you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at Welcome, everybody, to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is Episode 40, the Big 4-0, and my name's Martin, and with me each week... It's Ryan C., and we've got another special guest. This guy was an Aussie raised in the south of Australia. He headed to the US, filled with dreams of working in pinball. He ended up working for Williams, and it was the most successful Aussie pinball export ever. That's Cameron Silver. We couldn't get him on the show. We've got the next best thing. An Aussie who works with Kevin Kulik and John Popadook. Finally, his bad luck is over, and he's creating animations for Spooky. Ladies and gentlemen, the Aussie with the least Aussie name ever, David David Van Es. How you going, Dave? Hey, you actually got my last name right. Most people don't. So I'm going to take that as a win, and I say that's the end of the interview, and I'm just going to go. Thanks very much for coming on. We'll speak to you soon. Bye. Cheers. How do people stuff up their names? It's usually veins. Is there a veins here? Okay. So, it's, yeah, the story of my life. My wife, like, she loves my last name. Yeah, it was rough. But, yeah, you just go with it. Yes, I'm veins. Is that how you say it? That's fine. You just move on. Yes. So, Dave, you were in Aussie once upon a time. Still am in Aussie, my friend. I have an Australian passport. Okay, and you grew up in South Australia, the city of searches just outside of Adelaide? Very much so, up in the Adelaide Hills. So, tell us a bit about your journey into pinball. So, you used to route machines back in the day, is that right? Yeah, I think I've told this story before, but I lived up in the country. Most people, you know, in Australia know that you usually have to travel pretty far just to get anywhere, especially in the country. So I grew up on a country farm and, you know, go to McDonald's. That was usually a once-a-year treat, and that would be a 45-minute trip to the McDonald's. who always had the best playgrounds, you know, that you could literally kill yourself on. They don't have them anymore. Every kid's birthday party was the same. It was a McDonald's birthday party where you got to go into the freezer room and then everyone used to take a picture on the slides. Were you part of that generation, or is that just... Oh, absolutely. There was one playground they used to have that used to be a big red round thing and you just sit in it and it would just spin. I mean, I think it's still a good thing. But, yeah. I love your cheeseburger. I would hate to think how many kids have lost fingers or... Yeah, this is before everyone started suing each other. You do? So, but yeah, so, you know, a lot of the times... I grew up on the farm, but I never liked working on the farm. So, I would basically disappear to the local video shop once a week. And I don't know if they did it in the US, but in Australia... I mean, you guys, I'm sure you guys have this on the East Coast, but you'd go to the video store and they would have, like, pick five movies for ten bucks. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I... Well, it was, like, one daily and, like, five weeklies or something. Yeah. So you get, like, one of the latest movies and the rest you just choose random ones. Oh, absolutely. So I would basically, any excuse to go to the video store, load up with enough films I possibly can and I'd just disappear in the house. So anything to get out of any farm work, I would just get into movies. And of course, the video store would have an arcade, like usually a stand-up fighter game and a pinball machine. So that's where I really first discovered. I never had a lot of money, so I'd always just be looking at them. Pinball always looked more interesting because it was the bigger of the things that we had instead of being a regular arcade unit. I remember the first game I saw was a Terminator 2 actually I take that back a haunted house later on but yeah Terminator 2 took my fancy so that's where I got really introduced to it like knowing what they were didn't know what they did and then my dad was a contractor and I did work with him on the weekends and so forth and my dad was a little bit of an entrepreneur there and he goes, well, do you want to do a business, David? I'm like, oh, okay, that sounds good. Well, what do you want to do? He said, I have no idea. And we're sitting at the fish and chip shop and we're like, how do you get an arcade machine? Like, how do you get that? Like, how does that work? My dad had no idea. And he goes, well, every dollar you earn, I will match whatever you want to buy. Okay, we'll do that. And we had the trading post. I think you guys don't have that down there. idea. It still exists. But I don't know whether really anybody can't abuse it anymore. You might as well just go to Gumtree. It's owned by Stencers, so they'll keep on pumping money into it and lose money. It still exists. Gotcha. So, like, my dad would get that once a week, and he would look for, like, cars to buy, like, you know, typical Ockham and stuff. And they always have an arcade section, you know? So I'd go around and you'll find, like, Pac-Man. It's, like, really cheap stuff, like $200, $300 little arcade units. And my dad's like, well, what do you want? And I'm a big science fiction horror fan. And I'm like, I want a pinball machine. Alright, well, what is that? And I picked out a Thattery Star Wars. It was $1,200. And my dad's like, well, you don't have that money. And I go, uh, that I've saved up $600. And he goes, what? So he had to match it. We went down, we picked up the Thattery Star Wars, got home, and I basically went around all the fish and chips, pizza shops, and finally found one that would take it in there. And basically, that's how I got into the routing business. Went from Dead Airy Star Wars to a Twilight Zone I picked up for like $1,600, a thousand trips. What year was this, roughly? Ooh. It had to be like 97, 98. Yeah. And yeah, it just grew up from there. So I would put it into game rental shops, video shops, you know, takeaway joints and stuff like that. And then you became a millionaire and that's the end of the story? No, because, again, I always wanted to be in some form of entertainment, giving people pleasure, right? That was the whole point. I wanted to get into arcade machines because kids will always be rushing there, right? They always want to play it. So it was always like the talk of the town. and I always liked movies and how movies were made. So I'm making such a short story so long. You got into making movies, right? Yeah, so essentially I was earning enough money from my routes and working and stuff like that and I had some people that were into film and television and they were like, well, David, why don't you go and do that? There's a school, why don't you go to the film school? and that's pretty much, I started going to film school after high school and then sold everything to buy camera gear and stuff like that and got into film and television. And I liked making money and at that point, the arcade wasn't really making that much money. In fact, it was literally costing me more money to go around to pick up money than I could be on a set. So I moved on because, and honestly, girls kind of like people making movies versus arcade machines. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I did that and I went and worked for Carnival Antonio Cruz Lines as their audio-visual manager for them and that's how I ended up on the state side. I just figured I'd start an advertisement saying hey, you want to go and work in the Caribbean for seven months? And I'm like, ah, that sounds pretty darn good to me. For sure. jumped on a boat, and that's actually where I met my wife. Was she a passenger on the boat, or was she part of the crew? She was actually part of the crew. Yeah, because I've read some stories about people that go and work on cruises, and apparently, like, you're not allowed to sleep with the people, the commenters, right? Yeah, you are not meant to fraternize with the guests at all. unless you're upper management. And if you're upper management, you can interact, but you're not supposed to do anything else. Yeah, but apparently, like, everyone knows all the spots that there's no... I read this, like, really long Reddit post. It was the most interesting thing I've ever read about how, like, the drinks are, like, 50 cents or a dollar each for a drink, so everyone just parties everything around. Dude, you have no idea. I mean, it... Okay, so the time I was there, it was a seven-and-a-half-month contract. There's no days off. You work – you're pretty much working every day. So there's – but when you have time off in the evening, I mean, it was 50-cent beers, $1 spirits, and – I mean, I literally would walk around with a tray of shots every night. He just was like, I don't know who you are. You're going to sit down. We're going to have a drink. And it was a good time. You have your own special bars, right? Like, the bars that you get these special drinks are workers only, but there's, like, hundreds of workers, right? Yeah, they have crew bars. So you have a crew bar usually in the front of the ship and on the back of the ship. Okay. So that's where everybody would end up. And, you know, you'd disappear one side of the boat and pop up on the other side of the boat. It was a good time. So they're obviously meeting your what was to be future wife then That led you to your future country of residence Yes, essentially She actually is an accountant by trade And how she ended up working on the ship was Her friend said, hey, let's go work on a Antonio Cruz, that'd be fun And she said, that'd be great too Well, let's all sign up And she was the only one that signed up out of her group of six friends she was she was lonely and you swept in so um uh yeah and basically at the end of that Antonio Cruz um it was basically let's see who gets a real job first and i honestly don't have a real degree like she does as being an accountant and She found the job first, and that's why I ended up where I am. Okay, cool. And so how did that lead you getting into the pinball design world? Ha ha! We know. We know this, and it's a fun story. Well, so, I mean, pinball completely fell off my radar until I had been working in the infomercial industry and got comfortable in that position and started having a decent income. And I went down that path like most people. I was like, oh, what did I have as a kid that I want to do again? And that was pinball. And got back into it, started buying a few more games and found RGP, RPG, whatever they call it back in the day. And then... RPG is Rock of the Power Grenade. It's RGP. and just basically found the whole community here of pinballs and basically got back into pinball, talking to people about pinball, fixing up pinball, restoring pinball machines, and, like, honestly, when I... After you restore a bunch of games, you kind of... there's nothing left to do. It's like, all I'm doing is making a game nice and then people are going to beat on it. I'm not really contributing to the industry. So, and that was when the big resurgence started happening with JJP and everyone else. There was, you know, J-Pop turned up, and he was looking for people to help him out doing his games. And so I was like, well, he's online. I'll just reach out to him. And I reached out to him. and J-Pop and Skid B were kind of parallel to each other to be honest and I got a response from J-Pop and fanboy completely freaks out and he wanted me to help him out dude whatever you want I will help you with anything I can do to help you please let me I'm there for it and the same with Skid B they got Predator. I love Predator. Anything I can do to help you guys, it looks like you've got everything taken care of in Predator, but if you guys need a hand, let me know. So, let me ask a question then. So, at this time, what sort of, like, contract or agreement was in place with either of those two entities? Like, typical Aussie deals, it's a handshake. Gentlemen, it's basically, I trust you. It's like, hey, I'm J-Pop. What could possibly go wrong? Well, exactly. I mean, you've got to remember, I mean, his track record is pretty phenomenal, right? Like, just with the games he's done. Even you go back to World Cup soccer, even though if you look behind the history, you hear about, like, you know, I guess Steve Ritchie had something to do it by the end of