Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the pinball studio podcast. I'm your host Sterling Martin and today we've got David Benke from South Carolina He's a competitive pinball player, a state director and so much more So today we're going to learn his story But first off, let's talk about the sponsors Old Town Pinball, do you need a newer used game? Head over to oldtownpinball.com Also, The Electric Playground, does your game need a new topper? head over to teppinball.com and our newest sponsor actually renewing because they are sponsored from last year spooky pinball do you need a creepy ass game head over to spookypinball.com anyway david welcome to the show it's great to have you man how's it going it's going great man i'm really happy to have you on the show i've wanted to do this uh for a while man yeah i love coming down here it's not too far of a drive um usually play pretty good here so yeah yeah i love it yeah i'm glad you came and played in our christmas party tournament last night that was cool i know it's a drive for you from south carolina and everything yeah i mean still being in charleston it's only two and a half hours so it's really not that bad it's just annoying on 95 well anyway today we're going to hear your story and basically how you got in this hobby and everything um what's your like earliest memory of playing pinball did you play as a kid or did it come later on in life do you remember maybe the first machine you saw or i'll let you start off where you were all those started i have like four locations that i played at as a kid i didn't play all the time but i played way more than my other friends everybody else was playing the video games that was me and i'm i played more pinball than all of them so the four locations were chucky cheese okay hot wheels which was like a skating rink um james island cinema on james island and uh aladdin's castle at citadel mall okay so all this is in south carolina yeah it's all in charleston i grew up in charleston so um so chucky cheese is probably the first place that i played right just because i was going there earlier in life than the other places um and i remember that they had a simpsons data east and a tmmt um so that would be what like 91 92 something like that which would line up with the timeline you know right um but i also remember the movie theater had um adam's family um so that would be around the same time um and i remember playing uh funhouse at uh hot wheels right so it's all kind of the same time i don't know what was first but i played all of those games man y'all had an awesome lineup compared to what we had here in savannah i think i missed like the big hype for like pinball and it was just like falling off by the time uh all the games i saw them route they were already like 10 years old yeah yeah i mean i was i was playing whenever things first came out i actually remember my buddy down the street his uncle um i remember him talking about whenever bride of pinbot came out okay like he was a big pinball guy like he always he thought that it was cool that like i played some pinball right so whenever i would be over there and he would be over there he'd always be like hey man you play some pinball blah blah blah and um i remember whenever uh he was so excited that bride of pinbot came out which is like a weird memory that i have yeah yeah but yeah he was pumped about it so like i was i was around whenever these things were coming out but i was just like a keep the live yeah i remember specifically being at hot wheels and they had a twilight zone and i remember somebody you know must have been some guy that came in there to play pinball a lot or something i remember somebody trying to explain to me what i needed to be doing and i was just like hell bent on just getting it up to the mini play field and using the magnets and stuff i was just like lock i'm not taking the lock i'm hitting this ramp you know i didn't even know games really had like a way to play them at first i was just like oh you're just supposed to keep the ball on the play field and there's not really a game but then later when i found out there was actually things to do that's when pinball actually became fun for me yeah so i i played a lot um you know i would go to these tech and tag tournaments and in between my matches i would go play the pinball machine so that was usually at aladdin's castle and i remember they had like a monster bash they had a party monsters they had a tales of arabian nights i remember playing all this stuff but i don't think that back then i ever really grasped what i was supposed to be doing like what the goal was i think that i probably figured out okay if i bash frank i get a multiball but i don't think that i really understood rules until palmetto pinball club which is where you know i played whenever i was younger and then there was a big gap just like you know everybody's story is the same i played when I was a kid, didn't see him for 15 years and then found it. You know, like that's pretty much what happened with me. Roughly how old were you when you were playing in this club? So that was 2016. Okay. That's right. When I discovered pinball. Yeah. So again, I went through a breakup. One of my good buddies went through a divorce. We started being roommates and he had a friend that had a Ghostbusters and a World Cup soccer and it was that guy's birthday. So he wanted to go to the secret pinball arcade called the Palo Alto Pinball Club for his birthday. And I guess through collecting, he knew somebody. Because back then, it was not a public thing. Right. You had to know someone. Kind of like the wormhole was back in the day. It was legit. You had to go park back behind these shops, go in this unmarked door up these stairs, walk down this hall and just go into this random room and all it had was a little tiny sticker that said palmetto pinball club you walk in and there's like 15 pinball machines and nice it was incredible so i went that night and um this guy heath ashley he was um i believe he's the first ever uh south carolina state champion um he won the first one that we hosted um he saw me playing and um Pat Pietras, who was the first state director for South Carolina, they were two of the, like, founding members of the Palmetto Pinball Club. And they saw me playing that night and kind of, like, you know, were like, hey, like, you're pretty good. Like, why don't you try doing this? And why don't you try doing that? They taught me, like, World Cup soccer. They taught me what to do on Giant Mnemonic, Whirlwind. Like, we had a killer lineup. That's awesome. Yeah, they just taught me a few things. And, you know, I kind of started figuring it out and they were like, hey, like hit us up on Facebook anytime you want to come and we'll let you in. So I just started just started going up there like two, three times a week. And that's awesome. You all had that going on back then. Oh, my gosh. It was incredible. So we had a Whirlwind World Cup Soccer 94, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Johnny Mnemonic, Star Trek Pro that was like hooked up. It didn't look like a pro. It was like the best Star Trek Pro I've ever seen. Starship Troopers, which is a random game, but it's actually a pretty good game. Actually, I don't know if I've ever played that game. I've seen it at the Pinball Palace a few times. It's really ugly, but it is fun. It's got like an extra, it's kind of like got like an extra flipper, but it's a small flipper. So it's scissor flippers, but they're not the same size. Right. But it's a cool game. We had Taxi, 8-Ball Deluxe, Wizard, Mystic, Nugent, Flash, Funland. And then later on, Kevin Martin from Papa, the guy that started Pemberg and all that. um he actually moved to south carolina for some reason and um he brought his lord of the rings and the twilight zone from papa like our twilight zone had a sticker on it that said this is the machine that was used at you know papa 12 in the finals or whatever right it's sick um that's very cool that's the game that i learned twilight zone on and um we also had a ghostbusters which i believe was his as well damn yeah it was a killer lineup great mix you know like we had like the good old games and we had like awesome you know mid-level games we didn't have a ton of the new sterns but like other than that it was incredible so that's like that's where i learned how to play that's where my first tournament was right yeah yeah when ghostbusters came out and i solid i was like man that's so cool but i'll never own like a new stern or any of this but then a few days or for a few years later i'm sitting here buying all of these yeah i mean it's crazy how it happens once you get one it's you're not well i thought like a grand was a lot i think i bought back to the future for 1200 and i thought that was like i was like that's a lot of i was trying to talk the guy down he's like no no like 1200 is like the bottom line and then you know during covid i sold it for five grand oh my god yeah looking back on deals that i have passed up right is horrible like i went to this guy's house in charleston he had this sick house he's like a bachelor like 50 years old he had like all these old skateboards on the wall like it was a killer pad and he had a um pool sharks that was in pretty good condition and he was selling it for $600. Okay. And I went and played it and like blew it up. And then I was like, ah, there's not that much of this game. I don't know. And I didn't buy it because I was just like, ah, it's not a great game, but man, I could have bought it and just sold it a year later for whatever. There was also a grand lizard, uh, for sale in rock Hill for forever. It was on Facebook market or Craigslist or whatever I was using back then. It was on there forever for like $1,100. And I was like, dude, there's this cool-looking