Quiet, we're on the air. Hello everybody. This broadcast is coming to you through the courtesy of Brito. And it's six delicious flavors. Chocolate, vanilla, cranberry, strawberry, and raspberry. Ouch! It's still raspberry. Mmm. Take that! Now keep quiet or I'll suck ya again. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, his name is Dave. Hello Dave. Hello George. Knocking the rust off, I can't believe how long it's been since I've recorded, but I want to thank you and John for a very successful podcast in February. A little cringy at times, and you know the part that I cringed at. John removing a digit with the saw. Don't elaborate. So I want to thank John personally. The numbers in February and so far through March have been incredible. Um, March specifically, the last couple of weeks, we're at least 50 fold up a day. And Dave and I had this conversation this past week. I attribute it to all you poor slobs that are waiting in line, uh, at the airport. That's what I think. But it could be that Dave and, uh, John, uh, really pulled the numbers. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Very easy to talk with John. We could have probably went for hours if it wasn't for a dinner bell ringing for his wife and said, you guys got to stop. Well, let's go to an email I received through, I think, the podcast. You've heard from this gentleman before, Steppen, I think it's Gee, G-E-E or Gee. A good letter no matter what. He commented on your episode, a fantastic episode, both entertaining and educational. From this episode I learned why Steve Young's repro drop targets often break and I should never buy a secondhand table saw. All right. There, we're learning something. Very good. All right. So that was one accolade we received. Let me pull this up on... So we got one from... You might have gotten the same one from Mithos? Oh, Mithos. Yeah, did I forward that to you or did you get that direct? No, no, no. This is out on Pinside. Okay. This is the podcaster, you know, let's beat up on podcasters, influencers and call them blowhards. Did you see this? No, I try not to... Well, right. You don't want to. He called us out and I want to thank him because he got seven pluses. So that means all you that like us just won't reply. You'll just give him a thumbs up. So he said, I really only listen to the classic pinball podcast. It's old school and with some repair stories and no drama. Once in a while I'll turn into slam tilt, but I have to be in the mood. Okay, I think that's a good one. I got something from Methos too. His name is actually Mark. Okay, what did Mark have to say? He said, hello Dr. Dave, I agree with your top Sterns. I have all those except flight 2000 which is coming next week. Don't know why I never picked one up. Probably because they are pretty common. You have a nine ball on the list. I have one and it's a chore to keep it running. It's all about those little switches in the left there. They're going to be just right. We still have some gremlins that serve us from time to time. Yep, most nine balls do. But that game is something else, I'll tell you. You can tell that Steve Kirk tried to sketch or stretch the limits of what Stern could do or would put up with at that time. I read an interview with him and he was pretty pissed that they released it without it being complete, but they needed the cash flow to get it out the door. I love the game. Actually, that's the much changed with Stern. Stern is still releasing games way too early and they, oh, we'll do it in code later. So, not much has changed. I love the game. It's like nothing else in that era. I've had Cheetah, Catacomb, Ali, Big Game, but they're all gone. They were all okay, but just didn't grab me as much as the others did. I will definitely get the updated code for Flight 2000 that you recommended. All of these are games that are not intended. Okay, that leads me into this, talking about games. Grant, thanks again for sending us this top ten list from Mr. Mustache to Sexton. This is his top ten list for games 1980 to 1984. Did you happen to watch this? There was some familiar games in there. It looked like actually from my game room in my games. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. He robs the pictures and puts it in the montage. He robbed the video. Yeah, he robbed my 8-ball deluxe, I think, maybe, no, not the LE. He robbed the one from like 84 or 85, whatever that one is, and then the old, the original school one from 81. I will say, whenever he shows my stuff versus the other crap that's on there, the other crap that's on there looks kind of beat up and rubbed down with a dirty diaper. And my stuff shines nicely, so hats off. So let's go through this list real quick. And what I want you to keep in mind is, are there any games here, you can stop me and say, this is a game I would replace. All in all, the game is a success, and it is a success. But what I'm wondering, you know, because there are three games that I wouldn't put in there, what's missing from Bally and Classic Stern that we might put in, you know, in place of the ones he picked? Okay? A lot to remember there, but you'll get it when we go on. Okay, sure. Go ahead. So here we go. Number 10, Black Knight. I think it's this. I wouldn't say that belongs in the top 10. Okay, okay. So we'll come back to replacement in a minute. The numbers really don't matter. Should I comment on each one of these or wait till the end? Yeah, well, you can comment along the way. So number nine, Frontier. Not really. Okay, okay. You got two now you got to replace. Okay, number eight, Centaur. Yeah, I'd say it belongs there. Okay, remember you got to put replacements. You got two you got to replace. eliant, Alien Poker Okay, I have a comment on this. Yeah It's got the you know across the playfield plunge. Why would you put skateboard in there instead? Skateball ... Is Alien Poker that much better than skateboard? Yeah, Alien Poker has cool artwork and I don't know. Skateball is a poor man's ... Okay, let's keep going, so you are ambivalent to that one. Skateball is favor ... it's a poor man's fathom, that's Skateball. Okay, you got two you gotta replace still. Number six, Sea Witch. I think that stays. No, no, I don't think so. Okay, now you got three you gotta replace. Okay, we're gonna keep going. Eight Ball Deluxe, that definitely- Definitely, that's in there, yep. Okay, so these are the two that I found that shouldn't be on the list. Time Fantasy and Space Shuttle. I like Space Shuttle. No, those should be, those are B games, no. Okay, so now you've got five games you've got to replace. There's a reason why this guy's a pornstache, man. So number two and number one is Fathom and Stargazer. I'm assuming that you keep those on there. Yes. Okay, I'm putting you on the spot. So come up with five games between 1980 and 1984. I think Timmy should stick to ramp games, just saying. Okay, so you're not coming up with a list. I'll give you a list. Half this list has got to be replaced in your eyes. Okay, alright, so let's see. I would put in star...oh no, 81 to 80...what years again? 80 to 84. 80 to 84, okay. Well, we got Quicksilver, we got...did you put Stargazer in there? Yep. Okay. That was number one. I put Nineball in there. Okay. I would put in... Okay, that's two out of five. Flash Gordon. Oh, there you go. I put that one in there. Good one. Good call. I miss it. Any more I got to put in? Oh, you only got three out of five to replace. Go ahead. Okay. I got two more to go. How about Xenon? Would you put that in there? Xenon... Yeah, I'd put it in there. Not a strong game, but a lot of memories in that game. We're not ranking them one to ten. I just pulled and said, look, you already eliminated half the list. I only eliminated two. You took five out. It's 80 to 85, right? 