it and stuff like that. Either way, all his games are phenomenal. you know um so yeah like when he said he needed help I was like whatever I can do I will help you I will say I had a very clear understanding when I started working with him that he that the deal was I would get a game just like everyone else oh man he promised a lot of people games Yeah, but I'll be honest with you, if I didn't get anything, I kind of, it would suck, but I knew this was a risk. Oh, yeah. I, you know, anything inside the pinball, unless you're getting paid, it's a risk. And you've got to remember, it was not my day job, so I wasn't dependent on it. That's what I was going to ask, whether, you know, in your, I don't know, 16 hours of awake time per day, So, you know, how much time would you have spent working on that versus your day job? Let's just say it's a lot more than I anticipated. I mean, essentially, I'd go, you know, start work at 8, come home at 6, 6.30, have family, you know, have dinner with the family. And around 8.30, I mean, you know, if you ever speak to the spooky guys, like, hey, when are you going to talk to David? It's always 8.30 and beyond because I come home, have dinner with the kids, get them down, hang out with the wife a little bit, and then I just go into the computer room in my study. And from 8 o'clock, 8.30 onwards till 2 o'clock in the morning, I'll be working on stuff. And that has never stopped. And so over what period of time, and I guess you were working on J-Pop, the Zibware machine, as well as the Skit-B machine at the same time. But, you know, over what period of time were you working on, let's say, Magic Girl? Magic Girl. Actually, I have, I think I've got my hard drive here. Let me go back, J-pop. Someone needs to play waiting music. Some of my earliest stuff, like I have right now, which was the Magic Mirror for that game, goes back to January 2015. and that's probably 2014 when I actually really first started talking to him about it. In fact, actually, let me check my emails. I can actually find out for right now. Sure, and we'll link all those emails into the show notes. Wow, I'm completely off. It's 2011. Wow. Wow. Yeah, so there you go. So I started talking back in 2011. So was that the only game that you worked on with J-Pop? Was it Magic Girl or did you also start working on other things? Yeah, I got Razza, Magic Girl. I never got to work on Alice in Wonderland. But I did a bunch of work for both of those games. So now that you've seen Magic Girl or seen enough of it, what is actually there. How much of your content actually made the final cut? Because everyone knows that it's quite an unfinished game. The majority of the stuff is not there. But even you look at the display that they have there, there's nothing there. I mean, it just looks like they're... I mean, I've never had my hands on a Magic Girl, but it just looks like it's just a bunch of PNG sequences. Are they your PNG sequences? No. No, like Magic Girl, I mean, there are whole sequences where I had a magic mirror and the face would appear in it and it's floating and it would disappear. I'm going to have a great, I don't know if I can even, I guess I can show these because technically you never paid for them, so I technically own them. Yeah, sure, please do. I mean, we got to play it, how long ago was that, Ryan? That was probably three, four months ago. Six months ago. Yeah, maybe even longer. but we did get to play it. I think the last podcast that you were on, I believe, was when you were on Spooky. You hadn't seen any footage of it, and I think there'd just been some pictures. We did stream the machine for a couple of hours, and the animations looked all right, but... What you said there, they just picked the sequences, they kind of changed. Yeah, yeah, nothing was really moving. Yeah, I mean, look, the whole experience was quite underwhelming, mainly because you could see what it was meant to be versus what it was in its completed state at the time, and there was just a massive gap. All right, well, I don't know how much trouble I will get with this. I am going to share your screen, guys, and you can tell me if you saw this in the game or not. Are you going to send it to us on...? Yeah, I can see it. Yes. So this is the type of animations I was doing for the game. So that's just a looping background. And I don't think any of that turned up in the final game. And, you know, it's his game to put what he wants into it. And I don't know if this didn't fit the theme. I mean, I think it does still. But that was the type of stuff that I was doing for him. Okay. And, in fact, do you have any rather stuff? on your computer. Reza stuff. This is really good for podcasting. This is good. Yeah, podcast. No one can see it but me. Maybe... You know what? I'll probably send you down a couple of clips. I can't see why you can't share it. Unless I've got a literacy synthesis. Oh, that's kind of cool. So there are different variations of that one. I'm trying... Right now I'm watching them. a clown shooting a ray and I had different ones with like a farting gas. We all love farting gas, right? And I get that the point is that you've done all this animation for Raza and it hasn't been used so who's got the animation now? Subling me. No one. Honestly, no one has ever come and spoken to me about it. And I think, honestly, John at that point had moved on from me doing stuff with them. So, yeah, they probably just didn't think it was suitable at the time or the game that they were making. So, I had no idea. I mean, I just did a bunch of it for him. So, at what stage along that journey with J-Pop did you start either feeling or get some information to think that something wasn't quite right? I mean, by the time it got bad, I mean, I don't say it ever got bad, because I always hoped he would pull it off. I mean, he had some really amazing stuff that he wanted to do. I think he got, he just didn't know how to produce a product. I think really what it comes down to. So my hope is everyone would finally would get something from it, get a game, that would be great. And by the time that went bad, I started working more with Spooky. So it was just basically a switch of, hey, John, if you ever need me, let me know. If you need some assets, just let me know and we'll figure it out. And then basically the communication just stopped. So did you get paid at all for any of the work you did? None at all. Nothing. So was it meant to be that your full payment would be a game? Yep. Okay. And were those games, sorry, there's only meant to be like 16 or so games or 25, but was that meant to include all the ones that he promised to everyone that was helping him out or were they on top of, you know, the limited run or was that never mentioned? Never. Did he ever say? This is why it would have been smart to have a contract. Yeah, I know. Hence my subtle question at the start, right? Yeah. No, and I mean, look, My experience with him, working with him, was... It was a pleasure. He was never... You know, he respected me for what I did. I mean, some people might argue, well, he didn't pay you, so that didn't respect you. You didn't get your game. I'm like... But I knew full well what I was getting into. I guess it wasn't his intention up front to not pay people. He didn't deliberately put people off. He was just deliberately incompetent. Yeah. Not deliberately. But he was incompetent. He didn't know how to build these machines. They got way too complex for him. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he just, he wants, I think when it comes down to it, he wants to do a lot of it himself. I think he's also worried about people taking stuff. If he brought people into work with him, he's worried about them probably leaving to other people. You've got to remember, you've got people jumping ship from Jersey Jack, you've got from Stern, like, everyone's going back and forth all over the place, right? So, like, the whole industry exploded, so people getting lured away here and there. So, I think John was really concerned about that happening to him, and I think that's what kind of caused him to shut himself out of a lot of that stuff. Yeah, because what he was also doing was, and maybe this is, it links to that as well, you know, he was using a lot of custom parts and a lot of, and, you know, Even the cabinet itself was a custom dimension, and he was patenting things along the way. So maybe that's one part really protective, second part maybe a bit of experience, and third part maybe a bit paranoid? Probably all of them put together. Because, I mean, this industry is so small. I mean, I talk to a handful of people, and I trust those people completely, and I'm still amazed of what gets out. Like, I mean, you literally can't fight with someone else hearing it somewhere else. Yeah. I mean, this industry is so tiny, you know? It's just, you know... I was having a chat to someone in the US about it, and I said, how do all these leaks come out? Like, you know, how can we know the next... how many games from this manufacturer? And he said, well, there's only so many people in the industry, and, like, say someone who makes toys, and then you go to have a meeting with them and they leave toys from another manufacturer on the table or something and it's just there and then they talk and then it's out of control after that. And it also comes down to licensing as well. They read each other out, yeah. Well, hypothetically, they don't technically tell, but I would not be surprised if certain licenses talk between other licenses. I mean, I think it's just the nature of the beast. you know, and when one pinball company shows interest in something, then it's like, hey, just, you know, give your heads up. Someone else might be interested in this, you know. So there comes that bidding war, and that's where I can see licensing getting really, really expensive down the road with more people via, you know, going for that certain title. I heard a story that there was a license or that was going into deals with a particular manufacturer and then tried to bid the other manufacturer, I mean, at the time there was only two major ones, so you can guess who that was, to try and get more money from them. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what sucks. And dealing in the film and TV side of things, before the internet, right, you would make a deal for a film and it would be all-inclusive, right? Like, you'd get this film. And then the internet came around, right? And then it was like, oh, hang on, when I did that film, but it's online, I'm not getting royalties from that. So their agents then jumped on the board like, well, yes, I signed a contract to be in this film, but now you're selling it online, and I need to get a cut of that. And that all filters down to if it's used in television, if it's used in a video game, if it's used online. Like, it's just agents and companies have now gone into the market of, okay, then you own that look, like you're an actor, you own your face, so therefore wherever it shows up, you have to clear that, where back in the day, you did a movie, you didn't own that likeness anymore. You know, the studio that paid you owned that. We'll get into that in more detail in a sec when we talk about kind of D&D versus LCD animations, because you've done them both, but before we get into kind of the spooky side, But you also had, you know, an involvement, brief it may be, in Skid B as well. So was that going on at the same time that you were working with John on Magic Girl? Oh, absolutely. So, you know, me, it's like I'm all, you know, enthusiastic. I didn't have a kid. I think I had my first child at the time. Again, I had a fair bit of spare time, and, you know, I'm pretty fired up. I'm talking to John, and I see what Skid B are doing with Predator. I'm like, man, that's cool. I'd love to, you know, Predators is a thing that I would love to have. And I just hit them up. I was like, hey, guys, like, I'm seeing what you do on the display. If you're going to do another game or whatever, if you need a hand, let me know. I'll definitely jump on in. And, of course, when they find out that you're pretty much willing to work for free or for a game, everyone wants to use you. And, yeah, that's how I got brought in onto Experts of Dangerous. Oh, wow. Yeah, and so you'd done some promo videos for Predator, but... Yes. It really was. So, I mean, we really didn't get that much information about Experts of Dangerous, and for