and you get angry at rich people having stuff, you will always be poor, okay? If you're poor and you look at the world with opulence and there's a lot of stuff out there and you don't look at rich people as if they're evil and they must be doing something wrong to get their money, then you've got a chance of becoming like them. And I'm not saying being rich is the key to happiness or anything like that, but if you're getting angry all the time, then you will always be angry at these things and, as I said, you always won't have it. Fair enough. When I see someone with a Supreme Commission and they're paying $100,000 for it, I give you two thumbs up. Good for you. If that's what you want to do with your money, then that's what you want to do with your money. You earned it. Yep, fair enough. What else happened? So, Star Trek Vault. Are you? Yes. I kept thinking you asked. So, what's really interesting about this is that we didn't know. I didn't know. Did you know they were doing Star Trek Vault Edition? Well, no I mean, no one knew about the ACBC vault as well I mean, I don't think It's the only thing that never comes out of Stern The vault Yeah, I know It's just the conversation with like Gary and George Gomez It's like, hey, you know, bit of a gap in production here Let's pull something out of our closet It just came completely out of the blue And I had a lot of people messaging me saying Surely you knew about this And I said, no, I didn't The first I saw was when Stern announced it on their Facebook page But this is the thing, right? I mean, we've got, you know, Iron Man Vault, you know, different artwork, a bunch of small changes here and there. We've got Spider-Man Vault Edition, like a re-theme, totally different art, different cabinet, et cetera. You know, new dots, new sounds. What other vaults have we got? We've got ACDC Vault, which is probably the one that's closest to the original, but... With some fixes. Yeah, it comes with some fixes, with the removable little playfield. Yeah. How many other volts Is that all there is for volts I think that really is it But have all of those machines had new code as part of the re I don't know. ACDC has? Yeah, ACDC got new codes. Spider-Man had to have new codes. Yeah, because of the new animations. New animations. Iron Man, I don't know. I wasn't even into pinball then, so I don't know. Okay. So, it'll be interesting. I mean, obviously, we've spoken before about Star Trek, and I think we both have agreed that it probably does need some new code. Yeah, it'd be nice, but this is the weirdest one, and what I was trying to get at before is there are, it seems like there's no changes to this at all, and it's more of a re-release than a vault, as defined by their previous versions. I mean, a vault just thinks they're just going to make it again, but they just stopped making these like a year and a bit ago, so I guess instead of announcing on their Facebook page saying hey we're doing another run of you know Star Trek so anyone interested this I guess makes it more of a talking point when they say Star Trek Vault Edition even though it is just a rerun it really much is a rerun and there really only would be besides code there'd only be one thing that is consistently not quite right with just about all Star Treks that I've played there's what is it it's that stupid pop bumper thing that happened in my yeah Yeah, but the ball gets it. And it's not just yours and it's not just mine. Every Star Trek that I've played gets the ball stuck at the pop bumper. So that, I don't know, might be just a little minor fix, a millimetre out and away you go. So someone sent me a picture after my tournament because he has a Star Trek and he just... You know those... This is going to be really hard to explain, but basically they're like those see-through circular discs that you can put at the bottom of chairs and stuff like that. Basically, he just chopped that in half so it's a semicircle and put it there so it doesn't really look like it's there. It's kind of invisible. Right. And that stops it from happening. So I've got to go to Bunnings, probably buy a pack of like 100 of them. They probably come in a pack of 100. Chop it in half. Chop one in half. I'll give one to you. I'll have the other half. Yeah, for sure. And then I'll just throw the other 99 in the bin. Yeah. So that's what they've just come out and said. Basically, there's no changes. Unchanged, I think, was the word they used. It's just been released. There's more of them. And, you know, again, people were polarised by it, I guess. Some