80 to 84 for the third time. 80 to 84. Okay, okay. Well, I gotta get my date straight. Okay. Okay, you got three. You gotta come up with two. I'll let you slide for a little bit. If you come up with something while we're talking, you can be like, okay. Okay. Okay? You can think about it. All right. It's not that big a deal. We've talked way too much about Tim Sexton. I'd say Flight 2000 belongs in there. Okay, okay. Okay, so you're going heavy. There's no other than Alien Poker. That's the only outsider you would put in other than classic. Yeah, Williams games from that time just are not that strong. They're just not that strong. No, I'm trying to even think of Gottlieb, not that strong. You're talking Bally and Stern. And 1980 was key for Stern. It was their best year. 81 was pretty much the best year for Bally and 79 for Bally. So, I mean, 81, Class of 81, you got Fathom, 8-Bow Lux, sort of Medusa but not really, Flash Gordon, Lee, Flash Gordon, Xenon. Yeah, that's one that I think should have been on there. Yeah, he missed that one. And it actually has some sort of ramp stuff there, so I'm surprised he missed that one. And then the Stern stuff, you got Quicksilver, Stargazer, Flight 2009 Ball, you could sneak Sea Witch in there, I guess, It is a good game. Right. So, okay, so you pulled that one back in, so you're whole. Sure. Okay, so I think we talked about this before, but I don't remember and I didn't go back to listen. So real quick, I've been getting emails on these head-to-head pinballs, and I just want to go over them one more time. So you've got this thing called Super Panic Ball from Japan, that's an import. I saw a picture of it. It's like, okay, you know, lots of bells, whistles, lights, etc. But the two that I want to focus on are the one that you and I played, Battle Station, Myth Pinball. They're getting ready to sell them in April and deliver them by the end of the year. Don't like that, but anyway, that's their business model. Then you got this other one, Monster League Hockey, that guy Jake Danzig we had on with... Oh, yeah, Danzig, yes. With the help of the General. Yeah, General Lee. Yes, he had the Daisy Dukes on. So he's got a head to head. And again, he's getting ready to price, I don't know when the delivery is. So those are both taking shape and those should be out sometime in 26. So do you. What do you got? What would you like? Well... Okay, let's see. A good story, how's that? A good story. Alright, well here's an interesting story. So, I was on site working on a T2 that was, the guy said it was pretty nicely restored and I'd say, yeah, it looked pretty good, new clear rubber around and so forth and new flipper bats and all that kind of stuff. But the flippers were crap and he had a sound issue and something else going on. www.NorthstarIT.co.uk T2 Williams from 1990s and T3 from the early 2000s from Stern. So it's weird that you would call me about it. It's just a weird quinky dink. They call it coincidence. They do. Coincidence. So it was a weird one. So let's see, what else did I do that's fun here? With that T2, so, you know, it was a nice restore, new cabinet decals, new CPU, nice Playfield, silicone rubber all around, but why oh why didn't they rebuild the frickin' flippers with new mechs inside, with new plunger links? They just left it all slop in there. Because that takes time. So does cleaning a Playfield putting rubber on. That takes a lot of time. He even replaced the coil stops and bats. He replaced the coil stops and the bats, but not the key stuff like the pawls and plungers. That was just dumb. Incomplete. Yeah. Incomplete. Oh, and then I got another call. I got a call from, yeah, our friends in Jupiter, Florida. Oh, yeah, you said that. You know, I see them everywhere. The pinball dudes. We're dudes. We're pinball. But, yeah, not so much. Let's sell a lot of new games. They sell a lot of stuff on eBay. And it's, you know, sort of, you know, sort of, whatever. Sort of sorted? Sort of wiped down. Sort of sorted? Yeah. I got a guy... Not too sorted, just sort of sorted. I got a guy who got a Gorgar. Dream game for him, like his kid. He's up in New Hampshire. How long before the disappointment? Let's see. I think day two. Day two. And it started not working. It had all original boards in it. And he said, you know, I just want this game really nice. I just, can you come pick it up and do your thing? I don't care when you do it. You know, so I picked it up and it's like, wow, boy. I just can't believe it. Were there any holes in the wall near where that game was? There was holes in the bottom. There were holes in the bottom of the cabinet that they drilled for some frickin' reason. Big holes. How do you know he didn't kick the bottom of the cabinet? I wouldn't doubt it. So more, more pinball dudes, more, I guess they have such a presence on eBay and they have a really, they have like all five star or 100% reviews. I don't understand how they're doing it when people are getting disappointed and they're calling me to clean up the mess on aisle five, but it's really, really weird. I've got a few clients from across the country that lately it's weird about Supermans, you know, and... That's not an easy game to repair as you've talked about in previous episodes. I'm in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman! It's Superman. It's Superman, yes. So they keep calling me about this thing and I guess people keep buying these things. No one knows how to fix them. They buy them, you know, cheap and it's their dream game. Well, you don't do the homework knowing the backstory that they're notoriously finicky and that you really, really need someone like you to spend a lot of time to get it to work and even then, you need to be close by on call. And even then, very few people work on these Atari boards and the guy up who was doing Your plan may be set to gain more establishment than finds. You need time with Rs, up to $30, 000 more than what you've earned with Interim Pips. At your expense. Yeah, that's right. Don't go straight to 700 bucks when you're very, very competitive, here we go, well check in RI. All of these are great. I think you could definitely make the whole of the game nice and the boards are good, but it's kind of an iffy proposition sometimes with Superman games. Let's see. What else have we got here? I've got something I want to ask you. All right. I've got a lot more stuff. Go ahead. What do you got? So, did you talk to John about the CPR sale last month? Oh, yeah. He went and grabbed. Oh, yeah. He went and got several. Oh, you did too. I did too. I just went and grabbed. I grabbed one because I have a stack of playfields as high as tall as me that I just know I going to get to them So why am I going to buy more But still if know like I think they are that money in the bank That just a matter of do you get to the project Does somebody need it for a project? Right. Or do you just want to sell it and get some money back? Yeah, I mean, I could have actually loaded up and just down the road, you know, sell it all, make a couple hundred bucks here and there in each one, you know, could have done that, but... Okay, continue with your story, sorry. Alright, so then, so Stern warranty. I got a Stern warranty