those people that don't know, it was a theme that was loosely based on Mythbusters, is that right? Yes. They, I mean, they, yeah, so what I understood is they had the license with Adam and the other guy, like, Jamie. So. So was that like a spin-off show? Like, not, just by the same people? No, they, basically they didn't go, so what I understand, Discovery owned the title Mythbusters. It was their brand, and this show was coming to an end anyway. So they decided to go directly to Jamie and Adam directly to work on their license, because they had a very successful stage show going on. I think it stopped last year, but they had basically a stage show where they would do the tricks they did at Mythbusters, but they'd do it live on stage. Okay. Right, okay. So it wasn't really an established license or franchise, this whole experts are dangerous, or was it going to be? Um, it's one of those... I'm leaning onto the fact that you've then got to make animation for this. So if there's something that's formed or not, you effectively become the visual director for that new license, I guess. Yeah, so they already had their artist working on it. I mean, everyone pretty saw the artwork they had for the play field and stuff like that. So essentially when I got brought into it, it was like, This is the playfield layout. This is what our artist has done. Adam and Jamie have signed off on their likeness on the playfield and so forth like that. So that's as far as that went. They already had all the preliminary software design done on that game pretty solidly. In fact, they did a whole booklet, which I actually still have, of all the switches, very much like the Bally Williams manual use they get. I have all that, and by looking through that, I would come up with how the game is going to play on the display. But we never got much further down that path, because once Predator came to light, which we all thought they actually had, yeah, just that everything went under. Which was disappointing. There was some really cool talk. But at the time, you say disappointing. Was it sort of like, as you said before, you understood the risks, were you sort of thinking, oh, well, it was a risk, or were you, like, really gutted because it had happened? Well, this was the same time as John, so I'm kind of like, yeah, two for two, here I go. The pinball industry sucks. Well, look, I'll put it this way. Worst case scenario, I'm going to have a great talk on the convention circuit, because I'm going to be able to show, this is the animation from Magic Girl and Raza, and here is Expersive dangerous and I'll start selling the software primarily design manual, you know. And look, it's all an experience and honestly I felt like this is all just me learning because doing animations for a pinball machine is vastly different to what I do in my day job and it's just another skill set. So basically I'm taking my skill set, trying to apply that to telling a story in pinball, one of the things that really attracted me to pinball was essentially always the theme first. It was never about the toys, right? So the theme always drew me to the game. And that's why I always had Star Wars. I had movie licenses because that's what I loved. So that would always attract me to the game. And then I would see the world under glass. I would see like the Terminator 2 with Arnie in the background. Or you'd see the toys, right? And then that would make me want, okay, I know the movie story. how do I make that happen on the play field and as a kid right so I would you would have to hit for those toys to make those toys to do something that you remembered from the movie which tickled that nostalgia for you which made you want to drop another coin in right so it was me taking the storytelling that I learned in my craft of a film and tv is how can I bring that back to pinball, and by working with John and Skit-B, you know, instead of at that point, every game was kind of more like just shoot the flashing shots. I really wanted to tackle more of this stuff like, what's the story behind it? And if there is no story, can we make a story behind it? Like, it's all great to hit the shot, but one thing I missed from the pinball back from the 90s was, you were making that ball tell a story. You were making that ball do things. Like, theater of magic, you know, you're making that bowl disappear like you're a magician, right? And not everyone could do that. So, like, you would tell your friends, come and look at me play theater of magic, I can make the bowl jump up on the box, you know? And that was something I wanted to bring back, like, I learned animation, I learned storytelling, I wanted to infuse that more into pinball than it was at that point. And I just thought... I mean, how do you do that, though? I mean, was your role then more than just the animator? Were you helping to try and consult with Playful Design? So John is very protective, so it was literally he would tell me what he had. He would send me artwork from Jeremy or Matt. This is what I have. This is what I kind of want on the display. Make it do something. and then I would literally take it, cut down the image and animate it, right? And then I would just tell little stories. So one of the backgrounds was for Raza and it was an amusement park. It's a, you know, destroyed amusement park. So I would just, like, there was a giant Godzilla in one of them. So I'd have lasers coming out of his eyes and his mouth. And, like, I would just try and tell my own story, you know, because John would just let me do what I want. with Skit-B they had unique toys and it's like you know they wanted this army of dummies basically coming after Jamie and Adam and that's basically how the whole intro happened like okay well let's tell the story about them defending the earth against these dummies but again they all kept their kind of waltz to themselves and just like add what you can to it you know but I guess That's what you do when someone's working for free. Just do what you want to do. So, no, I didn't have any real influence on the playfields themselves. They would just literally give me what they had, and I would play with that. Okay. So, I mean, after these two kind of, like, breakdowns in pinball companies and things not going that well, you hooked up with Charlie from Spooky Pinball, and that's what you did. I was Ben first. Oh, it was Ben first. Okay. Right. Yes. So I met Ben, that Ben, I can't exactly remember Ben, but it was through J-Pop. It was something between Magic Girl that brought us, no, Magic Girl and Raza. Yeah. Yeah. It was meant to be Ben Hex, Ben Hex theme kind of thing. Yeah. So, and he wasn't aware that I was working on it. You've got to remember, John kind of kept everyone isolated. So, you know, I didn't know Jeremy was working on it until everything blew up. Like, the first time I met Jeremy was he got on Pinsight. He goes, hey, I've been working on Magic Girl. Like, this is on Pinsight. I'm not sure what's going on, you know. And I quickly personal messaged him on Pinsight. Hey, dude, you better give me a call. Like, I'm the animator and I'm not sure what's going on. But, you know, I think I can get you off the speed pretty quickly. Um, and that was kind of like, from that point, then I, you know, you reach out to Ben and you start forming this group of people, like, you start figuring out what's going on, you know? Um. The J-POP support group. Basically. Basically. And, um, and then from that, I met Ben in person at TPF, who introduced me into Chuck, saying, hey, your next game, because I'm not doing the dots for you, you need David. And that's essentially how I got brought on to Rob Zombie. So Ben did the dots for America's Most Haunted, is that right? Ben did everything on America's Most Haunted. Okay. And it nearly crushed him. Yeah. So he wanted to bring in you for the dots. And is it my understanding that the Rob Zombie, is it a DMD or is it like an LCD that's emulating a DMD? It's an LCD emulating a DMD. Wow, okay. Now, how is that? Because obviously you've probably, is that your first time working with Dutch, so to speak? Fuck. I mean, literally from working in HD or even standard definition. like so me being naive because everything I was doing with John and Skit-B was very just do what you do so I just did what I do so I would make it nice HD and I would work with it and be fantastic and then when you go work for a real company and it's like no this is the system we have this is how it works and this is how you can comply to it you go okay well this is different So it wasn't LCD, so why were they forcing you to emulate dots if it wasn't LCD? Is that something to do with the processor wasn't able to... The PENX system would only drive a certain size. Okay. So basically, to get the frame rate that you want, it's designed for that frame size. And then that comes down to making sure the board is cost-effective and stuff like that. It's basically you figure out what you need the game to do, and then you design everything around that. So, again, what sort of freedom did you have when it came to the animation that you provided for Rob Zombie? And the subtext of this question is, what the hell with the testicle? It was just, you know, the ball is saved. It's as simple as that, you know? It's just like... But don't the balls get chopped up when the ball gets saved? Isn't that the opposite? Only one. Only one. He was cold. His left side of him was cold and it didn't drop. Look, it obviously is, by far, the most gruesome animation on any pinball machine ever, so congratulations on that. I only had one clip banned, so I will take pride in that. I don't think there will be another pinball machine that will take the title of most hardcore pinball machine. It really is. What's the clip that was banned? It was an insert coin animation. What? Oh, no. Yeah, and it literally was basically pushing a coin through someone's arm, and some people said that did not look like an arm. Yeah. It was not the intention, but you've got to remember. So, like, I would, so, like, so, I honestly thought I'll do everything in HD, and then we'll just truncate it down to that size. Because at that time, you look at what Stern was doing, they were taking video clips and then basically shrinking them down to the display. They didn't look that crash hot, but they were okay. You almost figured out what was going on. Yeah. So, like, I just took the same concept, right? And we'll do the Penhex system. We'll just do it all HD. So one day, maybe in three years' time, if we upgrade the system, we could remaster, like, at that point, you know, because I was with Skit-B, they were talking about doing, like, Funhaus version 2. You know, that's when there was all those announcements for Totem version 2. You know, so they were talking about these new versions of the older game. So because I was hearing about those conversations and people were talking to me about it, I was like, well, if I'm doing Rob Zombie, maybe in three years' time, I just re-render everything out in HD, and then we can upgrade Rob Zombie to HD. But as soon as we started compressing the image down, it looked horrendous. And that's why you get this really cool coin insert animation. You compress the crap out of it, and it's just like, yeah, that does not look good. So let's leave that out. Just so. But, like, so, lucky enough with Charlie, like, Charlie saw what I could do, and he was like, we have, Rob Zombie had to sign off on everything. But he didn't care, like, do, you know, you've got my songs, theme it to the songs, and just go for it. So we would literally take the music videos, look at all that type of stuff, and then Ben and me, we would storyboard it. and we would storyboard the whole mode out, get a story and then basically that how the modes would come about We would basically tell a story in the mode versus of like if these many shots how do we tell a story with that It was like, what's the story of the song? Let's theme it around that, and then the shots would come from that. And so was anything rejected, or they pretty much accepted it all? Everything, everything. And they even didn't get to see the insert animation. That was killed. The full save almost got cut too, except they left it in when they went to take it to Rob Zombie's show, and Sherry Moon played it, and Charlie said, oh, no, no, we can take that out, because he totally forgot that it was there. And she goes, no, you've got to leave that there. That's