And now for a word from our sponsor. And now, back to the show. So I think the most memorable thing for me about day two was in the homebrew section. Yeah, yeah. I met this guy, Cole Martin. Remember you played that game, Greek Gods? Yeah, yeah. He made that game with his daughter. Right, right. That was really cool, man. It was really heartfelt. And she did the artwork. She did the artwork and the call-outs. She was the voice. Oh, okay. It had like a lower play field. It had all these cool little tricks and stuff. and that guy is really cool man i hope we see him again 2025 um he also had that one weird one that you had to like hug the hugging game i actually played it people were like ill weird i don't want my face in there i was like fuck it you know what i'm saying like what is this thing and it was really cool man it was just like a whole different way to play pinball which i thought was neat like it was like a cylinder that you put your arms around and had the flipper buttons on the back side yeah picture like a futuristic looking barrel yeah i mean it wasn't a barrel it was on a table top like a surface a little bit below eye level you had to lean over yeah picture yourself hugging like a barrel and the buttons are on like the back side right where your hands are yeah and you're looking down and it's like the perspective is really weird it's almost like an above straight down 90 view which was really interesting to play but anyways i just want to give that guy props and shout out man i actually really enjoyed playing those games yeah i mean i think one of the unexpected things about the homebrew section was just the creativity of that type of thing where it's like this doesn't even look like a pinball machine totally different yeah it is pinball but it's like also some other thing entirely yeah trash land was another one that was just mind blowing out there and like so weird and cool that was inspiring to see a lot of those games yeah then i remember you played quite a bit of um boys night out yeah yeah i played it yeah ian seemed obsessed ian was obsessed with that game actually tied into a short film or something and i think the same guy who made it made the film right right yeah so he like made a pinball machine off of his own short film yeah epic super epic who does that so that was pretty cool boys night out right yeah boys night out that one was fun it had like some cool 180 ramps it was cool interesting shots and stuff it was fun joel kaiser that's the the guy's name joel kaiser yeah he's yeah find him on imdb find his film and then uh check out the game ian's favorite game ian's favorite game of all time that's what he said tony hawks pro skater i want to say that was probably one of like the bigger talked about height yeah games this year 2024 yeah i think apart from saw pinball tony hawks was the one that i heard most people talking about probably right how many times did you get to play it i think i played it two or three times cool cool yeah i played it once with um don from don's pinball podcast and then i think once with you okay yeah i thought it was really cool personally i was into it man i thought it had everything that i would want obviously you know as a diy project it's probably tough to pull off some of it but he kind of did it very much felt like the original tony hawksborough skater that i used to play on my playstation when i was younger well yeah i mean down to like having the assets from that game like you choose your character and it's like a 90s polygon yeah yeah yeah the music dude it was awesome it was like the music from the game um he had the cool half pipe stuff he had the little like tech deck looking mini skateboard that uh you could spin it was like a play feel spinner right the whole thing rotated right but you could also so you could also hit the board yeah And then flip the board at the same time that it was spinning, which is like critical to actual skateboarding. Right. Super clever. It was cool, man. Oh, dude, my favorite part. Right. I didn't even think about. So in the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, you had the hidden tapes, like the secret tapes that you had to find. Right. And they were always somewhere hard to reach, kind of floating. Or you had to like jump or like get on top of a building. Dude, I played that. I think I got every single one. They were hard to find, dude. in the game there was like a shot that you had to access by like using a diverter and then it had to go up to this upper area and then only then could it come back around and hit the spinner yeah that was a secret tape you couldn't figure it out in one go which was cool i wish i could have played it more i hope that somebody makes an actual tony hawk game like i know that's probably been rumored for a while but i hope it's half as cool as like all the stuff that he did in this homebrew amazing man amazing yeah and then uh you know clark fairly with the basically the multilingual yeah gorgar gorgars