call. Oh, that's right. You wanted to tell this story. Yeah, so, ring ring. Yeah, um, they told, well first I got an email from someone at Stern. Yeah, can you do a warranty call for us? It's a brand new Star Wars Fall of the Empire. It's very appropriate. You sure it's not Fail of the Empire? You failed the empire. Yeah, fail. I said, yeah, okay. I'm assuming, which you never should do, I haven't done a warranty call for a long time for them, that typically years ago, you go do a warranty call and they ask you what your rates are, what your approximately is going to be, and you give them a ballpark and say they agree or don't agree, and then you go from there. Then you do the work, customer's happy, they sign off on it, Stern sends you a check 30 Well, they changed something. So this time around, I didn't realize till later, he said, okay, yeah, great. You can do it. Well, you know, Joe Shortsleaf here, he's going to be giving you a call to come out and work on his game. And we were sending the parts and it's a, we think it's a, it's a, a string of GI bulbs, lower left is all out. And it's a known thing. We've got a bad batch of sockets from China or something, and they should take and short out and cause a problem. So it's okay. So I called him up and I said I made a point, went there, looked at the game and I'm looking at it and then I'm isolating these sockets in question. There's nothing wrong with any of these sockets. So they gave me a whole bunch of sockets to replace and it ain't gonna do anything and that's not it. So I think I found, I found something else wrong. I found like a short somewhere and it took out, I think it took out one of the node boards. I replaced a node board they gave me and something else and I got it running. It was actually running. I said, oh, this is great. I've had this game for a week and it hasn't worked at all since brand new. He did buy it from Mike Dodona down there, the biggest Stern distributor in Milford, Connecticut. Automated? Automated. And he stands by his stuff, even when Stern might not. So Stern kept sending parts and so I got an email later that night from the customer that says, hey, sorry to say it but the, oh, first the customer, as I'm leaving the customer, do I owe anything? He's like, no, no, no, Stern's going to pay me. I should have known right there, there's something like, why does he want to pay me? He's like, no, no, Stern's got this. I late when I got home I looked up it's like oh now it says that Stern will cover has very limited warranty they will cover parts but labor is on the customer so the customer was supposed to pay me labor for this not Stern so here I am it's like okay great that was dumb sounds like sounds like a free repair for that guy kind of but at least the guy was like I told the guy later on it's like I had no idea this is this way but this is how it is and and by the way here's my bill you know And on top of that, it's hard for me to give him the bill because he emailed me and said, well, the game's not working again. It still failed. So now I'm in the middle here. I don't have, you know, Stern's trying to say to go out there and do something. I'm not getting paid. I'm just doing free labor. You ran, didn't you? Did I what? You ran, didn't you? Oh, I did ran, but I talked to him. I said, listen, I think you have a lemon and you should get a new game. I said, you know, let's not quit messing around. So he talked I talked to Mike Dodona and Mike agreed to send him a whole new game, take the other game back and work it out and fix it at the shop or something. And then I talked to Stern and I emailed them and said, hey, you know, this is what you owe me and this and that. And actually, 30 days later, you know what came in? I got a check from Stern. Yay. Ring the bell. So that was a happy ending on that one. But am I going to do a Stern warranty call in the future? You keep saying that, but you get these phone calls. You know, stop. You know better. You know what the problem is, George? I have a hard time saying no. I know you do. I'm too much of a nice guy is the problem. That's the problem. You need to get a little pitbull in you. I got to be like you, George. I got to spend some time with you. Yeah, bro. What did Steve Ritchie say? Oh, you bark. Oh, about you? He said you bark. Oh, about you? You don't remember him saying that to me? He goes, you bark. I don't remember that. Yeah, I'm gonna find that. Anyway, we'll come to him in a little bit. I got something I want to talk to you about, and I know some of the answers. Just bear with me for a minute. Okay. So did you watch any Olympics? I know we're rewinding, folks, but I haven't recorded since January. I got this list of all kinds of crazy stuff. That's good, because I'm going to go back in the Wayback Machine too and talk about some other February stuff too, since you're talking February. But, yes, I did want, I like the Super G, I like that Super G out of control. This isn't about the events. This is about the commercial. The commercial. Okay. Do you recall seeing the Pokemon commercial? On the Olympics? The Olympics. For Stern Pinball? You couldn't miss it. Well, I don't think I saw it. It was for the movie or the game? No Okay, no, all right. What's it? No It wasn't for anything. It was this generic Bring Pokemon to your attention. They weren't hawking the product. They weren't hawking a game They weren't and I kept saying to myself because I watched a lot of the Olympics. I Bet you I saw that commercial if I didn't see it 50 times I saw it a hundred times. And I kept saying to myself, what is this all about? Obviously, you know, Stern's come out with the game since. But, you know, I went to our good old AI and said, what am I missing? Yeah. And this is what it spit out. It said, emotion, collectability, smart marketing, cross-generational, constant reinvention, social media. It's a perfect storm. And if you think about it, my kid collected them back in the 90s. Right. But now they're exposing themselves to a whole nother new generation, younger kids, and people like me who casually know about it only because my son collected them. It's like the universe knows about Pokemon. It's why it's the most revered brand in the world, I guess. And the most moneymaker. I can't believe you didn't see the commercial. No, I didn't really watch, I watched the little bit of after the fact clips on YouTube. I don't really watch, I didn't watch the TV version. That's why. Okay. Highlight reel. Because of the time difference, I was watching at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock in the morning. So, I was watching everything live. Oh, one thing, one thing, back to Superman for a second. You know, all the people wanted to get, did you ever notice like, you know, the TV show from the 50s, The bad guys would unload their guns, boom, boom, boom. Superman would stand there confidently with his hands on his hips, cape flowing behind him, bullets bouncing off his chest, until the bad guys ran out of bullets. What'd they do? They threw the gun at him and Superman ducked. Why would you duck? I don't know. That's a good one though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. I bring in all the thoughtful conversation, George. Yeah, yeah. That's a good one. I bring out all the thoughtful conversation, George. Oh, so I'm just bringing out the crap, is that what you're saying? Yes. No, George. I'm just, I'm bringing out the wacky stuff. Some wacky stuff. Maybe the guns were made out of