awesome. Yes. So, yeah. No, everything, I mean, it's essentially, you know, we would just look at the stuff. They had a topless witch dancing in one of the music videos. well, that's exactly what the mode's going to be, you know? So it's just you look at what we're licensing, you take that story and you convert it to the pinball machine. So from after Rob Zombie, you also did work on Dominoes and The Jetsons. Yes. But I guess, I mean, they're more contract games than spooky titles. Did you have any involvement with Total Nuclear Annihilation, or is that once again the animations were just all stuck in EC and he wanted to kind of do everything himself with that? Well, so, yeah, so Domino's and Jetsons were contract games, and they both all had their challenge. Actually, Domino's was honestly, that game has more animations than Rob Zombie does. Wow. A lot of people don't, Honestly, there's still another code update coming for Domino's, and I'm actually really, really proud of that game. That game has some really, really unique rule sets in it, and let's just say the wizard mode in that is pretty awesome. And I'm not going to spoil it. You've got to play it to get there. There's like one or two in Australia in a different state, in Queensland or something, so we're never going to get to play it. Well, I'm going to have to, like, when I come down there, I'm going to have to hunt them down because I actually enjoy playing that game. That game, it actually plays quite well. And the new and the final code that will come out for that eventually, I think people will change their mind on that down the road. There's a lot of stuff in that game. Everything's custom in that. Like, working with Domino's, I mean, they literally gave me everything. It was an absolute blast to work on. Jetsons, on the other hand, I enjoyed working on that game, but, you know, when you're dealing with a high-profile license, you're limited to what they want you to do. So, you know, you can only do so much with what they give you. But I still love that game. Like, my kids, when we go up to Wisconsin, that is the game they go and play. Like, I am amazed at just how the kids gravitate towards that game. And there's still going to be stuff going to be added to that game coming up soon as well. That's not in that game right now. Is that the same display as Rob Zombie, or it's a bit bigger or something, isn't it? No, they're all identical. So they're basically running the exact same system. I think there might be a slight board variation up on that. But they're all pretty much the same board system. Okay. So then we had Jackson's done, and then TNA, Scott already done most of the animations that he wanted. But I think a lot of that stuff come from public places. So basically we had to go back and redo. So he liked what he had. He just basically turned to me and was like, make it our own. so I would basically take that and of course we had Matt working on the art so he would do variations of what he had and then we'd create the animations from that so everything was done from scratch so that lock screen like when ball one locks is that your styling? because the animations that you showed me before with Magic Girl and that kind of has that same art style I'm not sure what do you call that? That's Matt. So this is what's funny. So from working with John, I met Jeremy. I met Jeremy, Ben, and then I went for Spooky. So I'm working along with Spooky, everything else, and then all of a sudden this other guy comes out of the woodwork called Matt. I'm like, who the hell is Matt? And then it turns out he did nearly all the art for Raza. I'm like, oh, dude, I've been working on your animations. He's never seen a single one. We're talking on TNA. Well, hey, check out these images. Like, this was the video I did of your animations, of your images. So this is Matt Andrews. People that don't know, yeah, Matt Andrews. So, yeah, so the ball one lock animation is, he drew the art, and then I would create the animation from that. And, in fact, there's a very similar animation to that from Raza. Raza, they had a, like, a bunker deal. So, yeah, I just realized that's very similar, and thanks for pointing that out. I just realized what you were talking about. Yeah, well, the thing I'm trying to get at is it's kind of like cell shading, but it's not. It's like got that, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it, but it's got the same art styling. Like everything looks like it's kind of like glowing a little bit. Yeah. Again, like, I basically, a lot of this stuff, like, people don't understand there's a big difference between animators and people that, and artists, right? So I'm what you'd call, I don't even consider myself an animator, but being in this industry I'm in, you have to be a jack of all trades. And a lot of people think people that draw do the animations, or an animator does all the drawing. That is not the case. You have someone that usually does all the art. You give it over to someone like me, and then I will start creating, taking your assets, breaking them down into animation. And that's basically how that works. So that's why you saw a similarity between what I showed you just then to what you see in TNA because it's the same artist as regarding that. But, you know, it's his style, and I'm adding on the 1950s look to it. I think we've pretty much caught everyone up to speed. So now we can finally talk about Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. You don't have to be very turned off with this amount of ranting. We've got a two, three-hour podcast, so they're only at the start now. So Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle, when did your work start on that? Because obviously they've had the license for, like, what, a year and a half, two years or something. When did you start doing work on that? So, I mean, Charlie was already working on the Whitewood, but we made, I guess, you know, the official announcement was in last, TPF last year, so people don't realize, like, we literally just did 12 months, like, announcement of the game and showed the game. So we had that. We would start storyboarding. We would basically go up to Wisconsin and we'll look at the game at the Whitewood with Charlie. Charlie would tell us what he wanted. This is somewhat the story modes. I want, you know, I want my monsters doing this. This is Alice Cooper because he's the Alice Cooper fanatic, him and Bug. And you guys do what you do. So we would sit there and we'll look at the game and we'll look at the shots and we'll go, well, okay, what are the characteristics of the monsters, like werewolf and zombies and stuff like that? werewolf is all about speed. It's all about combo shots. So the whole mode, you know, we sit there in storyboard and it's like, okay, so werewolf, you've got to make combo shots. So it's like, one combo, you're basically loading the gun. The second combo shot, you're lifting the gun up to shoot the werewolf. The third combo, you're blowing the werewolf away. You know, that's your mode. So we're basically... Go ahead. Do you have to collect that gun? Because I know you have to kind of collect things that make it easier before you fight the monsters. what happens if you haven't collected the gun, or do you have to collect the gun before you get to him? You do not have to collect the gun. You will always have the gun. But what the items will do will either reward you with a quick kill, a faster kill of the monster completing the mode, or it will give you combos. Best combos instead of three? Correct. Okay. So basically, you know, there's two ways that most people play. People I will play for go into the wizard mode, or they will play in a tournament setting. So basically your items are either going to help you gain points, or it's going to help you get to the wizard mode faster, essentially when it comes down to it. And Bowen's coming up with way more stuff than that, but that's basically the general idea of the weapons. The items that you collect is either going to help you go through the mode quicker, or it's going to give you way more points. So can I just go back just a quick sec? So just back to the animations, I guess. We were talking before about artist versus animator. Yes. Where's that crossover with you when it's doing the animation? Like, was the art already done, or do you collaborate on the art style as well? Well, we'll give them a storyboard. So basically, we'll give them a wish list of what we want it to look like, and then we allow them to do their style. I mean, we wouldn't choose an artist that we didn't think was right for the thing. And that, again, that's all down to Charlie. Charlie knew who he wanted for Alice Cooper. He knew who he wanted for Rob Zombie. Rob Zombie was unique because I had to create a lot of stuff myself. And because it's so low resolution, I got away with murder, I'll be honest with you. I could get away with just, you know, not high-res stuff. Right. And that's one thing that's scary going to a very high-res display is people want original licenses, but to create content for original licenses the way I want to do it, it would probably cost you more money than going to get a license. Well, I think that was the feedback that everyone was sort of talking about with Dialed In. because it was a new, well, not new license, but unlicensed. They had to create that content all from scratch. So it's not like you've got assets that you can slot in, a 15-second video clip here or five-second there. They've had to do it all. So you're in the same boat here where everything that you're now creating that's on the screen is all new. That's time-consuming, right? Yeah, and, you know, you try to explain to the artist, All right, just I want you to be prepared. Like we're going to be asking a lot from you, and you've got to be ready for it. Normally an artist, you know, they're providing you the cabinet, the back glass, the play field, some quick little, you know, logo treatments and stuff for the display, you know, like your scoring display and stuff like that, your overlays. But everything else in the background is using assets But when you do Alice Trooper, for example It's like, this is all going to be hand-drawn And what's worse, I'm a huge, you know, Tales from the Crypt fan I'm, you know, Creepshow fan So, like, when Charlie's telling me about It's going to be his nightmare castle And he's living in this castle And you're going to combat his creatures in the castle I'm like, okay, I know what I want to do. I went away one evening. I basically mocked out an introduction of how the game's going to look and feel. I sent that off to Charlie, which basically is a comic page because Alice Cooper did a bunch of comics with DC back in the 80s, I think it was. And I found that image, and I took that off the web. I put it together, and I did the whole comic book opening up, revealing comic panels of him. You know, I'm just basically doing a... Is this him with the two nurses in the background? Yep, yep, absolutely. Okay. And I just mocked it up. Like, you basically... I stole everything I could with Alice Cooper, threw it on this, threw it over to Charlie with a temp soundtrack, and I said, Charlie, this is how I want the display to look. The next thing I find out, next morning, I say, they love it. I'm like, what? That's what they want. I'm like, cool. but it was your first attempt. It was like, could you let me polish it up a little bit? It's one of those things of like, when I get something in my head, I just want to get it done. So I'll just sit there and drum it out and that's pretty much how the whole comic book came together. It was like, well, this is what I love. This is right down that vein, so let's do it. Yep, he signed off on it. That's how we're doing it. Okay. Is the next step for you to almost do, and I don't know how this works in animation but I know in sort of design you've got your style guide. Is that kind of what you had to do with animation as well to say, right, this is now what the visual look is going to look like. Don't change it because anytime you change it all the work of animation, the hours that you've put into it almost get wasted because you've got to redo. Essentially, that was another thing I was seeing a lot in the industry here was when I'm working on film and television, everything's going to be cohesive, right? Like, you can't take people out of the story. As soon as you do a bad cut or you change the theme or the music, it takes people out of the story. And as soon as you take them out of the story, then they're looking at all the bad stuff. And one thing I had noticed in Pinball is when it comes to the display, they were throwing everything in there and the kitchen sink, and it wasn't cohesive with the art package of the cabinet or the play field or the theme. And that was one thing I really wanted to make sure with Alice Cooper was everything was stylized exactly the same. So if the artist is doing the cabinet, he needs to be doing the art for the display because if we can marry all those three elements together, it's just going to make people get into the license more, get more into the game, to have a real feeling, have a real connection with that world under the glass. And that was like, it has to, everything's got to blend together on the display. The display is not that important, but when people are watching it and they can get a sense of what's happening on that play field, it's on that display, they connect with it and it makes them want to play the next ball. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, it is true. I mean, like with Magical, the play field artist, and the cabinet artist, and you're the animator, like working three different people with three different art styles. And even Getaway, as an example, the guy who's getting away has three different faces, one on the play field, one on the back glass, and one on the D&D, and they're different shades, different color hair, et cetera. And not that anyone back then probably cared about it, but I guess with the LCD and things being so crisp, the spotlight really kind of gets put on it, And, you know, we've seen Iron Maiden and people are gushing over it, but I guess if someone was to point their finger and complain about something, I guess the animations, because they've kind of taken stuff from, like, the mobile phone game app thing, and, you know, it's different. They've done some custom animations that look really good, and then they've kind of copied and pasted some other animations. And I guess if anyone was to kind of look at that and be critical of it, It would be someone like you that creates that content, I guess, that would say, oh, you know, that kind of could look better if it was, you know, more like this. But I also understand they're dealing with probably a licensor that has a mandate of what it has to be. So that's what it comes down to is there's a lot of time pressure to get stuff out. So you've got to work with that limitations. I mean, us, regarding Spooky, switching over to the P-Rock system, most of the modes were pretty much programmed in on the Penhex system, but when we've made the switch, it's a completely different way of programming. Was it still going to be the same size LCD with the upgraded Penhex system, or are you now using... Okay, so the animations are still going to be pretty much the same. You didn't swap from dots to HD display? No. So the NetPenHack system was going to be a HD system. It's just the development side of it was taking longer than, you know, we were hoping it would take. And because we wanted to be at TPF, the switch basically had to happen. So, you know, you just deal with the timeframes that you have. So, in fact, I will – what I'll probably end up doing, guys, is share you some of the, I'll say share one of the storyboard ideas that we did for Alice Cooper so you can just see the process. So I'm going to share the screen with you guys now and then you can share it on your Facebook or whatever you want. This is the vampire mode. So the vampire, so we basically would start out with a storyboard where we have panels. So we would lay out what the mode would look like, which would be the name, and then like from that frame, it will go into item modifiers. What would be the fast win? If you collected the fake, you're going to be able to kill the vampire quicker. If you get the garlic, for example, it will give you more time. It doesn't kill him, but you can do more damage, which means it gives you a longer, more time to collect more points when you kill him, right? So that's all your introduction video. We'll basically show you how to kill him and what item modifiers you have picked up through the process. Is the bull getting staged during these animations? Yeah. So basically, when you make it through the rooms in the game itself, the bull actually gets trapped by a magnet in the back of the play field. So that's when you see the comic book pages flip down. So you're flipping through the comic to get to the chapter of the vampire section, the vampire chapter. And that's when you'd see the vampire. It would have a quick little quote on how to kill him, you know, something cheesy like, you know, you got to stake him in the heart. Then it will show you your modifiers if you collected a stake or if you collected garlic. And then the bolt would be released and then you would see the coffin. So basically you'll see the coffin and there will be text on the display that will basically say, shoot to the upper playfield. Once you make that shot, the top of the coffin will blow off. and the vampire will rise up and now he is facing you. He looks very happy. This is all Ben Heck. He drew all this. So basically, this is him standing up and that's when we would show each target one stakes him in the heart. And we'll have the animations and this is what we want it to look like. And this is the storyboard that we would give the artist. So once you make the shot to the stake, you will see the stake get driven to his heart. He will fall backwards, right? So once he falls down, he's on the ground with a stake in his chest. Most likely, you're off the upper play field, so you've got to get back up there again. If you hit target one again, you cut his head off. Because like all vampires, when you stake a vampire, they're not necessarily dead. You've got to cut their head off. Sure, yeah. So once you do that, so additional points. So you cut his head off, he is dead. You've actually won the mode now. So once you've cut his head off, you've won the mode. Then you go into the victory laps, which essentially our original idea was you're burying him back into the ground, but it just wasn't feeling right. So what we basically did was like, well, the other thing you do to vampires is you burn the bodies. So instead of burying them in the ground again, essentially you throw basically a torch onto the body and you burn it, and that becomes your victory mode, and you're basically burning the vampire. That's cool. So that's the original storyboard, and then when we discovered certain problems that we can't do that on the animation, then you start getting creative. Okay, so how's other ways you kill a vampire? You burn the body. And so instead of burying it for the victory lap shots, now you're just torching the body. so my question I guess is you know it's going you're going down the comic book path and comic books are static images now you there's you storyboard this you give it to the artist the artist draws it so how much animation is well first he freaks out because he's like what's all this stuff okay but this is how we're going to do it yeah so so how so he he draws it so how do you do you animate it or are you just flipping the comic book from one? Like, what is your job in this? Are you flipping the pages, or are you making, like, the pictures move? No, so I will basically then cut out all... So he'll give me one solid image, and there'll be different layers to that image, but I usually have to break them out even more, and then I will create the animations from that. So he'll give me one solid character, and then I will create the animation with the arm and the eyes and the mouth moving. So I will basically, in fact, this is so going to suck for everyone else that I'm doing this. So what I am showing you right now is the mystery award for Alice Cooper. Yeah. Okay. So basically, behind the background, we have a crypt, a graveyard with a crypt. And all the art is actually taken from the blade art in the game. So basically, I went in, cut out the backgrounds, added in the moon animation, added in the bat animations in the background, and then basically create the animation over the top of that. I've got insect mode. One of the insect modes is you basically kill insects. Is that like a mini mode, like a monster battle? That's like a side mission? It is. Insect is actually the insect creature mode. But to get to the insect, you've got to kill all his little babies. So essentially, you have insects running across the display. and then as they run across the display, you'll hit a shot and it will squash one of them. So basically you're squashing the insects and then you find the insect and you kill him. It reminds me of that mode from Men in Black where you kill those insects to get the guy really angry at the end. Pretty much. I actually didn't think about that, but you pretty much nailed it. And these animations actually take a long time. You're just seeing, like, the first 15 frames. But they'll just literally walk across the screen and stuff like that. And I've got different types of insects and stuff like that. I've got a spider. He moves and he shakes his back and stuff, like the Alice Cooper skull on the back of him. And I literally will go through and break down each part of the cockroach. So he will give me one piece of the cockroach, and then I will use a real piece of animation of a cockroach moving. Like, I will look at their body parts. Yeah, I'm just going to be... And then I will literally then go back to the actual creature and animate him to look the same. If everyone's wondering, Dave has a split screen of basically a real cockroach and then the animated one, and then he's kind of playing side by side. We really should have recorded this, Marty. We didn't know that was going to be our first YouTube podcast. I never, yeah, I apologize, but I kind of like to show, you know, I do everything on the fly. Yeah, you can take our word for it. It looks very cool, guys. Yeah, so, you know, honestly, it's probably a little bit overkill for the game, but I, you know, when I get on a path of how I want to do things, that's where I want to go with it, you know. So how much longer do you think you have to work on Alice Cooper before you're done with it? Obviously the code is still in the sea, but do you think, you know, by the end of the year or a couple of months? So regarding animations, so each monster, and again, Bowen is now leading all the code on this, on game rules. He's kind of the dungeon master for Spooky now. Yeah. We have each mode, each monster has a base mode. So basically how you defeat the mode. Okay. After that, there's a second mode, which is kind of a victory lap mode on top of that. So all the base modes, I already have, I've only got three more of those modes to do, as in base modes. Okay. I already have Frankenstein done, Cold Ethel, Crypt Multiball, Vampire, Alice Cooper, Werewolf. I'm working on Insects now. And then it's Igor. And then it is Tentacle Creature. So, I mean, animation-wise, I'm probably over 50% done. Yeah, so I'm working, you know, so, but that doesn't include fixes. So a lot of this stuff is, I wouldn't say it's rough, but it's the basic stuff. There will be things that no one will probably even care about that I will go back and fix. Like the animation of the insect that I have, there's something I don't like about his leg, the way it's moving. So I will probably go back and fix that. Is it approved? How often do you have to get approval for things before you... All the time. Okay. All the time. It's just like everything has to be approved through the licensor. We have much easier time. I say that now that we've got an easier time with the licensor that we've got now, but it's purely they're 100% in charge of what we're doing and you know so they have to approve everything, they have to see the modes, they have to see the dots, they have to see they have to hear it, they have to hear the audio one thing it's kind of a little bit frustrating so we've literally taken this game from concept to showing you guys in 12 months and it's just, you know, when you see people say about Alice Cooper's audio, for example, his audio track, that is actually his persona as Alice Cooper. If you watch any of his videos, his old TV shows, that is exactly how he talks. He does get more animated as he gets excited, but his character, he lives in this castle. He's an aristocrat. He