game. And everybody told me that game sucked. I hate all those people. Really? Because that game's awesome. Man, I love Grand Lizard. I think I discovered that, like, Kyle from, you know, he was Marco back then, but now he's working for Stern. I'm forgetting his last name. Tall Kyle. Yeah. But he was always talking about Grand Lizard in all his videos, and I'm like, I've got to play this game. Yeah, yours is great. It's got the alternate back glass and everything. Yeah, it's early. It says display number three on it. So I guess it's a display game because the plastics are all different, the back glass is different, and the displays are in a different spot than on the production model because it turned into the System 11 kind of on fire and stuff where they're all grouped together. yeah yeah i love i love playing that game they had it at uh pinkies revenge yeah and i think i did play it there once maybe at pinkies they also have a spy hunter there like i know that's another one that's another one i was telling you uh last night that they had a spy hunter for sale in columbia back in the day whenever i first got into it right dirt cheap and everybody told me that it was like the worst game ever which is not it's not amazing no no i think it's really cool though i like weird games though i get tired of like the same old same old like three pop bumpers over here and you got an orbit and like you know just i like weird oh yeah i'm so glad that we have gotten away from the pop bumper nest like that that idea should just never come back well that's what i liked spy hunter with the pop bumper down there i mean it it will screw you really quick but i like that it was different you know and i think keith ellen kind of to some extent you know put like his godzilla one down there and stuff yeah i mean he definitely got it going you know i mean Steve Ritchie he did one without a pop bumper back in the day no fear oh i forgot that one doesn't have a bumper i actually have a picture of myself uh me and my brother playing monopoly and no fear like back in 2001 at a uh at a ski ski resort okay my mom like whenever i got into pinball she randomly was like going through like old photos and she was like hey i found a picture you playing pinball send it to me it's me and my brother playing those two games and then i ended up getting a no fear later okay um but yeah yeah so i guess he really kind of got it going and i think shadow didn't have one either okay yeah yeah another there is a few games out there i guess they don't have pops i don't miss them when they're not there yeah i mean we've got limited space yeah so we don't need you know the ball just getting stuck up there bouncing around and it doesn't you know it's not like it even gives you a bunch of points or any it's literally just a time waster i think gary stern always said he liked it just because like if you're not a good player and you get it up there you're hearing a lot of noise and points are moving around and yeah you know you're not really doing anything other than shooting it in there and it just pop around for a little while yeah but i mean with how it is now i mean it just doesn't work anymore no no we got limited space we gotta we gotta do something else with it than these pop bumpers i don't mind them being down that you know like the way the new star wars is how it's down just kind of out of the way and right if it's in a weird place i kind of like them yeah yeah i mean i've got a rick and morty at home and that pop bumper on in the bottom i mean i think that it's cool you know like i mean it takes some getting used to right it's a good i mean i i like the idea of having them just i just don't want the nest so it sounds like your collector as well so i would say that i'm definitely a player like i i don't spend a lot of time fixing them like i can fix them i've rebuilt flippers Like I've done little stuff, but, um, I mostly play them. I have them just so that I can get better at playing and having them at home. Like I need them at home. Right. But I would definitely not classify myself as a collector. Like I don't get obsessed over, you know, having the nicest version and like, you know, Oh, I have to have this game. I just need games. Right. You just like having a collection around of games. and then you move them on or whatever yeah do you kind of trade them from time to time and you know get different titles so i have like a really good situation with ken grant um so a lot of people are going to know him from the competitive scene um he uh he has been uh lending me games for like oh that's an awesome deal um so i've you know i buy my own games but he always has games at my house and it used to be because him and nate grant who anybody that watches competitive pinball knows nate right his son um them and um todd reynolds used to come down to our tournaments back in the day and i didn't have any games at home and ken had too many games at his house so he just brought one down one time i think the first one that i had was doctor who no no this is how it started i haven't thought about this in a while oh you're good so um he came down and one of our tournament players this guy jared rice had a doctor who the the one with the working topper okay i don't think i've ever even seen a topper in person it's a prototype like they didn't make very many of them because it was too expensive but he had one that he had gone to canada to get wow so this guy drove all the way to canada to get this game brought it back and you know he had it for a couple years and he was just talking to ken like and ken offered to buy it and he was like sure so i went and picked it up and brought it to my house and uh I had it for maybe a month before Ken came back for the next tournament. So that was the first game. And whenever he came back, he brought me, let me think. It was, he brought me Batman 66. How about that? Oh, man, those are some good games. Yeah. Oh, he's given me, I have a whole list of all the games that he's given me. It's insane. It sounds like my buddy Mike used to do the same thing. Yeah. So, all right. So listen to this list. It's a long list. Yeah, go ahead. It's incredible. I've had all these games and a lot of these games I've had for like six months. Right. And just on loan. Yeah, just on loan. So Doctor Who, Batman 66, Original Metallica, The Shadow, Next Gen, Centaur, No Fear, Jurassic Park Pro, 8 Ball Deluxe, Whirlwind, Sharky's Shootout, Stranger Things, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dirty Harry, Walking Dead, Iron Maiden Premium, Deadpool Pro, acdc pro monster bash twilight zone harlem globe trotters spider-man black robo war and pirates of the caribbean stern does your back hurt after moving all these games oh my god i don't care it doesn't matter i bet ken's back hurts he does this for everybody like there's okay i hope that ken doesn't get just you know pummeled with requests right now but he has games at like six different people's houses. Damn. Okay. And he has, he has a situation just like the studio at his house. He's got like 15 games. He has like a detached, right? Like building like 15 games. Wow. And then he's got all these games all over the place. That's crazy. I call him Penn Santa. He's the best. No, I had a buddy named Mike CB and he used to, well, rented a stranger things that game had just came out and I really wanted it and I couldn't afford it at the time. So I rented that from him for like two or three months, but then we became friends and he just started doing the same thing, but it was, it was really bad. He'd be like, I know your work, but like, if you could, uh, unlock your house, I'll put like four games in there. And I'm like, deal done. And, uh, I was like, you know, you could like still, uh, charge me like rent on some of these games. He's like, I'm just out of room, man. And then my buddy wills the same thing. Like, Hey man, if you can unlock your house, I'll put four games in your living room. He's like, deal. Yeah, it's good being nice to people because if you're mean to people, they're not bringing you games. You know, like just make the connections. I mean, I think that there's a lot of people that just, you know, these things take up a lot of space. Yes. That was the thing. He had like a little garage arcade and it became where like he had the game set up to like where they were all standing up and you couldn't even walk in there. It was probably like 40 games in a little garage. So he's like, all right, I'll put five over here, five over there. yeah and i mean i mean having them at somebody's house that you trust that you know is not going to beat them up yeah is better than paying for a storage unit or something yeah he loved it after a while because i was doing like shop jobs on them for free he's like dude i drop it off i come back and it's in great condition yeah i need to be better about that to be honest with you i don't clean games enough um but i have all the stuff i'm definitely i'm about to bring robo war back to ken because I've had it for a long time. I actually got it to do a project in school. So I graduated from University of South Carolina. I have a business degree, but they were doing free tuition at the tech school in Charleston. And I always just wanted to do something with like graphic design or animation or whatever. So I went and I did that. So I was still working, but I went and just at night I went and got an animation degree. Oh, very cool. Yeah, and my big project, like, you have to do a senior project, and my big project was doing animations No that awesome Animations for robo war so me and um uh john marsh uh who unfortunately passed away earlier this year he was like my mentor he the guy that made um uh he made space balls okay so the space balls that you see at southern fried and all that that's my guy he awesome john