So I must emphasize, of course, that when we see Sarah and Howard up here, we're not looking at two individuals joining together. That's fucked. What's going on? Yeah, really. Come on, hurry up. Let's turn to the vow, shall we? Howard, do you take this woman to have and to hold? Yeah, yeah. I do. Yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, to hold. I want to hold her butt. And, Sarah, do you take this man to have and to hold from this day forward? No way. Take me. I do. Yeah, yeah, over here. Over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. I'm still playing the ball on the screen. Thank you, Blue Suede. Yes, Ron loves that song. I hate that song. No, I love it. Okay, let me rephrase that. I hate their version of the song. The B.J. Thomas version is okay. That version, I want to shoot myself when I hear that. If I were to get Guardians of the Galaxy, that would have to be replaced with something else. I don't care. Something else. Coming at your love. Redbone. There you go. I should have been there anyway. I agree. And this is episode 70. Rocky IV. I must break you. We have the Russians now. Yes. We have Ivan Drago. We have Brzee Nielsen. Yes. Is that right? Yes. Yes. When she was actually in movies because she was going with Stallone. Stallone. Because she was in Beverly Hills Cop 2 also, I think. Yes, she was. Yes, she was. And wasn't she in Cobra? Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. Well, we have a guest this week. We do. We do. The 30th ranked player in the world on IFPA rankings, Mr. Carl D'Python Anghelo. Hey, guys. 30th now, huh? 30th. Is that bad or good? It's good still. It's good still. It's very good. He sounds like he pays attention to it as much as I do. What is Mr. Hallett? Mr. Hallett. Let's see if he's gone up or down since the last time. Oh, yeah. You're now above 250. So, Ron, you're at 256. I'm still good. As long as I stay above 200. Yeah, and I'm probably above 400 now because 413, woo-hoo! Got to keep that B going. Got to keep the B. But as Steven Bowden says, who wants to talk about tournaments? This show does. Mm-hmm. So, Carl, what got you into this wacky, wacky hobby of ours? Oh, gosh. Where do I start? That's the question. Right from the beginning. Right from the beginning. Oh, yeah, we got plenty of time. and I'd be stuck on the pinball still, you know, or in replay. So I just snowballed, went to high school, went to college, and then got the itch to buy a machine. So I was looking on eBay. I found a Whirlwind back in the day. What was this? Somewhere around 2000 probably. I picked it up for $680, which, you know, in today's market, that's an insane price for a Whirlwind. Brought it home, realized I can't have just one. picked up a safe cracker after that, and then everything just snowballed from there after, after going to one of Jim Balsito's parties. Because I only had two machines. And then I go to this guy's house, and he's got 25 or 30 machines in his house. Woohoo! Exactly. I'm like, I can buy more games. I can fit more games. You know, I can just shove them in this corner, shove them in this corner. So, much to the disappointment of my wife, You know, they exploded. And I'd sit around 10 to 12 at any time. I always tell her she should never have let me buy the first one. So it's her fault. It's her fault. It's all her fault. And then I started at gyms. That was when I played my first tournament and joined the Orange County League out here. And then just started going to various places, California Extreme. Began an annual tradition after that. and just little by little it grew and grew and grew. Very cool. What is in your current lineup right now? My current lineup? Let's see, I've got a Fishtails, a Wizard of Oz, a Paragon, a Flash Gordon, a Lord of the Rings, a Dracula, let's see, and in the garage I've got a NBA Fastbreak, Arena, a Wildcard, Williams Wildcard, and there's one more in there. I know there's one more. It's always the last one, right? It is. It'll come to me. When you have enough games where you can't remember their titles, that's right. It's just fine. You need help. So the Iron Man didn't make it. Didn't need it anymore? The Iron Man is gone. Oh. Because Carl's one of the few people, probably ever, to have attained do-or-die multiball. Not do or die, hurry up, but the actual do or die multiball. And he screamed it. And I think after you did that, you said you didn't need the game anymore. I guess you were serious. I didn't think I was, but it sat there for about three or four months, and I didn't play it after that. It just sat. And I didn't have the desire to play it anymore. It was really strange. Normally I go back to games even after getting to the Wizard mode, but for some reason that game just cut it off. Wow. Wow. Did you have a Hobbit, too? I did have a Hobbit. Did. It was not as well. I like how when he's done with him, he just drops the mic. Boom, that's it. Done. No need. So what point in playing did you realize, like, you know, I'm pretty good? What did I do? My first trip to Pembroke. The first one I went to, I took third place. That's kind of when, you know, it went a little further than just the standard hobby. I mean, just getting to Pembroke alone was a big deal. But before that, I had won the Orange County Pinball League. The first year I was in it, I won it. So that was kind of my first accomplishment. And then definitely Pembroke, and then it just, you know, I started going to Papa every year. You know, it's basically biannual trips to Pittsburgh. Two years ago, you were runner-up in Pinberg. Right. Tell us a little bit about that day and going up to the finals and what you would change one thing about that day. And why Alien Star is awesome. Alien Star is awesome. It is. My alley passes were not – I wasn't doing very well on those. I should have done better, but I still did okay on that game. The big – what was it? I think it was Family Guy that really messed with me on that final bank, the final four. My nerves hit me at that point for some reason on that first game. I normally don't get nervous now, except for we'll go into this later, I think, maybe. But the heads up in Vegas, I was shaking like crazy. I couldn't believe it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, there's something about that format. But so I was a little bit like that in Family Guy, a little nervous, a little just tense. After that game, I loosened up when we went to Doodlebug and then Twilight. So I would just try and calm myself down in that first game, I guess, and then try and get more help from my wingmen, from Raymond and Chris on that final game of Alien Star. They were the reason I couldn't get a tiebreaker with Keith. They set me down Raymond, and then he steals the Aerosmith from me in Vegas. He's my nemesis now. Ah, yes. So we can have a sports fest one time on the show. Yes. Family guy. I'm just thinking that's one of my game sales. Yes. Family guy. Me too. They had all the posts out in that game. I mean, there's nothing. You look at the left and, you know, it's just wide open. It's like terror on the left out lane and the right out lane. Yeah. That'd be scary. It probably wasn't enjoyable to play and even think about playing that in that kind of situation with those outlanes all the way saying, I can take any ball and go right down the drain and you don't have a chance. Yeah, yeah. I remember when we started Twilight Zone, I didn't really look over the game before we started it and I'm playing. And then the ball's getting the pops and I look at the left by the outlane and there's just no post there. And just this shock comes over me like, there's nothing there. Absolutely nothing. So what would you change that day, if anything? What would I change? I would win, of course. Oh, well, you know what I mean. Like any strategy, you know, or anything like that. Apart from playing better, I would change the day before. Okay. Maybe a bit more because I squeaked in into the finals. I was having a rough end of the first day. I think it was the beginning of the second day. and I needed some good rounds. I pulled together at the end, but I had to play from the very beginning of finals all the way to the final match. I went through five rounds. It was a very long day. I would have avoided being around Johnny since he got me sick there as well. That's the plague. He's permanently the plague now. Excellent. I love it. So you were talking about the posts not there. I had a similar experience, like playing the game and noticing as I'm playing it that something is not there. And that was at the Sanctum playing Viking. Oh, gosh. If you're familiar with Viking, the two posts and the little piece of rubber to save the ball, they were gone. Gone completely, huh? Gone completely. Both posts, the plastic, everything gone. Literally, the lamp socket is there, like the hole for the lamp socket exposed. Everything's gone. So if it doesn't take the in lane, it's gone. Period. There is no saving the ball. See, Belcido tries to trick you with this. He turns the posts upside down. So it looks like you have a chance, but you don't really. Because the rubber is sitting too low to push the ball. Wow, that's pretty cruel. You still try and you'll get that nice tilt when you push too hard. I like that. Now, Ron, you get to thank me for that. Why? Why do I thank you? Because that was my Viking. Oh, that was your Viking you sold? Okay. That's my Viking I sold to the Sanctum. Good job, Bruce. Good job. See? So we mentioned Jim Belcido a couple times. Now, you guys run a tournament. Yes. Called it, well, most people just call it InDisc. I'm starting to wonder if people actually know what it stands for at this point, because it's just known by the initials. It never drains in Southern California. There you go. Bob Matthews named that thing. Yeah, it's become pretty big at this point. You guys have been to the museum, right? You came out last year, I believe? Yes, we came out last March. So we're actually putting the tournament in the arcade hall this year. Oh, wow. Okay. That's a big room. Yeah, we're moving a third of the games back into the back end, so we'll have a nice, large open space for the 25 games we're having in the tournament total, I think. 14 in Maine, 7 in Classics, 4 in Women's, and then some side tournament ones, some stuff for Project Pinball. It's going to be a huge tournament this year. Wow, very cool. Plus, it's going to be open. That's the part I noticed. It's going to be open. Yeah, that's what I noticed. So, Bruce, if you're not too busy with the bar. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I've got so much free time lately. Just throwing it out there. That's all. Okay, 24 hours this weekend I was at the bar and not drinking. Or playing pinball. I did play pinball. We practiced. We'll get into repairs later on. So, Carl, now you run in disc. Are you repairing the games when you're there? Are you tournament director and playing? Or what's your biggest role when running in disc? Biggest role is getting the cameras and the stream ready. I then also do rulings as a tournament director, and I'll fix games where I can if someone else isn't available. Okay. But, yeah, the stream and the broadcast and then just general tournament directing would be my primary duties. Are you good with the wrench and everything? You fix most of your own games? Yeah. Yeah, I fix all my own games. I don't bring anybody in except these EMs I have are giving me hell lately. That's very impressive. Me and Ron both appreciate that, that you are handy. I feel your pain with EMs. Yes. They scare me. They scare me. I got one in the bar now. I saw that. You got a Grand Prix. Grand Prick. Very appropriate. Very good. Yes. Yes. So you said streaming, your streaming rig, your whole streaming setup, you've kind of become one of the preeminent, I would say, streamers of tournaments. It's not like one of those, you know, like a wussy like me who just streams one game. Your setup is for like ten or more games. It's insanity. That's what it is. You are Papa level. Pure insanity. You are truly Papa level. I swear, when I see yours, I was like, holy cow. And you're doing this by yourself. That's what's even more impressive. Like, what the hell are you doing? I need help. I need help. You do need help. You need someone more technically proficient when you're not there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because bad things can happen, like cameras switching to the wrong thing and entire final batches being missed. But I digress. Yes, yes. Oh, stop it. strikes again. So what do, is what you do, like, your profession similar as, like, a tech position? Yeah, I'm, I'm in IT, mainly web programming. I figured. Now we got you back to you guys. Great, thanks. Come on, Bruce, this comes up a lot. There's a lot of pinheads we've had on the show that are in IT. I know that, there's a ton. Yeah. So when are you getting in IT, Bruce? Um, Mr., no, I went the opposite way. I own my own bar now with my wife. That sounds more fun. Yeah, it