lives, you know, in this house. The monsters don't get him excited. They're just his friends. you know, it's just like, oh, you're going to go and feed the werewolf? Like, good luck to you, you know? And it's sort of like, he's not going to get more animated when you guys are doing better, you know, or you hurt one of his creatures. And it's just, it's frustrating because we can't, you know, it's like we can't show everything, not everything is approved, and it's just one of those things of you just got to work with what you have, and you guys have only seen maybe 5% to 10% of what you're going to have. Wow. Yeah. I guess it's the conundrum of kind of showing something incomplete to kind of get people hyped up or, you know, wait until the thing's 100% approved. But, you know, I guess you guys have to continue to develop as you start to ship machines and things like that. But it goes both ways, I guess. I can see what you guys are talking about, but you also can't expect people to love 5% of your product when you still have 95% to go. Well, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, right? Exactly, yeah. In a perfect world, we'll love to be able to show everything done, but you've got to meet contracts, you've got to meet agreements, and you will just do the best you can with what. Something I've always wanted, I just want to bring more of a storytelling to pinball and that's basically, you know, everything I am doing with Spooky, it's about trying to get, you know, that screen to marry the story that's being told under glass. So you said before that you're, you know, the genres that you're into are horror and sci-fi. So the question that we'd like to ask everyone, you know, and I guess it's more of a question for you since you are creating demo machines, but what would be your dream theme? Would it be something Arnie? Because you mentioned T2 and Predators, so obviously you're a big Arnie fan, right? Yeah, I like Arnie, but I'm not going to pay him a million dollars to be in a game. I don't know. I mean, everything's so hot with the 80s stuff right now. if I was going to grab titles, I mean, I'm a big Evil Dead fan I mean, I made a well known when I was interviewed by Charlie, like Evil Dead would be a fantastic license, even though that got cancelled today, Ash vs. Evil Dead so that's hopefully it'll come back to life on Netflix, because I think Netflix buys everything but I dream theme, I just Honestly, I want to work with a license that wants a pinball machine. I mean, at the end of the day, there's nothing worse than working on a project, and this goes to film and TV, the stuff I do on a day-to-day basis as well, is if not everyone is excited in the team to work on this, the project will not be as good as it could be. And you've always got to compromise when you work on a project. I completely get that. but if you work with a licensor or a producer that doesn't really like what you do, it is a grind. Like, I'll go and be a Walmart greeter if that's the case, because it's just not better. So you said that you love horror and you love space, so therefore you like space horror. Take the whole dream thing. What would therefore be your favourite space horror film? And then I'll tell you mine. Vent Horizon by Hollywood. That's exactly what I was going to say Event Horizon, I don't know whether it would make a great thing For a pinball machine, but It's a haunted house in space Oh good You know, it's just, yeah That and killer clowns From outer space I mean, I can look around the posters I've got in my room Right, I've got Gremlins, I've got Rocketeer I've got Frankenstein, the Frighteners From Dusk Till Dawn Fright Night You know, it's just That's stuff that speaks to me as a kid. That's stuff when I went to watch a movie. My first film I saw in the theater, I didn't know what it was, but it was so vivid, was Crash of the Titans. Yeah. You know, it's like, if I can make a game that makes me be in awe of, like, how they did that. Like, that was the worst thing about going to film school. When you learn the nuts and bolts of how a film is made, you can't watch a movie anymore and be in awe of it anymore. Right. Yeah, and with pinball, it's a little bit different because when you can make a pinball do something magical on that play field, that's magic. And if we can theme a whole game with a display in that, that's kind of where the magic is for me now, and that's kind of why I'm leaning more towards doing that type of stuff. So then let me ask you just one more question from me then. So taking Spooky out of the picture, because obviously you work for them, so you're going to be a little bit biased. Talk me through some of the other manufacturers' machines that have come out in recent times and what ones you like or are impressed with. I mean, everyone has done something that's pretty amazing, right? And I'm not sucking up to any of them. But, like, with what they did with Pirates of the Caribbean, it is absolutely gorgeous. And, you know, people say that's a dead franchise. I am sorry. that franchise still makes over a billion dollars. If you go to any Disney theme park, you've got kids, like, dressed up as pirates. That line for that ride is two hours long in most places. That license is not dead. It's a little bit past day because it didn't do well on the last film, even though it still grossed nearly a billion dollars. But what they did with that package is absolutely gorgeous. uh, let's jump over to Stern, I mean, Ghostbusters is amazing, Iron Maiden, I love that, um, haven't played it, but, like, just the complete package is absolutely gorgeous, Alien, I actually think that as a complete piece is wonderful, um, you know, I just, if I was going to look at anyone else, me as being an animator, nothing beats JJP for what they do. I think what they do is amazing. I think Stern, I like where they're going with their stuff, but they're dealing with licenses and stuff that would terrify me. But they're also still, they're still of the adage that what you're really looking at is under the playfield. So, I don't know whether they're really going to invest too much in the amount of animation they put because really they are focusing on the play field. Whereas if you've got J.J.P., much bigger screen, they sort of talk about the fact that it's what you see on the back. Plus they've also got video assets in high res that they need to put up there as well. So there is a bit of a difference there. I do believe that philosophy is definitely on the play field. And I have no inside information there, but I am on LinkedIn, and I do get to see who works there. They have some amazing animators, 3D animators there. So they're going to do some pretty amazing stuff. And the stuff I'm seeing coming out of there now is great. I just think the game cycle they're on is probably really, really tough for them to do what they need to do. Sure. You know, I mean, I've got to work on multiple games that are spooky, right? Like, we're a very small team. I would hate to think how many games they've got in development. I mean, they've probably got a five-year, you know, a good five to six-year plan mapped out with licenses and lawyers and all that type of stuff. And, yeah, that's a whole other beast. I don't know if I, yeah, I don't know how I would do under those constraints. So that's why it's good to be sort of kind of independent, to be honest. Well, it kind of goes back to a point that I know Ryan made a few minutes ago about the fact that the likes of Spooky and JDP, they do need to announce their machines before they go into production. And that's because you don't necessarily have the luxury of being so large that you've got a five, six-year plan that you can lock in. So you do need to get your support of the community and understand how many units of a machine is going to sell in the future to know how many parts you need to buy, how much you need to spend on animation, what your bill of materials is, to then put into production. Yeah, I mean, just, you know, the amount of games that Stern do, it's just, it's an amazing company. I mean, just, it boggles my mind. I mean, there, you know, there's a reason why they're the king of the industry, you know, and that's, you know, what Charlie says is like, we're not there to compete with them. They, you know, they're their own entity. We just, Spooky, myself, we just want to make titles that make us giggle and have fun. We want to make games that our friends want to play, that we want to play with our friends. Come and look at what we're doing. We just want to make, you know, we want to make our own stuff. That's all it comes down to. We're not looking, well, it's Charlie's company, but, you know, I just want to do cool stuff with it. That's all it comes down to. I want to contribute something from what I've learned in my industry and hopefully bring that into pinball a little bit. That's awesome. Well, okay, my last parting point to you is, you know, we've sort of talked about your journey as being very interesting, and you sort of talked about some of the art, like, you know, we talked about Iron Maiden as well. Something good has come out of something bad is the point I want to make. So you had, you know, a not-so-great experience with J-pop. You sort of, you know, brushed it off. That's fine. It's a bit of learning. Skit-B again. But as a result, you actually, you sort of talked about it before. You've got to start in the pinball industry, understand the craft of animating in the pinball industry to then be able to land at Spooky, which is a really good story. And, you know, obviously the same thing happened with Jeremy Panger. He had a bad experience with Magic Girl. then people noticed his art and he's now got an art gig, right? So it turned out well, I reckon. Well, I don't know. I mean, Jeremy's not Australian. But I kind of, I think my attitude is, it's kind of a very Australian thing, right? It's like, you know, she'll be right, mate. She'll be right, I know. Just go with it, you know? And it's just, you know, I tend to give more than I always promised. I'm a big believer of, you know, under-promise, over-deliver. And it's just one of those things that I knew what I was getting into. I wish it didn't happen the way it did. Like, I wish I had a Magic Girl. I wish that all successfully happened. But, you know, if it didn't, I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew if it didn't work out, worst case, hey, I've practiced some animations. I learned a little bit more about that type of industry. I can use that to go somewhere else, you know. So you've got to treat everything you do in life as a learning thing, you know. It's just like you've got to keep learning from it. I mean, that's one thing in the film industry is like you're only as good as your last job and you've got to use your last job to get the next job, you know. So you've just got to keep doing what you can do. Awesome. Cool. Well, Dave, that was a great interview. I think it's a great, great story from rags to riches. I just okay he's like yeah I'm not going to give you that it's like why don't I move back to Australia like you left America I can't afford to move back to Australia it's that expensive down there yeah I guess all of our US listeners don't realize how ridiculous property prices are now in major cities in Australia it's everyone's in an extreme amount of debt So... But we still win the most livable city every year, Melbourne, number one every year, and Adelaide is like second or third or something. Yeah, well, I know everyone from Sydney's moving to Adelaide, apparently. Really? Yeah. So... But the gallery's kept up with the prices or not really? Yeah, not really. It's really difficult now. It's pushing everybody out. Yeah. Everyone's supposed to go away from the city Correct So Do you come back to Australia often? Are we going to get to meet up And play some pinball I guess I will be down there this year So uh Adelaide We about Adelaide and Sydney Ah, boo. All right, well... Well, where are you guys? Like, one's up in the... Like, one's in Melbourne, right? We're both in Melbourne. No, we're both in Melbourne. The greatest city in the world. That's a miserable place. It's so cold. Actually, I love your city, but it's always grey. Yeah, that's fine. True. Okay. Well, if you make it down to Melbourne, let us know. We'll hang out. But we thank you again for coming on the show. I think we're going to go down to Sovereign Hill. Sure. Ballarat. Ballarat. There