marsh he lived in somerville which is like 45 minutes from my house Right. And I went up there whenever he was working on Spaceballs and I helped him with rules and stuff like that. And then whenever I was in school, I was trying to come up with my senior project and I kind of pitched it to the art director up there. And he thought it would be great. And then after I pitched it and he approved it, then I started realizing, oh, God, like this is going to be complicated. I don't know how to do this. Right. So, uh, so I hit up John and he helped me so much. Like we were taking robo war back and forth from his house to my house. Like he would work on it, like on the like technical, like how to get this LCD to function side. Right. He would work on it for a while. I would work on the animations. I would like bring stuff over to him and we would just work on it together. It was incredible. It was an awesome experience. That's awesome. um yeah we actually got on a call with the guy that started fast oh okay cool so we got on like i was at john's house in his garage and we were talking on the phone with that guy right i can't remember his name yeah i'm forgetting his name it was so incredible listening to them talk about the technical side right because like fast doesn't have a um gotley premier um system you know they've got one for you know the williams games of the 90s or whatever you can just buy a kit and then you can just start you know adding your own rules and stuff like that but they don't have it for gottlieb so there was all these weird you know problems with how the gottliebs work so john had to call him and they had to try to figure it out he ended up working it was awesome so i mean i obviously stole the show at the uh at the senior we have like this night where everybody presents all of their work and everybody was playing pinball they were all playing robo war and just like talking about my animations and stuff it was really cool that's crazy i'm actually trying to had it for a long time so i've had it for probably i've probably had robo war for like two and a half years so oh nice yeah it's time to get it back to ken yeah i'm actually uh thinking about i've been thinking about doing a homebrew for a few years now because i've done restorations and everything So like I know my way around working on pinball machines, putting them together. The part that scares me is the coding part, man. But I think I'm going to start one this year and I'm almost like trying to put together a team. Like I do know like one guy that is about like coding pinball and stuff in Brunswick. So I'm going to try to like drag him into it. And I've been talking to Michael Barnard that, you know, did Jaws and stuff. I'm like, would you be down? He's like, hell yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I saw that he did something on Big Trouble in Little China. no no he didn't do anything oh he didn't no i told him i was like you do know about this homebrew community he's like no and i'm like dude get on that page and like say uh because he's been wanting to do another pinball machine and uh just nothing is lined up uh right i'm like well these guys are paying a lot of damn money for art and uh so he got on there and already everyone's like how much how much how much yeah i mean having the legit artwork uh i mean it takes the homebrew to another level right i feel like that is one of the big identifiers this is a homebrew whenever the art is well that's the thing i wanted to look like a real cornerstone game when i do it i don't want to i don't want to spend thousands of dollars and it look half-assed like i want this thing to look like who made this yeah i mean i don't i can't picture you doing something half-assed sterling oh yeah i mean in the short time that i've known you just come in here i mean this studio you guys should see it it looks like a legit studio um the pinball studio which is his uh arcade outback is i mean it looks like a it even has a desk you have a desk you sell drinks like yep i i just can't picture you doing something half-assed so if you do a homebrew it's going to be incredible i know it yeah i don't want to say what the theme is going to be but uh you can't it's one of those big spielberg movies yeah yeah you can't reveal it i mean if i if i did one which i want to do like from doing the robo war project right i really i think my next like step is going to be to get the fast um williams system right and retheme see that was my other idea retheme i think that's a good first step because everything you don't have to worry about all of that and it'll just i mean that would get your feet wet with the code and all that I thought it was really cool listening to some podcasts, and I think it was with Bug from Spooky. He said that they use Unity, which whenever I was in school, I had to make a video game level. I had a class that was like introduction to making video games, which was really cool. I actually made a video game based on Junkyard, the pinball machine. yeah so the the backstory was the um the main guy in junkyard you know he's trying to rescue that girl from from the junkyard or whatever yep the uh the story of my game was they had a kid and the kid was staying at at you know grandma's house or whatever and snuck into the junkyard oh and It was a side scroller of him going through the junkyard, collecting all of this stuff like rockets and all these different junky things to make weapons and stuff. It was really sick. But yeah, I don't remember why I started talking about that. Oh, yeah, I think I started talking about homebrews. Oh, yeah, Unity. Okay, Unity. No, I remember. it's because bugs said that they use unity to code their games which is really cool because that's what we used in school and the way that they do it it's like modular like like you it's very visual it's not just typing in code you have like um these different nodes that you connect with i mean it's like little strings that you connect i like the idea that it's way it's way better it's more visual yeah it's not just memorizing like dude i know nothing about coding i've never done any coding in my life and my buddy over there on this computer brought it to me the other day of all the stuff to like prototype uh you know the the playfield layouts and stuff i forget the name of all the programs but uh he's like showing me the basic decoding i'm like i i i don't even know what you're talking about man yeah yeah actual actual coding with like you know c++ or whatever any of that oh my gosh it hurts my head so much but the um the node based i can't remember exactly what they call it but whatever unity does is it's it's a lot easier yeah so i think that that's that's the way to go and luke told me that they did all the modeling always in fusion 360 like for all the modeling for their games and i know they just start off like i'm trying to like do it like on a like a virtual setup and check geometry he's like they They just put a board in a game and they start screwing stuff to it. Well, I mean, that's what Ellen said that he did. Right. You know, I'm like, I can't afford 20 playfields before I get it right. I know. Well, that's why you just keep unscrewing. Yeah, it doesn't have a lot of holes, a bunch of holes and wood filler and all of that. And then you figure it out. I feel like that would be a better approach for me, though, because I'm like a very hands on kind of person. And, like, a computer, I'm going to want to scream at it after a few hours. But he did say there's one cool thing. Say, like, you can kind of write the game and, like, the rules and stuff. And whatever in that program, you can pull it over to FAST. And not have to reprogram all of it again. Like, you can already, like, be making headway. Yeah, that's awesome. I am, like, so excited to do that. We need to clear out some space in our house. Our house is pretty small. um we've got like an addition on the back which is where the pinball machines are but right now i've got four pinball machines um i also collect um marvel cards like from the 90s like the old school like um baseball cards for marvel cool collect that so all of that stuff is downstairs um we have two guest bedrooms and never have guests so you sound like me yeah you're my first guest in seven years i know well i mean gary was you know gary was there first so for those that don't know he's got a life-size gary stern cut out in the corner of the guest room scared i forgot that was in there i took it out of my arcade because i'd go in there at night and i'm like who the hell is in here like i'd see like the silhouette of gary well that was my thought whenever i walked in last night i was like oh my god and then it was gary oh man that was hilarious Yeah, thank you for letting us stay, by the way. Oh, no problem, man. This is so much better than driving home late at night. Yeah, I know it's a drive, and pinball tournaments don't tend to end very early, especially when you start them later on. Yeah. Well, the last two, the ones that we drove home from, the drive was pretty sweet because I won both of those. Yeah, you got that massive trophy. I mean, it looks like you won like a national championship. I know. It's gigantic. Yeah, well, I told you, whenever you were trying to convince me to come down here for that, you sent me a picture of it. Yeah. And I was like, I want that. I want that trophy. And I didn't think I was going to get it because game one was Adams family and I got last. So I essentially needed to win the next two. Damn Adams family out there, man. Oh, my God. That scoop is a nightmare. I've never played one that scoop was so bad. Last night, the reason why I did not make finals is because of that Adams family. I had it trapped on the left. I backhanded. it hit the post and went out the left two balls in a row after ball two i had