the last time we recorded was the end of november oh my god and then i think that episode came out before christmas and then i went out of town for a week i went to disney world with the family right and then while i was at disney world i got the flu right right and then i had the flu for a solid two and a half weeks basically from a couple days before christmas through the new year it was bad and then i haven't had the flu since i was a kid so i was like i don't get the flu it's like the stupidest thing so i don't either until this year yeah man it was bad this year i got it really bad too it was crazy yeah so and you didn't get it from me i didn't get it from you no i mean you sound better like you sounded pretty rough for a while it was bad and i i mean i definitely feel better my spirits are high you know yeah yeah so you know i i'm here now in mind in spirit in body in the shedcade 2.0 dude nice job by the way i was gonna say you for those out there who can't see this matt has done quite the remodel on the shedcade i mean it's like 50 bigger you you have some legitimate acoustic it feels bigger yeah it's amazing i like your jethro toll tapestry that i've been looking for somewhere to put that thing we can actually hang out in here comfortably and play pinball and have guests yeah so the shedcade is down to two pinball machines because i think at one point i had four in here which is insane and made it impossible to work on any games right but yeah it's feeling pretty good yeah it does it feels amazing man nice job and smells way better in here it does like a cinnamon kind of smell going on i'm excited to be here and i'm glad to be back and we got a lot to talk about we have a lot to catch up on yeah but anyways yeah man i'm excited to be back and i think um i guess is this gonna be the final is this the final episode it's kind of funny they excited to be back for the last episode i mean but you know there's like we're gonna be working on a couple things for the quote unquote next season yeah so setting up the shed cave is kind of like part of the prep work for season two and more consistency i guess on not having to set up and tear down and move stuff around and back and forth and it's kind of yeah less of a scramble right and kind of on a weekly basis it's the first time i've ever experienced this man like coming up with ways to produce content week to week you know and it's tough yeah like mad props to anyone out there content creators podcast people youtubers whatever it is a lot of work to have a weekly show yeah it's a lot of work no ragrets yeah regerts no regerts but yeah we don't have an exact timeline for season two to start but i think in the interim we'll have occasional things supposed potentially some game reviews kind of like self-contained yeah sort of self-contained stuff got some other stuff in the works that's not necessarily in the typical bash pinball episode format right right right but yeah so you know the channel is it a channel is that what you call it is this the channel the channel won't go dead youtubers have channels yeah i mean we have a channel youtube channel but we forgot to stream us playing pinball yeah we'll be able to stream in here actually it's pretty easily now that this is set up the way that it is. So maybe that's something to look forward to season two. Or maybe you have some streaming off season. Video stuff, maybe. So yeah, this is officially the last episode of season one, which is kind of like Expo part three. We just gotta end it. We gotta tell our story and end it. You know what I mean? This Expo stuff has gotta stop. I mean, we're what, like four months off expo i mean yeah at this rate we're gonna have to combine it with expo 2025 yeah so for season two we've got new stuff we want to do and new ideas a lot of that stuff requires some prep work and we don't want to be on like the weekly grind of it we're not waffle house we can't always keep the grill on anyway we have a lot of big ideas international guests you know and animals we're gonna have animals on the show um we're gonna do on location shows whatever you want we'll do it Yeah. Just not... We have a time now to plan it. I got a bone to pick with Ian. What? Yeah, why? He just won't stop calling me. He was harassing me about episodes. Really? Yeah. I think it's because he started a podcast. Okay. And I think he sees this as competition, so I think he was trying to get in my head. Oh, I see. You know, it's not really a competition at all. because we don't have a magazine. No, we don't. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're doing something different than Mr. Jacobi. Jacobi, yeah. I mean, Ian, like, I don't know why you want to start problems with me. I thought we were friends. But, I mean, I'll fight you if you want. I mean, if necessary. He's a lot bigger than you, man. Yeah, but I'm from Panama, dude. I got street smarts. I'm scrappy. Yeah, okay. If he wants to fight, if he wants our podcast to fight, I'm all about it. Okay. I'm not sure how you can put two podcasts against each other, fighting-wise. Anyways, Tangent, Ian, stop calling me. I love you. All right. So we got to go back to last episode a little bit because Glenn Glenn Waechter had brought a kangaroo nutsack to Expo. But I think we had kind of asked some questions about kangaroos. Are they real? Yeah. Not the kangaroo, the nutsacks. Yeah, like what's the deal with this? Because we were curious. And we got some listener feedback. So we heard from Ryan from Phantom Tilt, actually. Oh. A fellow podcaster. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. I forgot they were out there. So Ryan said, it's a dark red meat. It's a bit smoky and a bit gamey, but bloody, bloody delicious. I got to get the accent. I can't. I'm not going to try. I really wanted to say that with the accent. Bloody delicious. And then roo tail stew with dumplings is a classic dish. Tail is the fattiest part. Oh, so, Matt, this is going to sound insane. Until today, I didn't actually know that people ate kangaroos. that's like shocking to me yeah it's almost disturbing to me yeah they have pouches for their babies i don't know maybe they're terrible right maybe they're just like a mean people eat bambi too you know people eat everything that is crazy but they're big animals there's a lot of meat on them so but yeah hamburgers i'm sure you could kangaroo burgers ryan said it's smoky that It sounds good to me. Smokey. Yeah, so thanks, Ryan from Phantom Tilt. By the way, check out their podcast. Oh, hope to see you at Expo too. So yeah, I've been listening to their show from the beginning. I'm a completionist. And I'm hoping that a couple more years from now, I will have figured out the Australian accent. I'm not even going to try it now because I'm so bad at it. I think that's a good plan. I can't even think of like one word to say with an Australian accent right now accurately. Crikey. Crikey. That wasn't bad. Okay. I mean, Steve Irwin. I've heard enough of Steve Irwin to do that. But wait, there was one Steve Irwin phrase, I think. This water's murky. Real murky. That's pretty good. That's it. I got one phrase and it's not even that good. But I feel like listening to Phantom Tail, I'm going to get there. So you should do that phrase again next year. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll try it again. That would be like my benchmark. Yeah, to see how much better your Australian accent has gotten. It can only go up from here. We also received this voice memo from a listener, and I think we've talked about him before. He's kind of an enigma. He's kind of a mystery. We don't know what he looks like. Mr. Johnny Crunch. I think we solicited his input on this topic on the last episode, and he got back to us. Do you want to play the clip? Yeah, so we're going to go ahead and play that so you can just hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Hi, fellas. Johnny Crunch here. I've taken a moment away from the ladies to reply to your interest in kangaroo sacks. Yeah, chowing down on a roo is nothing new here. They taste like koala and platypus, or chicken, as some would suggest. Aden roo is more common up north of the country. Not so much down south of the border, or Mexico as we call it. Johnny will smash down a roo or two when he visits the northern coast once a year. The sacks are like dim sums and they go alright with a little sauce. The sacks that don't get eaten will get used as coin pouches or stack ten high at the dump. Johnny can hear the ladies calling, so I better get back on the workbench. Best wishes. So, from Ryan, we got some info on the meat, and from Johnny, we got some info on the sack. and he i mean he also sounds kind of insane dude don't you don't you agree i think that's just australian personality he even sent us a link to where we can purchase these kangaroo nuts oh right yeah we'll post the link in the show notes 34.99 or four interest-free payments of 8.75 with afterpay. Nice. Yeah, I got to buy a kangaroo nutsack on layaway. Australian made Roger Roo kangaroo scrotum pouch. You could fit at least $10 in quarters. Do you think? Yeah, easy. From this picture, it's a pretty long kind of scrotum, you know? Yeah, that one looks... They might be advertising the old man kangaroo sack, but... At least $5 in quarters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the way. And now for a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. speaking of aussies yeah we played some really cool australian games we we were in the cool club we were hanging out with electric bat rachel and kale jamie from wormhole ian so rob rob burke who is the dude who basically puts on the expo right um he has a huge collection of games and he brings his own personal games. And apart from the main convention area, there's a separate room that is just full of mostly Rob Burke's