people were saying it's ridiculous. I saw people were saying this is ridiculous, Stern don't know what they're doing. I think Stern know what they're doing, guys. Really? Yeah. But honestly, someone was like, this is ridiculous, Stern has lost the plot. I think Stern knows their market. Andrew Hire has lost the plot. Stern has lost the plot. Yeah. I mean, Iron Maiden has kind of like almost ruined the second-hand market. It's ruined everything. At the moment, you know, machines aren't selling as much as they used to. And this happened with Ghostbusters. It takes a while to recover. I mean, a Star Trek premium just sold for, I think, it had to go down to eight grand. The guy had it for sale for a while. So, you know, in Australia, that's about two and a half grand less than buy price. So I'm not sure how well it will sell in Australia, but whatever. So this is just a marketing thing, right? Like, hey, we're doing it again. Yep, why not? Bye. So, in other Stern news, the guy who was kind of... I'm not sure if he's in charge or what his position was. He's vice president. Okay, of CTC. Yeah. A game company. The guys who do all the remakes. He has attended his resignation and announced that, I think, as soon as next week, he's going to be working for Stern. Yes. What's his position, Marty? Oh, I think it was, like, manager of exports or something like that. Yeah, so Gary Stern does a lot of that apparently. I mean, last week when we were talking to Michael at AMD, the Australian Stern distributor, he was joking about how Bruce and Gary kind of argue over the quantity and the price of the machines coming down to Australia. I guess that might be now Doug's score that he's having the argument with. And yeah, I think he's also going to be traveling a lot and doing a lot of international shows. and, yeah, I guess it takes a bit of pressure off Gary. He can do more news interviews and talk about how the ball is wild. But, you know, I think this is a good thing. It's obviously showing that they want to focus on, you know, probably international markets. But what does this mean for Chicago Gaming Company? Well, they've got someone new in, Ashley something, and I guess she'll be doing the same thing. I don't know. We've never interviewed Doug. I actually reached out for an interview with him about a month or so ago, and maybe he already knew he was going to leave, or maybe he just doesn't give a shit about podcasts. But he never got back to me. So I don't know what his day-to-day job was at CUC. But as I said, they're making remakes, so what can they do wrong? Well, in the same breath of this update that we got, they also did note, without mentioning what it was, that they're expecting whatever that next game is, it's Monster Bash. to hopefully be shipping in July. Yeah, so maybe next podcast we'll be talking about it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Let's just have the conversation now. Hey, mate, did you see the new Monster Bash? Yeah, I did. The flippers feel a bit weird. Yeah, but how about that LCD screen? Amazing. Fantastic. I love all the additional toys they put on it, maybe. Well, on the top of it, right? Because that, oh my gosh, that topper makes it. I mean, if you don't have a Monster Dash with that topper, you don't have the Monster Dash, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And I love the green armour. It would go really well with that green AFM armour. There's two green side-by-side pinball machines. Who knows? Like Monster Green, that's what they're calling it. Oh, they will. Yep, yep. Yep. So there we go. That's it. That's our YouTube review. Let's see who's right. We were. Yeah. What else? Okay, so the Deadpool image that was floating around for a while finally got leaked by Timbal Paparazzi or something on Facebook. Yeah. It was funny because everyone was like, who's Timbal Paparazzi? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know either. But we'd seen that image for a while. And everyone was like, oh, is that the John Trudeau design or is that the George Gomez design? Nobody knows because it's a leaked image that nobody's really putting their name to. But my take on it, looking at it, it is very George Gomez circa Avengers. Yeah, I didn't put much thought into, you know, which design it would be. I kind of just assumed it was Gomez. And then when it got out, you know, everyone started really asking the question. and it kind of makes you second-guess everything. The thing that made me kind of think of Gomez was the giant sword ramp on the side, kind of similar to Lord of the