like one million points and it didn't get better on ball three i got smoked i ended up with like 2.5 million and then of course while finals is going on i tour the mansion i mean it's just how it goes uh everybody's got a story i know that's always how it goes but yeah i was super stoked to come down here and and win that trophy because that's definitely the biggest trophy i've ever gotten and it was a i mean you do a great job with the tournaments like you have all this pageantry that goes on with it you do the tickets and you know you do giveaways and you know for that one for halloween you had the whole front set up with like all this oh yeah yep try to make all the halloween decorations you had the big um sandworm um blow up thing just wait until we do our beetle juice launch party oh it's crazy insane i have to be here for that oh my god i'm so jealous that you got to go up there and play it yeah it was fun uh it sounds like they're gonna let more people come next year i'd like some other people to the main thing is you gotta buy a game oh you have to buy again so like to go up there you're pre-committed yeah okay gotcha i guess they don't want you seeing it if you're not gonna buy it or well it was like such a limited they didn't really like plan this out well dom wanted to do it and then like i think bug was not as excited but then everybody came there and like everyone was like wow i'm really enjoying this this is awesome and everyone's behaving i think they're worried about people taking pictures and stuff they're like hey you gotta leave your phones at the door but everyone was really respectful and uh nobody did anything stupid or anything so i think they'll open it up to some extra people but i think buying the game was like all right we got to limit this and like you at least got to be buying a game to like come um yeah but uh yeah i mean as long as they don't open it up to anyone you know they still have to vet people yeah we were in like a little area of the factory it wasn't like we're on like the main floor it was like the corner of like the the there's two or three buildings i'm not even sure but we were in the building where they like cut self out on cnc and bend metal and all that you know it wasn't where they put the games together yeah because i'm sure that they're probably working on something else too you can't just no we went all factory we went now pretty much really yeah i just walked wherever but uh i think there's like certain offices and stuff like no like behind those doors or or you know games coming in the future but out on the floor they don't they don't leave anything that would uh make you think oh they're making this game or that game yeah i just watched their um the documentary that's on amazon prime on them it's it's old it's it looks like it's almost 10 years old that they must have done it a documentary yeah there's a spooky documentary on amazon prime what and it's got bug whenever he's like no way 18 or something i've got to watch this oh my god it's incredible it shows all the old footage of like the games like their homebrew that they did beforehand um it goes through the whole story of how america's most haunted came out and like how they got um rob zombie and how the dominoes thing happened oh it was it's incredible like me and kristen watched it maybe i don't know a month ago i want to say that it was right around the time that beetlejuice was coming out i was listening to another podcast and they mentioned it and i was like wait what a documentary i had no idea yeah and i watch spooky are they even aware that this exists yeah i mean yes they they have to be um yeah they're all in it the whole family's in it they they interview like the mayor of that town and like dude they got hooked up with that situation up there oh yeah like that town loves them they i mean well they probably employ three quarters of the town yeah i mean that's why they're they don't allow remote work right like everybody has to work has to live there right all i know is when i was leaving there there was like one gas station in that whole town and it looked like it was built in like the 50s and uh i'm like i'm gonna get a cold drink for the road and i come to the fridge the fridge doesn't even work it is like very old school mom and pop like in the country kind of deal i was like you know your drinks are hot and she's like yeah we know and i'm like okay yeah and then whenever you left she was probably like tourist yeah tourist that's been broken for 12 years yeah i want to i want to go check it out man just from seeing that documentary like i i mean i don't know if i could pre-commit to a to a game to go up there but i would love to go up there just to just to check it out probably be other opportunities like not during a game launch night where you could go and and visit the factory i don't think they would be against it um as long as you set it up ahead of time yeah it's really cool though it's uh it's not huge but you get to see how they're built and i don't know i mean i went to the stern factory and that was cool and all but that was like very corporate like yeah we're like spooky was like your friends you know what i mean so uh well i mean that's just that's just the difference in the companies man yeah i mean stern is is a monster no they are like and spooky that was like Sam's Club when you walk in there. That's like if I had to like say how big the Stern factory is, probably like slightly smaller than like a Sam's Club, like Costco type place. Oh, my gosh. But Spooky's, I don't know, probably a third between both buildings. Yeah. How do you feel about where Stern's at right now? I don't even know how to even answer that. I wish Stern would just slow down a little bit on building games. Nobody's buying every game that comes out anymore. I knew a lot of people that were buying everything, but they were coming out with two games a year. Now they're doing four, maybe five. I feel like if they just slowed down, maybe some of these little issues wouldn't end up in the production games and stuff. I still love Stern. Don't get me wrong. I've got a whole Stern wall of games outside. I love the code in their games. It's just these other companies are just doing the most. They're putting everything in these games, whereas Stern's not quite doing that anymore. But they have really well-coded games where these other companies maybe not as much. And they have Elwin. As long as they have Elwin, that is the secret weapon right there. He's the best. I think that he is number one i think that he is above richie and lawler and i'm like subscribed to ellen games like whenever they come out i'm like i remember when i was getting jaws uh it was just like a rumor and i was telling my distro i was like i want to buy jaws le he's like but what if it's not jaws le i'm like oh i'm like well i'm still buying it yeah i mean i think that every game that he's ever done i actually i actually think that jaws i a lot of people think that jaws is like his best game i've heard a lot of people say that i think that jaws is like down the list like that's probably my favorite is probably josh yeah yeah i feel like you you might have said that last night like i think that jaws is down the list but it's still so far ahead of everyone else I agree. Like, Elwynn's worst is above the next guy's best. Right. And I'm wondering if some of these people at Stern are going to retire soon. I mean, some of them are getting up there. George just seems like he's going to work forever, but I wouldn't really call him a designer anymore. You know, he just kind of, like, fills in when needed. He's the captain, man. Here's the ship. Brian Eddy and John Borg and all them. I'm like, how many more games are they going to make? I keep hearing this rumor that Brian Eddy's retiring after his next game. I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard it from a few people now. And I'm like, who's going to replace all these guys? We got Elliot Elliot Eismin coming up, I guess, with Transformers is the rumor. That makes sense. He's an engineer. He probably has been dreaming of some kind of mech for that. Hopefully Stern will let him do whatever he wants to do. Yeah, that's the thing. it's like uh with john wick i do like how john wick shoots um i haven't played it in a long time so i can't speak about the new code but uh i was like for being a mech guy where's all the mechs yeah it's kind of weird i mean the premium you know it's got the car that comes out or whatever but to me what that game feels like now this is obviously obviously just speculation yeah what that feels like is george gomez was making kind of giant mnemonic part two okay and was too busy and Elliot Eismin was like i can take this thing to the finish line right and george was like fine i got a million things on my plate because if you look at it i mean where where the shots are are very very similar to giant mnemonic you know i'd have to compare i haven't i haven't thought of those two games and comparing shots yeah um i just i did feel the game had flow to it that some of the shots are pretty tight but if you're hitting them it's like wow this game's fast yeah it gets super fast if you if you play it without slowing it down yeah it's going to go out of control yeah because i bought it brand new and i opened it up out the box and those first few games when that play field is like clean clean that ball was hauling but i'm so glad that they redid the code like i know that um i was just confused i didn't even know i'm like what is going on yeah i mean that the the adding the perks and all of that just just adds so much to the game it gives you a reason to care what mode you're going for because before i mean it was just like okay hopefully you just start the yellow mode you know i mean but now there's like there is there is