you go. We'll meet you halfway. Thank you. All right. Sorry for wasting so much of your time, guys. And I apologize to the pinball guys. I hope no one listens to it. Marty's going to edit it down to about 25 minutes. He's a master. Absolutely. Awesome. All right, Dave. Catch you later. Cheers. Bye-bye. All right, so that was David Van Es. What did we learn from that, Ryan? He's a pretty cool guy. He's a cool guy. Yeah, a cool history in Kimball. I don't think anyone has worked for Mr John Papadiuk, Kevin Kulik and Liv's Tale the Tale. I don't think anyone's worked so much for so long and not been paid. Yes, and the funny thing was, if you listen back to the Spooky interview all that time ago, as I think we touched on it, that he ended up taking a job with Spooky and he gets paid per machine, I think, on Rob Zombie. So I don't think he learned his lesson on the first two, but it ended up working out okay and he's now employed by one of the bigger... Well, I mean, Spooky don't claim to be big, but at least they're shipping machines compared to other mainstays. You're going to get your machine. and the other thing I forgot to ask him as well but it was also back on that Spooky interview was that I think the thing that sealed the deal because he'd obviously he'd worked for John Popajuk and then worked for Kevin Kulik and it was like well I'm now going to go and work for Spooky I don't know and sort of had to speak to the wife and Spooky sent him like a care package and that's what got it over the line with the wife yeah it was a bit of bribing well it is a bit of bribing but I also think it kind of demonstrated the family vibe that Spooky has. Definitely. And I was a bit upset after talking to him and kind of finding out that he's such a cool guy that I didn't really hang out with him at all. I had a quick chat to him at Texas People's Festival, but I almost wish now I can clone myself and go back and hang out with more people because I 100% enjoyed my time there. But, you know, I don't know. He's so cool. I want to go back and hang out with him again. Well, it's 2019. 2019, surely you're going to do Texas People Festival again. As I said, I have to bring my wife and my kids, and that would just be Buzz Clinton 2.0, so that's not going to happen. So there was a bit of, I guess, news. We'll bring it in now on Alice Cooper. Someone recorded some footage at MGC, and they released it during the week, and they put up a, I think they call it a shotgun mic or something, right next to the speaker. and there was new-ish code on there, a newer code where we get to hear Alice Cooper? Yeah, of course. Did you have a listen to that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did. Look, okay. I'll tell you what I thought before I had a piece of information and then I'll tell you what I now think. Sure. So when I first listened to it, I went, oh, okay, that's a bit subdued. I'm not feeling the energy, is what I'm sort of saying. But then obviously, Charlie has spoken up as well, and I think the word is that the more you get in the game, the more passionate and exciting he gets. But also what he was saying is that, well, that's the character Alice Cooper. That is how Alice Cooper speaks. And if you knew Alice Cooper, the character, that would be fine. yeah I was in the same boat exactly the same reaction and my I guess my reaction was a bit more I'm the one who sent it to you so I was like oh my god check out these call outs like like what's going on like how can I can do better call outs than that I'm not Alice Cooper I'm not like this this stage presence guy you know yeah probably not um and I actually sent it to Lucas and uh and he's he's got one on order on on Toyota and he was just like yeah you don't understand I'm like, that's Alice Cooper. And he just linked me like 20 videos or something. He's like, check out this video and check out this video. I mean, I watched one of them, Lucas, I'm sorry. And yeah, I guess that is, I don't have one on pre-order. I'm not an Alice Cooper lover. You don't have one on pre-order. So we do a podcast. We have to talk about this stuff. I still find it interesting. I don't like those type of call-outs, full stop, regardless if that's his nature or not. I think pinball is meant to be a bit more high-energy, fun, and I get the whole storytelling thing, but I want to be excited by the story and not put to sleep. That sounds really horrible, but if a person that has pre-ordered the machine and likes Alice Cooper is happy with that, then I don't care because, you know, I'm not buying the machine. I think there was a bit of a combination of things as well in that, I don't know, I don't think there was much sort of like, you know, sounds happening in the machine itself, like when it was bouncing off pop bumpers or slings or the music as well. It's sort of, but that'll come out with sound balancing, I'd imagine. And, you know, I guess the interesting thing is, and I know we've talked, I think we talked about this last week, and we'll always talk about it, is that it's this really weird Catch-22 that they have when they're kind of compelled, and I feel he was compelled, to show a game in such an early state. And it can have positive and negative reactions at exactly the same time. Yeah, Dave Van Aers commented on it during our interview and he pretty much said, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. So you can't win either way. If you don't show anything, people go crazy because Charlie said he was going to show it a year ago when they unveiled the title. And if he doesn't show it, then what happens is what's happening with CGC now. People just sit there and complain. But what happens when you do show something that's incomplete is people judge it off that incomplete state, which is what's happening with JTP with the speeding disc and what's happening now with Alice Cooper. People are saying, I don't like this, I don't like that. And Charlie's kind of saying, well, hey, it's like 10% complete. You know, like, hang on. And the flip side of that, it's like, don't show us. So it's 10% complete. Don't show 10% because I'm going to judge it on whatever you show me. Whatever you show me, I'm going to talk about it and I'm going to judge it. And as I said, you know, I think they're going to sell it anyway, so it doesn't really matter. But what we don't want is the same situation as Rob Zombie that, you know, people don't like the machine and kind of can't get out of it this time. So here's my advice. You ready, Ryan? I've got a bit of advice. This is my advice for Spooky. And I'm not going to say that this is the thing that's going to solve everything, But what I think they need to do is a promo video. And a promo video that can show and make us hear what it will be like in its more elevated state. That way, even if you see that video and you go, oh, that sounded a bit subdued, you've always got a reference point to something that shows a bit more excitement. Exactly. And I think they did release, announce Rob Zombie with a promo video and it kind of showed enough people for it to sell out almost instantly. Did you see that Pinstadium Iron Maiden promo video that they did? You probably didn't. I've seen it. Yes, I have. Yes. Now, I'm not chilling Pinstadium. I know. Okay, I'm not. But that promo video is better than anything Stern has released their product with, and that's done by a third party trying to sell his third party products. Sure. Right? But he made Iron Maiden look cooler than, you know, obviously the machine was cool when you watch a three-hour Keith Elwin instructional video and Zach Sharp playing it, but in two minutes or whatever it was, you kind of got an idea of the pinball machine and, you know, the shots and the music and the layout. I don't know, promo videos work. You've convinced me, Ryan, I'm now going to buy a pin stadium for my Iron Maiden. Okay, it's a double whammy. You're going to get a pin stadium kit and the Iron Maiden. I just get a shield for Stern and pin stadiums. That's the influence this podcast has. We have massive influences. The thing that I didn't really like, and it doesn't matter if you're a Alice Cooper fan or a horror fan or whatever it is. I know what it is. Tell me. Every time the ball left the scoop, like the subway, the UK kick-out, whatever it was, and there's a lot of entrances, they boasted about the entrances to it. So this is going to happen a lot. There was like a kid, like a horror screaming. I know. I wish I chopped it up and I put it in there so people would know what I'm talking about. I'll link it in the show notes. We might do a bit of an outro if I've got enough time in the edit. Just make people unsubscribe from us. It is possibly the worst. You know I get really weird in particular about certain things. Oh, I do know that very well. Yeah, and you know I like sounds, okay? We did a whole sound segment. Yep, yep. This is the worst sound in pinball, okay? It is the worst fucking sound in pinball because, and I'm not a horror fan, so if you like this sound, please email us, headtoheadpinball at gmail.com and say, I like hearing a little girl suffering, okay? I want to think about her getting murdered or seeing a ghost or something. That's what I feel. Oh, Ryan. That's what I feel when I hear that sound. I think about my kids getting sassed by strangers. It's like this new parental thing. Okay, Charlie, there's some feedback for you, mate. Wow. Okay. That escalated really quickly. It is that grating to me. Like little kids screaming. I hate it. Like zero out of ten. Yeah, I would imagine. so, you know, it's a bit of a novelty when you've got that scream that happens on Ghostbusters. If that happened every time a ball exited a hole... That would suck. It's a bit of a different scream, but yeah, I understand. Yeah, well, you know, hang around to the end of the show, guys. People can't wait. They can't wait to hear it. So, look, the other thing just on the Dave Ennis... interview as well, was talking about other games that they're doing as well. Did we talk about the Domino's Code update? Yeah, I think Charlie possibly mentioned that anyway when we interviewed him. But yeah, I think there's 110 Domino's owners. Yeah, so I don't know. I think the Domino's layout for me is a bit kind of okay. I think the game that's from Spooky that's actually got potential. Don't shoot me for saying this, but I think the game that's actually got potential is the Jetsons. Why is that, Marty? Why is that? Because I think the layout, and I remember seeing, you know, Deadfoot do the stream of the Jetsons at the same time he did Total Nuclear Annihilation. And there was just something about the layout I felt was quite satisfying. And I sort of looked at the inserts and I kind of imagined a whole different rule set. It's really simple at the moment, but I think you could make a much better game with what's there. I mean, the inserts totally dictated the rules where you have to hit the shot a number of times to spell the name and then once you spell everyone, you get into some wizard mode or multiple. I don't know what the rules were. I didn't really pay attention. But how do you change that in the rules? Because you've got a video screen at the back. There's so much you can do with that. Yeah. That's a contract game. They're not spending time on that. And David, I kind of said that down to license restrictions. There's only so much they can do. So, who knows? So, there you go. You should cancel your Iron Maiden and get it done. Yeah. So, well, speaking of Iron Maiden, super segue there, Ryan. Yeah. Iron Maiden, did you know it is currently number one on the Pins on the Top 100? Oh, my gosh. She got 15 rings at number one. I can't wait for people to heavily downvote it and push it back to number 10 or something. What do you think is going to happen? Because, look, we've seen other games get released and become number one and then slowly dip down. Where do you think this will settle? I think somewhere between five and ten. And, hey, maybe it deserves to be higher than that. I don't know. I haven't played it, but everyone's raving about it. I really think that that top five is a protected zone. And when people that don't like the Iron Maiden theme, and hey, there's a lot of people that hate Iron Maiden. There's a whole, there's threads about it on the inside. Oh, what do you think we should like re-theme this to? You know, Stern should just like totally get the R-Squad license and re-theme it. Because I get