kryptonite. Maybe that's the story. Or maybe it was just lazy writing. No, he just didn't want to get hit with a frickin' prop gun. Right, but still it's dumb. I didn't say it wasn't dumb. I'm just saying. If somebody throws, you know, a hard thing like that at your chest, I mean, yeah, I get it. You don't want to get hit with it. Especially if they miss and hit you in the head. Do you have more? I have another February... I have something that I don't know. I don't know where this came from, but maybe you do. Okay. I have in my notes, it just says, Space Invaders Update. Oh, yeah, okay, that was Space Invaders Multi-Day Day Spa, North Shore Mass, and that was... Multi-day! Multi-day, yeah, yeah, multi-day. Was it successful? Finally, yes, but it had a lot of weird crap going on. Again, someone with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch was working on this game at some I had to redo a whole bunch of stuff. So you had to deconstruct and then reconstruct? Yeah, I had to fix what they did and fix the original problem. And I got it running except for one kicker wasn't working right. And it come to, so I said, okay, I rebuilt the cylinder driver board, put in there, so that should be working fine. But it sounds like maybe the the transistor is blown out. I'll tell you what. I told him where he can get a new, brand new, sawdust driver board for his game, and go buy for cheap from Weebly, from Andrew for a hundred- instead of having me go out there and do something, though. You know, at this point you already paid me some money for it. I did the rest of part of the game, you have one little more issue, just by this, buy this board $150. So he did, and he put it in and And I think when he did that, he gained his kicker back, but then he lost sound. It's like, how the hell do you lose sound? Oh, wait. Okay. Does that have the same sound board as Paragon? Uh, no. It has a, it has a, it's the same board as I think, um... Do you remember we talked about this and I said I took the board out and I replaced one component. Oh man. It wasn't the sound board. It's not the sound board. Oh. Did you fix it? Yeah. I emailed Andrew. I said what is going on here? And he said, you have some bad or iffy ground somewhere, connector issues somewhere that are a little bit off, you know, not quite reading right. And because the song driver board feeds the Sounds Plus or Vocalizer, well, Sounds Plus board, I think Xenon has the same board or Silverwell made it the same board. Yeah. So it's different than your Paragon. It's a newer generation. And it's something to do with feeding data to the soundboard and something's not happy with the connectors. So I said, okay, customer, I said, tell you what, I'm going to send you a known working out of my personal 8 Ball Deluxe game that's been working fine and it's bulletproof. I'm going to ship you that. You ship me the Weebly. And so I'll put the Weebly in stock. You have my board. And he put my board in, and guess what? Everything worked fine. But the Weebly wasn't happy with it, for whatever reason. Weird. Yeah, weird. But I'll take it. He's working fine now. I'm just gonna let sleeping dogs lie. It's working. So... So did you put the Weebly in your game and it works? I did not do that yet. No, I put that... Okay, stay tuned. Stay tuned on that one. We can go to a snowblower story of horror and possible mayhem if you like that one. How much time do we have? And how many more pinball stories do you have? I got a bunch more pinball stories and we have right now we got six minutes left on this thing. Can you tell one more pinball story then we'll come back and tell the remainder and I'll close us out? Sure. Okay. Go ahead. All right. How about we go with... All right. A genie. So this genie, they've had it forever. It's up in Billerica. I saw pictures... Original boards? Oh, yeah. Original boards. And I guess the owners love the game, but the owners, I think her brother-in-law was I was a tinkerer, not too good, a pair of pliers and a blowtorch kind of guy, and he messed with the game, and I guess she doesn't really care for the brother, had a falling out, but she got the game somehow, and he really messed it up. And I said, well, no problem, I'll just take my super-duper Pascal board and change some caps out to make sure it doesn't wreck the Pascal board, and we're going to be good to go. I looked underneath the playfield, all the solenoids were, nothing was burnt, and so I had confidence to put the Pascal in there and turned it on, and then it said fault or something. It wouldn't boot up all the way or something. It's like, oh, here we go. It's like, okay, well, all the coil, it's complaining about a coil. It's like, okay, everything's fine there. Oh, wait a minute, let's look at the coil under that shoots the ball out. Oh, that's not good. This thing had like a fire. This thing was so burnt. This coil was so burnt up, it stuck on for probably an hour. Nothing left of it and a big burn mark on the wood. It's like, oh, that's that's a problem. So got rid of that, put a new coil in there, Pascal, boom, up and running. That was, we were there for, I don't know, that was like 10 hours worth of work. And I still could have done even more work on it. It's like, you know what, you're you're playing... I mean, that's how much it needed as far as... Oh, it needed everything. I didn't even get to even really rebuild the flippers and I really wanted to but the flippers were working okay. I kind of cleaned them without really doing my thing because I was out of time. I said, you know what, down the road, play it for a while. I'll do another PM work down the while and we'll do some more work in the game. But for now, you've already spent a good amount of money and you're good because I'll be here until midnight if I don't get out of here. So that was that one. Four minutes. Stern warranty. Oh, our friends Mike and Chris, you know they have a Tron? This is the Tron that I sourced at a- Yeah, this is the one that was- I got a pinball show. Yeah, pinball show. I found it for them and they were all psyched because they were looking for one. This one was mint. They had all the ... It was like a Tron LE that someone made. They put all the chasing LEDs on the ramps and they put a color DMD in there and all kinds of good stuff. Well, Mike wanted to, you know, he's been playing the crap out of it and he wanted to clean it, so the ramps are all attached and he saw the wire for the, it's called the EL wiring or the wiring that kind of has the rampy chase lights or whatever, and he couldn't figure out how to get the wire off, so he decided to take a pair of clippers and cut the wires. Oh no! Yeah, no, bad. You don't cut the wires. So he cut the wires and then he wanted me to go, oh, can you come back at some point and do a whole day spar? So I did all that and I reattached and he didn't leave much nub left to attach wires to. He kind of cut a little close to where to do it. So I restarted them, shrink wrapped them, all good to go. And I showed him, it's like, here's where in the future you got to do it again. Just follow the wire all the way back up to the end. But he didn't leave a tail. He went right next to where the wires were. Prett y much. Yeah, not much tail. I had to really get in there. Don't ever pick up those snips again. Yeah, leave those snips alone. Do not touch them. You know, you were really good at software and that kind of stuff, but otherwise this stuff here, hmm. Leave the tools in the box. Leave the tools in the