does. I hate computers. God, if you guys only knew. Like, when me and my wife talked about opening a bar, I was like, that's pretty cool. I'm going to run the arcade side, and I'll do the general building maintenance. She'll run the bar and the kitchen. All the stuff you don't realize. Like, we had a budget, and we've blown past that budget. And the good thing is, I'm using all my games. What if I had to buy games and then bring them in? Oh, my God, I'd be... Like, the state of New York, every year, you can hit $2,500 for a liquor license. And don't you have to pay, like, per game for a license? Or you're going to do a set charge or something? You got an exemption. Oh, how'd you get an exemption? Because the town has not charged anybody in 12 years. well we came back and said you haven't charged anybody in 12 years and they said yeah you're right you went through the records like yep i asked the town clerk for it i said well it'd be kind of unfair if you're going to charge now me and not all these other people i said do you do you plan on charging these other people for their machines and they're like nope i said though so do you see my dilemma and they said yep and we will give you exemption like everyone else very good Bruce. So I saved a penny of what I put into it. Yes. But I So we have the streaming. Yes. You stream in-disc, you actually stream heads-up, which we'll talk about. But another thing, I don't know how many people realize, is the never-drained software, the software that's used for I believe it's still used, or was still used for Papa, and many other tournaments, is actually your software. Right. How did that come about? I wanted to go get rid of paper. Okay. I was tired. It was a year at California Extreme where, yeah, you'd buy a score sheet, and you'd have a single paper for your score sheet, and you'd be writing your eight scores on there, or the score keepers would. And the score keepers would have a stack of 20 papers and be flipping through it to find yours. And, oh, because the lines were getting so long also. I mean, I'm exaggerating with 20. But then people would also buy another sheet of paper and put it with the classics scorekeeper. So they'd be in both a classics line and a main line. And while they're playing this main game, they're called over in classics. And obviously they can't go over there. And then it's also finding out, okay, how much longer do I have to wait? I'm standing in line waiting for Ripley's, you know, my sheet of paper, and I have to go with the scorekeeper. Okay, how many more people behind me or in front of me? How many more? So I wanted to get rid of it. and I mean that was the genesis of it I wrote I ran a test for it which was the first critical hit tournament it wasn't a card based tournament it uses that software as a test run before our second end disc which used to run in January and just went from there, started as a local only tournament software have a local web server run it there because I didn't want to trust running anything over the web. What if your web connection dies? You're going to lose, you know. No one's going to be able to input scores. No one can queue up, whatever. And just kind of loosen those fears and now I give it to everybody that wants it. For free. For free. I know, it's great. And it's like, it's not even, it's not even called NeverDrains. It's just everyone calls it Carl Software. Yep. That's what I heard. It's like, I'm using Carl Software. Yeah, I get that. I get NeverDrains software. It's officially Drain Tournament Manager, but DTM. DTM. I thank you for making the URLs really easy. Like when I wanted to find what was going on in Freeplay, Florida, and I didn't see a link anywhere, I figured it's, okay, it's never Drain slash, it's probably FPF 2017. That's the format that's easiest. Boom, it comes right up. Ah, thank you. Consistency. I love consistency. I love it. It is so nice. so you brought your streaming rig over to the heads up challenge in vegas so how insane was that that was that was it sounded insane it looked insane it was loud it was it was six cameras on the screen at any time which was a feat in of itself um getting that many inputs on my computer i had to buy some extra equipment so it's just for that stream so we could do the heads up stuff getting it over there and inside the hard rock was fun up a freight elevator you know navigating through the through the showroom with the big buck hunter people and then the said the big buck hunter announcer and the noise and i just i was so loud in that room it's unbelievably loud all those f-bombs oh no yeah yeah you had the best comment other thing where you said like oh am i supposed to bleep that out. Loved it. I try to keep my streams mostly clean, and so that was the exception there. Because I have a son, and in case he's ever watching things, it's troublesome when I have to mute the stream, because, oh, crap. Yeah, I know where you're coming from. We have the parental advisory on the Twitch stream, and we have the adult setting on the YouTube videos. So now when you click on it, you have to actually log in to listen to them. Like me, that's all just for me. 20 or 30 people actually look at the YouTube versions of the podcast. But let's, okay, geek moment. For your streaming stuff, what are you using? For all the tech heads out there who want to know, what is Carl using? Like the whole rig? Yeah, the whole rig. What is it? Like, you know, I want to set up something just like Carl has. What do I need? Let me pull up my list here, if I can find it. It's an i7. I can't remember the model of the CPU, but it's one of the higher-end ones with the – it can do 12 threads, 6 cores, 12 threads. I needed more cores to be able to do 1080p broadcasting. Yeah, because it was insane. When I did Indus last year and I ran the instant replace, it was really taxing on the machine. So I upgraded that. Now I've got two Magewell cards in here, which are two four-input HDMI cards. So I've got eight possible inputs, 32 gigs of RAM, you know, multi-terabytes of hard drive space. Most of those are solid states because, again, the instant replays are going to need that. You need that super fast access. A GeForce 1060. It should probably be a little more, but I've been getting away with that. And that's the basics, just Windows 10 and then XSplit for the software. And then the replays, I'll be running through a software called Epic Rewind or Epic R Word. It's a little janky, but it works. It beats spending another $500, $600 on a different piece of software, which then doesn't let me use XSplit. I don't really like XSplit. And what kind of cameras are you using? You've got to be using a switch or two between all the cameras. Oh, yes. So I've got Monoprice 8x1 switches. Most of the other stuff I buy is all Monoprice equipment. So my T-bars, my rigs, my cables, most everything else. So the cameras I use, Sony CX-405s primarily. I was on the Panasonic's 180, their 250s, but I've had three of those die on me, so I will no longer buy those. It's really frustrating. Yeah, so those, the Sonys, I'm about, what am I at, 21 of them, I think. 21 cameras. 21 of those cameras 9 of the Panstopics And I've got some GoPros GoPro knockoffs, the Yeez Which I used last year But I may not use them this year Because the museum has another 10 cameras that we'll be able to use So I think with all of those We shouldn't need the GoPros So 6 HDMI switches Each switch can take 8 inputs So you can do the math there And then I've got 8 D&D extenders It's because we're going to do a direct feed on the DMDs this year. Wow. And you have all this crap in your car. You bring it up. Got to set it all up, which probably takes God knows how long. Then you've got to have someone who knows how to use everything and switching between everything. Plus you have a commentator camera. Right. I also have a wireless mic now for hopefully some interviews for Indisc, if I can find someone good to do that stuff. At this point, a lot of this comes down to who I can find at the tournament to help out. You know, last year I was lucky that Jermaine was around because he figured out how to run the stream, even the instant replays, really quickly, since I was still playing even in the finals. So you're saying you need someone in IT to help you out? Yeah, that'd be great. I love to do this. Hi, I'm Ron from the Slam Tilt Podcast. I'm here with so-and-so. You just lost that game. Can you tell me why? Why did you suck so bad that game? Why did you go for this shot when it obviously was the wrong thing to go for? I don't know. Speaking of knowing the right things to go for, we were talking about the heads-up challenge and the insanity that was the heads-up challenge. Yes. I didn't know how I felt about it at first because the first couple of people on the stream were, I think they were people who actually were going to the big buck hunter thing. Right, right. They didn't necessarily play pinball and they didn't know how to actually finish, how to do the challenge. Exactly. So it was like, I'm watching, it's like, uh-oh, this is an oversight here. This could be a problem. And I think they changed it to a five ball, because I think it was three ball originally. Yeah, everything was set on three balls, and the five balls really helped out. It was weird. It was like, it was the exact opposite of a normal tournament, where usually the games are faster, but then as the better players are there, the games get longer. It was the opposite. Everything was longer until the better players, you know, came through, and then things were just wicked fast. Yep, about 30 seconds of match near the end. I mean, that last game was 30 seconds for a $4,700 difference. Yep. Right. And it all involved hitting that button that you love, Bruce. Ugh. I had 40, I had 49 tie fighters. 49. And you needed 50 to start that multiple. See? One more hit. One more button hit. So if you just played more track and field as a kid, or more Galaga. Had a little faster hand, you would have had it. I never thought of it that way, a $4,700 TIE Fighter. That's an expensive TIE Fighter. It's more expensive than all the TIE Fighters that Stern bought because of all this TIE Fighter on a stick. The format is fantastic. I had so much fun playing it. In fact, I'm going to, here at my house on Saturday, I'm going to run a pair of Paragons. Oh, beautiful. I know. Beautiful. Because me and Bruce were talking about, we like the concept. We love it. But in a way, to make it maybe a little more accessible, because some of the rule sets are like, I don't know, what are they doing? Yeah. Why is he training on purpose? You know, it's just, for your average person watching that, they would be like, why are you training on purpose? That's the weirdest thing. So if you played like, because me and Bruce have a lot of older games, like we both have a big game. You know, we both have a Stars. that would take like two seconds to explain that stuff. Yeah, and you could. Good games for it, yeah. Yeah, like Harlem Globetrotters, you need to get in the saucer. No, not even that hard. Super bonus. Just get 20. Well, that could be one of them. That could be one of them, but I like the, you know, must get all the drop targets down and get in the saucer. So if you screw up, boom, next ball, you've got to start all over again. Like, oh, he was so close. I think things like that would be good. So if you're using Paragon, what kind of goals are you thinking of using? One of them is drain out the beast layer. Oh, very cool. That's the meme that I love it. So what does that mean? So you want people to drain on purpose? Yeah, you got to drain up, yeah. Get in the beast layer. And then the bad thing will be people are going to probably, you know, first, it's going to save it once in a while. You're going to be going, God damn it. It would be harder than you think to do it. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait. It's going to be my Thanksgiving – it's going to be like Thanksgiving Christmas all at once when I'm watching that stream going, yes, evil. It's so exciting. I think there's something about people like to watch pain. Oh, yeah. Especially good players. They like to see – I think that's why they really should consider consider maybe filming some more of the classics final stuff at Papa. They never do. The closest they have is Pinbird because you have an older game, which you have games like Alien Star, games like Super Orbit. They get way more attention than they've ever gotten in their lives. And people like seeing that. The best players just get owned on older games. It's more exciting to watch that short game than to watch the 40 or 50 minute dialed in game. Yes. Or the 40 or 50 minute Guardians of the Galaxy games that we streaming today My God So at what point did Papa start using your software Papa 15 16 somewhere in there I think They got wind of it after I ran Nindusk and got in touch with me via Adam Lufthansa because he saw it and passed it along to Mark, and they just asked if I could do it. And I said, sure. Spent, you know, two months writing up the special code for them. And ran with it. They're running their own stuff now. They have another piece of stuff at Aiton. Yeah. Do you have any plans to change anything on it or updates? Oh, yes. I have loads of plans. He sounds like us. All these ideas and I have no time for them. Exactly. Yeah. Between everything else, it always seems to hit the back burner. The main thing I need to do with that software is to make a centralized user base, user system. So, you know, you just log into the website and you create your own tournament. You don't have to contact me. I don't have to set a database up, copy files over. Because right now every tournament is its own database, and I only get 50 on the web host. So I'm constantly deleting old ones so I can put new ones on there. So we lose. I archive everything. So someday I hope to get everything back online so you can look at all the records. over the years. Just save a little bit more of my sanity. So more like the match play events thing, where you can log in and just say, I want to start a tournament. And there it is. Exactly. Cool. So if InDisc wasn't enough, and creating the software, and streaming pinball, and the heads up tournament... I do too much, don't I? No, no, there's more. But wait, there's more. There's also this thing called Critical Hit that you came up with. Oh, yeah. Interesting. So how did that come about? For those who don't know what it is, Critical Hit, it uses, like, cards that have various things on them. Challenges. Challenges or detriments. Alterations to the game. Yeah. Yeah, like, you know, you don't want to play that game. I want to play this game instead. Or I don't want this player in my group. See, let's see. I have to change my next batch of cards. It is, darn, what card is it? It's the one where you move a player. Anyways, at this last critical hit I ran, almost every single round, someone played the card to kick Jim Bilcito out of the group. Every single time. Despite the fact that he wasn't having a good day and he wasn't winning his games, they always kicked him out every single round. Wow. But, yeah, it came about. I just always try to come up with ways to make the game more exciting, are more accessible. And I thought of this as a way to almost handicap players, allow for handicaps without using handicaps. I have a lot of time to think on my drives to and from work. So at some point, some crazy idea comes up and it sticks. And it's kind of like the side tournament stuff I do, the button bash and all that. But it seems to have gone over well. I did not expect so many people to be interested in it the first time I did it. And then, you know, I had the first run of cards for three strikes, and those sold out way quicker than I ever expected. So I ran a second printing, and now the match play is dead. I still have cards for that. I probably bought too many this time, but no big deal. I figure they'll go over the years. We were very grateful for your donation. Of course. Very. And I know the guys who've gotten them, they're very grateful, jumping up for joy. So thank you again for that. Of course. And you brought up something I totally forgot about, all your weird modified games. Yeah. Thunder Tilt would be my favorite. Yeah, that was the funniest of all of them. I mean, the single hit to a thunder-destruct target tilts the game. Yep. It's the simplest mod to do and just absolutely hilarious. The layout on ACDC is just perfect for it. People are saying, like, what? It's like you have an ACDC, and it plays just like a regular ACDC with one little alteration. If you hit a thunderstruck target, you just tilt. Like single tilt, no warnings. It just falls over, go to the next ball. Yep. And so you're trying to not miss, figure out the best way to not get near thunderstruck targets. But it'd be funny. I saw a few instances where it actually hit the targets from behind. Yeah. It's like someone hits a bell. It comes by, like, raises one of those understruck targets, and it's like, oh, come on. And there's only three targets. Most of the games have four or five stand-ups. ACDC only has three. It's great. And you had another one where you had a certain amount of time until the flippers died, but you could add time by hitting certain things. It was flips. You had a certain number of flips. A certain number of flips, yeah, okay. But you could add flips. You could add flips by doing something. Yeah, I basically have a switch that can be added somewhere on the play field to add flips. So, like, every PlayFX was on Dracula. So anytime it went back in the shooter lane, it would reset the flips to 30. Oh, man. That is cruel. I love it. And then Button Bash, that's the other one I made with the, you've got, you know, the launch buttons on games, the big launch buttons. You've got three for the right flipper, three for the left flipper. Oh, yeah. One of the lights will be lit. That's the button that activates the flipper. Once you release the button, it randomly picks another one of the three buttons to change to. It could be the same button. It could be a different button. And so you have to constantly be watching the lights and hit it. If you miss it, you're locked out for half a second. And it's amazing how long half a second is when you need to flip a flipper and the panic that comes when you miss. Panic. Basically, just think of Simon. It's like a Simon game for each flipper. Love it. Yep. You see, we love pain. Yeah. I mean... Yes. So what kind of... We heard your collection. What kind of games do you tend to gravitate towards? Like, what do you look for in a game? Oh, boy. No, I'm really... I have a wide variety of games I like. Anything that's overly repetitive, I'd say I stay away from. So any current stern? Oh, boy. Not going there. Oh, God! Well, Bruce, he has a Gottlieb Arena. Is that a problem for you? No. I actually don't mind Arena. Okay. I grew up on it. Just checking. Just checking. No. Bruce has a Gottlieb hatred thing. Now, with the pain, babe, I took two of the rubber rings off of the top little, you know, million shot. So it makes it a lot harder to get the million. There you go. California extremes where I played most of the Gottliebs. Because they were the only games that were, like, not being played. Free and open. As it got more and more crowded. It got really crowded. How is it now? I heard there's more room. I haven't been in the main hall for a couple years. I'm always stuck in the tournament. Well, you know, when the tournament was in the main hall. But, like, last, no, not last year because there wasn't a, you know, there was a same date as Pember. But two years ago, the tournament was upstairs, far away from the main hall. Okay. Way away, and I never saw the main hall. All right. So, any other subjects you'd like to talk about, Carl? Oh, gosh. Is there anything else? Nope. I'm sure there's more stuff. Well, we have stuff. But if you have anything specifically. At the end of the show, we can do it in the plug section. Yeah, I don't remember anything else. All right. So, I was talking earlier about Guardians of the Galaxy. So, have you seen, you were driving back, and how long does it take you to get home? I do not wish to discuss that. It's too embarrassing. It's too embarrassing. Okay. Wow. It's a 70-mile commute. Which in California is probably, God knows how long that is. Two hours most days. Oh. Yeah. Ow. Ow, yeah, exactly. But I get to listen to you guys all the time. That's great, but can't you work from home? I do on Fridays. I get to work from home on Fridays. Oh, okay. Ooh. So have you seen Annie of Guardians? Just the pictures. Just the pictures. Okay. Yeah. So today was the day of the deadlift stream of Guardians of the Galaxy. And it was a pro. And they did have, Stern must have done something. They were able to tap into the direct video out feed. About time. Yeah. That's, you must have been, even though you weren't watching the stream, you read the mind of many of the comments I saw on the side of the stream. It's like, it's about time. You couldn't do that before. Actually, our own Tim mentioned that. Like, is he tapping into the – how is he doing that? Did they change something? Well, I don't know why. They're using LVDS on their monitors for some reason, and they have an HDMI port in the backbox. Where was the decision-making process there? That's my bit. So they had Guardians of the Galaxy, and they were wearing, like, different Guardians characters for masks. They had – Jack Danger was there. at least the personality of Jack Danger, he had Zach Sharp, he had Zachary Parks was there. It was his birthday. So he was enjoying his birthday in a pinball factory, playing Guardians of the Galaxy, and kicking everyone's ass. He was destroying everyone. It was quite impressive. The music, it had lots of orchestral music, and it had the two songs in it, Cherry Bomb, which was fine, and then he hooked on a feeling by Blue Suede, the cover of the BJ Thomas song. And, God, I'm never going to get that out of my head. I can't stand that song. I don't know. What do you guys think? You like that song at all? It's all right. It's iconic with the movie, isn't it? That's what they used on a lot of trailers, right? So people associate that song more with the movie, I believe. Yeah, you're probably right there. What do you think, Bruce? Was it used well? That's the bigger question. Yeah, well, I couldn't figure out how they were using it. Like, they would do something, and the song would just start. And then it would be occasionally interrupted by, like, the orchestra, like, the full, the regular music part. Yep. I was confused on exactly what activated it, what cut it off. It was weird. I don't think they have the timing down yet. No, they don't, because, like, you would hear the music, and then the orchestra part would play, and you would still hear the music, like, the song, like, really low volume in the background, and then it would come back up. And it's like, the code is obviously extremely early. I mean, a lot of stuff you can tell is placeholders. They don't have stuff there yet. But, I mean, the artwork looks tremendous. I'll say that. It looks good. Even the pro looks good as far as when you look at it. Yeah. As far as the way it plays, I mean, I haven't played it yet. It did seem the ball times were quite long, like really long. Yeah. Like I think in an hour, I'm looking back, I think they did two games in an hour. That's pretty scary. Yeah. Now, obviously, you know, they have ball savers on and extra balls are on, et cetera. So you can make it tougher. But just out of the factory default, it looks like it plays pretty easy. Was anyone going through most of the game, or was it? They started it off with these just, like, you could hardly hear anyone talking. It was just like you heard the audio of the game. They played, like, the first game. And then they had a break where they kind of explained some of the rules. and then they started in the second game, and that's actually where I left the stream and got ready for the podcast. I mean, when you actually look at the overhead shot, it's like, wow, this is Ironman and Metallica. It literally is, if you look at the bottom of the play field, you have the piston target in the same spot, and you have the crank it up thing in the exact same spot. Then you go up to the top, and they're sparky except it's screwed. And then the rest of it is Ironman. Same ramps, same spot. War Machine, he's in the same spot, except he's the raccoon now. Whiplash, same spot, but it's the whatever, egg, whatever that thing is. The orb, sorry, orb. It has the same, like when you hit the orbits, they come all the way around. It looks just like Iron Man. So should we start a pool on what Borg's next game is going to be like? Is it going to be like Kiss and, you know, which two games make a baby? Avatar and Aerosmith. The A's. Let's talk about Steve Ritchie. I mean, he just rips off all his old games, but he'll take, like, you know, one little part of one game, another part from another game, another part from another game. The last couple of boards have been, like, almost just copies, either copies or just a combo of two games. I don't know. It all depends on if it plays great, sounds great, and it's fun. Who cares? Yeah. Right? Yeah, exactly. That's what it's all about. Exactly. I mean, it's not like he's copying shitty games. he's copying Iron Man, which I love Iron Man, he's copying Metallica, and Metallica's awesome. Yep. You know, why would I have a problem with that? If he was copying from Avatar, although I don't hate Avatar, Bruce had that forever, and I actually kind of, I kind of like playing it just because it was... Different. It was different, but it was like, just Link multiball all day, just trying to get the Link super. And that was all I tried to do playing it. I like simple things, Simple things to understand that are hard to do. Pain. Pain. Exactly, pain. You'd like a TNA then, for sure. Oh, I can. I like TNA. You would. I don't. I played a ton of it. Oh, that's right. You played a ton of it. That's right. I don't know if I'd like it for home use. No. Just because I found it, it's kind of the same pattern. Like, I don't know. At least the two that I played, it was like soft plunge, control, backhand lock, soft plunge, control, backhand lock, soft plunge, hit, you know, start multiball, hit grid, hit scoop, go up top, and maybe if I don't get the reactor actually critical before multiball ends, that's the fun part. Like, okay, do I not go for that and try to get multiball again because I want to double it? You know, I don't want to blow it up without multiball going. That's the one decision thing I find. I like that. But, like, every game it's the same pattern. You do the same things in the same order. You're just trying to go through the reactors. I don't know. Just in a, like, a foursome situation or head-to-head, that'd be great, especially the lock stealing. Love that. Love the lock stealing. But in my area, I mean, I would assume in your area, there's probably a lot more of a scene. In mine, like, no one's coming over to play my games, unfortunately. No, no, no. I don't have anybody coming over here either. So it's me and myself playing. But wait a second. You live in Fontana, California, the best city in the world. That's right. Greatest city in the world. Greatest. It's not New York City, folks. We have found the greatest city in the world. It's the whole... No, I live in the greatest city, Albany. Actually, I live in Skodak. We are the greatest city in the world. But yeah, it gets lonely here with no one. No one to play with. Oh, my. Boo-hoo. All right. So speaking of TNA, so you had a TNA tournament yesterday. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was streamed. And what is your stream? If someone wants to find your stream on Twitch, where do they go? It's twitch.tv slash IEPinball. And the IE stands for? Inland Empire. That's the area I'm in in Southern California, the Inland Empire. Check it out. They played a lot of Total Nuclear Annihilation. That's a good thing. I assume you like it. I do like it. I do. It's a challenge. It can be. I think it needs to be set up right to make it a little more difficult so you don't do exactly what you said. There you go. Short plunge. You know, I think a strong plunger spring will really change that, and then just some really bouncy rubber. Yeah. I try to preface that by saying the two that I played, which were the two at Expo, if you make it nasty or yes, then you can really inflict some pain. I was getting some nice super jackpot shots yesterday 450,000 on a super jackpot is massive on that game Yeah, I never really tried that That's one thing I didn't explore For those who haven't played it, the super jackpots You've got to hit the drop targets back down, but quickly Because they reset So you've got to get all the way to the back to get to the hole Yeah, all the way in the scoop for the super So single, double, triple, super, and super is five times, I think it is Damn. Maybe I was playing it the wrong way. I probably could have got even more of a score, I guess. And I'll have to say, the best thing about that game, man, is the ball's sitting in the plunger lane, and you hear the music, and as soon as you plunge it, when the bass kicks in. Yeah. That is like, yeah, yeah, I could, yeah. That might be one of the greatest launches in history. So, all right, going down the docket here. What do we have for news? I got a question. Oh, okay. I got a question first for him. What game is in your future? I actually have a TNA in order. Okay. Oh. Very cool. Say so. Anything else in the site? Nothing else in the site. Not even pirates? I would like a pirate. It's just so damned expensive. Yeah, I agree. So, yeah. So, have you got to play any pirates yet? No. That's actually a dumb question because it was only at Expo and Australia. So, unless you were at those places, you probably wouldn't play. It was in IAAPA. It was in IAAPA? That's right. That's right. Pirates was good. I think you'd like it, Carl. Yeah, it looks like fun. And I always like Keith's games, Keith's rule sets. Oh, yeah. You'd like the, what, 20 different characters you could pick. I do like the whole, like, you can't pick the same character someone else did. Yeah, that is. Like, first or second, even important now. Yeah, it's like, that would be interesting, you know. You want to go first, second, third, or fourth? I actually want to go first, because I want to select this character. Yes, because I may be able to take advantage of it. All right, so we've got Guardians. As far as news, most of the news was, I guess, Guardians. And there was a tournament this weekend. There was a tournament this weekend? There were many tournaments. There were multiple tournaments this weekend. This weekend you had Free Play Florida. Yep. Had their tournament. Well, multiple tournaments. Yes. The main tournament was won by Eric Stone. And Class 6 was won by Josh Sharpe. proving he can win. He's a winner in our book. I think that was a mistake. It was wrong software, I think. He probably put a CD code in with a button. I don't know if you saw the film of he's playing, I think he's playing pirates. Yeah, he's playing pirates, and Jeff Teels comes up behind him and starts hitting the button. Yep. So that was pretty funny. Oh, they also had a women's champ. Whose name escapes me, and I apologize. I really should be more prepared. Fail. I'm sorry. It was Jeannie Leon. So if it was you, congratulations. If not, we're sorry. Yikes. Sorry. Yikes. I went on the website. It's there. It's there. Okay. I just don't know if that's her, how to say her first name. All right. Okay. Congratulations. Yes, to all those winners. Deborah Tommen won the classics at OBX. Nice. Excellent. And the winner of OBX was this guy. He hardly ever wins anything. I think his name is Trent. Oh, really? Trent Augustine, the guy who just won the Sanctum. Yeah. Now he wins this. I think he's got, like, I don't know, 20,000 circuit points or something. Yeah. He wants to just have a commanding lead. Yeah. Did you hear what else he won when he went down there? A new car. And you got them in the World Challenge Soccer. Did he get that? No. No, Striker Extreme. Striker Extreme. Okay, so you're even worse. Oh, that's mean, Bruce. You won a game. Come on. Wait a second. Do I want to play soccer with my game, or do I want to put a football guy and maybe have the Jets or the Giants or maybe even San Francisco 49ers? Same game. They use the same game. Oh, same game? Oh, okay. Same game. So it's the same game as NFL? Yes. Really? I did not know this. Yes, this was a different character. Instead of a goalie back part, they had a goal post. Really? Okay. Yeah, bad. Oh, come on, Bruce. It's a free game. I wonder if he sold it immediately like Tim did. I hope he did. Our own Tim Balls, unfortunately, did not defend his title. Fail. Wow, you're nice. It's not like he got eliminated in the first round or anything. Oh. Fail. Oh, sorry, Tess. Our own Steven Bowden finished ninth. As he always does, he took the positive of it. He was able to get out of there early and get home and not have to take another day off from work. Yes. So, hi, Steve. Hi, Steve. And hi, Tim Balls. Sorry. Sorry about that. I was in a tournament. You were? So, you held the Hulk head, right? No. I was at the famous Rock Fantasy for their fall open I love how they have their tournaments at the very end like the summer opens in September or something, the fall opens in November right at the end and they had like a set number of rounds and we actually finished on time even early isn't that amazing, they had a set number of rounds like it was going to be 7 rounds of match play So, like, foursomes, however they do the scoring, it's probably Pinberg style, 3-2-1s. Again, I didn't look because you know how close I pay attention to that. But I can actually tell you how I finished each round because there's only seven rounds. I finished second, so starting good, right? Second round, I'm second. Still good. Third round, third. Okay, that's not too good. Fourth and fifth round, last. Ouch. That pretty much killed me. And then the sixth and seventh rounds, I finished first and got up to tenth. But only top eight went to A. And the rest went into B. A did like the Papa style thing. They play like three games and four, two, one, however, you know, that deal. B division, they just did, you played head-to-head against other people, and it was two strikes, you're out. Yeah. And the first game I played, I played Rolling Stones Valley and got destroyed. And that was the last game I lost. So I ended up winning B. And getting heat for it again. Because I did the same thing. I got the same thing last tournament, and they're calling me the sandbagger now. All right. Congratulations, sandbag boy. Yeah, I'm the sandbag boy. Believe me, I tried my best. I just could not get in the top eight. But, yeah, and I ended up playing. we had a couple guys from my Albany league who actually made their way to Rock Fantasy to play in the tournament. And they did pretty well. Like Tim, who was the president of our league, I ended up playing him in the B Division elimination thing twice. So I gave him both his strikes. The second one on Aerosmith, where he was way ahead of me going into the third ball, and thank God there's tilts or not necessarily a requirement at Rock Fantasy for Aerosmith because I basically had to move the game to save it on a right out lane drain. Save that. Then it tried to drain again and I had the, what is it called? What's the ball saver thing called in Aerosmith? Help me here. Someone help me. What's it called? The out lane. It's called something. Just let him hang. Let him hang. Let him hang. No, don't let me hang. I just did it. Crank it up? No, but it's some term that's used in another game for something else, too. Whatever. It's the ball save. It's just something you light on the out lane, kind of like the one on Game of Thrones, whatever that one's called. So I drained and got it back, and I finally got multiball started. I had a very good multiball. Pulled ahead of him. He had his last ball to play, and he could not catch up. So that was close. And in the final match, I ended up playing Mike, Mike Pantino. We had a rematch of the New York State Finals from like three years ago or four years ago. And we got to play it on, and these were all randomly selected by the software, Matchplay.Event Software. It selected Game of Thrones. And we both had the same reaction, like, no, neither of us wanted to play that. So I had a decent game. And 1B, yay. Glory is with you. And Frank, the towel, he won. He's back, man. He's back in force. Is he unsuppressed or is he still suppressed? No, he's still suppressed. Okay. We're calling him Hoodie now. I saw that. Because he put a hoodie over when they took the picture. So he looks like the Emperor. Because he looks like the Emperor or the Unabomber. Good. Good. He kicked ass because he qualified high enough where he got to pick all the games, so he's picking like, you know, Big Brave and Cheetah and the older games. Oh, yeah, that's great. Hey, that's why you drive the bus, man. Yep. That's why you drive the bus. So repairs this week, Rob. Repairs. And that leads into my I have a Scott question. So, Scott, I know you're listening. Tech question for Cheetah, which you should know because this was your Cheetah. That you sold to Stephen Kehler. Now, I ended up under the play field of that thing, because I was actually working on it, being a nice guy, because I had my tools there for something else I was doing. Did you fix the thing? They were saying they had a sticky right flipper, which I could not replicate, and it did not stick the entire rest of the night. But when I lifted the play field up, the left slingshot coil is just hanging there. What? Yeah. And it's like, oh, the coil stop had come off because the screw is sheared off. Of course, you might say, screw, shouldn't there be two? There should be, but there wasn't. There was one screw holding the coil stop on. I found the screw, and I found the parts, but the screw is sheared off. So I asked, like, Steve, do you have a machine screw, maybe a longer one this size? Nope. Okay. Maybe I can take one from one of the other mechs. You know, to get it up and running. Guess what every other mech had? One screw. Yikes. Yikes. None of them had two screws. The pop bumpers, the slingshots, every single one of them just had one screw holding the coil stop on. Like, what are you doing? Zoinks. Zoinks. So, Scott, did you do that? No, that's actually not my tech question. My tech question is, while I was under there, I noticed the upper flipper on Cheetah, It has, now, for those who have a Sea Witch, Bruce, Steph, they use a resistor on the two upper flippers in lines to kind of, you know, lower the power so you don't, like, break things with the upper flippers. What they had on Cheetah, you