That's my gripe with them. I just dislike like 90% of them. There's only a couple that I'm like, these add to the game. This is a tough question for me because I feel like it's hard to single out specific things as good or bad because you can find good and bad implementations of a lot of specific things. Things that I wish I could see more of in modern games, though, specifically, would be like inline drops. I really like inline drops. Yeah inline drops are sick I really like it when inline drops have a progressively meaner feedback out of them as you go on Like on Frontier you hit the first bear and it safe You hit the second bear and it kind of rolls out and it kicking more towards the middle And then like the third bear, it's like you've got to nudge, otherwise it's going to drain down the middle. I really like that. In general, I like for a real generic gripe, I guess. I think modern pinball is way too safe and pretty much every shot on a modern pinball machine feeds back to an in lane, which I think removes a huge aspect of what makes pinball fun, which is fighting for ball control. The ball's supposed to be wild. And when you're playing all these modern games and you can just sit there and rail shots and they all come right back to a flipper, it just means whoever has the best shot accuracy is going to be the best at the game. And pinball wasn't always just shot accuracy. It's supposed to be ball control too, at least to me. So that's something I really wish we saw more of. I agree. And that's just kind of like the way modern pinball design has gone. People like those games. I think a lot of them are very fun. But I think there'd be a way to kind of do that, to handle that or like to balance that better. I think if you're going to have all friendly shots, you need to incentivize hurry ups or incentivize combos. Something to play, play on the fly. You got to force people to play on the fly because if you're making every shot a safe feed and you're allowing people to cradle up for like any shot, that's a significant amount of points. You're just making the game now play slower and safer, which sucks. That's not what pinball should be. At least not to me. Harry Williams said the ball was wild and like it's becoming less wild. Yeah, I think I talked to some I'm reading my notes back here and I must have talked about this. There must be another similar question. But yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on it. I agree with the upper play fields are almost always bad. I don't mind upper flippers and stuff if you can't cradle on them. But if it's an upper play field where you can cradle because it's like whitewater, I don't know if that actually counts as an upper play field or upper play field. That's the one where it's like that's the one I think of like this is great. This upper play field is great. See, you can't cradle on that. Yeah, one flip at it. That feels, it's like an elevated upper flipper shot. It's not really an upper play field. If you can't cradle, it doesn't slow the game down. Because you get one shot and then the ball has to drain out. And I like the black hole lower play field. That's the other one I really like. It's dangerous. You die in the lower play field and you die in real life. Yep. Yeah. So it's the things that just kind of. It can be done well. It's just not usually done well. Yep. In my opinion. And then one thing that we've talked about a lot on the show is center ramps. Alex hates center ramps, dude. Only when they're real center ramps. This has been a big divisive thing. If it's a little bit off center, it's no longer a center ramp. It doesn't mean the game's necessarily good. Like, in Adam's Family Stairs, it's not a center ramp. It's a center ramp. It's easier from one flipper than the other. Oh, you can hit it from both. It has to be dead fucking center for me to call it a center ramp. I don't want to start naming specific games, but if you can think of a game right now and you're like, well, that's a center ramp, it probably is. We just did a bunch of System 11 games. A lot of those Python, Angelo, Barry, Ousler games from that era, center ramp games. almost always a mistake. So yeah, there's a bit of what I like, what I don't like. Oh, we got a question from Ben M. Every episode is a little treasure. I like that. That's nice. I especially appreciate the interviews with the giants and geniuses of the pinball industry. The recent episodes with Roger Sharp painted a great picture of what it was like working in pinball during the golden era of the 1990s. They also touched a little on what it was like playing pinball during that time but i'd like to know more about that side of things and what it was like playing on location back then yeah ben m we would like to know yeah totally because we're both relatively young compared to at least this era of pinball yeah when i was a kid growing up like i played pinball in the 90s as a small little child and no one knew what the fuck we were doing we all just flapped like the flippers and you would try to hit like that's why i loved medieval madness as a little kid because it was like oh you could just hit the thing and it did a thing you know everyone would lose their fucking mind i wonder how we would get more of this information if you're an old guy that played a lot of pinball back in the day i would genuinely be curious to just kind of like hear about it like especially if it's yeah playing pinball during the 90s like playing in the heyday especially if you played in tournaments and were like paying attention if you were waiting for if you saw and recognized new games and stuff i would like to hear more from that yeah why don't you send us an email to wedgeheadinfo at gmail.com and we'll uh discuss it maybe we'll run a whole episode on like what location pinball was like in your experience i think