box, yes, yes. Oh, and his own, Gorgar, another Gorgar story. So, Gorgar Day Spa Revisited, 10 years later, and what I've learned. So this guy, he called, he emailed me and said, hey, it's the Gorgar he did for me 10 years ago. I was like, 10 years ago. It was in Newton. I said, wow. It stopped working. It's had some problems. I was like, okay. I'm trying to think, well, 10 years ago, what have I learned about, I was done like 12 Gorgars since then. What have I learned? And look at the work I've done. It's like, wow, I learned a heck of a lot because I wouldn't have done this back in the day. I didn't put, I had the original board set that I redid. I would never do original board set. I put the good board, the Weeby board in there. I redid the, I redid, oh, the magnetic read switches for the drop top. We be right back flew by well you done how many of those things i mean i guess they made a lot of them right they made a lot of them and so many people from our age remember this game fondly as the first talking game they played and made a big impression on the arcade they all want this game so it's like they keep coming in i get like one or two gorgars per year it seems and they want me to restore them up i still have a gorgar in my restoration queue whoever wants a nice one i have one to sell you know that's I bought that at Allentown years ago for the guy down in Cape Cod who wanted one and then he ghosted me so now I'm stuck with his Gorgar. But that's okay. We have about under a minute right now. Okay, why don't we cut and when we come back I'm going to have a libation from our friend down under. Oh, okay. I might join you on that one because I have the same libation. No, you settle down. Okay, I'll watch. I'll watch you. You calm down. Okay. I'll live vicariously through you, George. That's what I'll do. I'll see you on the other side. Okay, sounds good. So, I had a Led Zeppelin Day Spa. A recent game. It's like the one we delivered that time in Northboro. Right. Right? Yep. This guy was in Framingham. The one with the elevator. He had an elevator? The one that we recall, that weird thing in the middle that pops up and down. Oh, that thing, that thing. Okay, yeah. Yeah, this one didn't have, this one is a pro, so it didn't have all that stuff. But I will say Stern used a crappy gate made of zinc or something that it's a gate, when you shoot the ball out, it goes through this gate, goes in the playfield, and the gate's a one-way gate, so the ball hits it and whatever.icasffburn asnombieHH aktivmaz moderm, We just did a Twilight Zone two day day spa. I finished that as of last night. Brought it from California. He brought it from California. He lived in California, Washington State. He's been all around, and the game has come with him, and survived all this time. Relatively low plays, but I can tell someone else worked on it. proximity sensor was not working that proximity sensor is for the ceramic ball in the trough so when it shoots ceramic ball to the shooter lane is supposed to go power ball and knows you get a power ball in the play field in the game acts differently and watch you shoot into the gumball machine it doesn't have that then the game kind of met they kind of wrecks the mojo of the game so I fixed that by basically adjusting the where it sits and also by redoing all the I'm not sure if you can see the connectors on there because they always have a problem with the connectors with the IDC connectors of the .100. So I did read all that and that's all happy. NVRAM on it and I added the SuperDuper Pinball Life has the colored gumballs. So I got a pack of those and I stuck them all inside the gumball machine so nice and colorful. So that was a probably, that was like a ten and a half hour job on that guy. And he was very appreciative and paid me my stipend so that was very nice of him. Oh, and I have a-oh, Captain Fantastic just arrived from Ohio, got delivered here today, this morning. That was from this gentleman in Rhode Island, his father in law had it forever, bought it in 1993 for 500 bucks. Pretty nice shape, works, but he wants me to make it really nice and he went all the way to Ohio to get it, brought it to me, lives in southern Rhode Island and so... He drove out to get it. He drove out to get it, he brought it to me, dropped off this morning and said, I said well it might be, it might be a year, year and a half, two years, I have so many people in front of me, he said I don't care, I just want it nice, I don't, so my customers are just like, whatever it takes, I'll wait. So cool, so I'm going to try to fit them in where I can. I'm going to go see again this guy up in Gloucester, he has an Elton John, new Elton John game, the The SuperDuper LE one, whatever, from Jersey Jack. He also has that Godfather game, side by side. I went out there last year and did some work on those, kind of did some rubber, some cleaning on them. He said he had an issue, but I couldn't find the issue. This time around, he said, and he wants me to get it done before Easter, so I'm trying to fit him in. I have so much work in front of me. Elton John is dead. Poor Elton John there. For Reggie, he's dead. Look that up online. And actually, the CPU coin battery on these things, they get drained pretty quick. They last maybe from eight months to a year and your game goes dead and you can't boot it back up. Even if you did know how to put a coin battery back in, it does not equate that you can turn it back on. You need to go in there and jump a couple small connectors in this little section and don't mess it up and hit the wrong ones because you'll short something out. Don't you sit there and just shake your head and say the average homeowner who buys this has no idea that you have to do this. No idea. They just want the game. Every time you talk about somebody who bought a game, ultimately something goes wrong with the game and people are disappointed and they don't know how to fix it. Yeah. I know that's why you earn a living, but that's kind of obvious. It's just disappointment. Yeah, it is. It is. And so I'm going to go all the way up. I even said I can kind of tell you to do it. So, I don't want to get into that. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm not going to. I don't blame him. And on top of that, so even if you do this the right way, put a new battery in and jump the thing and basically you kind of jump it like jumping a car battery to restart the fricking game. If you get to that point, the game can still boot up and say, I don't know where my mind is. I'm blue screening here. I need you to plug a keyboard in in the USB slot inside the coin door and hit F12 or something. So I got to bring a keyboard with me now and plug that in and do that. It's like working on a computer. It's like it's... No, it is a computer. It is a computer. It's not like it. It is. That's the problem. That's why give me old school... Like everything today. Give me old... Yeah, like everything today. Like cars today. That's why I went and bought this 2025 car just now. It has less... It tells a bunch of computer crap. But the 2026 models, I've been looking for cars, they're all screens, they're all, it's like a, it's like a phone. They don't want you touching it. They want you to speak on your phone. They do not want Harry Homeowner going anywhere near these in comparison to older cars, which at least you had a fighting chance of fixing. These are all Google cars. These are actually extensions of your phone. They want you to start your car