reasons to play it purposefully you know instead of just banging the ball around i don't understand either because like tim sexton when that game came out he was coding it and he was saying this is his dream theme and all this and he's wanted to do this game for years and then he really didn't do anything but then he left so maybe he had already like plans to go to uh Chicago Gaming or Play Mechanics, whoever he's working for. I think that the idea of how he wanted the code to work with having to defeat the enemies, get enemies out of the way so that you can get your mode shots and how all of that worked I think that that was above everybody heads People just didn get it They like I just hit the shot Why didn I get credit for it I think it was just over everybody's heads, and I have heard some people that love that, like the Buffalo pinball guys seem to love that mechanic. I hear them keep the hype in that game. They're like, oh, I got a John Wick Ellie now and all that. It was funny. yeah but i i think that the new the new code for that and the new code for x-men are steps in the right direction yeah i've got to play both of those games again because like i said i have not played it since they've revamped the code well bond was the same way i i got a bond pro that game was gone after a month and a half i was like this is weird i don't even like it yeah bond i whenever bond first came out i everybody was like crapping on the game and i I was like, dude, this is George Gomez. This is an awesome layout. We just got to give it a little shot. I couldn't shoot it at first. I don't know what was going on. I couldn't hit anything on the game. And then I got it again. And the second time I got it, I'm like, how could you not hit these shots? It actually flows really well. You just got to find it, and then you're good to go. Hitting that spinner on that left orbit, I always had trouble with that. But now I feel like I can hit it almost every time. Oh, that feels so good, too. Yeah, it's a satisfying shot. in the back it's oh my gosh it's funny man we were talking about a homebrew and when my buddy was here the other day i'm like i want that shot in my game like i'm stealing that that shot to that ramp to to feed a wire form the wire form might not go to the same spot or the same way but uh it's so satisfying shooting it up that ramp back there yeah that's an awesome one i remember um whenever that was coming out i remember thinking that it was going to be something else and then bond dropped like i remember i don't remember what game it was i think maybe it was jaws like expecting it to be jaws and then it ended up being bond or something it may have been that but yeah i i remember whenever it came out just i don't even remember bond is a rumor that may have been a surprise i kind of miss the surprises now i always know all the rumors and they're usually right anymore i miss when i loves you know i put on a trailer video and i'm like oh my god they're making that game yeah i i would like to go back and listen to you know like podcasts from two or three years ago yeah and see what what the rumors were because that's what's going to be coming out you know yeah like that's what's coming now yeah yeah um so if if you could go back and listen to that stuff you probably have a pretty good idea of of what's coming up but i think everybody kind of knows i mean it's going to be pokemon it's going to be transformers acdc remake why are they doing that i don't understand that i don't really like the the original one i'm not a massive acdc fan i liked it when i was like 16 i'm burnt out on acdc for the rest of my life yeah i had i mean ken let me borrow one of those for a long time right i made a i made a tutorial on it like it's a complicated game um there's a lot going on it's actually great like the code is really good um you know the layout is solid i wouldn't say the layout's incredible with layout solid but we just don't what we don't need to redo it where's tron like all right john's doing all these remake games and like gomez knows we want tron they just came out with a tron movie like why was that i don't i think walking dead was even a stretch like i know a lot of people really like that game and the rules in that game but i think tron would have sold way better just oh yeah i mean i i agree and i don't understand why um they came out with that game but then you know the the animations are just the same animations they kind of beat around the bush on that too because they were telling yes we're getting assets like so we're getting movie clips well we gotta paint over them and then now people are just telling me it's the dmd clips from the original game painted over i'm like so it's not even the the show clips painted over i'm very confused yeah it's horrible and then whenever uh whenever i was watching one of the early um videos of it they have the legit dmd animations the red dme dmd animations for some of the stuff like whenever some of the stuff happens they haven't even painted over everything yeah it's why not just make new animations i'm not sure why they're even trying to read Well, there's a lot that goes into that, Sterling. Oh. Let me tell you, it is not easy. But they do have people on payroll for this. Yeah, I know. It's just time to do your job. It's so time-consuming. You cannot imagine how time-consuming this stuff is. I mean, I get it. Right. Which is why pay for the movie clips. Yeah, see, when I do my, thank God I'm doing a homebrew where I don't have to worry about licensing. At least I'm going to be able to use, like, movie clips for 99% of it. I might need a character or something animated here and there, just like a silhouette or whatever. But, yeah, I don't plan on making a cartoon out of it. The animations from scratch is like an absolute nightmare. I honestly can't imagine. That was part of why I wanted to go get that degree because I was like, the animations on pinball machines kind of suck. Like, I want to go, you know, be an animation guy. Now I realize it's extremely difficult, and that's why they're not that great because it's just so hard. What about the animations when they'll do, like, it's just a character, like, striking a pose and the background's moving? Like, say he's flying through the air. Are those hard to do? Well, that stuff is, I mean, you can draw that stuff, and then you can basically put little pins, little points on the drawing and get that to move. So they do that a lot like in Venom. Like an arms moving or something. Yeah, you can do that stuff, which is a lot easier than real animation. Right. Yeah, I don't see like full-on like a cartoon, like watching a cartoon, like animation type deal on pinball. Yeah, because it would just be insane to do that. Jersey Jack, their animation department is just head and shoulders above everybody else in my opinion. Their UI, like the way that they're, you know, like their little screens. that say like multiball and all of the stuff that they do is looks so good right that they do everything on their screen i mean they have a huge screen they have to do something with it right they do way better than everybody in my opinion um but again i mean it is just a difficult thing to do so i don't i don't really have that much criticism for it because the stuff that stern is doing and the i mean spooky actually does a pretty good job with their animations too but um it's just it's so time consuming it's it's got to be so expensive to get all this stuff done so like i'm like even i'm less critical of the animations now after going to school i'm like yep that's i still love the dmd era games but that might be a pain in the butt too like doing the animations on those i don't know how much yeah i don't know i i mean i imagine that that is rough now i heard when they did like deadpool they were like going through like the i i don't know all the terminology terminology like 13 bit am i saying that right is that i think it was 16 16 bit or whatever it is and they were saying that's like really hard to do you know on like an lcd screen and i'm like yeah pixel graphics yeah they're tough but it looks awesome oh it's incredible that's one of my favorite games ever i was like i want a game with all that kind of graphics throughout the whole thing but uh the animator whoever i get to do it might might want to kill me yeah deadpool i mean deadpool is a masterpiece to be honest with you i mean i had that game ken let me borrow that game for probably like a year yeah did a tutorial on it like it is just so whenever i do the tutorials like i dive into the to the rules and stuff and it's just it's so awesome it's not like incredibly deep but what's there is so fun and it's just like one of those solid games like i say like deadpool guardians of the galaxy like for the older games like world cup soccer like there's just great like entry-level games like give somebody new this game and they're going to have a ton of fun they're going to learn how to play pinball like that those are the games you know um i just feel like it's got everything that you could possibly need it's not like you know over the top easy to understand it's just perfect it's it's not perfect but it is one of the best games ever for sure right so when did you start getting into this whole tournament thing i know you're a state director now so you got to be pretty pretty deep into this tournament thing when did you like take it to the next level or next level and you started like traveling for tournaments and trying to hit all of them so it's funny whenever i knew that we were doing this podcast i went back and looked so i could see like when the first tournament i played was which was july 1st 2016 oh wow um so that would have been a few months after the first time i ever went to the to the club that's which in my mind in my mind the way that