games. And they're nice. They're really nice. I overheard multiple people saying these games are probably the best playing examples of these games And that was one of the big things for me that set Chicago expo apart these were all rob burke games and they were all super nice well maintained clearly he puts a lot of pride into these games they were great they played great and there was i don't know how many of them there were what was it like 40 or 50 60s 80 there was a ton of minimum 50 yeah at least 50 games in there it was like four rows yeah and it was a huge variety all different eras i mean not modern stern like those were out on the main show floor but these were like 70s 80s 90s games right and in that collection were the hanken games hanken australian super rare yeah the one that i liked just by the look of it was empire strikes back yeah which i didn't i didn't even know that existed dude the bad class on that game it was it was like ominous yeah you know like vader it was you know playing it was it was cool that game came out when the movie came out right when i first saw it i was like oh that's some sort of like knockoff or something i thought it was a re-theme when i first saw it yeah yeah yeah yeah because it was too cool like it looks super cool but it was a legit licensed empire strikes back when the movie came out yeah you know 82 or something i actually really liked that game and i just approached it differently it was very floaty the ball was very It had a lot of side-to-side action, like a wide body. Yeah, it was wide, and I think it was on five ball. Very slow. It felt like it never ended. We had a four-player game. And not to go out of Empire Strikes Back, but right next to it was another Hankin game, Dennis Lily's. How's that? It was like a cricket. I couldn't even tell what it was. I was like, who the heck is Dennis Lily? But they all love that game. apparently that was the better of the i didn't even play it we didn't play it because i was too busy keeping up with my empire strikes back game yeah our like 30 minute empire strikes back game yeah which honestly i wasn't that into i was just like i hope this ends soon i know so we could play something else but it was really cool to get to play experience it yeah i'm not sure it wasn't even on my radar i'd never seen it heard of it and it was cool to get to experience said that was really cool man that was like i don't know to me i feel like that retro game hall was like its own little hidden gem for me you know because i went in looking for x-men and all the new games and all the avatar etc etc yeah i found a lot of joy and fun in that little retro game area for whatever reason it's just like unexpected i guess there was so many games in there that i'd never played before so many the whole time we were there that i still didn't even get to play because there's just a huge number of them. I wonder if next year he's going to cycle it out with a whole other set of games. I don't know. I don't know how he does that. Look up Dennis Lilley, how's that? And check out the back glass on that thing. It is maybe the funniest thing. Amazing. The funniest pinball machine I've ever seen. Dennis Lilley apparently is a cricketer? Was that what it is? I think he's like a famous cricketer from the 80s. Yeah, so not a sport that I'm familiar with in any capacity, but apparently famous enough to be the theme of a pinball machine. Right. And he is prancing across the back glass. Man, and if you're going to be at Expo 2025, come find us and we'll play it together. I hope it's there. I really do because I want to play it. I never played it. What about Dodge Viper? Oh, yeah. So I had never played that before. Same. That was one of the like games I kind of forgot existed. Bad fonts. Bad fonts, bad Photoshop. Everywhere. Questionable in a lot of ways, but... Tons of fun. Yeah, it's fun. Kind of original like in some ways. And is it just me or did the balls have some kind of weird like drift? Like the balls always have backspin or some kind of spin. I think it, so I haven't researched this, but yeah, the balls, they're like this gray colored coated balls and they definitely behave differently than a usual ball. Yeah. I don't know. It reminded me of like a car racing or like drifting or something and it was kind of cool. And it's like you had to adjust to these balls. I really enjoyed that game. Yeah, that was cool to play. And then another one that we had both never played before was Time Warp. The banana flippers. The banana flippers. I've never experienced the banana flippers until now. And whoa. Really weird. Yeah, super strange. But I think the weirdest thing was they didn't really have that negative of an impact on the playing, as you would imagine, with the shape. It wasn't that hard to adjust a little bit, you know? Of course, it changes all of the shot geometry. All of the angles are different. But you can hit things that