with your phone. They want you to do things with your phone. And then they want to charge you a monthly fee so you can use your phone to start your car. It's like, no, I don't want any of that crap. So that's why I went old school one year back and I don't have any of that crap. I still... So let's advance this to the game that you're trying to repair. Sure. Yeah. Why wouldn't they just have a keyboard that says, press this button and it'll connect you to Stern and Stern... Well, not Stern, Jersey Jack, Jersey Jack. Jersey Jack, whatever, both of them, it doesn't matter. All of them are in the same boat. So you don't have to go through all this crap. Self-diagnostics. What fun is that? Well, we'll put you out of business, sort of, but I don't believe that for a second. I'm smart enough to know you can't replace human ingenuity with a service bot. Somebody needs to know how to use the service bot. If you put a keyboard in there, that would increase your BOM by, I don't know, $1.50. We can't do that, George. It's just dumb. I'll stick with my old school games. Me too. They're cheap, they're easy. And they work. If you don't want to, you know, earn a PhD in computer science, you know. But a lot of these people that like the ramp games and the latest and more and more crap and more lights and more this, more that, they don't realize, like Scotty said in one The more you overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. And that's what these games are doing. They're becoming so complex, just like cars. I like the plumbing reference. Good one. Yeah, there you go. There you go. So, that's why we're the Classic Pinball Podcast. We like old school games. They're simple. You rebuild them. I even have, I got original boards in my Bally lineup from 1980 that are still going great. I have a bunch of boards nobody wants. You know, I tried to sell them on on pin side to people who are going to Allentown and crickets. You know, it's like I said earlier, most people are just buy the new boards. I've got, you know, I don't know, probably five or seven boards that need to be fixed in one way, shape or form. And I just, you know, pick up the credit card and order a new one. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Reliable. It is easy. And they work. Here's another one. I got a theater of magic. I'm getting thirsty. Oh, okay. All right. Well, there's one more. This actually, this will lead into it. This will be because you're going to know this reference for this guy's name. I think you know this guy. Theater of magic, day spa. A lady called me up and said, yeah, my cousin recommended you to do a day spa in our game. We've had it forever, but it hasn't worked for a long time. And who is your cousin? Eddie Cabral. Remember Eddie Cabral? Eddie Cabral. Who was your cousin? Eddie Cabral. Remember Eddie Cabral? Remember he came to my pinball parties years ago? Eddie Cabral. Remember him and Tom Score Tommy were, they both talk about inner city Boston crap. Eddie Cabral. He went to all these concerts all the time. No. Little Eddie Cabral. Good guy. Nope. Yeah. Nope, he's not registering. Okay, I thought for sure you might have met him. I probably did, I just don't remember him. I haven't heard from him forever until he recommended me to go work in this game, which I'm very happy. Thank you, Eddie. That's nice of you. Do I have anything else in here? I don't know. I think that is that. Oh, well, you can grab a...you want to grab a beer, I'll tell you my snowballs. I'm curious to see what this tastes like. Oh, yeah. I want to know, too. So go ahead. Grab it. Let's see what we got. Hopefully, he won't be insulted. Grant, this is for you, Grant. Let's see, is it going to be a West Coast IPA or is it going to be a... Oh no, no, no, oh no. No? Eastie? This is what I would say is the working man's beer of Australia. So this is like a Budweiser situation? They would probably hit you in the face if you said that. I would anyway. No, this is called Victoria Bitter. Cengiz, Flip N Out Pinball Show, We'll talk about it in a few minutes. Sure. But he also sent me this great koozie. Good old Collingwood forever. We know how to play the game. So my fabulous magpies of the AFL. You don't watch Australian League Football. I do. I like it. So here we go. Depending on what you say about this beer, maybe I'll bring mine with me when I visit you. I'm drinking out of a can. I usually don't even drink out of a can, but I'm being authentic. Okay. We're all set. So here we go. All right. Go ahead, George. You go do it. It better not taste like Vegemite. I will say, yeah, yeah. The last time I did this was Vegemite. So let's say Vegemite flavor. How's that? Tastes like beer. All right. What's it like? What kind of beer it tastes like? A malt? A IPA? Yeah, it's kind of innocuous. It's just easy to drink. I mean, it's like any of the big brands. Like Bush? Any of the big brands. Half Blue Ribbon, PBR? No, not quite as harsh as that. Rolling Rock? I happen to like the little green grenades, but yeah, it's equivalent to any of those. It's good. I drink it. But it's not an IPA. If I'm Mr. IPA guy, it's probably not my thing. No, I'm not used to drinking this either. I mean, I'm... What I have the other day because I ran out because I hadn't been drinking because I was with the flu for most of the month so I don't think I could have even recorded but anyway um Yingling which you know it's an old brewery out of Pennsylvania it's good but I'm not used to drinking lagers like that yeah like them but you know anyway it's good I drink it I mean I you know I've had far It's getting far far worse. So, do you have any more stories? If not, we're gonna go with the big story. Well, before we go with the big story, let's go snowblower time. So this is back. Oh, that's right. Well, set it up. All right, I'll set you up. You had a harsh, you had a harsh winter. I did have a harsh winter. I did. So, uh It's not done yet. No, evidence by today being 35 degrees this morning. Yeah. So, yeah, so this was during the big snowstorm we had about a month ago or so. And, you know, I fired up old Betsy the snowblower doing great, did my driveway, did my neighbor's driveway, you know, because we all, I take care of them all, we do favors. One neighbor watches, you know, waters the plants when we're gone, the other one lets me use their car when I need it. So it's okay, yeah, one hand watches the other, you know, do their driveways. and and then one neighbor you know he's a little his little I don't know I call him the senator he's uh... a little holier than thou he basically calls us folks hey folks how you doing folks you know folk you hey I say that folk you man you know don't call me folks you know I can't stand that no I don't say folk you I say hello folks that's different that he's more like looking down like he's uh... he's from the ivory tower looking You know, let them eat cake. He saw me doing that and said, I didn't charge anybody anything. He said, Hey, can you do my thing? I'll give you a couple bucks. I go, well, gas is expensive. You know, I'm thinking you throw me a little bit. I'm thinking he throws me 50 bucks. He throws me a 20. It's like, all right, whatever. So then after I take the money, he's like, oh, can you do this and this and that? He wants to get 20 bucks worth. I should have just said, here's your 20 back. F off. So, me, the sucker that I am, I did his stuff, you know, not exactly on his spec. And then, his Prius, key point is the word Prius, is in a big snow bank. And