it happened was i went to the club and they said hey we've got this tournament like next weekend right and i immediately played in a tournament but apparently there was a few months where i was just going there um and uh i finished uh i finished ninth um and trent augustine from ohio was down he used to come down to our tournaments for some reason i think he used to come down to like get games from marco or something so he would just be in town in columbia right and um yeah he used to just whoop us like i remember at that tournament he put up like 800 million on that star trek pro and at the time i was so new i didn't know who trent was i didn't know how big of a feat that was but i was just like i remember telling pat petrus i remember being like man this guy's pretty good and pat just looked at me like i was just a moron he's like yeah that's the number five player in the world buddy oh that's like when we were at a bar and uh this lady's telling my buddy will about escher like oh that's my i think it was her son i think it was his mom and oh y'all are at a tournament or something we were at tpf at the bar and she and will's like who the hell is escher i don't know oh no yeah i had i had two of those let's so the trent moment was was just like sorry like i just got into this like i haven't been watching tournament pinball i don't know i just know the guy's obviously good well um the other moment was uh so kevin martin obviously i said he he used to keep games at the club he didn't go to the club very often but he had games there well one afternoon it was like a sunday afternoon him and his wife came in and you know they were playing like i introduced myself like talk to them a little bit or whatever pat came in we were all playing pat talked to them and then they left and pat was like so cool huh and i was like what and he was like yeah like you just met kevin martin and i said okay yeah he's a nice guy and pat's like dude that's like the godfather man like he started papa he started pinberg like he was programming games in the 90s and all this stuff and i was like i don't know i mean it's nice yeah it was cool but yeah it's it's um palmetto pinball club just got me going man like it introduced me into everything like i learned how to play there like started playing tournaments there um but actually my second tournament you're asking about traveling around my second tournament was at a bar in charlotte so the second tournament i ever did i drove two hours to go so you were already dedicated yeah i guess so yeah i went up there like and i remember um we were playing medieval madness and i had never seen it i didn't even know medieval madness existed um and they back in back then abari was the abari crowd was like they wouldn't give you tips on games like they were just very competitive they were like much more competitive than we were in south carolina we were like just have fun like whatever like you and i remember asking somebody the rules to medieval madness like what do i do and they were like you don't know medieval madness how do you not know medieval madness is like the most popular game of all time i was like dude i have never seen this game and they were like well we'll tell you after after our match is over i'll tell you what to do i was like oh right whatever so um that didn't go great but then the guy that told me how to play it he was like yeah and monster bash is basically the same thing well later on in that tournament i got on monster bash with one of the best players in abari this guy garth who is a beast he's like the man um especially back then and i remember i put up like 700 million on monster bash like the first time i ever played it and all the people were like crowded around like i beat Garth. It was really cool. It was really cool. That's awesome. But yeah, that I, I, uh, I was going to a bar a lot back then because it was like maybe an hour and 45 minutes from my house and they had all these, I mean, it was, you know, way bigger than the club, you know, it was just awesome. Like the original bar, he was incredible. I was there the first, I was the first person to play their Star Trek Next Gen. I drove up there, and I thought that they opened at 4, but they opened at 5. So I got there an hour early. They ended up letting me in maybe 10, 15 minutes early. And I went up there just because they posted that they were getting Star Trek Next Gen. Okay, yeah. So I went there, and I was the very first person to play it. And that score that I got, that first game, is to this day the highest score I've ever gotten on that game. Really? yeah okay and i had it at my house i had couldn't beat it for like six months was it set on timball no no i got to the wizard mode like and i was not timing out the modes because i didn't know that you could do that at the time um let's see if i've got it i'm like big on pendigo so every game that i've ever played in my life i have the highest score that i've ever gotten on it Okay. Because I found Pindigo right whenever I started. I don't think I've ever got on Pindigo. So it is 3,346,000. No, hold on. 3,346,710,070. That's what I got. For your first game? Yeah, I believe it's the very first game that I ever played on this. That's nuts. Yeah. 286 weeks ago. i believe um yeah pindigo man i i need to check it out apparently so it is basically like instagram but for pinball and you just definitely need to get on there so you can you know add your friends you can you know keep track of your scores and the way that i use it is i the first time i ever play a game take a picture so i know what my baseline is and then anytime that i ever see that game i know what my personal best is so i am that's a good idea yeah so i am always going for for my personal best i'm bad about remembering like what a good score like people would be like what's a good score in this game and i'm like i don't even remember man like i'll have to play it like yeah it's it's awesome though because now i mean it keeps track of the locations so like if i go look at my pin to go right now i have played 479 machines at 74 different locations it keeps your highest ifpa rank so i know that the highest ifpa rank i've ever had is 473 it's just like it's it's a it's amazing it's a great tool and they're really cool guys like um whenever i first started playing everybody went to pinberg so they gave me this is whenever pat gave me a key to the palmetto pinball club he was like we're gonna be gone we're all gonna be in pittsburgh all week so here's a key you can play whenever you want so i went and i played non-stop that week by myself and put up all of these pindigo stores and they like hit me up on they like emailed me or something and they sent me t-shirts and stickers they were like man like you've been you've been killing it this week and just sent me clothes like it was cool heck yeah yeah awesome guys so uh i know you became a tournament director at one point how many years did you play competitively before you were like hey i'm gonna run my own thing so that started because i moved from um columbia back to charleston where i grew up um and there was no tournaments there except for once a year this bar called the recovery room would bring games in like they always have two games there they still to this day like in charleston if you want to play the new stern you go to recovery room because they always stay updated they have the two newest sterns always but once a year they would bring in like 10 games and do a big tournament they would like clear tables and it would be like a thing it was called pinception and actually that's the first tournament i ever won in my life me and it was the first time i ever brought kristin to meet my parents okay we came down to charleston from columbia and uh i we went to the bar to just play the day before and there was a sign saying like tournament tomorrow whatever this is like before i knew to like check ifpa or anything like that so i was like oh my god there's a pinball tournament tomorrow i gotta do that so the first time i ever brought her down to meet my parents the second day that we were there I left and went and played at this tournament and I ended up winning uh but I left her alone with my parents for like eight hours and I missed dinner like we had this whole plan for like dinner but because I made finals I didn't make it I didn't get home to like 8 30 or something my steak was cold but yeah that was the first win I ever got but anyways there was no pinball tournaments in charleston so whenever kristen and i decided to move back she got a job um down there before me so i was coming down on the weekends and i would just go play and um on james island where i grew up there's a bar called the break and they had a medieval madness and adam's family and maybe one other game and um i was playing it i put up a big score and some tall guy was watching me play and just started talking to me and ended up being the owner, Matt Gardner. And he actually runs Boardwalk Entertainment or Boardwalk Games or whatever it's called. He's an operator, but he also owns the bar. And I was just telling him about pinball tournaments in Columbia and he was like, so what do you need to do that? And I was like, well, you probably need about seven or eight games and you just need somebody to run it. And he was like, well, could you do that? I was like, yeah. Do you have more games? He was like, oh, yeah, I got a ton of games. He's like, how many do you want? And I was like, I mean, seven or eight, ten, whatever you can bring. He's like, all right, I'm going to clear this whole wall off, and the next time you come back, you'll have enough games. Hell, yeah, that's awesome. And that is literally what happened. I was like, okay. So I came back like a month later, and he had like ten games, and it wasn't just ten games. Yeah, it's a decent lineup. He had a Kiss LE. He had Adams Family Gold, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash dialed in. Like, it was a sick lineup. And he was like, yeah, like, we're ready to go whenever you are. So I started hosting tournaments down there. That was in 2018. That's a good setup. Oh, it was killer. I mean, and he's still like he he hasn't bought that many recently. But, you know, whenever he buys them, he gets like L.E.'s. And, you know, like he buys weird stuff like we always get to play the weird games like he's got. Oh, my God. What's the. Oh, I cannot remember it now. Oh, queen. Like he bought a queen like stuff like that Like he just buy the most random games No he did not Well Queen had a lot of problems so he taking a break from them But he's got Harry Potter coming. Oh, very cool. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about Beetlejuice, but he buys cool games. And he keeps it going. And I hosted there. I used to do a monthly there. And that's whenever Ken and Nate and Todd would come down. Dalton actually came down one time. Oh, awesome. Yeah, he didn't win. I won. Oh, wow. Not at home base. No, we couldn't let him do it. But yeah, him and his dad, Stephen, stayed at my house. Oh, cool. Yeah, he destroyed all of my games, of course, put up all these crazy scores. Yeah, he's a beast. Yeah, I love those guys. But yeah, I started hosting back in 2018. Then we started doing a weekly thing. um tuesday night pinball we did that for a while and then i went to school and i had classes so i had to kind of pass it on to chad pats um who is a really awesome player he's he lived in charleston for a long time his first tournament was one of my tournaments okay um and now he's a tournament director up in um the upstate um he actually hosts the tournaments at ken grant's house because ken is just not going to he's he collects any place right someone else is gonna run it yeah somebody else has he makes the pizza but uh but yeah chad um chad is running the show up there and um he did a great job at the break and he passed it on to this guy chad cochran um who has been doing it basically since chad left so maybe a year and a half okay um and it's been it's been pretty good Like we've been getting maybe, you know, between 15 and 20 players on a weeknight. So, yeah, it's pretty good. Andrew and Morgan that you met yesterday. Yeah, super nice people. Yeah, they started playing at the break. And now they've got three games at home. So, I mean, it's so addicting. Yeah. Yeah, I think I met you at the break. Yeah, you came down for work or something. I didn't know you were having a tournament. I was just working in Charleston, and I was like, where can I play pinball? I was like, all right, this place has the most pinball. Yeah, and I think that after that, whenever you were doing your first tournament, you hit me up, and I think I made a little video and sent it to you. Yeah, probably. How to submit to the IFPA. Yeah, yeah, because I didn't have a clue. Yeah, I think I had my first one scheduled, and then I came and played in y'all's tournament, and then I had mine a couple weeks later. yeah i was very confused at first yeah i mean it it's not it's not second nature if you need somebody if you're listening you need to make a short video for people that have never done this in their life like all right click here click here do this definitely there there needs to be that i think that there honestly needs to be some kind of like test that you have to take before you're a tournament director like well i know another person that just ran a league and like they're having issues like submitting because they don't know you know and it's their first time and like what i'm finding out is leagues are probably a little more complicated than your standard tournament yeah i've never run an official league because um fellowship of the silver ball which is up in um the upstate the first year of their tournaments they did a league we had never done a league anywhere in south carolina they were the first league yep and um we didn't at the end of the year you know we played for a whole year and at the end of the year we all got one tournament result and you know none of us knew so like imagine playing a whole year of tournaments and doing mediocre and you know there's like 20 people at these tournaments so you get like half a point for a whole year so we switch to uh to single tournaments and then we just keep separate league you know private league rankings and stuff and okay they do year-end awards and everything but each tournament is an individual tournament so that you know you don't play for a year and get one score yeah that that would be tough i want to do a league this year but i'm going to do like friday night league and then i'm still going to do all my normal tournaments yeah and i want it to be like a shorter flip frenzy type deal because some people are asking like can we do something that's a little shorter because i always do this like i don't know three three and a half hours of qualifying and then top eight so it you know it lasts a while if you make it the top top eight well the good thing about that is that the people that care about ifpa points and stuff they're the ones that are making it to the end and the people that they love it they're like longer longer yeah the people that just want to play for two hours and leave they're the ones that aren't going to make the finals so then for the most part yeah um but yeah it is a it's tough to balance that because you know i i personally want tournaments to be as long as possible because i care about the points right same um i'm not chasing them but i know there's people chasing them so i try to offer you know longer tournaments that are going to be worth something uh and then the league i know the same people are going to play in the league too because they want all the points yeah I mean, the league, if you do it like eight weeks or whatever, that, like, let's say you do, I think most people do four seasons a year or five seasons a year or something. If you do it that way, that is a way that the, you know, the best players in your league can get some chunk points. Right. So that, you know, it ends up being a lot of TGP because you're meeting, you know, so many times, playing so many games. that's that's a way that you know if if they do that and they do well they can get you know 25 points 30 points for for a league win and that'll help them get to atlanta or wherever they're doing the um the state tournament you know right which i know you've got some good players down here that should be playing in the state in the state tournament but it's just yeah you know the whopper farms and it's like they don't travel to every single one of them they get behind really quickly yeah i mean it's tough especially with it being atlanta is a lot farther away from here than people think oh it's four hours like if not longer if you're going above atlanta you're it's longer than four hours um yeah me and kristen travel to the upstate for fellowship of silver ball every month and it's three and a half hours that's a long yeah it's a lot i can't imagine going five hours see everything else is like charleston two and a half hours but it's not georgia and then you got jacksonville two hours away but you know florida points and you know people want georgia points and there's nothing i really wish like someone would start something and make him like the halfway point yeah um because it's just me and the pinball palace in the south and then it's you know everyone in atlanta nothing against any of those guys i'd be doing the same thing but it does make it tough for you know anyone that lives in the southern part of the state for sure yeah i mean i think that i think that um the palace you know obviously it's an incredible it's like my favorite place to play um but because they have so many like patrons that are there like i feel like it would be hard to do as big of a tournament as they could do you know nick wants to do some bigger ones um i think they were kind of discouraged at first too because none of their tournaments were worth like i mean first place would be like a point and a half two points but i'm like none of these people have ever played in a tournament none of them are ranked like let them play in some tournaments it'll start creeping up i was in the same boat like i was running tournaments one point for first place yeah before everybody gets their five or whatever yeah um but now you know on average it's getting more like you know 15 points something like that but uh definitely nothing to compete with the whopper point and i mean the the whopper farms where people are getting 70 80 points or more yeah i think i got 13 for winning the um the halloween tournament which is not bad you know see we had a lot of casuals at that one too uh nothing against anybody coming everyone's welcome but uh there wasn't as many of like the higher ranked players at that one i think last night it'd be worth halfway decent i feel like in georgia too you have to go to southern friday and you have to do well because that used to be the thing you got to play in southern fried and if you're playing uh here in the you know southern area uh you got to play in every tournament basically then you have a fighting chance to to make it a state but you got to do good in all these tournaments too um but now you got to play in southern fried and travel to like four or five of these whopper farms and play in every tournament here to just barely make it you know at the very bottom of the cut line yeah i'm i'm glad with what we've got going on in South Carolina and it's fairly balanced. I mean, Charleston is definitely, you know, the lowest, uh, we don't get very many points in Charleston, but the people that care travel to Columbia craft