you wouldn't normally be able to hit because the tips of the flippers are pointing in a different direction because of this kind of banana shape. Banana shape, yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. I didn't hate it. We only played it once or twice, but just anything that's different like that is kind of fun. It was fun. I mean, I wouldn't want every game to have banana flippers, but having a one-off game with them is fun. It's a different experience. Dude, you know what I just thought about? dream theme donkey kong with banana flippers banana flippers on the lower play field cool i'm totally into i'm into it but they gotta make them look like actual bananas actual bananas i'm into it they also had magic girl so that's like the John Papadiuk game that never materialized You can see like the John Papadukeness of it, like the kind of flourishes and sort of like windy, whimsical stuff. But man, it was bad. That was really unfortunate. I can't help but to wonder, right, had it been finished, if it would have been much better. Because my instinct is saying no, but I could be totally wrong. John Papadiuk has a lot of cool ideas, but without the rest of the Williams team, you don't end up with Arabian Nights or Theater of Magic. You end up with Magic Girl, which is a turd. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it could be turned into something cool. It was cool to play. It was cool to play. Super rare. Can't find it anywhere. It also just wasn't really working very well. I don't know. I got something that I'm kind of bummed about. Freaking Jamie Birchall. He goes, you know, we're hanging out, whatever. He's like, I really want to, I want you guys to show me how to play Black Rose. Yeah, because he wasn't, he didn't know Black Rose that well. He wasn't really familiar with it, you know, and you had one. I was mad at you for like a month. I think I had sold it not that long before Expo. Right, and he really wanted to play it, and they had one in the retro game area. And then he proceeds to, like, annihilate us. This was frustrating for me. It's your game that... So, I mean, to be fair, like, the Black Rose that they had played well. It was nice. It was a good example of it. And I don't know what it is, but every time I've owned a game and then played the same game that I owned... Elsewhere? elsewhere i'm horrible at yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because i'm dialed in focused in on like my own game that i had because i've played it literally a thousand times yeah i just couldn't do it i couldn't do it just played a little different than mine and it completely messed me up jamie you know is a pretty good player and he beat both of us i was i was pretty embarrassed I was like, I can't be me at Black Rose But yeah, I just couldn't hit anything Jamie's just like, I can't believe I beat you guys at Black Rose There was a rumor about a guy Giving away ice cream They just called him the ice cream guy The ice cream man I guess he's at a lot of these He shows up at all these pinball events This has got to be some kind of myth, a legend. The legend of the ice cream man. Next thing you know, there's an ice cream man. And he was taking requests. You could get a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of... Yeah, dude is homemaking this ice cream himself and bringing it to pinball conventions. And then just sharing it with people. For free. For free. This can't be real. but he's just like a guy who likes pinball and ice cream and he has a way of forming a crowd of people around him yeah he looked like jesus you know with his like people around him like his followers yeah yeah that's kind of how it felt to me yeah it was like ice cream jesus ice cream jesus and like he must have served thousands of bowls like jesus right splitting the loaves of bread oh my god do you remember there was a random group of other hotel guests and one of the ladies i think they were slightly intoxicated proceeds to take it upon herself to come over to us and go excuse me where did you guys get that ice cream you're definitely not a pinball person like i can tell you know yeah no i knew i could tell yeah yeah you can see it in their eyes you know what i mean they're almost like bankers you ever look at a banker's eyes yeah kind of dead different different like pinball people because they have to follow the balls they have like this different soul in their eyes you can identify they did not have that right who knows right maybe the ice cream man does not discriminate i mean how do you know he didn't ask us if we played pinball maybe he has enough ice cream for everyone it was multiplying like the loaves anyways ice cream man if you're out there god bless you like honestly that's like a memory i'll never forget is this free ice cream from this random man yeah and it was delicious someone that we were really excited i think it was probably one of the first people