it's like, I think he said to go over the stairs and do that too. He went back and I went for a walk somewhere, I don't know. So I'm over there, and this is at night now, it's dark. And I'm in there, I'm trying to, you know, get the Prius out, you know. Kop ziehen Smack One vin. Feb m 2021 semmen Look Step Outיך She's like swearing at this frickin', you know, like, what the frick, you're gonna, my husband sent us out of the hospital, you're gonna kill him with this, you know, she's pissed. And so I help, have her help me pull it out of there. Good thing it did not cut the cord, cord's still intact, just wrapped around it, so we got it out of there. Yeah, I think it ripped the cord out of the Prius anyway, ripped it out of the source, I don't know where it ripped from. But previously, like last year, I PM'd my snowblower and I thought I did the right thing I thought I put the right shear pins in there, but I didn't. I put in some generic ones. So what should have happened when you do something like this and you get it caught the shear pins are supposed to break instead of the transmission breaking Well the shear pins didn break So the next in line is this brass worm gear thing deep inside a transmission and I looked that up online Oh you going to need a day and parts and special tools to do or bring it somewhere for a thousand bucks to go mother Or you go and get a brand new snow blower. All of these are part of the Or you call my friend John Day and Jim Rutherford who are good to go and say we'll do a springtime project so they're going to come over sometime. You better buy those guys capes because they bail you out all the time. I think I will. They do. They're good buds. But you know I try to return the favor as best I can. I say anytime you guys need anything you know so. But yeah so Jim has all the automotive parts I need, automotive tools I need to do it. I got the parts. I just need to set aside an afternoon and have at this thing while it's summertime or springtime and then it'll be ready for next winter. But yeah, that was almost electrocution time for me and that would have been a very bad day. So, yeah, so that's that. I did also get a guy today who wanted me... I'm actually finishing up on a Star Trek Next Gen that I was going to own for myself until this guy said, Del Wellfleet, well I really want a nice one, can you sell me yours? I go, uh, okay, so I'm almost done with that now. And I've learned a lot with that one too, it's my second one I've done, full boat. Then I got an email from another guy who bought, he bought a game from Pinside, he's in Hoppington, and it was quote unquote restored or referred from this guy in Georgia. Oh my God, he said he got it home a day later, it doesn't work. Do people not have the patience to wait so they can go and actually see the game in person instead of taking somebody's word from them hundreds of miles away? What could go wrong? Trust me, trust me. Hey, I trust in my- Would you buy a car that way? I sort of did. I got hosed too. I get it. People have some control, you know, have some restraint. Yeah, people want what they want and they want it now. I get it but... This guy said, he said, you know, he wants me to work it up and this and that, so he sent me pictures. They said, I don't know if you do cabinet swaps and this and that. So now he's talking to Kam, it's like, boy, now your bill's going up. Oh, now you're going deep. Deep, and that's going to take a lot of time. And then he said, well, now I'm thinking, you know, I could just call Chris, I really want a real nice collector quality game. I could call Chris Hutch and go, yeah, you might want to go that way. I mean, if you want something that the inside you can eat off of. Yeah, if you want the trophy. You want the car show where you lift the hood up and don't drive the thing. Okay, that's different. I don't do that. I do a nice game, looks great, plays great. I'm not going to chrome your frickin' power box inside the game. I'm not doing that. Hey, people want, like you said, people want what they want. With an entire new wiring harness. You build a wiring harness from scratch. I just can't, I can't bring myself to it. I'll just continue to buy cheap games and have fun. Yeah. I'm trying to think right now in my lineup Maureen wants to bring up and I want to do it too. I want to have room in my tech area and I need to do a video. A six million dollar man, I still haven't done a video of that. She finished touching up the cabinet. Because of all the health BS I've been going through and hospital visits and crap, it really set me back. So I haven't even had a chance to even play six million or even record it and put it out there. But the plan is to bring it upstairs in the lineup. We have four up there right now. We could do a five, but the five is a little crowded upstairs in the game room. I really want to take one down and put this up instead and I'm really thinking, I'm leaning towards blackjack coming down. You know, it's a great rare game but it's an EM and it's, I don't know. I play mine every day. I love my game. I did for a while but it's, well it's a new girl in town for you, it's a new girl in town, that's why. No, I've had it for a year but I just like, I like beating the game. There's just something about playing the game. It's simple. You can teach anybody to play it. Yeah, it's fun. I play everything else too. But you've got other simple games. You've got Harlem Globetrotters is simple. But no, I, you know, it's all, I get on these rolls and I just start playing something and ignore everything else and then come back to it. I mean, it's nice having 13 games and just have variety. It's fun. That's true. So how much time do we have? We have... I don't know, we got like 10... We got at least 10, 12 minutes, maybe 15. Okay. Unless you have something else, I'd like to... I'd like to get started with my story. Sure, George, I can't wait to hear what kind of story you have. Do tell, please. Well, we need to start with the beginning, which is... I really tried hard to put a podcast out in early March, actually thinking that I was doing a favor to the show and the person, Dave Marston. Hey, we'll give you a month of advertisement. Well, 20 minutes before we were set to record, and it was either the last or second to last day of February, I get this call from Dave Morrison. I'm like, what the hell is he calling for? Oh, maybe he needs the call in number or, you know, some piece of information. Well, long story short, he proceeds to tell me that they're only going to issue one press pass to a show. And I was taken aback. And I said, you're kidding, right? And he said, no, Gabe is worried about the number of press passes, people not paying. And I said to myself, well, I'm not going to shoot the messenger. He used one of his minions, Dave Marston, to be the bearer of bad news. I said, this isn't going to work. I need to tell Dave. He's like, no. Don't tell Dave. Let's record and do the piece and you can tell him afterwards. I'm like, no, I can't go into doing a show knowing that I haven't told him something. No, that's not going to work. And furthermore, the more I thought about it, I'm like, how ungrateful can you be? I said, do you realize that you still have one of the top 10 episodes of all time for our podcast? Do you realize that we did three shows on your show last year? And actually the one you did was one of our top rated was either number two or number three for the year. I said, no, we're not going to