that that would answer ben's question i think that'd be kind of an interesting compared to then and now like that'd be interesting yeah we'll work it into an episode somehow if we don't just read it off okay next question's from mitch c he asks how does one beat zoe were able in a pinball tournament. I like Zoe answered this. This was on our Instagram. Big Mitch man over on the East Coast. He was pinball over Boston. He asked us this question. I think he just finished second to Zoe in a tournament. And she responded to this comment directly with one doesn't and the nail Paul Fish emoji. Yeah, Mitch, I'd love to tell you how, but I would need to know the answer as well because I've lost to Zoe more than any other single person yeah i think i think you just give up you shoot for second man there's nothing wrong with nothing wrong with second i the things i know about zoe is that she's an insanely good player she's a very patient player and she's super competitive so the only thing i would say is i want to try to play mind games with zoe she doesn't need any extra bulletin board material so if you're talking shit that ain't gonna work like yeah you can't get in her head you know So she's a killer. If you're really in a tournament and you want to beat her, you just have to pray that she has a bad day. Yeah, or just a bad game. Because if she's playing good, you're fucked. Yeah, I agree. Okay, next question. I think it's from the same Mitch. He asked, if you could have a pinball location in any city in any decade in history, what would you choose? Decade would be the 1970s for sure. That was like peak pinball popularity. That's when they were making the most games. Pinball was everywhere. It was mainstream. Like, I would love to be in the 70s. You would be there for the switch from electromechanical to solid state. You get to see the small flipper turn into the three inch flipper. And back then, dude, operators are making fucking real money, dude. Like, do you want a second location? Hell yeah. We're opening up one, two, three, four and five, dude. Like, this shit's earning, dude. They would just be pulling buckets of coins out of cash boxes. dream city i thought a lot about this because there'd be a lot of cities in the u.s that'd be fun but i think mine would probably be mexico city i love mexico this 1970s were the time like mexico was like undergoing kind of like modernization the border was open we still traded a lot with them and it was before kind of like the drug wars and stuff and like to my knowledge pinball's never really been big in mexico but i don't know why it couldn't be especially back then yeah uh so this would just be like an excuse for me to live in mexico and i would fucking love it dude love it living in the 70s in mexico city that'd be fucking sick dude i would love that i'll just imagine you in like the the fucking nacho libre when he goes on his like date night outfit oh the one sure dude just be rocking the white pant blue shirt nacio your clothes look expensive thank you yeah my answer also kind of selfish like the mexico pick would probably be Tokyo or somewhere in Japan in the 1980s, mainly because I love Tokyo and Japan. Yeah. And yeah, it's also the 80s specifically because that's when pinball completely died there. Prior to that, they were kind of giving it a go for a bit. Sega was actually making domestic pins in Japan for a while. And then it just kind of died off when video games boomed there. I would love to have the chance, you know, if you could somehow sway history and keep pinball successful in Japan, seeing what it looked like now there would be insane. like that could impact things the 1980s were like i mean just a crazy decade for japan it was like a massive economic boom that led to a huge bubble economy but it was very cool led to a lot of cool shit so that's my pick lots of cool cars oh yeah lots of cool cars that's all right 80s japan tokyo yeah that'd be a good good pinball arcade yeah that'd be sick next question is from this must have been from a reddit reddit post yeah we got flannel heart asking or saying not only does Alan have a great lineup, but I'd like to give a shout out to one of Wedgehead's bartenders who, upon my last visit there, told the most annoying child I've ever been around to, hey, knock it off, when they would not stop hollering nonsense phrases the top of their lungs. I'm not going to name names, but tipping was good that day. All right, Flannery. I got to clarify, this isn't my lineup, right? Like I am, try on the show, I'm like, I'm one half of Wedgehead. I have my business partner, Chris Rhodes. Chris Rhodes has been an operator for 20 years. These are his collection of games he's got 150 plus games we rotate them in and out of wedge we're not blessed with space uh we have room for we squeeze 24 games and into our building at a time uh because rent is fucking expensive dude but we are blessed with rodsey's kind of like his deep collection of games from all eras we rotate them in all the time so it feels like we have more something's at least fresh you know but uh yeah we don't put up without a control kids i don't think anywhere should yeah like i even if you're the place that is family oriented yeah it ruins pinball spots that's the thing i responded to this on reddit but just to reiterate i said that i like that wedge allows kids i think it's good to expose kids to pinball i enjoy i have nine nieces and nephews and it's like i like having little kids play pinball but i like that wedge head doesn't allow kids to run the place and if this was a bartender i'm thinking or i'm assuming it was the little kid's lucky he didn't get suplexed but uh yeah it's just one of those things that like rowdy kids can ruin a spot for everybody you can ruin a spot for another family there with kids yeah if you've got kids don't let them scream