Rings, but, I mean, I guess anyone could do that. So I'm not sure if you've got the picture in front of you. It does look like this is definitely the comic book version because you've got people like T-Rex and Kraken. They're not in the movie. Have you seen Deadpool 2 yet, Money? No, I haven't. Okay, it's a good movie. I'm going to. Yeah. And people, oh my gosh, half the posts were about that Deadpool bash figure, the bash pool. And everyone's like, I hope they don't put that in there. Like, that's just a placeholder, come on. What if it does get released and it's back? Oh, we'll just chuck it in the fire. Yeah, go for it. I was going to say, the giveaway, the reason why I thought it was Gomez is there's a shot just to the right of the target bank underneath the bobblehead Deadpool. It goes to the right, around behind to the left and to a ramp on the other side. It's no longer Shane Pimble ever. It reminded me of the Avengers ramp shot that everyone hates. The Black Widow ramp. Yeah, that's the one. So I just think that. And obviously the sword on the right, which reminds me of Avengers as well, or X-Men or, you know. Yeah. So here's the interesting part, which is one of the first things that I saw when I saw this originally. In the shooter lane, there's this kind of like a ball capture device that's hanging above it. Now, it looks like there's a ramp that drops down, but not drops down from, you know, where you're shooting. It drops down the other way. So possibly it's a ball lock or a staging device. I don't know. But it looks like maybe one of the orbits, kind of hard to see with this image, all the way back into the shooter lane. This ramp drops down, and then it kind of gets loaded in there, which that's the only thing that's ever happened before in pinball, a ramp facing the entirely opposite direction of where the player's facing. So that would be cool. I mean, it doesn't look like there's any optos or anything in there, so maybe there's some switches underneath. But there's also, if you look on that sword ramp, Marty, it looks like there's three little cutouts for optos in there as well. so could they possibly have two physical bulldogs? That doesn't usually happen in a game. That's usually one physical bulldog. Yeah, who knows? Maybe, maybe. Who knows? I'm kind of glad that it's out because at least people aren't going to say, oh, I wish this was the movie one and not the comic one. We can see right there it's the comic one, so if I see comments when it comes out like, oh my gosh, I should have done this, it's like, well, it's not. So shut up. Yep. Well, there you go. So who's doing the art for this? So it looks like zombie yeti art. And this is a really funny thing, is that somebody posted about this on Pinsight, and they said, I wonder who's doing the code. And someone was like, oh, it was confirmed on Head to Head Kimball that Tanio, is that how you say his name? Yeah. Yeah. Tanio. Yeah. I'm like, was it? And I listened back, and it was when zombie yeti was like, I'm kind of working on the next project with a guy called, you know, with George Graham Anderson, a guy called Tannio. Do you know who he is? I'm like, no. But that's who he is. He's a coder. And I've been working at Stern for apparently like four or five years. So there you go. There's your group of three that will be probably doing this pinball machine. Probably. Not confirmed. Probably. Nothing's been said. Yeah. But anyway, moving on. Thanks. Moving on. What have you got, Marnie? What else? I mean, the Pirates of the Caribbean topper got shown. It's like the logo for Pirates of the Caribbean, and that's it. Yep. Great news. Yep. Next. Look, I'm excited by this. There's actually been announced, instead of having the IFPA World Championships in Australia, which was kind of thought of that it's probably too far for people to go, too much expense for people to come out to Australia, therefore too much of a hassle. How about the Southern Hemisphere? That's the entire Southern Hemisphere. Everything below the equator, whatever it is, right? All coming together for the Southern Hemisphere Pinball Championships. Ooh. Where would this be held, Marnie? Who has a shitload of pinball machines? Well, there's actually only two people I know that have got a shitload of pinball machines. one of them at the moment is in the position of letting people into their place. Yes. And so this is Rotodave Dave Peck. So this will be at Auckland. Cool. But it will... So there was a bit of a press release. It says the top people players from Australia and New Zealand will