and draft where we're hosting state this year. Um, they actually have a tournament today, um, which is going to be incredible. Um, they have started getting 50, 60 players, um, and they started last year and they would only have about 20. Um, but it's an awesome place they have a huge back room um you know you're not cramped um plenty of places to play like plenty of room to sit they have good food now um so they're killing it and then the upstate has always since fellowship started with um you know sarah lindsey and brian merit they started it um ken has been a big part of it uh they have been going every month since 2017 um except for covid obviously um yeah and they they're it's big points there and they do two times a year they do a three-day event um in the spring they do a big weekend and in the fall they do pinstock and like dalton travels for that like bill mason and kaylee campbell like yeah heavy hitters yeah like harold van patten tommy vernary like all of these big time players in the south go to those things so they end up being pretty big right um and i mean rock hill has an awesome tournament scene now we're gonna have a ton of rock hill players at state tournament this year um brandon willard uh up there he's the guy that runs their tournaments they they do leagues they do monthlies like they do all kinds of stuff and they have a ton of great games um so they've got good players and there's just you know we have everything is within about two and a half hours you can get to points that matter you know you don't have to go four or five hours like the rock hill people some of those people um mostly play there and go to fellowship or columbia every once in a while you know like most of most of the people in columbia they will play mostly in columbia and then travel to some of those other things every once in a while right so you don't like have to go to one particular place you know that's nice yeah what led uh i know you're a state director how did that come about so um pat pietris was the first state director um he held it down in the beginning and whenever he stepped away he had like some life stuff going on um so he stepped away and Sarah Lindsay took over. She is one of the people that started Fellowship of the Silver Ball. She used to host tournaments at her house. So she took over and she had some health issues. So she asked Brian Merritt to help her. So then we had two state directors and whenever she fully stepped away she basically passed it on to me. Okay. So it's kind of the way that it's set up. IFPA doesn't really dictate how the state director is named. It's kind of like the person that's been doing it has been doing it. And then there's someone to recommend this person. Yeah. And then like, you know, I think the community kind of dictates who, who takes over afterwards. Like I know in North Carolina, you know, unfortunately, Kevin passed away. Kaylee was doing a lot of tournaments and stuff, and she just kind of was like the natural person to take over just because she knew everybody in the state. She was running tournaments. You know, she obviously cares a lot. She's a very organized person. So she ended up taking over. And then in Georgia, I don't know exactly how Tommy ended up being the guy after Brian. Well, Brian knew Tommy was more than qualified. Oh, Tommy's the man. So he asked him to come on board because Brian wanted to step away. I think he did it 10 years, if I remember correctly. So I think Tommy's still the right guy. I mean, he knows the ins and outs of all these tournaments. Funny enough, Tommy started his pinball journey with me. Really? Yeah, in Charleston. Oh, that's nuts. So he worked at Blackbaud, and they had like two machines in their break room. That's also how Chad Pat started. He also worked at Blackbot and they had machines. But yeah, he started coming to the break tournaments. He ended up buying a couple games. Like I went over to his house and played. Yeah. And like there were times early on whenever I was directing at the break that like something would happen and I would be like, all right, we're just going to do this. And Tommy would be like, the IFPA says that we should do this. and i was like okay all right so it probably like kept me on my toes you know if i ever have a question about rules i'm like all right i know who can answer this oh i still ask it like like he definitely like he was my little protege for like two days yeah and then he like took off and he's an incredible player now like now he could be on the board with the ifba like oh he should be things yeah he 100 should be he's a great player great director he stays organized um i love going to big tournaments with him because me and him both like do these spreadsheets with the game rules and like and he actually added um so like i started a spreadsheet and he took it over and then he added to it and he added a column for like um venue specific stuff so like whenever we go to these big tournaments like you can put on there in that column like where the plunge is for the skill shot and like where the tilt is and all that stuff and so now that spreadsheet who knows how many people get that now right um but it was super helpful at pinberg like i i like won a game because i knew where the skill shot was because it got one of us i mean there's a ton of people that add to it you know yep um but yeah it's it's awesome i love having tommy he you know he's been a big part of pinball in the south absolutely basically since it started and like just incredible to see what he's done um i remember being at a tournament at pinkies one saturday it was pinberg last year two years ago and they had it on and he was like top eight it was like that's my guy it was awesome man i love that guy no that's that's cool um how many years have you been a state director now so my first year was um the year after we came back from covid so i think during that year and a half break sarah kind of decided like i'm not going to come back to this um so um that was my first year and sarah had promised fred richardson who owns bang back which is you know an awesome place to play in columbia um she had promised him that whenever it starts back up we're going to do the state tournament there so my first tournament uh state tournament was at bang back um and actually me and fred were the final two and fred ended up beating me um but uh that was my first one and i kind of was like helping brian um i was i was kind of like just helping brian more so than um you know taking the lead and then um the next year was at Dave's in the upstate, Dave's Farm, which I'm going to start doing a monthly tournament the day after fellowship, so a Saturday tournament to try to get some of the people from Charlotte and Georgia to start coming again because they kind of quit coming because it's Friday night. Fellowship's Friday night. It's hard to get there by 7 o'clock if you're traveling. So I'm going to start doing a Saturday tournament at Dave's, starting in 2026. That's cool. For Dave's, I kind of stepped up and was taking care of a lot more. Now, after that, we went to Radioactive, who was kind of the new kid on the block. Last year, I hosted two big tournaments for them. The winter tournament, which was in February, And then they did a big summer one that I hosted. And then we did the state tournament there, which was awesome. They had like a separate room in the back. Perfect. Yep. So we had a separate room away from everything, five games from each era, which South Carolina from the beginning has been very like before it was mandated by the IFPA that you had to do old mid new. We were already doing that. So we were doing that from day one. That has been a requirement. Like basically our requirements of the venue are you have to have at least five games from each era. You have to have everything set up by January 1st. All the games have to be where they're supposed to be and ready to play, fully functional. And you have to provide practice time. So on weekends leading up to the tournament, you have to provide practice time. It makes sense. Yeah, I mean, and that's just like that's not something that IPA requires. That's something that South Carolina requires. So it's just that's how we've been doing it, and I feel like it's the most fair way to do it, to give people that are traveling an opportunity to practice on these games because if you wait until the last minute to set them up, everybody shows up the day before, which, granted, you know, if you're the best players in the state, you can adjust, right? You don't need the practice time. But some people need to, like every game plays different, regardless if the title is the same. Right. I mean, it's not, I don't think that it's imperative. I don't think everybody should have to do it, but that's just what we've always done. So that's what we're doing. Yeah, I'm not against that at all. That's a good idea, I think. Yeah. So actually, I'm going to have to get out of here because we've gone long. Yeah. And they've got a tournament at Craft and Draft where we're hosting State, which I have to get up there. I'm playing and me and Andrew Ford, who obviously is a great player from South Carolina. He he works for Carolina Game Lab, who is providing the games at Craft and Draft. We have to go through some games and like. Figure out the settings and all that stuff. So. So, yeah, I'm going to actually have to get out of here. I didn't realize how long we've been talking. Oh, man. It's been a blast, though. I'm glad you came on the show. It was a lot of fun. And come and do it again, man. Yeah, I'll definitely be down here. I definitely want to get into the homebrew stuff, and hopefully we can help each other with that. Awesome, man. Well, until next time, I'll see you later, buddy. All right, man. Hold it down. Thank you. We'll see you next time.