yeah he had the multi-pin there in the homebrew section with gorgar and firepower firepower which by the way the music was awesome yeah like i really liked that music with firepower mod that he did yeah that was fun i really enjoyed playing uh yeah clark's clark from richmond pinball collective yeah i kind of i'm kind of bummed out that we didn't Really hang out with them. That's the one thing about Expo, too. It feels like you're hanging out with people for like five minutes. Then you go hang out with somebody else for five minutes and then you come back around. There's not enough time. It's not enough time. And everybody has, you know, like places to be or other people to see. It's the coming together of everyone from everywhere. It's just kind of the nature of it. But that's why you got to go back next year. I know. Dude, did you see the gigantic Robert mothership? Yeah. Literally the biggest pinball machine of all time. Bigger than Hercules by far. Oh, yeah. Wasn't it next to Hercules? Yeah. It dwarfed it. And it dwarfed Hercules. But yeah, it wasn't running. I swear. But it looked amazing. I swear that flipper bat was like my art, dude. I'm not even exaggerating. You have to run that thing on like three phase power. So much effort just to bring that thing in there. It must weigh like 1,500 pounds or something. Who knows, man? Who knows? Yeah. I think it probably weighs more than my car. Yeah, so day two, we kind of made the rounds, hit up some of the smaller manufacturers, played Space Hunt from Hexa Pinball, French game. You had a lot of fun with that. It wasn't really working when I played it. Yeah, I thought it had some interesting kind of like original shots that were a little different. Kind of hard to hit. I had a really hard time hitting some of those shots. Yeah, it's just nice to see that other companies are getting into it. And it'll be cool to see what comes of some of these new manufacturers and stuff. Yeah, and I think that's maybe subconsciously one of the things that I'm excited about with these homebrews that I guess kind of opened my eyes was like, in a big picture, you know, pinball becoming more popular, it is going to bring a lot more ideas. People are going to have different opinions and thoughts and the way they do things are different than like Americans, right? So it's like you're going to see different ways to access shots or different rule sets that might be original. just something different something something to change it up so we did get to play one other kind of like major release pinball brothers on brand they're swedish there you go abba their other games are alien and queen but yeah abba was not a theme that i was super excited about not being all that familiar with abba's music no hate no hate i think abba made some very like well-crafted pop music but um there was a helicopter in the game for some reason i don't know why locked the balls in there locked balls in a helicopter tons of fun um i really sucked at that game for some reason it was fairly straightforward layout like it reminded me a little bit of like a mid-2000s stern or something you know there's nothing like mind-blowing about the shots or the layout or anything like that but i i really liked it and for whatever reason i did really well and i was really good at it i don't know why you know you got the all the ball locks and the multi balls like i just couldn't hit the ramps for some reason but it's one of those weird games that just works for you you know i think if you like abba you're probably gonna love this game i think you would if i had one in my arcade i'd probably play it if i could hear it yeah i mean like all those music themes i feel like you have to be able to turn it yeah and i don't even think we could hear it that well we couldn't hear it and maybe i'd like it more if i could hear hear me some abba but uh we saw roger sharp playing oh yeah he was as we were leaving yeah he was like on the very last machine on the edge and he had like a little baby crowd around him right like a couple people and like it was a live stream like a streaming rig yeah yeah and i was like whoa wait what's going on and then we noticed it was like oh my god that's roger sharp he's just like playing eva yeah i guess to close out day two we we were starving and for whatever reason i don't know if we couldn't find food or something so schomburg closes at like nine o'clock everything was closed saturday everything was closed yeah expo goes until like 1 a.m on saturday it goes real late the only thing open was the 7-eleven right and it was like it was a little sketch the moment we parked i kind of tightened up a little bit you know what i mean like my pockets like this is like a weird panamanian like i don't know when you grew up in a big city or whatever yeah there's danger everywhere so like you're you kind of learn to be paranoid yeah i had that like kick in a little spidey sense you know and uh yeah anyways it was sketchy it seemed like the owner of the