know, it looked like a hack, but I'm thinking this is factory. They had a post, like a playfield post, screwed in to the bottom of the playfield with a spring on it that attached to the flipper, like underneath. so when the flipper flipped it actually was resisting so it was like making it less powerful and I'm thinking that's actually factory as weird as that looked why else would that be in there? I can't see someone hacking that in there for what reason Because I didn see a resistor there I mean I didn look terribly close maybe it was there and disconnected and that was the fix But I wondering since that was made before Sea Witch if that's how they did it in that game. Because Stern was known to do stuff like that in their games. Yeah, I can maybe see that. So, Scott, tell me, is that factory or is that a hack? And I have one more tech question for Scott or anyone else who may listen to the podcast. And we mentioned this before. Big game was the first game that Stern used a single-piece flipper bat, as opposed to, like, the steel flipper bat with a plastic shoe screwed on it. Mm-hmm. What's the Bally equivalent? What was the first Bally game to use a single-piece flipper bat? If anyone out there knows. Or if Carl knows. No, no. I don't know. No, no, no. No, no, no. I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole. I might guess Rolling Stones just because that's the first one that used the linear flippers, and maybe that's when they changed it. But I'd like to know for sure. When did it change? I'm just curious. And as far as repairs, the only repair I did was on his Kiss, the Rock Fantasy Kiss, which wasn't really a repair. The Rock Fantasy Kiss, the left flipper, is actually a stern flipper, the kind you can't get anymore, the single-piece ones, the ones that are in games like Sea Witch and Big Game and Quicksilver, et cetera. so I took that out, and he had a Williams slipper on the right, so I replaced it with two Bally slipper bats, so it's correct. Then while I had it apart, Howard asked me, like, can you look at the top pop-upper? It never works. And I know what he means. It was never really – it was kind of dead. Like, it would only go off if you hit it at the right angle. So I just made the switch more sensitive, and now it actually works. And he was like, wow, it's the first time it worked in 10 years. Yikes. Which I don't, you know, the game hasn't been there 10 years, but those were my only repairs. Carl, any repairs for you? Just looking at my games and going, that one's still broken. That one's still broken. I can't play this. Oh, that's right. That's still broken. That count? Well, what's broken on them? Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. I've got my Jungle Princess. It's been broken since the end disc of last year. Again, the EMs are giving me hell. And the wild card, too. My wild card, the previous owner took, you know, like contact cleaner. Oh, no. Every single, you know, rebate on the underside. Oh, my God. On the base. And I clean it. It works. And maybe a couple weeks later, it stops working again because it's all filthy again. I can't seem to get it all to go like gunk out. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why it's just a constant battle. No, apart from that, what did I do? I hooked my topper back up on Lord of the Rings. That's about it. I've been doing a lot of things. How about you, Bruce? I'm sure you have any bar-related repairs. Oh, my God, yes. Quicksilver. We bring it to the bar, and we're like, boy, the flippers are really dead compared to every other game here now. Wait a minute. Quicksilver is at the bar? Not a Quicksilver. Sorry, a Stargazer. I was about to say, I didn't give you permission for that. I have half ownership. It's 50.1 to... You can only take half of it to the bar. You can take the head. Just the head. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I brought Stargazer there, and I'm like, boy, the flippers are really, you know, right next to its stars at the same outlet. It's a 20-amp outlet. So I'm like, okay, the stars works great. All of a sudden, I'm like, let me go buy some flipper mechs from Pinball Life. So I bought the Pinball Life mechs and popped one in, and I bought cabinet switches also, thinking maybe we're losing something on the cabinet switches. Put them in with Zach. Hi, Zach. Thank you, Zach. Zach was a big help this weekend. So he puts it together, and I'm on the other side of the room working on IJ because the path of adventure. Remember that upper play field that, you know, doesn't work too well? We got that working finally with the new up-throw cabinet switch. But he puts it in, and all of a sudden, boom, pops a fuse. I'm like, what's going on, Zach? He goes, I don't know why. I'm blowing two fuses already. I said, well, I don't have my fuse box here, so let's try to figure this out. He finally figures out that he wired it wrong. okay, puts it back together, the main fuse blows, the F6 on the, like, what the hell's going on here, so he pulls the board out, he goes, yep, I think the bridge rectifier took a dump, and it did, so he's like, I got an old board from you, I give him all my old boards, he's like, I got an old board from you, I cleaned up, I brought one, I got one of the newer boards, but I hate, that is the worst thing ever to do on an early valley is replacing the rectifier board on the transformer. It's just one of my pet peeves, one of my hates in this world. So he's like, ah, the bridge rectifier's bad, I'll replace that while we're there. He's like, ah, the resistor's a little shorted too. Replace that, power it up, flippers are nice and strong now, and probably will be there for a couple months before I get my playfield. The one that'll make my machine better than yours, Ron. Okay. So flippers are weak, wire something wrong, blow stuff up, replace stuff, and now it's good. Yes. Okay. So I'm sure I can do that. And then the IJ fixed, too. We fixed the IJ with the other thing, too. So we're good. And then Zach was there. We brought up the Grand Prix at Zach's. So we brought his Grand Prix over, and one of the coils stuck on on one of the pop bumpers, and it was just a little too close adjustment. and fix that, and just going to bring over Demoman. Oh, that's right, and I worked on Demoman. That's actually Ryan's Zomix game, and he gave me that. And when we talked about it a couple weeks ago, he has prototype ROMs in there. So there's no secret. So finally, Zach got all the EEPROMs from Ryan, and it burned them all. And I put them in last week, and you can actually run LX, LX4 ROMs for the CPU with the prototype sounds, but then when you go to certain modes, the sounds don't activate. It's just blank sound. That's kind of funny. I put the sound ROMs in and everything's working the way it should, so I just got to clean that pig up, and it's going to the bar also. Demoman. Excellent. Love Demoman. One of my favorites. What do you think of Demoman, Carl? That's great. It's great. I do enjoy it. It's even better when you, are you going to have the claw on or off, Bruce? Oh, since it's for location, it'll be on. Yeah, but I'm just going to pick Lock Freeze every time. Not for a tournament, then I'll change it. Okay. Evil. Remember, you still have a little bit of evil in Bruce. Or we could have used the special tournament ROMs on it. Yeah, I was going to say there's a modified ROM now, isn't there? Yes, that's where ROM has it. From our friend Soren, friend of the show. Well, that's what I got in mind. So you can try to do lock-freeze all day, and you'll get super pops. I'm sorry, super jets. I'm sorry, it's a Williams. I've got to use the right terminology. So, Rod, you ready for a little pain? I'm ready to win. It's time for face-off. Face-off. I don't know if you heard last week, Carl, what we got for this week. I did. I remember I groaned, but, yeah. He was hoping for something new where he'd be like, DMs, I have no idea what these games are. And neither do I. That's bad. I've got to bring up IPDB to even see what these games look like. Oh, yeah. I know I got one winner. I know that for a fact, man. Yeah, I'll probably get mine. But since he has to go first, I'm... Yeah, I have to go first, so I don't know if I want to go right for it. So for those who may not have listened to the show before, this is where we pick a year randomly. Well, the year is picked by usually our guests from, what, 1974 to 1996. We try to get in eras where, like, number one, we've actually played the games, and there's more than, like, one manufacturer. And then we'll have however many manufacturers were there at the time. We do three games. I will have one manufacturer. Bruce will have another for this year. And there's strategy. And, you know, who picks first? Do I go right for my big game? the one I know I'm going to crush him with or not, or like last week when I have nothing to work with and I have to sell these terrible Gottlieb games. Although I don't hate them like Bruce does, but I'm sorry. I wish I had Gottlieb this freaking time. Silver Slugger is not beating like Funhaus or whatever it was. I mean, it's just not happening ever. So that was embarrassing. So for this week, we have 1975. I have Valley. Then I have Williams. Which, you know, Bruce usually wants Williams, but I don't know if he wants it this week. I don't want it this week. So, according to Bruce, because these are his... Whoever wins... I go first. Yes, whoever got the pick, the Showcase Showdown... The Showcase Showdown. ...has to go first. So, I'm going to pick... Bow and Arrow. And again, Carl's going to decide whose game is better. So, bow and arrow. Just a fantastic EM. It featured prominently in this year's Pentastic Tournament. Go to Tim Ball's stream and watch the exciting finals between Bill Birnbaum and Eric Stone when they played this game. See the excitement that is bow and arrow as it has two awesome spinners that you can rip. It's one of those EM games. You build a bonus, they collect a bonus. So you build your bonus, hit those spinners, and then you collect it with the saucer in the upper left. A nice little orbit shot. It also has the wonderful saucer at the top, a valley staple. Just plunge into that saucer for various awards. It's an excellent game. Good artwork. I mean, there's not much to say about something this good, really. Great side art. And it also has, I believe it has a gate. Yes, it has the gate, the collect gate on the right side, which you can open up and then hit through back into the shooter lane. Who doesn't love that shot? Everyone loves that shot. Four pop bumpers. I give you the awesomeness. That is bow and arrow. Now here comes your challenger. And I know you've played this game, Ron. It is a staple in one of the Orange County members' pinball collection. All right. Triple Strike. Bowling theme made by Steve Kordick. Can't go against that. Steve Kordick is and was the man. He made Pocorino. That was his last one. You've seen all about him. That thing was terrible. One of the worst live bodies ever. you have the typical at this era Williams rules where you have to hit A and B to get your whole bonus and also your triple bonus which is cool in the middle of this play field you get 10 rollovers which represent the 10 pins in an easy bowling game, when you roll over those 10 pins one time, you get one strike when you do it again, you get two strikes in the middle and when you get it for the third time, you get three strikes also you get the rollovers on the left hand side one beautiful pop bumper and a kick out hole up top like Harlem Globetrotters they'll kick your ball out towards the pop bumper and hopefully get one of the A or the B beautiful artwork you get the beautiful 70's guys with their ties on bowling sweet I give you triple strike alright So looking at these I definitely like that Triple Strike has a Orbit, full orbit shot Versus the scoop shot On bow and arrow I like getting it back up at the top Just in general on EMs But those rollover buttons I'm not too sure about Compared to the two spinners on bow and arrow I agree to that one Yeah the spinners are just Too much fun to hit right? I agree, spinners rock and let's see and triple strike those outlanes just look massive I have to admit I haven't played triple strike before but it just looks the ball goes there and it's going out right I have to agree with you but Ron's played the goodness of it he knows it Bruce you're supposed to continue to sell your game no I can't sell this thing no see I cannot sell Williams on this year. That shows a total lack of effort. I sold my games to the end to the point of patheticness, really. Did you win? No, but I stayed true to my games. Sounded like a forfeit almost. Yeah, I mean, he's like giving up. Come on, don't do that. Williams didn't make one spinner game in his whole freaking year. This is like you walking off for your third ball, and you're just like, I'm too far behind. I'm done. It's got 13 buttons and four drop targets. I know it does. It has great rollovers. But