gather to battle for pinball supremacy. Players from around the globe are also invited to attend. The event will alternate annually between Auckland in New Zealand and Sydney in Australia. and be run in the month of October. Three large tournaments run over the weekend, culminating in the main Southern Hemisphere Pinball Championship. Yeah, so let's see how many... So, I mean, Dave runs his... You know, he's part of the... What's it called? The New Zealand... The New Zealand... Pincade. Yes, he runs Pincade every year, and he's always working on his machines, so he'll be ripe and ready to go, and I think it'll be run very smoothly since he's involved. So we'll have a link to that in the show notes. And, jeez, how many people go to Pinkade? I think over 100 or so go to Pinkade. So who knows how many will go to this? I guess a lot of whoppers will be up for grabs. It is capped. So it's actually capped at 100 players. Oh, really? Yep. Okay, I didn't know that. I didn't know the press release copy. I did. So 31 have been confirmed so far. and this has only been announced three days ago, so it will continue to fill up. So if you do want to travel over to New Zealand and go to one of the biggest tournaments that we've seen in this location, sign up now. We'll link it in the show notes. Are you thinking of going, Marty? I am very much thinking of going. I was thinking of going to Pink 8 next year as kind of my yearly pinball adventure, but I don't know. I guess I'll have to wait and see, but I'm not sure if I'll enjoy myself more at a competition, you know, putting the world championships thing in front of it or pin canning. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Wow. Someone was throwing the idea around. This is Lee, the other guy we were talking about. There's a thread on Pinside about an Australian puppet-style facility. So this guy, Lee, I think we've talked about him before. He and Dan Robar were the ones who organized the only Australian kind of Pinball Expo that's ever been done in 2014. And he has a shitload of pinball machines. He really does. And he's an ambassador for pinball. He's kind of taken the back seat in the last couple of years. But he's tossing up the idea of if he should build a bigger shed, possibly, at the back or... I can't remember, of his house, some of this massive kind of property, you know, pretty far out from the city. and he wants to kind of have possibly a... Will you describe it, Marty? Well, yeah, it's a big shed, effectively, with all the pinball machines there that everybody can come to where it's not really going to be interfering with neighbours or his own house. I don't know. Yeah, kind of like a pinball museum, but on his property. On his property. Pretty much. We'll see what happens with that. But here's the guy who's running... There's a pinball meet later this year called The Barn. Yes. And, yeah, it's just basically a massive gathering. He's capped it to 120 people, and, like, within a couple of days, there was 120 people that wanted to come. I know, and I'm on the waiting list. I'm on the list. I haven't even asked my wife yet, but I should be able to get down there for that. So this is what I'm saying. I mean, 120 people wanting to come to just a pinball meet in Australia, you know, would have been good to have the championship thing in Australia first. Yeah. Oh, well, next time. We'll get it. There's no rush. We will have a big event. Yep, 2019. Absolutely. All right, so before we head to the mailbag, this week in pinball, he ended up doing a top ten dream pinball themes. Marty, tell me which ones, yes or no. Okay, go. Number ten, Jaws. Yeah, I could see that happening. Yep, I'll give that a tick. Yep. Number nine, Beetlejuice. not convinced at this stage, but as we've said before, I think visually it could look great. I just... Anyway. There's no way that that is number nine. That was either people hearing about it saying, oh, yeah, I want that, or just a bunch of Stern employees just giving it back. Right. Sure. Number eight, Blade Runner. This always comes up. I just... I don't know how it would make a good film machine. Yeah, I don't know either I mean, because obviously I love the movie But the movie's all a bit atmosphere, right? And mood You wouldn't say it's an action... I don't know I would say no on that Yeah Okay, number seven Masters of the Universe Is that He-Man? That is He-Man I would only give a big tick to Masters of the Universe if it was He-Man and She-Ra. I used to watch He-Man as a kid, but if Masters of the Universe was like what, they made it into a movie, did they? I think there was actually a live action movie as well. 