shop thought we were cops while he was selling alcohol to some underage people? Anyways, yeah. So I got my favorite 7-Eleven sandwich, like the little pre-made plastic container sandwiches that they make. It's like a Southwestern turkey sandwich. I think I got some prepackaged yogurt and string cheese. That was dinner. Yeah. Night two. the next day the final day of expo we did get to play another big ish release the funhouse remake oh yeah so we played the one that i think it was the one with the um brian allen artwork yeah that's right like enhanced version i think it had some extra features and stuff seemed fun seemed cool yeah i didn't i don't know i you know i had a hard time man it was playing a little hard i think but the artwork looks great yeah it looked great i don't know i couldn't i mean i didn't really have any fault with it same kind of just general indifference but like it's a remake who is it yeah who is it for like funhouse fans for new fans for like a person who grew up playing funhouse that wants a new version of funhouse i don't know who who is that game for I'm not sure. I mean, Funhaus is one of the more, is one of the pricier 90s games, I guess. It's not up there with the most expensive ones. Attack from Mars. Right. Monster Bash. Yeah. So, you know, where do you go from here? Pinside, Top 100, Top 50. There aren't that many left. That's true. There's Tales of the Arabian Nights, Theater of Magic. There's a handful that are still command a lot of money. Right. But Funhaus is like not in that league, you know? Yeah. You know you can get one for like to It cool that it going to be more accessible to more people I not trying to hate on it for me i don know actually you know what i don i don like fun you just don like i just don't like rudy i thought we were pals i'm starting to like it more i played an original one recently that played well and i was having quite a bit of fun with it i think that's one of those games that until you get past the hump of finding all the basic shots it's just not fun you know there's certain games like that actually gophers is kind of like that like rejecty i like it was cool to play it the the main thing we did on day three was take a little trip yeah we can't go to schaumburg slash chicago yeah without checking out logan arcade yeah you know i mean i i hear so much about it just like in general as probably like a staple in like the pinball community and world and history yeah and logan is like where they basically test new stern games apparently logan has all the pre-release code on their stern games the designers are frequently over there testing their games in the real world and kind of cool i mean it's kind of silly right like we leave a free play place to go money spend money on game but you know honestly it was worth it because yeah i don't know being in chicago and playing pinball in the real world not in the convention world you know what i mean so i thought that was totally worth it to me that was like a little its own little moment actually playing at logan so we got there they have their own restaurant it's like adjacent it's not actually semi it's like yeah it's called fry like an eagle fry like an eagle i remember that yeah and they have a ton of hot dogs it was like vegan i remember the hot dog had like raspberry jam and cream cheese it wasn't a hot dog i'd ever had before but it was really good but we shared the fries that's right they were chili fries yep that was cool yeah and they had a monster bash on free play which cool that was cool they had the gotley bone busters which i think that everybody hates or a lot of people i know i know it's fun oh i played so yeah i played that a bunch i got my best score i've ever gotten on radical by the way i think bone pinballspinbusters is actually ian's favorite game oh right right i think i remember him saying that yeah that game is wild but it i it was fun man it played good like all the games are played pretty well they had a mix of stuff they obviously had like a lot of newer sterns and stuff we played some x-men it was just a cool place cool vibes i would go there all the time to play pinball that's an easy like pinball spot to make it like your pinball spot i wish we had a place remotely as cool as Logan. Picture Dive Bar, but a little bit bigger. And a shitload of pinball machines. Yeah, just wall-to-wall pinball machines everywhere. They had a few arcade games, but it was mostly pinball. Yeah, so shout out to those guys. What I'll say is if you're in Schaumburg and you're trying to get to Chicago to play pinball or go to Logan or something down the city give yourself way more time than you think you're gonna need oh the train and traffic watch some youtube videos or something to figure out just the train system what i wish you would have known was a schedule which on the weekends apparently is only every two hours yeah on a saturday you have to time it very precisely there's multiple trains there's the The Metra is like the