that's not the point of taking them to a pinball let them scream run jump and like I mean, just the game should be hopefully stimulating enough. Yeah, teach them how to play pinball. That's what you're all there for, right? Just don't treat it like a daycare. That's really what it is. And we don't allow that at Wedge. It's like kids have to be supervised. Yep. You want to read the next one? This is from Don De La Mort off of Reddit. Love Wedgehead the bar. Love Wedgehead the podcast. Congrats on the year. Thank you, Don. I'd love to hear some discussion on pinball etiquette. Like, I know Wedgehead has signs up that say something to the effect of no camping. I've often found campers going for five or six plays in a row at free play spots, especially on whenever the brand new machine is in at that location. I'm fairly new to going out and playing regularly, so I've been wondering about any commonly agreed upon etiquette and sharing space on games. I figure more social people might just simply go up and say, hey, can I have the next game? But since, for example, Wedgehead specifically put a sign up, it makes me feel like there's some nuance to the matter. personally i'd love to not have to ask feels a little weird seems as if there's 20 sick ass pins to choose from at the bar you might as well just play a game then move on and play something else keep it circulating but i also guess i live in a society and other people might think differently than me that makes you just think of stanza we live in a society yeah is there general culture etiquette within pinball enthusiasts that dictates how people should behave with camping and queuing on games at coin op places do people put quarters down like on pool tables how to earn replays and matches get handled so it's always more awkward to deal with this i feel like at coin op spots because if someone coins of a machine if they have like a coin break where it's like oh put in five dollars and get 10 credits instead of five if someone has 10 credits on there it's kind of like well they kind of just like rented that machine out for the next hour and i hate that we have the signs up because it's just a common problem at any pinball spot it's i think it's usually worse at coin op spots because yeah that's what i'm saying you can't really expect a player to leave behind their matches or replays and just let someone else jump in and take them because you paid for them or you earned them right and a lot of places will also incentivize the exact opposite of what you would want by giving players a price break for putting in more money out the gate right so it's like if they were just going to put a buck in and play and then walk away but now they're putting in two to get three plays or four to get five plays or whatever it is you know i don't know if there's really much you can do at those spots other than being assertive and offering to like add credits to the game that you play in between them yeah but i will say that at wedge we put those signs up and whenever we get a new game like we just got x-men everyone wants to play x-men everyone's like you got x-men yes we have it it's on free play we want you to play the shit out of it we want you to get your wristband and play it as much as you want but we do have our bartenders be like, yeah, you know, it's a popular game. Just make sure, you know, you move along. Like we have our bartenders will say that to customers as they come in and we're giving them their wristband. We don't go out of our way to say that to every customer when they come play pinball. We have the signs up in the room like, hey, don't camp on a machine. But when we have a new hot game like that, we will absolutely just be like, you know, just like make sure other people get to play, too. Yeah. And in general, I think that's what I mean, if you're listening to this podcast you probably already are kind of you have some social awareness regarding this but it's like when you're playing a new game just even if you think you're the only person in there look up and look around before you start the next one if someone's hovering you can ask if they want to get on it it's kind of like on you when you're playing to make sure no one else wants before you just keep going on game especially at a free play place i really wish that people would go back to the quarter on the glass yeah that would be so nice if i didn't have to talk to people and I could just slip a quarter on the glass and they would be like, okay, I need to like come up for air for a second. That's no one will know what you're doing. If you do that, that's a thing that existed back in the day that nobody does anymore. And so the people that are the problematic campers will not know what you're doing. Uh, I think usually the best thing to do is just be like, Hey, do you mind if I hop? Like, like you said, you got to just go out of your way to ask, be like, Hey, do you mind if I hop on the next one? If I see someone kind of start up another game right after they finish one without looking at that point i'm like ah fuck them i gotta go say something because otherwise they're just gonna keep doing this yeah you just go all right what even when you guys finish that game i like to get on yeah that's what i usually do it's like okay they got two in a row without looking that's you know i'll be like can i grab next and that's fair yeah it's fair you got to be assertive unfortunately i think there's kind of no way around it yeah that is kind of one of the rough spots though okay next question from tk turk he says i love listening to your podcast my way home from work it's great my question do you think a pinball arcade is a viable business idea without alcohol and food i have a friend that wants to build one but doesn't want to be bothered with alcohol which i think is a big part of how to build a