continue. I'm, I'm mad and I'm upset and I'm just really disappointed that you're so short-sighted with this. He goes, well, it's not me. I go, the collective you, you're a part of the organization. I said, listen, I said, I'm not in a good frame of mind right now. You've kind of ruined everything. I was ready to do a nice show, letting you run for 40 minutes. I said, I can't do that in good conscious right now. I need to talk to Dave. Um, I said, I can't believe how disrespectful you're being to, to us and all the things that we've done to help promote. I said, we've done this for six years. I said, more importantly, look at all the time and effort Dave and Maureen have put in, you know, for the, you know, best in show, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter. There's a lot of time put in there. And I said, this is we're a team. We're one. We're not two. So, you know, we need the press passes like we have in the past. And I said, more importantly, I go, you know, I have to drive 500 miles, spend three days in a hotel out of my own pocket. And you're going to grouse about an extra ticket and it being an impact financially. It just didn't make a bit of sense to me. And I said, it's what a fool believes. It's your, you know, cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's just really short-sighted. And, you know, this went on for quite a few minutes, but he tried to apologize. And it's like, I'm not blaming you. You're the messenger, but take the message back. You know, I don't hear from him. That's it. We're done. No, there's no more. And Friday came and went and I didn't hear anything. And I canceled, I don't know, a week or so later. I'm like, I'll be benevolent. I don't need to cancel right away. But I did. I canceled my room. And lo and behold, Dave calls me one day and says, you're never going to guess who called me. Let me rewind for a second. Dave, who? Me? Yeah, you call me. Okay, me. Yes. But more importantly, at the end of the conversation with Dave Marsden, I started getting pings on my phone and online, Dave looking for me like, is something wrong? Something happened? Do you get the connection? You know, he's wondering on the other end, George is late. George is never late. George is usually on time. He's got everything, you know, moving in the right direction. And finally I called Dave afterwards and told him the story. So I'll let you pick up from there and I'll come back into it in a couple of minutes. So maybe, I don't know, a week or so after that when he talked to you. Well, when I was waiting for you on the Zoom call in Marston and a couple minutes afterwards, no one was showing up and then I saw Marston, I talked to you and then after I talked to you, it's like, okay, this is going sideways. I'm in not the best mood for this either. This is kind of, we're getting kind of screwed here. He's coming in the room, wanting to be admitted. So I just basically clicked off the whole thing. It's like, no, we're not doing an interview. We're done. No, I don't think so. You've worn out your welcome with this. So, I don't think so. So, the fast forward to like a week later, he said, hey, can I call you? It's like, sure. You know, and I was kind of, I was kind of quick with him at first, but I was like, you know, I'll entertain, see what he's going to say. So he said, well, you know, you know, Gabe's trying to watch how many passes are going out. There's too many things going out. He's watching the money. I guess he's a little tight with the buck and so forth. I'm like, okay, well, that's great, Dave, but why now? Well, some people think that they're entitled to come to a show just because they have status and it's getting free and so forth. He doesn't want to have that. He said, I think there's some egos going on with, I want to try to be in between and broker a deal between you and Gabe. It's like, what is that, does Gabe, does Gabe, well, Gabe doesn't really even count that. He sees other people working harder on his volunteer stuff than that. He doesn't really see that. Does Gabe see what we do for him on our podcast? Well, he doesn't really listen to that. Well, he's short-sighted, and I'm gonna interrupt. But if he had any idea of the numbers we've pulled in March where I would've released AN Killer Club I said last year, I said out of my own pocket, my own money, I got to drive, I got the hotel room, I got to put food in my mouth, you know, it's not cheap. And I said good things. Where'd that get me? Nowhere. See, I don't think, there's no respect there, there's no... That's a really good word. No respect, no appreciation for what you do, for what you do for him. I think he just wants slave labor. Because I don't have a shovel in my hand digging a ditch, that's what he wants. Doesn't mean I can't orchestrate the players to dig the ditch. Right, right. There's a job for everybody. Yeah, I just happen not to want to do the jobs that you need people to do. Yes. And fast forward because I'm nosy. I see that they're still looking two weeks out for volunteers. Well, it won't help your cause and look, you can do whatever you want. It's your show. Gabe DiMunzio, you can do whatever you want. You can throw it right back at me and say, George, if you don't like it, start your own show. Well, no. I'm not starting a show, and I'm clearly never going to talk about your show again, because you don't deserve it. You don't deserve my respect. When I interviewed Ivan at the Allentown show... Right. We're going to go see him again. Right. And he basically said, he said, I'm not like Gabe's show. Dave has all these volunteers and doesn't pay them, as far as he knows. And I don't think he does, but correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, these are all volunteers and they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart. God bless them for doing that and, you know, whatever. I think they're being a little taken advantage of. But Ivan pays his people. Ivan pays his people. And they're very loyal to him. People have different business practices. I just don't like being disrespected. I don't either. And people like that don't deserve, you know, the time. Here's where I'm really, I'm, I'm torn because I would like to be there. I'm kind of let down because I would have liked to have seen John Day. And I encourage all you that are going to the show to go sit in his seminar. Bright guy, entertaining, go see him. You know, the other piece is, it wo would have been nice to be there with Steve Ritchie again. Steve, I'd be more than happy to buy you a seafood dinner if you'd sit with my cohort here again and be a little bit more prepared to have a conversation with you rather than the off the cuff that we did. But, you know, for those who are interested, episode 127 is pretty good. I'd like to see Steve make our top 10. He's not there yet, but I'm sure he's getting close. Um, that's kind of, that's kind of where I'm at. So, sorry folks, you're not going to hear anything this year, next year, years to come. The proverbial, they screwed the pooch. They screwed the pooch. Yes, they did screw the pooch. Uh, poor pooch. What's with you anyway? I can't help it. I'm a greedy flub. It's my hobby. Save me! Well, it looks as if our time has just about run out. Just enough left to tell them who the sponsor was. Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Dave! Right. George, you don't know what you're saying! You're under zero control! George, we've had it with you. Say no rodeo, bro dad. Hasta la vista, baby.