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. Was that the one that had Dolph Lundgren or something? Yeah. Was it? Yeah. I've never seen it. And Courtney Cox was in it as well. Oh, really? Well, there you go. Okay, number six. Blues Brothers. This has come for ages as well. Nah, move it on. Although, I mean, good music and all that kind of stuff, I guess you probably could. Hey, this would be kind of like a spooky title. A spooky title? Yeah, okay. Just add some skeletons on there and make it spooky. Number five, Rick and Morty. Yeah, for sure. No brainer. Do it. Okay, who would you like to make it if Rick and Morty was a machine? J.J.P., Stern, Spooky. That's pretty much it. You know what? I would say I would want Stern to do it. Because? Because, and you know what? I would want John Borg to do it. There you go. I've even narrowed that down further. What's the bash to it then? What's the bash to it? Well, I don't know. I don't know. But it could actually have a bit like Portal where you go into the ray and it transports to another area. I reckon you could rip off Metallica again, if it was John Borg, and put Morty in the middle in a chair every time you hit him. Oh, jeez, Rick. Yeah. See, I'll tell you the reason why I think this, and don't take this the wrong way, but I wouldn't want a layout or a play field that challenges me too much. I want it to be all about the call-outs, the flow, the fun, and not get too serious and get caught up on being the most innovative with the most innovative rules and all that kind of stuff. I just want it to just be fun. You can buy your $120 3D-printed portal gun for Measel Mods just like a week after it comes out, right? Yeah, there you go. Easy done. Okay, number four, The Matrix. Yep, would love it. My favourite movie. Just number one, right? Yep. I don't know. In fact, I don't know it. Someone said the other day, oh, has Marty even seen The Matrix? Yes, I have, and it's actually my favourite movie of all time. There you go. I almost called my kid Trinity. Wish you had. Well, just have another kid just so you can call it Trinity. Well, this is the thing. You always have to think of the nickname that people give to kids. Trinny. I don't know. Okay. Sure. Number three, Back to the Future. No. No. No. And for me, I say no, and I know how many people want that theme. I don't like it. I don't like, I didn't like the movies. I was not really connected to it. Not even the first one. Like, I watched it, and I enjoyed it. Have you watched it recently? No. I watched number one again a couple of years ago, and it was ten times better than when I watched it as a kid. Okay. And so, I'm not saying no because I think it's a bad theme. And just for me, I don't get it. But I know that a lot of people are calling out for it. So I would imagine that it would sell well. Number two, the Goonies. I know you haven't seen it, Marty. Do you get a thumbs up or a thumbs down? Let me tell you why it gets a massive thumbs down from me. Have you seen the fat kid doing the truffle shuffle at least? No. Okay. I've not seen anything about it. And that's why... You haven't seen anything about it? I'm not saying anything about... I know that there's someone called Sloth who apparently in real life had a tragic life and I know that because a sponsored post on Facebook keeps coming up telling me about the person who played Sloth had a terrible... Don't make this a sad thing, Marty. This is an uplifting podcast. You just ruined it. Don't make me think negatively about the Goonies. Come on. Well, I know nothing about the Goonies, but I know that people are calling it out, so maybe it'll do well. But for me, nah, I don't see it. Do you like Indiana Jones? Not really, but I understand why that makes a great theme. It's like Indiana Jones for kids. Anyway. Okay. Not really. Number one. No surprise. Harry Potter. Yep. Yep. If you're down on a... Sign on scene on that? I'd give a kidney for Harry Potter. How about if it was a, you know, a super limited edition only, right? Yep. 30 grand. Yep. Yes? Okay. If I had 30 grand, maybe I would. I thought you tripped over your money. I tripped over it. $500 for that. Yeah. Not when I've just paid for my trip to America and I'm in. But, oh, you know. And it never would be at $30,000, but with the amount of demand they've got for a Harry Potter pinball machine, if you did a Super L.A. and charged that, people would buy it. Nerds. I don't know any people in the world that doesn't like Harry Potter. Like, you