successful modern arcade what do you think alan um he's asking me right yeah no yeah i don't think it's probably a good idea do you need me to elaborate um i'll elaborate you're not gonna make enough money off okay so they're okay so the thing is with with pinballs and arcades right there's a reason why they died the problem is and you'll still hear it when you go into forums or anywhere else people be like man that ain't good oh these games cost a dollar now they're too expensive you're like yeah that's just kind of keeping up with inflation that's actually lagging behind inflation but in people's mindsets the the value of one game of pinball is less than really what it should be. And so you have to subsidize it with other things. That's why arcade bars have become the model because you can sell them something else. The thing with pinball is it costs a lot of money. They take a lot of expertise and time and labor to maintain. They take up a lot of real estate. Real estate square footage is very expensive. So like trying to get people at 50 or 75 cents a play. It's not that it can't be done, but it's hard to do in big metro areas where the rents are bigger. If you inherited a building or you own a building, the math is a little bit different. If you're a rich person and you could just be like, hey, this is kind of my hobby. We have 10 people on staff, including me, and we're a small spot. There's no way we could do it with just pinball. Absolutely no way. There's just no way. Running a pinball-only spot with no other income can be done. And I can only say that because there's some that exist. But I don't know of any that exist in a major city or without something subsidizing the business. The one I will say, and they listen to the show, they're our friends, the electric bat. They're, you know, I know Kale and Rachel are always like, oh, Pinball can make money. And we're like, they've got a unique situation there. You go back and listen to our operator spotlight on them. but they basically they're in like a little strip mall next to a bar that's been there for 30 or 40 years it's like a staple of the scene and they're open for like something crazy like 20 hours a day or something they got the space next to it and there's an entrance through the bar to their arcade so they could be open way longer hours they don't necessarily have to be there they don't have to directly staff it at all hours that the bar is open plus the bar is still there so people can buy drinks and then go play the game so it's not necessarily still not only an arcade it'd be much harder to do as only a strict arcade yeah not impossible maybe you can't make any hard and fast rules for any of this but it's definitely going to be an uphill battle doing it without food and alcohol at least you can do it without food because it depends in oregon you can't Because you have to serve food if you serve liquor. So I would say as far as going back to this question was because his friend wants to open one without dealing with the alcohol. I would say start a route instead. Go operate pinball. Don't worry about anything except for the pinball then. Yeah, totally. And you can actually make money. It doesn't have to be your full-time job. It's just that would be a way better. Put it in somebody else's bar. Right. Or other public space. It's already being paid by the alcohol. Yes. And you just give them a split. you put in your games you get some income out of it you can kind of create a scene that way i would definitely start with a route especially if you don't want to handle the all-encompassing running a bar running a bar restaurant with an arcade if you're not looking to run a bar i feel like you should start a route yeah at least as an entry like if it goes amazingly then you get a set the new yeah yeah you can start an arcade later but a route it should be the number one way to start yes that was my official response okay next question from uh jim and hillman on reddit he said congratulations guys one year is very impressive thank you he said to here's to many more years of your awesome content with so many great games out now and more rumored to come out what is your dream theme game and what is dream one dream innovation you would like to see implemented in future machines so i responded saying i responded on reddit right away and i was like dream themes are something that like we've always been like i don't know if anybody cares like what me and alan want to see but we're gonna get into it a little bit because you know well we they asked we said we said who cares and then somebody's like well i care yeah so i guess like you asked okay so alan what's your dream game i don't really people ask me this all the time i just don't you don't want to get your hopes up almost it's like kind of apart from me yeah i don't really think about it to be honest like most of my favorite games are just like games before licenses were even a thing or the most common way right like a lot of time it's just like a very talented artist create something cool yeah again i like that but i know we're not going to get a lot of that in the future you're not going to get another whitewater yeah i like i understand we're not going to get that anymore but if they're licensed and i like the game i like a lot of licensed games where i don't like the license like i just play and i'm like oh i like this you're like bram stoker's dracula i've never seen the movie but i like the game quite a bit and i feel like they nailed the theme and i don't know i mean i like both that's one i like both but i would say like guardians of the galaxy or stranger things i like both of those games i don't like either of the original ips yeah like i recognize that they're popular but like i don't personally like them but i like the games then there's games where it's like i like the