double-decker train, which is cool. Take that one. It was a cool experience. All of our train rides, we met people, we hung out with random strangers, talked about pinball to strangers. Yeah, it was refreshing to have human interaction and actual conversations with strangers. For me, I think that's one of the things that I do like about big cities, right? It's like diversity and people are more open to having a conversation because you have to. I think that is somewhat unique to Chicago. Certainly, New York is not. like that. Well, New York, yeah, they're a lot more standoffish. LA is not like that. I think it's a cool thing about Chicago. I mean, obviously, it's not the only city like that. Right, right, right. I did come away, because this was like my first real trip to Chicago, even though it was short. I'd never been. I think it's my favorite big city in the US. Chicago has like real history, and you can see it everywhere you look. And I also felt like I was in a batman movie because i think i think the nolan movies were filmed there because there's a lot of like underground stuff because the city's like built up above ground basically next time we go for expo i want to make a point to try to stay a little bit longer take at least like another two days separate from expo just to like kind of learn more about it get more familiar spend more time doing chicago stuff not just pinball stuff pro tip don't go to expo thinking you're gonna go to chicago too yeah you need extra days yeah oh yeah so we got to mention after we got back from chicago much later than we were expecting we did get to play metallica remastered we were waiting in an incredibly long line to play it with don the other don other don pinball podcast on and i think i got bored of waiting because i saw ian playing x-men and so i ditched you guys to play X-Men. But you guys stuck it out in that absurdly long line. We did. And what'd you think? Because I think that was the debut of that game. That was the first time anybody had seen it. Honestly, man, I liked it. I liked the original one too. It's been a while since I'd played the Metallica game, so I didn't really, it wasn't like fresh in my mind what it played like, what it felt like. I do like the new art. I didn't like the new Metallica on the screen. Oh, right, because of the video. yeah i wish it was like older metallica yeah it's got this like guns and roses is the same way it's just got modern modern concert video james hatfield with like a black shirt and like i just yeah i don't know dude like it's my personal preference you know what i mean it would be cooler if it was like 80s or 90s metallica videos i think most people when you think metallica you don't think 2024 you think 1980 yeah because those dudes are like in their 60s now or something so So it's a little bit of a vibe killer. It's no real hate. I mean, it actually played really well. It was fun. And I feel like they did a good job at enhancing what was already there in the play field and the toys. I thought, I mean, I didn't get to play it because you and the Dons. The Dons, yeah. You guys were like killing it. You were holding up the line. Actually, yeah, man. We did really well. And he got me. You guys had like a good competitive game going. There was at least one turn where I was like, I think I might get him on this. But he definitely knew that game a lot more than me. Yeah. Yeah, he got me. But it was really fun. You guys had an epic showdown on that thing. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, the new artwork package, I thought it was beautiful. Yeah. At least on the LE. And it had like the foil looking. Kind of gold and green and red. Three dimensional looking art on it. Oh, man. But yeah, that was great. That was really fun. i think we closed out expo we went over to the uh retro game room and let ian pick the game bless his heart diamond lady diamond lady diamond lady a game that i had looked at already because the artwork on it is insane hideous i mean but beautiful beautifully hideous it's a gottlieb game that's a throwback to an em it's weird because it's like retro but also retro within a retro it's like inception but it has like the big chunky flippers the artwork gives strong elementary school valentine's day card energy yeah so it's like photographs of the woman the diamond lady who is also on the back glass and she's like glammed out early 90s style with a sequined red dress and it's also playing card themed yeah yeah they took i don't know 150 pictures of her and just stuck them all over the play field in different poses. It's just bizarre and it's hilarious, but I love it. Thanks, Ian. And I want it. I know, I know. That's such a cool, like, I love that game too. I want to get all the rest of the Diamond Ladies. I want all of them. And then I want to put them in all of the bars that I can find. All of them. Just Diamond Ladies everywhere. I know. The seduction. It's just one of those baffling design choices that is endearing now.