don't see the whole thing about Back to the Future. I don't see the whole thing about Harry Potter. Harry Potter came out at the same time that Lord of the Rings came out. There was a South Park episode about it. Yeah. No, no, that's not what made me change my mind. But it was just like the cool kids kind of watched Lord of the Rings and the nerds watched Harry Potter. And I don't know. Nerds rule the world. It's true. It's true. Nerds are back in. So. Should we do This Week in Pinball? This Week in Pinball. Yeah, let's do it. All right, just quickly, Big Bug Hunter has left the building. Basically, someone played it at my tournament and fell in love with it. and without me kind of even listening up to say, I'll just offer me a price and ask my friends. And he accepted it. So that is now gone. I wasn't prepared for this to go so early, Marty. And I had a couple of games on. I was trying to get that monster buck. I think I messaged you and I said, I was two away from monster buck. And that multiball is so cool because it ramps up and it gets more intense and more intense. So I said, effort. I took the glass off. You did what? I'm not going to buy this machine again just to see what happens when you hit the super jackpot, right? When you hit the super jackpot, there's this audio delay. It goes ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, super jackpot. It has some really bad sound and call-outs, but that bit is really amazing. So I'm like, if that's what it does at the third level, what's it going to do at the fourth level? Guess what it does, Marty? What? Nothing. Nothing. Okay. This fucking multiball ramps up stage one, stage two, stage three, getting more and more intense. And then you get Monster Buck and the insert light goes on. And, like, there's no call-out. There's no super-duper jackpot. There's nothing. It just goes back to level one. And I'm like, what the shit? I think they forgot to code it in. Yeah, they ran out. They just went, you know what? No one's getting to this frickin' wizard mode anyway. Why bother? Yeah. So that's Big Buck Hunter. I have to make room anyway for Quicksilver. and I won't go into it fully, but someone's offered to pick that machine up for me and deliver it in about two or so weeks. And there is another machine that might be entering Mikasa soon. We'll talk about that next week. Oh, you're not going to tell me again. Let's not pretend, Marty. You know I... But we'll mention it next week. It's not set in stone yet. What did we do together this week, Marty? We went to a people meet. We did a Facebook Live video there. We went to the Danger Shed, version 2.0, out in the Dandedongs, and nothing embarrassing happened out there. Nothing at all, Marty. It was just a fun little time. It was very easy. We went there. We had a good time. Neither one of us had an experience that we would rather not talk about, especially on a podcast. All right. So what happened is this place in the middle of nowhere, right? Middle of nowhere. Up the Dandenong Mountains, right? So dirt road to get to his house. Two driveways. We parked on the wrong driveway. When it was time to leave, we left like one of the first people to leave. It was like, you know, half past midnight. Everyone was still raging and going. You reversed your car. And I don't know how you did it because I wasn't aware of this. You just kind of like banged your car into this massive dirt mound behind you. And the car sounded like it was about to fall apart. It was that loud. It was a massive crunch, wasn't it? Yeah, and that kind of frazzled you, and you're like, oh, fuck, don't, you know, it happens, you know, whatever. You spun your wheel around, and... I ended up in a ditch. Your beautiful BMW ended up in a ditch, and you tried to reverse. And so, you know, because it's a BMW, it's rear-wheel drive, so I could not get any traction at all. There was no way I was reversing out of this thing. So what did we have to do, Ryan? I jumped out of the car and looked and said, yep, we've got to get some people to pretty much get back. To get everybody in the party to come out. So these guys are all, like, pretty much driving cars. People were, like, sleeping there or sitting in a motel next to them. and I don't know how many people, like six or seven people, they were all there, and they're all kind of like laughing at your misfortune. Yeah, I was trying to make the most of it. I was joking along with them, going, ha, ha, ha, yeah, I'm really in on the joke. I was embarrassed as all hell. But I probably wasn't the most embarrassed at that