theme but i don't like the game so it's like i don't know it's rare for me to like both like for both of them to come together go awesome theme awesome game like that's rare for me yeah just uh demolition man okay that's the that's the number one that's it okay but if assuming an awesome theme is going to get an awesome game what's your best uh what's your best for business pick oh yeah i was gonna say i was gonna answer this in two ways yes best for business pokemon pokemon alan's a big pokemon guy he loves a little he loves them like i played it as a kid i don't i'm not still into pokemon i wouldn't even be like oh here's the pikachu edition or whatever like it wouldn't matter but like i you imagine if they did the le's and it was like you get to pick your starter as that you know like oh here's your charizard or squirtle or you know i just know that this like we said about taylor swift this would go nuts on location oh yeah this would open up the floodgates to new players and for me as an operator like i know rodsey like i even told rodsey because this is like a rumored one i'm like dude if they announce this buy three out the gate i'm gonna put it immediately like yeah the game doesn't even have to be good this will do well yeah exactly right like even if it's not good but best for me like if you're asking me personally i don't think these would be commercially viable but big trouble in little china is one of my favorite movies of all time i'm a big carussell fan we throw carussell birthday party every year yep it is march 17th for anyone that makes a war makes the trip out we throw a big birthday party for him every year maybe he'll come out this year yeah maybe it'll be this year sign some posters for us but yeah big trouble in little china or cliffhanger i really like those late 80s and early 90s like action cheesecake movies like they're just goofy and stupid and i love them i don't think either of these have a lot of mainstream appeal now like ideally they would have been made in the 90s but it would be kind of weird seeing one of the real kind of like 90s cheesy movies made with the modern like rgbl like it would not look it'd be weird it should have been made in the 90s that's the hard part about the like doing the dream theme okay for me me personally number one ultimate dream theme like if they if they were just like okay we'll make whatever pinball machine you want right now same answer as before taylor swift it would make my wife very happy i know zoe likes taylor swift so it'd make her happy yeah and make a lot of people happy make so many fucking people into pinball people and so many people and it would just be a very nice shake-up I don't think there could be one theme that would have more of a positive impact on the hobby and I'd say that like earnestly like I'm like I really really think doing a big pop game would be very good for the hobby and I hope it's something that we see soonish as far as like other stuff that's not realistic like just getting kind of into like my actual personal dream themes that we never see that are going to remain dreams I would love to see someone do any of like the cool like really visually striking anime movies or series that people bring up all the time There's ones like Ghost in the Shell or Akira or Evangelion. Initial D would be insane for me because that's just, like, my favorite anime of all time. I don't know if we're going to get an anime theme ever. it just seems like it's like they license that shit out constantly all day they make little toys seems like the closest we would get would be pokemon i mean i know they made the show but i don't think anyone really considers that true anime do they i don't know yeah it's nice i mean it's not really like that's what i mean i think that's what it would be like that's what we would get anyway but yeah that's why you're like but anything like even if they did a dragon ball z i would be hyped it's just not something i would buy myself immediately would have to be one of like the big cool looking themes for me to go for it yeah um realistically like something that i think we actually see in the next few years i think we do see another john carpenter movie very soon that's my guess this isn't like an actual rumor it's just like i'm like i bet we see a john carpenter movie really soon and i bet alan blows his fucking brains out of spooky builds because it's gonna not be how he wants it so we'll see i think that's the problem with stream themes is like man that's kind of what i wanted to wrap up with that because i think the hard part it's like be careful what you wish for it was easy for me to really enjoy guardians and stranger things because i don't like the ip but the people that wanted those games and then they got them there's a lot of people like it's not how i wanted it and i'm like i don't care I love, like, if you haven't picked up throughout the course of this episode, I'm just kind of a weeb in general, and I like Japanese stuff, and I really wanted a kaiju game of any kind. I mean, obviously, I wanted a Godzilla game. Ultraman came out, it got announced, and I bought it immediately. Godzilla got announced a little bit later, and I was like, eh, it's a stir, and I'll play it everywhere, and I ended up buying one. So I do kind of buy stuff based off of theme, and it's hard if the game's not that good. That's all I'll say. You have the perfect theme, Godzilla, and they make the perfect game, Godzilla. Like, it's, they both, it came together. But, like, that's rare. That one came together. And so that's why it's like, okay, it can hit. But, like, there's a lot of themes that I do like that I don't like the games very much. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I mean. That's it. That's our dream theme talk. They got to make us a Pokemon Taylor Swift game. Combine them. Combo.