no spinners. None of these games. What the fuck were you thinking, Liam? So who wins, Carl? Who wins this game before I destroy him with the next one? Bow and arrow, of course. Of course. Bow and arrow. Okay, Bruce. What do you got for us, Mr. Quitter? I'm not quitting. No, I want a game with spinners. and there's nothing fucking here. God, it sucks. You've got to... Okay, Bruce, I'm sorry. You're getting no sympathy for the games I had. I had street-level games last week that I had to pick against freaking Funhaus and Whirlwind. Come on. I'm going to go for... I'm going to cut you off, because I think if you picked Little Chief, I wouldn't have had a hard decision there. Nah. There you go. I don't like Little Chief at all. I had to play it so much, you know, last year in the A Division. First, it matters what the judge likes. I'm going with something a staple of Papa also right now. Pat Hand. Pat Hand, $6,500. Okay. Sell it to me. Two pop-overs on the bottom. Not just one, but two pop-overs on the bottom of the play field. You don't see that much, actually, in games. Yeah, probably because it was a bad idea. No. Well, this moves it around a little bit. Rollovers in the middle again. You have five targets lined up top, five rollover buttons on the left-hand side, and four targets on the right-hand side. I actually don't mind this game. It was either between Pat Hand or another game, but I like Pat Hand a little nicer. I just want to see one more thing in the upper play field. And there's five rollovers up top. So you have 15 rollovers. Nine targets. Wow, there is literally five. Jesus. I think there's a question of rollovers. Maybe it's because we're not putting drop targets in, so we have a little more budget in the bill of materials. So how many rollovers can we put in this game? God, I do like to do pop bumpers. That is pretty darn cool, though. And what's with the bizarre pop bumper caps that they used then? God, those are... Yeah, they're weird. I think somebody got a contract saying, hey, let's get the weirdest pop-up recap she can do. I think someone was high. It was 1975. It was. Damn hippies. That is Pat Hand. Okay. So for my next game, I'm just going to go right forward here. We do three of these, folks, so if I get two in a row, and the third one's just for pride. So I'm going for Wizard, classic, classic Bally, over 10,000 units produced of this awesome game. And it's not just the theme. It actually is a good playing game. Go for the cards. Flip the cards, man, and flip them back over. One flipper. One flipper game. Killer Dave Christensen artwork, once again, for being interrupted. That's why I interrupted you the last one, because you always interrupt me. Three pop bumpers. You've got the saucer at the top. We have rollovers, but we also have a nice left orbit shot that feeds the top, which I know Carl likes because he just said he likes that. So there it is right there. And then you have, of course, the spinner. Did I mention there's a spinner in that lane that leads up to the top? Did I mention that spinner is awesome? Just kill that spinner. Did I mention you can increase that total? Instead of 10, you can make it 100 a spin. and then you have the cool cards, a nice little custom feature. Well, actually they used it on Flip Flop too, but still they're cool cards that you can flip back and then flip them back over. Just a great playing game, fun, great theme, great artwork. Bally at its classic best, over 10,000 units sold. I give you Bally Wizard. I yield the floor. All right. So what I like about Wizard from all this is there's multiple ways you can play it. If you want to play it safe or dangerous, you know, if you really want to risk it, you can go for that 5,000 target that's on the right-hand side and shooting those flags, you know, to bite the flags on the left-hand side. That's dangerous as well. But you've got to do it to get your various features. So, you know, there's more risk-reward here. going over to Pat Hand. Can I play the crickets from Frontier right now? Yes, you should. Yeah. Let's see. There's a double bonus somewhere. There is a double bonus somewhere. There is a double bonus. It's probably just lit on the fifth ball. You can hit, maybe hit ten buttons on one flip with the upper orbit. I do like the upper shot, if you can keep that going. I mean, I know it hits the bumper, unfortunately, and has to dribble back down left, and you can hit it back up on the right. It's bad hand. When I get this in Pemberg, oh, gosh, I have to play bad hand. I know. It's a staple. It's a staple, unfortunately. That's exactly it. It's an unfortunate staple. So, of course, Wizard wins. Of course. Yes. Yes. All right, so I win. But we'll have the Pride game. We'll see if he can pull one out here. So it's my pick again? Yes, it is. Your pick. You know, I'm looking at Little Chief. It looks pretty good, Bruce. You should consider picking that. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. And I can also see, like, Williams has something against spinners and drop targets in this era, at least this year. And they were in love with rollovers. I guess 1975 was the year of the rollover for them. It is. I mean, I'm looking at it. It's like, man, they did not like drop targets or spinners for some reason. Well. Okay, I'm looking here. I'm trying to find ones I've actually played that I know anything about. Oh, Aaron Aches sounds familiar. Is that the one where the dude's, like, smoking a cigarette in the back glass? Let's see. Yeah, there he is. Yep. Let's look at the play field. Oh, God, one of these. I don't know how I feel it's got the you see folks he was just going for the two wins I went for the two that I thought would be killer and it worked so now I'm kind of stuck with I really don't want to pick this but it's I mean you can't go against the numbers right what they sold let's look at knockout let's see if knockout is any good no it's not It's not? Oh, it's this turn. I played this before. I recognize the backlash. Where did I play this? I played this at some tournament. But it's got spinners, though. Of course it does. But it's got, like, two pop-upers in multiple lanes and, like, a weird little setup. I remember probably not liking this. So, all right. I'm going to go with Air Aces. As I was saying, killer play field in Air Aces. great Dave Christensen artwork. At least it looks like Dave Christensen. It probably is. You want drop targets? Did I hear drop targets? Well, we have nine of them. Nine of them right in front of your face. Easy to hit and probably easy to drain. But also easy to hit. We have two upper flippers to make it easier for you. You can hit them back up top for a couple saucers and a couple pop lumpers to help you get it in the saucer, I'm sure. And you can get to the back up top from the lower flippers also. At least it looks like you can, looking at this shot. A cool yellow artwork thing going, yellow and red. So you probably want to keep this away from the sunlight in this game, because it'll probably fade. Great plastics at the top of the playfield, just plain yellow. Keeping with the theme. No need for any artwork on the plastics. Sorry. I never understood that. They have artwork on all the plastics. But then you go to the top, the apron, not the apron, the arch, and they'll just have, like, the plain yellow. To the point where you think it's a prototype or, oh, that must have broken the plastic. It's like, oh, no, that's factory. Why? Why did they do that? But it keeps with the yellow theme, and it looks great. I yield the floor. Okay. I'm going with Little Chief, a Steve Korda classic. You get two pop bumpers. You get a gate, an open, lockable gate, so you can get it back into your plunger again to plunge again. We don't need a saucer up top. We need a saucer in the middle of the play field. Rollovers on the left-hand side. We just love our rollovers. And you get double bonus. I don't even know how you get double bonus on something. It might be a game. Oh, A and B. Maybe the A and B together will get you your double bonus. Strong Williams flippers. Great artwork. I yield the floor. And may I add, if you look at Little Chief, that looks like... It's a hybrid Aztec. Well, no. Also, when you look at the inserts with the thick paint or whatever, the thick circles they used, it looks like it could be a Sonic game. Yeah. You know what I mean? If you look at it for a second, it looks vaguely like this could be some kind of Sonic game. Now, if you look at Aztec, if you just put a spinner where Aztec has a spinner, This Little Chief would be rocking. I'll give you that. Spinners are always good. Yeah, but not in Williams in 1975. We don't have the money for that. We need rollovers. Yeah, unless they've got a big contract for them. Rollover company. How many? What, five on this? Five, that's all. Budget cut. I hate Little Chief. I know. So do I. No, but, you know, that was in the A-Bank and Pop-Up last year, which, you know, I got too much time on it. Yeah. Yeah, shoot it back up at the top, you know, hit the lanes, hope it survives coming back down and do it all over again. Yep. Over and over again. Whereas Air Aces was a favorite from Indus 2014, one of our classics games that year. You know, a lot like Jack in the Box. except to just push down more, I guess you could say. But drop targets. You can't go wrong with a bank of drop targets. I agree. You just can't beat it. But Little Chief isn't horribly isolated. Arias is. Sweep again. Three weeks in a row, people have sweeped. I've got to give the art to Little Chief. Arias is lax in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. So now, Carl, you get to pick the next year. All right. 1974 through 1996, you say. Six. Six. Okay, six. All right. My randomizer says 1988. Ooh, I like that. Let's see what 1988 has to offer for our manufacturers. Now, are we splitting like we talked about, Williams and Valley? No, just keep them. It's the same company. The Premier? Ooh, yeah, this is interesting. Williams. Actually, Bally, Midway is separate. The last one is Bally 100, which is Blackwater 100. Blackwater 100 was in 88? Yes, it is. All right. So, it's not enough Bally. It's not enough of only two. Right. You've got Midway and Bally, but yeah, if you wanted to, yeah. Actually, Midway actually had three because Ramp Warrior also. Yeah, Ramp Warrior. So, it's Data East and Truck Stop too. So, you actually have four. Well, truck stops were they converted over, so we can include that as a Williams. Okay, so Williams, Data East, or Premier. And Gottlieb, yep. So, put those three in, Carl, for us. Alright, here we go. Randomized, and Premier. I will pass. Oh, I get Gottlieb again. And what do I get? Please, please be Data East. Data East. Yes. Finally, we get off the Williams. That's a little interesting. All right. I like Premier this year, though. I like Data East. Torpedo Alley. Secret Service. Time Machine. Oh, man. Those are good. I know. Premier, you got TX Sector, RoboWar, Diamond Lady. This is going to be interesting. This will probably greatly depend on the judge. Well, I'm thinking. Because some people really don't like the Daddy's games. No. Like what? You didn't like Torpedo Alley when they had that. I don't like Torpedo Alley. It's the old one. Honestly, you hit the spinner and when it's lit, you're going to crank. But Keith, that one likes it. The one likes it, so it's got to be good. The one does like it, and I just kind of slap him in the side of the head sometimes for that one. Yeah, but you like Algar. Love Algar. What do you think of Algar? Yeah, what do you think of Algar? I hate Algar. Yeah. Nothing to shoot. It's just... Like it goes up top. Yeah, back up top. Yeah, yeah. But it's on a nice orbit. It's flat up there, and you've got the scoop in the middle, and it's just... Yeah. It's like the reaction everyone has. It's just like... And then the pop-up one gets the extra points deducted, which is the only one I've played, because it's got the sharp corners on the edges, on the lock bar. So it tears you up. Isn't it great artwork? Oh, fantastic. I love his sarcasm I want a blow up version of that on my wall here I should think the sharp edges that's factory that's the same Stellar Wars has the same thing and that was Williams super wide body lockdown bar good job Williams good job Stellar Wars a vastly superior game to Algar by the way although you know if it was between Pocahontas and Algar that would be tough because Pocahontas is really bad it was a terrible game so I that'd be a good one okay so that was face off it's time to empty the mail ball bag oh my oh my yes we'll still say oh my oh I'm going to say forever and ever because guess what he only been accused of one person he only had one person until a second person comes forward Yeah Charlie Rose just got accused of it for eight people Yeah so he probably screwed Yeah Yeah Alright, so we got first mail is from Scott with his comments on the previous podcast, on number 69. He says, Ron's operator hack with the lamp stock is a really bad idea. Thank you. Instead, try using actual flux. Comes in a pen. Yes, I tried that. I tried flux and sanding it down, and it still doesn't stick. You don't need to sand anything on new sockets, according to him. You should also use, well, here's the thing I don't have, a huge soldering gun like 150 watts or so. No, I don't want those. Okay, I don't have anything like that, so maybe that's the deal. I think it's so obscenely hot. He also has some suggestions on the belly drains that Steph was talking about. That wrong post might be on the Sea Witch's plastic where it is getting stuck. Also, someone made an S-shaped deflector for the top of it. Hmm. His favorite line of the podcast. It was from me, where I said, don't interrupt me, asshole. Gee, I wonder what I was talking about. You should never insult Stephanie like that. You should apologize to Stephanie for that one. What? You were interrupting me probably during face-off, and I told you to shut up. Would I do a thing like that? Yeah, you would. And then Futz, who you can never get his name right. Yep. I didn't get it right either. This would be the programmer for games such as Dracula. Head to head couldn't say his name either, so don't worry. Futz in Reuter. Futz in Reuter. So it's Futz in Reuter. So I put my foots in your Reuter? Yeah. Oh. Okay. Never forget. Never forget. Okay. Oh, God. Ron's voice was cracking a lot trying to defend Premier. He noticed that. It was funny. You should allow one strikeout for the people to have less games. I tried to do something like that, but Prusino, he makes up rules as he goes along. I gave you, I took away half my games like that. So, but we have a very, it's even with games this time. This ought to be a good one. This should be a really good one. 1988. Data East versus Premier. So that's that. Litter. Only two more. Next Litter. Let's see, Eric, who is the guy who actually did the Dirty Harry Color DMD, and he was watching my stream. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. What do you think of Dirty Harry, Carl? It's great. Another great game. Okay. I love it. I love it. So he says, hey, Ron and Bruce, I watched a bit of the Dirty Harry stream with the Color DMD and noticed that it's screwing up the status report if you get it during multiball. So thanks for finding that. I was never looking at the screen. I'll get that fixed. And if I can recreate, yeah, I had a thing where I tilted it, and the color, like, disappeared. It just became one uniform color. Like, I lost the color of the color D&D. And at first I thought, like, did I knock something loose? I just rebooted the game, and it was fine, and it never did it again. So I don't know what that was. So, yeah, the key would be what you were doing when you tilted it. So I was unable to duplicate that. P.S. Why is it that you guys associate films with the podcast, but then name them based on the content of the discussion? In other words, name them something completely different. I haven't been around since the start, so if it was explained early on, I may have missed it. Well, there is no explanation. It's just lunacy and stupidity. And we're good at that. Yeah. We just wanted, like, I don't know, some kind of series to continue. But then I started, you know, I named the podcast, like, whatever happens during the podcast. Whatever comes up that I think is like, oh, that would make a good title. You know, like when you look at the bunghole crane. I mean, as soon as you see that, you know you have to name it the bunghole crane. Or last week it was the beef thing. Never beef. Never beef productions. Beef on wick. Beef myself. How can I, like, not use that? And I would just list, like, Jeff Parsons from the Pinball Players podcast. He didn't get it either. He was confused by the Never Beef thing. Yeah, I've never heard of it. Exactly. So we have yet another person. So, guys, I know you think it's a cool name. And Tim got on our case like it's not called the Never Beef tournament. You know, it's called the New York City Pinball Championship. Yes, but the email comes from Never Beef. It's like, what the hell is this Never Beef thing in my email box? All right, I'm getting on that too much. Sure. No more beefing. See, Tim, I'm the good one. You were making fun of him. How about that? When you're the one that's ragging. Then we have an email. This is a short one, an unusually short one, from the Pinball Princess. It was, I guess, last week's staff. The subject line is, Uga Chaka, please kill me. Ron. Yes, I agree. He says, hi, guys. It's been so long since I wrote into the show, though it feels like the last time we spoke was only last week. Speaking of which, I feel particularly honored that you let me appear both on the episode airing on April 20th, 420, and on episode 69. No comments on that? What's the difference? I don't understand it. 420. She's on 420 and 69. God. Okay, I may not be as frequent a guest as Raymond or Timmy, but I can at least say I have that distinction. Oh my. After my amazing fail in thinking of a good theme for women, although I suppose Lady Gaga isn't the absolute worst idea, I spent the entire week pondering what a good theme for a woman was, for like a pinball machine. So this, while it started as me lying down in bed and going, oh my God, Wonder Woman. How did I not think of Wonder Woman? Which apparently was almost a thing. Evolved upon listening to the podcast. Yes, I really did. She listened to herself on the podcast. That's a big deal. It is. if you hadn't even listened to her previous appearance, into considering the subject of good themes for women in general. What exactly is a good theme for women? Does this necessarily mean a theme featuring women, such as a prominent songstress or a female-centric franchise, like Wonder Woman? Does it refer to a theme wherein the script is flipped from the usual so-it's-boy-howdy-big-ripe-bananas or some similarly male-objectifying theme? Oh my, I'm up for that, George is saying. Why would he be up for male objectifying? Because it makes it big, ripe banana. Oh, very good, Bruce. Or does a good theme for women simply entail representing women without them being relegated to eye candy? Good example, super score. Bad example, was too long to make. Yeah, Big Juicy Melons, any ballet game from the 70s, pretty much. It could refer to any or all of these categories. Thus, while I absolutely failed at providing good examples of existent or potential themes for women, I would argue that my mind was torn between these interpretations. Okay, to be honest, I just panicked, as usual, but I will stand by my argument that good themes for women is the subject that needs further elucidation, and it should be discussed more. I'm hoping that others have filled the mail ball bag with better theme suggestions than I have thus far. My brain suggests Jem and the Holograms or the Spice Girls one more time. How does my brain even work? I apparently suck at thinking of good themes in general, never mind on a specific subject. I cut my letter there. 400 words. I try to be brief, okay? I tried. Distracted by the Guardians of the Galaxy stream player 31915. Thank you, Seth. Thank you, Stephanie. Once again, please write in. We need good themes. Yes. What do you think, Carl? What would be a good theme for a woman's... Pad hand. Themed... Oh, God. Pad hand. Pad hand. Oh, gosh. Any ideas? I'm thinking. I'm thinking here. I thought the Lady Gaga one was a good idea, but what do I know? Powerpuff Girls? Miley Cyrus. My Little Pony? Well, that's more of a kids thing, I guess. Yeah. Some kind of anime thing. No, no, no. You can't go anime. You'll get to... Oh, yeah. You're right there. You're right there. Never mind. Sorry. Hmm. See, this is hard. And by the amount of email we'll probably get on this, we know how many female listeners we have, which is probably not many. Crickets. Crickets. So, again, we're looking for good themes. And we're not getting any. But we're not going to stop trying. Yes, we will not. So I think we're heading to the end here. I think it's time to finish up. Maybe. Maybe. Oh, no. Maybe not. Well, we never asked Carl, and I'm going to throw him right on the spot right now. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Game you like, game you hate. Oh, gosh. We don't do that anymore. We are doing it because there's a new guest. Well, we replaced that with Face Off. Nope. Carl gets to have the little problem now. Okay. All right. What do you want first? Hate or like? Always hate for this place. Always hate. Okay, okay. I'll do Star Wars. Oh, yes. Which one? The Stern. The Stern Star Wars. Yes! Cannot stand how it plays, how it shoots, especially the premium and the LE. Oh, yes. The pros a step above that, the premium and LE are just, oh, gosh. The shots just don't feel good to me. The rules are okay to me. I'm not a fan of the multiplier. I'm not a fan of the modes. It doesn't draw me in like it should. I love you, man. I love you, man. You're rocking it. Yeah, it was an easy target. It was. And game you like or love? Game I like or love? Let's see. I forgot. Does this need to be not in my collection? Yeah, it can't be in your collection. It can't be a collection. Exactly. No, no, no. Actually, hit for the... Oh, yeah. I'm making the rule now. It can't be. I'll go with the safecracker. Nice. I haven't heard that one come out before That's a good game It's an oddball game I wish Thorin would do something with the ROMs for that For tournament play Because I think that would be a lot of fun in tournament play What would you like to do to it? He listens From what I understand the game It doesn't want you to win the board game You will not win it You just don't have a chance at it I know there's a way that you can Have the spinner always go In order so you can skillfully pick the right, you know, one through two, four, or five for the board game. But that still doesn't matter if it just, you know, if the percentage is so, if too many tokens have been given out, yeah, exactly, it just won't let you, you know, it'll cheat itself. It does. Yeah. Like you'll get ones and the guy's getting fives catching around a board so fast it's not even funny. Right. That's right, Bruce, you had one. I did. I loved my game. That was actually a fun game. I was like the assault on the vault. I saw it on the vault for 45 seconds of fun. Yep. And the one time I got a token, it actually came out. Just the way it rolled down the glass to me. Like, oh, that was cool. Yeah. Token multiple, right? That's the best thing. The vault when you spell vault. Yep. Fantastic. And you want to catch it so you distract it. All right. I like that. See? Very good. That's a safe cracker. So, do you like Dialed In? I do like Dialed In. Not as much as most people It's a fun game, it's not spectacular Oh my It's not spectacular Why is it not spectacular? It's very Almost linear I know you can take all the different modes But it really is It's got that structure You shoot the guy, you shoot the scoop You've got your mode to play I don't know how to get away from that either With a mode based game And I hate the sim card shot I despise the SIM card chart, especially since they all come with protectors now. It just, no matter what I do, I can't shoot directly into it. Most of the time it's a dribble from somewhere above it goes in the SIM card. It flows nicely. It's just, and the call outs are lacking a little for me. It doesn't have the excitement it should. I feel like, you know, when the blasters are coming down, it's, you know, I hear the count of three, two, one. It just doesn't do it. It doesn't do it for you? That's it. So you want more like, you know, three, two, one. Yeah, you should be doing the call-out. Jackpot one. Oh, God. Get some John Reed Stagerson there, yeah. Yep. There you go. That's what we need. Shoot the jackpot. Or the guy from World Cup Soccer, the NBA Jam guy. Of course, it's my opinion he should be in every game. I know. Oh, I know. Yep. What? Spenders need to hire you for the voiceovers. Not me for the voiceovers. I'd just be ripping off other people doing voiceovers. But I'd be cheaper than they would be. Yeah. What a fantastic shot! We have the Bruce official half yawn. Half yawn. So I think it's time to pay some bills. We can pay some bills. www.pinballlifter.com We sell lifters, filters, helpers, wheel kits, and a little bit of mods to make your pinball machine move around. Use your brain, not your back when moving your pinball machine. Two things coming up for the Silver Ball Saloon. You can check us out at www.silverballsaloon.com or check us out on our Facebook page, Silver Ball Saloon. We are opening next Wednesday. Can you repeat that? We are opening next Wednesday. The exact date is what? It is the 28th. No, wait, 29th. 29th. 29th. Wow. No, the 28th is our soft opening. We're having a couple friends come over, and I did invite Ron, but Ron cannot make it being so far away. But I did invite Ron, and I invited like 15 or 20 people. They're going to come over. We're going to have our chef just cook all the food. People are going to pay for drinks and pay for pinball, but they're going to get free food out of our friends, and they're going to try out the bar for the first time. And then the next day, we're open. So the soft opening and the hard opening. The hard opening. We're going to do it not like big advertising. Hopefully word of mouth will get people in, but I hope all the locals will come in that I know and I've supported their businesses for people. What time is the opening? We open at 3 o'clock. 