night. What do you think, Ryan? I was feeling really bad for you, because I didn't know how much damage you'd kind of done to your car, and I felt somehow responsible since you gave me a lift to the place. And so I was really pushing very hard, really hard, okay? With all your might. With all my might. And even with everyone pushing, it wasn't going anywhere. And then we realized that the back was not making any connections, so Fabs had to go at the back and bounce the car. And anyway, we managed to get it out, and I felt a little bit of a breeze. a little bit of breeze downstairs and I looked down and my pants just somehow exploded. Your pants have exploded. At the front. At the crotch. I'm wearing black underwear and everyone thinks they're seeing my dick but it's not my dick, it's my black underwear. But yeah, at the front. So my junk's just hanging out and everyone thought it was hilarious. Because you actually just said, oh my God, I just split my pants and I'm thinking, oh, you must have split the arse out of your pants. No, you split the crotch out of your pants. Yeah. That's so... Picture in the show notes. You'll get to see. Everyone's taking photos. I didn't even bother trying to hide it. Oh my gosh. I was just like, it's going to happen. I was there reversing my car, and I'm like, as soon as it stopped, I had the camera out taking a photo of your junk. So, Marty, how many thousands of dollars worth of damage did you do to your car? None. How did that happen? And how did you back up and hit, like, a dirt wall full of, like, rocks and stuff in it and then drive into a ditch and have no damage in your car? That's BMW quality for you. It's made by Deep Root. You take a swish over to it. Anything else? No, that's, well, another embarrassing thing was that I attempted to install a pin stadium set live on my Twitch feed and I fucked it up completely. You just suck, mate. Yeah, and in fact, you can't even watch the replay. I deleted it. It's so embarrassing. Oh my gosh. But fortunately, I did have a second set and they were installed fine. Oh, did you actually fuck it up as in you ruined the Pince-Aliens? Like you... Wow. Well... At least you interviewed Keith Elwin this week. You got that going for you, right? There's the positive. The worst part of it all was that Scott from Penn Stadium was in chat watching me all the way just doing... Like, I would do something and I'd look back at chat like 10 seconds later and he's like, you need to do this first. I'm like, oh, shit, too late. And then I'd do another thing and then there would be notes saying, you're meant to do this first. I'm like, oh, shit. I just completely did it wrong. You know how yesterday I was telling you to open up Game of Thrones and, like, unplug the cable for the opto and plug it back in? Yes. Don't do that, please. No, no. This is what I'm trying to tell you. Do not let me go under any machine. But I'll tell you what, especially a machine that doesn't have service rails. That's really hard to actually get it sort of halfway. I couldn't work it out anyway. All right. Well, should we head to the mailbag? We should. The first email, and this is... We can have an open dialogue Always send us your ideas of pinball things But here's one that's come And this would be my dream thing But I know nobody would want this as a pinball thing Craftwork The electronic band The godfathers of hip hop And dance and techno All that, it came from craftwork just the music and the visuals that they have would make an amazing pinball for three people. So the email that we got from Shane... Hi, Shane, says, here's a few ideas that could find an audience, I think. So first one, craftwork. I know there was already a prototype Tour de France machine, but a fully kitted-out playfield with UV optic fibre ramps like Tron and a few cool modes could be a seller as far as niche titles go. I'm only expecting Martin to understand the references for this one. Well, yes, I do, and I think it would be amazing. Autobahn multiball. Remember what we were talking about? You can name anything, and you can add multiball to it. Autobahn multiball. Radioactivity mode would pulse the playfield with a green glow. Pocket calculator could generate random music tones based on which switches you hit. And a boing boom chuck. That's actually the correct pronunciation of that. What are you talking about? This is almost worse than beat and play, Marty. Anyway And the last one was flightof beardandblade.com.au Did you say that? Yeah Flight of the Concord Yes That would be hilarious I fucking love those guys