that we talked to on social media yeah actually said hey cool i will check out your podcast erica from erica's pinball journey it was crazy because we kept seeing her running around back and forth going to this event, hosting this thing, doing that thing, shooting over here, doing something with Marco. Like, dude, she was so freaking busy. And I was just like, oh my God, how can you do that? Like, how are you alive? And it was like 11 o'clock and she was still running around and she was like, hey, I'm actually free if you guys want to go play some pinball. But the highlight for me of hanging out with her at the end of the night was Varkon. I didn't know about that. I had never heard of Varkon. A Williams, it looks like a regular arcade cabinet. Regular tall, shallow arcade cabinet. Yeah. Joysticks. Joysticks that control flippers. Yeah. And it's basically like a Banzai Run vertical pinball play field. It's like a vertical play field. In an arcade cabinet, essentially. Oh, but it's also like... It's like inverted. So you're looking at like a mirrored reflection or something. Something like that, yeah. That you're actually playing. That was a really good game to close out the night. We'd had so much fun, played all these awesome games, and then it's like, boom, here's this wild card who's totally different. Just not even close to anything you guys have ever played before. It was awesome. And we had been in the retro game area for a while, and I totally ignored it. Kept skipping it. I saw it over in the corner. I just thought it was something. Didn't think twice. I thought it was like Galaga or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And it was like, holy crap, this thing is amazing. I really want one. If I had unlimited funds and a dream house, I would put that thing somewhere in there. Like in the living room or somewhere in my house I would put a Varkon Yeah I mean it a novelty for sure I don think it has the staying power But just as something to have if you have a larger collection or something get a Varkon man I think it's really cool. I don't know about maintenance. Can you get parts for this thing? Don't sleep on Varkon, man. Varkon, super cool name. Varkon. Shout out to Erica and Erica's Pinball Journey. Thanks for making that time to hang out with us. That was really, really fun. 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 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. I know. Dude, did you see the gigantic Robert mothership? Yeah. 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. 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. It's wild. But us and Ian. The Dons? Yeah, me and Ian and the Dons. That's what I was trying to get at. Right, right, right. We had a four-player game of Diamond Lady. I think we played it a couple times, actually. We did. We played it a couple times. We got through the first game and we were like, you know, we need to play that again. and uh it's got one ramp in the back it's got several spinners and some drop targets various stand-up targets it was fun man it was tons of fun ian like killed us that's so cool right like i don't being put onto a game like this just because this person happens to like it and then you also appreciate what they like about it you know it's yeah i want one now i know and i found a couple insiders in our general area that own them really yeah oh but like they're not for sale They're not for sale. It's in their collection. I've gotten messages from randos asking to buy my games that aren't for sale. So I don't know. Maybe I'll hit them up. That should be the name of our pinball company. Diamond Lady Pinball. And we only put Diamond Ladies. Like you said, we hoard them all. And if you want a Diamond Lady, we are your go-to. We can ship them all around, but we will never sell them. We'll never sell them. That's a good idea. We'll just start, apart from Bash Pinball, we'll just start a diamond lady pinball.com yeah.com and then we collect all of them and then if you want one you got to come through us yeah if we ever actually get a diamond lady i'll write her a song and it'll be on season two or three so this is the end of season one allegedly yeah yeah anyway go to expo if you haven't tldr go to expo that's what we should have just said in the beginning. I know, I know, I know. That's like the summary. It's like, go to Expo. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I'm going to TPF. Oh, nice. You're going to go? Yep, yep. Me and HackerJ. Oh, nice, dude. That's cool. My bro. That's cool. Probably going to be hanging out at the Wormhole booth because I don't actually know if we know anybody else that's going to be there. Maybe we do, but definitely come find me. I don't know if you can identify me without Don. Like as a pair, I think we're identifiable, but by myself, I don't know. I don't know. Good luck. Good luck finding me. Return to your home. Evacuate all personnel.