3 p.m. You heard it. 3 p.m. Wednesday, the 29th. The Silver Ball Saloon goes live. I think our ribbon cutting will be later, like the week after. I get to be on the front, like the newspaper for East Rochester with my ugly mug. Oh, my. Is that going to help your business or hurt it, though? Well, I'll stand by my wife and all this look like. They'll, you know. So congratulations, Bruce. Yeah, no, I'm getting nervous now. And I'm not nervous about the business part of it. You're nervous about all the games breaking. You got it. Yeah. But usually my games hold up pretty well. But there's going to be constant beating. You want constant beating. I do want constant beating. Technically, you want them to break a lot because that means people are playing them. So you're going to be torn. You're going to be conflicted. And luckily I put down Ron's Galaga. It hasn't screwed up once. And the ball bowler's in. And the pool table's in. And Todd just finished up the jukebox today. It sounds incredible. We got a brand new AMI internet jukebox. I posted a little video on the Slam, not the Slamtail podcast page. I only did it on, I'll put it on Slamtail also. But I put it on the Silver Ball Saloon. So if you have not liked us, please like us on the Silver Ball Saloon. Or you can go to my personal page. The video is up. A little sneak peek of the arcade. It's a vertical video. It's a vertical video which Ron hates and I like. Oh. Oh, yeah. Will you tell him that vertical videos are wrong? Do I need to link to that video? I already got the link. Yeah, I'm sure you got it. Well, did you see Jeff Parsons? He put the video I was thinking of. I always think so, for the animal to tell you how bad vertical videos are. Yeah, that one, yeah. Yes, PSA right to it. Thanks, Jeff, from the Pimple Hall Players Podcast. Why pass? Other than that, yep, just come on down. 17 games we'll have in our location so far. You'll get to play some LEs, and you'll get to play a lot of premiums. Star Trek LE. You'll get to play a Monopoly Platinum Edition, of which there are how many, Bruce? Forty. Forty. You'll get to play some Paragon, some Harlem, some Stars, and some Stargazer. It's one of the few places you can actually Stargazer on location. Coin drop. I would say so, yeah. Yeah. So come on out. Now, the second thing I want to tell people about is we're going to have our first tournament on December 30th. Oh, really? Oh, really? It's going to be a four-hour match play event at the bar. We're actually going to open early to bar, so I have to con one of the bartenders to come in early, or I'll have Kathy at the bartend. The time will be probably open the door at 12, 1 o'clock we'll start, four hours of match play until 5, and then finals after that. So owner's not allowed, right? The owner is allowed. Oh, another Bruce rule again? No. Come on. I've got to get points somehow on this thing. I've got to try to make the New York State Finals and the New York State Upstate Finals. Are those points updated? You'd have to ask Mr. Tim Balls. Oh, he's doing it. I gave him responsibility to the Upstate Championship about two months ago because I knew with the bar coming up I wasn't going to be able to do it all the time now. especially now I'm doing 24-hour weekends. See, you mentioned that. It looks like the state championships for New York changed. Yeah, something changed with it. We always have the controversy here in New York because of the whole New York City thing. How do you guys in California handle it? Because you've got a pretty big state. Oh, yeah. Did you move it around? Like, how does it work? We alternate years. So one year in Northern California, next year Southern, and we go back and forth. What a smart idea. Oh, what a smart, that seems like very simple. So we've got it this year. It's nice. No more flights. We'd like to fly up there, you know, or it's a six or seven hour drive. Yeah. We have a seven hour, it's an eight hour drive between Buffalo and New York City. And for the past four years, Ron, it's been in New York City every year. It's been in New York City every year that it's existed. So however many there have been, yeah. So we said we wanted a Buffalo or a North, and they chose Buffalo, and then people in New York City are crying. Yeah, and it doesn't matter for us because we don't care. Maybe I shouldn't say that, but even from Southern California, we only have three players maybe qualifying, and everyone else from Northern California will have to come down here. Last year, I was the only one that was going to be going to Northern California, and I had to cancel out, so it was all Northern California people. All the other Silicon people went to Vegas or Bob travels who knows where. Yeah. But the thing is, it has to move around the state. Well, the thing is, in our case, the first two years, I call it the pre-Super League years. Yes. Where you had a situation where it was more even. So you had upstate people actually in the top whatever. Actually, there was a ton of us the second year. It was seven the first year and then nine the second year. Yeah, like nine. So you have people in Buffalo that are traveling all the way down to New York City to basically play in a tournament where it's like four out of seven, and if they could get swept, then okay, you're done. Right. Yeah. Thanks for driving. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. But, you know, and it actually wasn't as much a deal the next two years because you had the Super League. Yeah. So there's no way any upstate people could even get in anyway, so it really made no sense to have it anywhere other than New York City because you weren't going to be able to get in. Now, the death of the Super League, You have a situation where you have upstaters. I mean, how many of us are there this year? I haven't looked at the list. At least three. I guess the argument would be, why are we going all the way out to Buffalo for three people? But guess what? Next year it could change again. It has to move around the state for pinball to grow. Sorry, it does. But it moved, like it was going to be at Pocketeer. Yes. Now it's going to be, because I just got the email today, so let's move to Game On. Game On. I don't know where that is. It's about 10 minutes. It's closer than Niagara Falls, actually. Nice place. I will say, Jamie, we had a tournament there a couple weeks ago for the Game On fall brawl, and the games play incredible there. Jamie's done a great job keeping them running. I am happy with that. the games played great. And that was one of the reasons why they decided to move it. They want to have games that play great. That's all I'm saying. I'm going to be PC on this one. Watch me smile with my thumbs up. Ding! If I say that you're being PC, you're not being PC. You got it. You're finally catching on. Okay, so what else do we have? Oh, let's say hi to our favorite podcasts. Our favorite podcast. Oh, don't forget Flipper Fidelity and Pinball Star. Flipper Fidelity with Mike Pupo. You can buy your Guardians of the Galaxy. I have to call him tomorrow, actually, for Mr. Zach. He's getting a Guardians of the Galaxy? Nope. Oh, I'm sorry. That would have given me a heart attack. Guess who he wants me to find a price for? You're not going to say Star Wars, are you? You got it. Oh, my God. Zach, dude, seriously, come on. I don't understand that, boy. I'm speechless. I don't know what to say, man. Wow. He loves the game. He loves it. He's going to put it right next to his Jokers and his Jokers. Woo-hoo! So he wants me to get a quote for that, and I've got to get a quote for somebody else on the Guardians, Ellie. But Flipper Fidelity will be just the guy to give that quote. He will. And then if you're not looking for Stern and you're looking for one of the other manufacturers, Joe at Pinball Star. Check him out for your Houdini, your TNA. Eventually, you're going to have your, what's it, your... Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper, yes. You can also get your dialed in. You can put a deposit for your Pirates of the Caribbean. So a lot of selection for Joe Newhart also. And we have all our fellow podcasts, which let's see how many of I can name here. We got, they were actually recording today. Brody, we even talked pinball. Buffalo guys. This Flippin' Podcast, the Pinball Players Podcast, Pinball Profile. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. Yeah, the other Jeff. There's too many Jeffs. I have both Jeffs. There's so many. How do both Jeffs? Head-to-head pinball. Head-to-head pinball. Ryan, Steve, and Martin. They called me out because they were scared that I offered a place for Ryan to stay when he comes up here. Mm-hmm. And then he said he's either afraid I'm going to go George Sakai on him. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's what he said on the phone. Oh, my God. Was this the last one they did? Yes. Well, you can tell them. You can stay with me. I will not go George Takei on them. I promise. Okay. Okay? Oh, my. And go to This Week in Pinball to look at all your news, because that's what all the podcasts basically do. They do. Yes, they do. I had something else I wanted to say. It was evolving. You mentioned the head-to-head guys. It was something. Oh, I want to make a correction for them. I'm calling them out. This is something that keeps getting screwed up over and over. I've heard this on other podcasts, too. No one ever gets this right. Roller games. How do you feel about roller games, Carl? It's all right. Oh, wrong answer, wrong answer. The great game, roller games, one of the greatest games ever. Every time that's mentioned on a podcast, it's like, oh, then the show got canceled before it came out. The show was actually beating American Gladiators in the ratings, which was the point. The production company that made the show went bankrupt. Not because of the show. They just went bankrupt. And that's why the show stopped. Get your damn facts straight. That is all. Ron has all seven episodes. I have all seven episodes. I don't know. I think I saw like one episode. I just remember a wall, and I remember they had a band play at like halftime. Go for the wall! Go for the wall! I think we named all the podcasts. We are the Slam Tilt Podcast. We can be found on Facebook. Just search for Slam Tilt Podcast. We are on YouTube. All 20 or 30 view hits that our podcasts get per episode. We'll keep putting them out there to make our 20 or 30 people happy. Again, just search for Slam Tilt Podcast on YouTube. You'll find us. You'll find handy tech tips also. I'll keep putting them up there. Correspondence can be sent to slamtillpodcast at gmail.com. So please send your suggestions for a good women's theme for a pinball to slamtillpodcast at gmail.com. Again, this has been Episode 70, Rocky IV. I have to thank Carl D'Python Anghelo again for appearing on the episode. Thank you, Carl. You're always welcome. And would you like to plug anything? Oh, he has things to plug. There's Indisc. Yeah, Indisc coming up. Yeah, of course, January 12th to the 14th. NeverDrains.com is the website, or Indisc.com to buy tickets. It'll be at the Museum of Pinball, and it's going to be huge, huge. TV's on every game, so you can watch everyone play. What else to say? There's critical hit cards, if you want to buy those. That's NeverDrains.com slash critical hits. That's the only way you can find that, too. I don't have a link, because I've been lazy and haven't updated the website. streaming twitch.tv slash IE Pinball. There's an IE Pinball theme going on here, I guess. Yeah, that should be it. And we, actually, late December, we're going to run, or at Ace Goge, it's the Korean barbecue down here in Van Nuys. Great food. He's going to run a Guardians of the Galaxy launch tournament. But the difference is he's going to have two, and we're going to run a heads-up tournament, just like the Vegas tournament. Nice. For the finals. Nice. For, like, top eight or top 16. We're still figuring it out. But that should be a lot of fun. Very cool. Tell us before then, too, so we can definitely plug that again. Okay. And that's Van, how do you say that again? Yeah, Van Nuys. Van Nuys. Van Nuys, California. Did you know that's the greatest city on earth? It is the greatest city on earth. Van Nuys. You heard it here. You're the Slam Tilt Podcast. Thanks to everybody. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, David Rush. Can you fly? Oh my, my Oh my, my You can do it If you try Oh my, my Oh my, my Guaranteed to keep you alive