Yes I wish they did more That's why they're so good Just like Fawlty Towers, right? Two seasons of absolute gold and that's it and it just leaves you like Hey, excuse me I want more No That's all you get forever No And someone will try and redo something similar and fail So, Flight of the Concord There's absolutely nothing like it. Yep. Yeah. So we got an email from H. Dobson, and he was kind of talking about, because I was complaining that a whole bunch of people kind of didn't rock up to my tournament last minute, and I did actually kind of do what he's suggesting. He suggested that, you know, no-shows kind of don't get their money back, but I gave people their money back, so I don't want to be evil. I just want to commit from people. and he kind of tossed up an idea about if you don't rock up, as well as your money not being given back, you also get put at the back of the list for next year. I'm not sure about that. I mean, a lot of people get their, you know, emergencies happen. You know, family emergencies, you can't penalise people for having a life outside of pinball. And he said, on a non-pinball related note, which I know Marty won't care about, I heard Ryan say that he was off to watch the Collingwood and Essendon game on the Slam Tilt Cluster VUK episodes. I was curious which side he supports. I got an AFL streaming package this year, and I have a couple of teams I follow, including Collingwood, since they have an American, yep, Mr. Cox. And the team I enjoy when they lose is the Sydney Swans. I actually go for Essendon, who are the number one team of all time in terms of premierships, but they haven't won a single final in the final series for like 15 or so years. So I'm struggling. But this year they've won every game against good teams and they've lost every game against pathetic teams like Collingwood and Carlton. So it's a weird team to go for at the moment. That's AFL. People don't know what the hell AFL is, Marty. They're probably not going to Google it after I talk about this but I'm going to link some highlights in the show notes to show why it's the greatest sport of all time. BeatenBlades.com to you, mate. That's what I was going to say. Whenever someone's talking about something that isn't interesting, just drop the URL. There it is. Email from Nima saying that he was insulted that it's not just any hydrofoil, Marty. It has a name. It's the Curl Curl. Not one curl, but two. The Curl Curl. Right. Do you know what Curl Curl is? No. It's a beach. It's a beach? Yes. It's a beach in Sydney called the Curl Curl? Well, it's actually a suburb and a beach called Curl Curl. I just hate things with two names. Really? Yeah. Can you imagine it called Martin Martin? Or Martin Martinson? No. John Johnson? Yeah. Ryan, Ryan? Yeah. That stuff just doesn't really bother me. Okay. Oh, it doesn't annoy me that much. I'm not busy. It's not the uproar about the Stern Vault Edition. I'm not that crazy about it. That's pretty much it, I think. That's pretty much it. Hope you enjoy the interview with Keith. I've had to edit it a lot, and it was the most fun I had editing, just listening back to it again and again. So thank you to Keith for coming on the show, and thanks, everybody, for listening. Should we tease him next week as well? Should we do another? Should this be our thing now, just teasing who's coming next week? Yeah. No. You saw all the Facebook ones. You're taking it too far, right? It's all a bit much. Okay. The hints that I gave on Facebook, I should have done them in reverse order. One of them was rare earth magnets, okay? This is that story that Keith did about the whole Rusek thing. The other was goat, which goat in sporting terms usually means the greatest of all time, right? and the other one was Neo the One, which is the term that Bruce and Ron coined for Keith, which seems to have kind of stuck. Next week we have someone that is not a big household name. He's never been interviewed on a podcast before, but he's very important and has worked on a lot of pinball machines, so I'm really looking forward to his interview. Yeah, so am I. All right, you can check out all of our stuff on head2headspinball.com. Follow us on Instagram. Twitter. Fucking subscribe on iTunes. I can't do it enough. 45 episodes. Maybe we'll have to get our friend to do the outro again. Yeah. So email us at head2headpimble at gmail.com and we will read out your thoughts at the end of every episode. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. We'll speak to you next week. Ciao. Bye. Hello to all of our listeners in Aruba. Yeah.