a headache when I listen to Iron Maiden. Cool, man. It's a cool story, bro. It's a cool story. And what those people are going to do is they're going to log into Pinside. they're going to say, and they haven't played Iron Maiden, and this is why the top 100 are stupid and they hate rating games and putting a number on it, because people will just artificially give it a lower number. They won't give it a zero, because that gets flagged now. They'll give it a seven. They'll give it a low enough number to look like a legit rating, and they'll downvote it, because people are petty and they want it to... Judging a pinball machine on a theme, I know it sounds stupid to say it's stupid, But it is stupid because at a deeper level, like all those older games, right, like Sea Witch and everything, what is the rules of Sea Witch got to do at all with mermaids and sea witches and sirens and all that kind of stuff? Nothing. It just has some sound of the waves crashing in the background and a chick on the play field. And like, you know, Stargazer has like the universe or whatever. That's not theme integration because there's no rules associated with whatever the theme is. So pinball has come from this, like, themes only start to get really integrated, I guess, when the Souls say, you know, System 11s and maybe a little bit before that. So as the origins of pinball, theme means nothing. But now people are like, Iron Maiden sucks because I don't like their music and the singer can't sing as well as Angus. Angus doesn't really sing, but I know what you mean. You know what I mean? I didn't make love to a chick in the back of a van, you know, the one for Iron Maiden. It was Metallica, so Metallica's the best. It's just so fucking stupid. All right, so here is the worst review of Iron Maiden so far, and it's been given a 7.173 out of 10. So the pros are good layout, not Stone's usual recycled crap. Well, fair enough. Fast play. Trooper multiball and Aces High are pretty decently programmed modes. The other modes are so-so. The cons, bad animations. Well, other people have said that. Yeah, I get that. Fair enough. Sound isn't that great, especially for a music pin. What? Which part of the sound? The music or the callouts? Because the callouts are like 10 out of 10. And the music is the music. So how do you like it? You either like it or you don't. Maybe he's saying sound quality. like the sound that's actually coming out of the speakers and maybe that, because I'm getting LE with the upgraded audio, maybe that'll sound better. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Okay. Mummy multiball is awful. It glitches Captive Ball over and over. The play model, which I played extensively, feels flinsier than Stern's previous pins. Definitely lighter than Stern's recent pins. Overall, it feels like Stern took a great design and slapped a quick theme and software onto it. Probably did. It seems like they're using cheaper production methods which make their pins feel cheap compared to what they were producing just a few years ago. The entire machine is very light. If you have the game on a hard floor, it's going to be sliding all over the place. I moved the machine over six inches with a slap save. So you've got to understand... Six inches? Six inches. He got like a... With a slap save. Yeah. Just a slap of the... He tucked it on the floor and he's like, Yep. It's made of paper. See, now, this is the funny thing. Transport that exact review onto Medieval Madness, right? Could you say that Medieval Madness has bad animations? Sure, it has dots. All dots, it's like this root level suck. Sound isn't great. Yes, they had an inferior sound system back then. Mummy multiball is awful. Switches and captive ball over and over. That's the same as like Riot, the mode on Walking Dead. I'm sure there's a like all the multiples in Medieval Madness are pretty much the same, you know, hit the super jackpot and you know, do you think anyone's like Medieval Madness feels flimsier than you know, Crucial of the Black Lagoon that was really heavy, like no one cares about that so I'm saying, people are going to pick dumb shit to slide Iron Maiden down and I don't think it's valid, because people that same guy I bet you if you look him up will say I love Walking Dead I love the riot mode it's my favourite which is the exact same rules as Mummy Multiple which he says is awful yeah well I did look him up he also rated let's talk in this guy he also rated TNA a 6.76 he's a hater what's his highest rating Medieval Madness that's hilarious ok so Pat you know what And we're not having a go at this guy. It's actually more so that you just can't please everyone. And even that sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but what I'm really trying to say is that the sound quality is not going to appeal to that person. And somebody else might listen to it and go, yeah, the sound quality is really good. Somebody might actually play Mummy Multiball and go, oh, fuck, I love that multiball because it's really simple. You know, just different things. So it's not actually a go at this guy at all. It's just people have the ability to exercise different tastes, and a 7 out of 10 is still really good for somebody that's a bit sort of iffy about it. So that's not bad. As I said, I like looking at the Pinside Top 100, and overall I think it's accurate-ish, but sometimes I feel like I like to rate my games or games that I've owned, but then I think no, because it's just putting a number, assessing a number with a pinball machine, for me it's either thumbs up or thumbs down and there's really nothing in between giving a game like a 9.3 out of 10, what does that mean? how does a 9.3 differ from a 9? well I don't, I think there's actually a number of different things like you rate certain components and then it all it'll ask me to rate the art but art doesn't mean that much to me so how does the ratings figure that out? it can't say what's important to you It just says rate the art. I don't think art should have anything to do with the rating, but that's just me. For some people, art is everything, and the rules take the back seat because they don't know how to play pinball. Yeah, no, fair enough. I understand. That was our weekly Iron Maiden, and I can't use the words because I got told off, so it's the Iron Maiden Positive Echo Chamber. That's what I'm renaming the music. Oh, nice. I like that. I got told off for using the other words. I probably should have said that last week. Last week when I was talking to a 16-year-old girl. Yep, yep, yep. Can we make it? Yep, yep, yep. Got that? Something for learning? Yep, yep, yep. Got it? Yep, yep. Cool. Awesome. Okay. So, let's move on to Jersey Jackpots of the Carribean. Ah, my friend of the topic. Have you done anything wrong recently? No, I've been waiting all week to talk about this. I love this topic. This is like just the nicest topic to talk about. You know, I really want to talk about this spinning disc every week for the next month. And today, you just talked about it twice today. so even better. It's so interesting. It's so interesting. So we saw the stream on Wednesday or whenever it was. Wednesday for us, Tuesday for everyone else possibly. And the spinning disc is obviously smaller because it only takes up the two inner circles that were there before, I believe. What else have you got, Marty? Well, all I'm saying is they just couldn't get it to work. They said the disc was slipping, gears were grinding, optos weren't reading. So it was just, I don't know, I said last week, it was not a decision that they took lightly. They pretty much promoted this machine on the back of those spinning discs, so I don't think they wanted to get rid of it, and they just had to, and it would be very disappointing for them. Yeah, and Eric did mention in the stream that the design was final, but we are hearing some rumours that some stuff is getting redesigned, but maybe it's, I don't know. I don't know if I believe the rumour that Pat Lawler is possibly helping out with something. I feel like an idiot for kind of mentioning that because it just kind of seems like what... No, just say it because if it's true, then we can go, yep, head to Head Exclusive. That's right. Oktoberfest. We got there. But, I mean, if for Eric to say that it's final, then I guess it's final. So what would Pat Lawler be doing? Like, what else is there to add to the machine? And what room is there to add any other toys to the machine? It doesn't really make sense. Maybe there are other things that aren't quite so reliable, but maybe Pat can come in and fix to make them reliable? You know, because he's also the engineering guy as well. And so also, we've actually just seen that there's an interview or some questions that were answered this week in Pinball. So if you go to thisweekinpinball.com, there is an article where they've asked Eric some questions about the spinning disc. And look, I sort of said before that it would have been a difficult decision. And he said that removing them was a very difficult decision. In fact, the hardest thing he's had to do at Jersey Jack. So, yeah, I could imagine that that would be pretty pissy for him. So, yeah, especially after the way they introduced the machine as the all-conquering, stern-destroying machine. and after his talk, there was that thread on Pinside, it was a dark day for Stern, but I guess things have kind of flipped at the moment. He did mention that the spinning disc they kind of showed and they used in the stream had the wrong colours because basically they just kind of slapped a normal kind of spinning disc in there and just put mylar over the, I guess, the artwork or the rubber. So it wasn't the right colours and that will change because people were kind of saying it looks weird, it looks wrong. So it will fit in more with the artwork. But apparently it's staying. So people were talking about the seven stages of grief. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah. I found it hilarious. Denial or anger and all that kind of stuff. Some people are looping around. Some people have got to the second stage. I think it's staying, guys. So if you want to cancel your order, cancel your order. If you want to stay, stay. But the other thing is they did confirm, you know, is the disc itself, and they probably did on the stream, you know, spins in different directions and it's variable speeds as well. So it'll still be kind of cool. But I think the thing that you were talking about is that it wasn't necessarily the actual spinning mechanism that was really exciting for you. It was the way it was lining up to issue those random awards, which weren't really probably random at all. And as I say, I think it's also that people just want something different, even though it's not that different, different enough to say it's not a spinning disc, it's three spinning discs at different speeds, different directions. It's just something to say, I believe. I haven't played the machine enough to really feel like it's, you know, mind-blowing or something, but people seem to like it. The reaction speaks for itself, with Pinsight having their little meltdown, people actually cancelling orders. People care. I guess they do. Eric says it's set in stone in the This Week in Pinball interview. For some reason, I still believe it. Even though I just said get over it. I still think something has to change. They'll have to offer something, but I guess we'll see in the coming weeks if that happens. Fair enough. All right, so what else have we got, Ryan? A little quick update on Highway. Cointaker, I believe, have a bunch of adding machines that are ready to ship over to the US, but I believe they're refusing to take new orders and to pay for that order because Highway... I mean, Alien has a lot of issues, Highway-wise, and they're not supporting their customers and they're not shipping replacement parts. So I don't think Cointake is kind of holding them... Not to ransom, because I'm sure they can sell those machines to someone else, but they want them to ship off replacement parts because a machine is no good if people aren't getting support, especially when they're using custom parts for a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah. So I'd heard about this during the week. And what I liked is how you just told that story in a very nice and up-tone, which was, by the way, this is what's happened. Coin taker. And it wasn't you that spoke to me during the week, but what was really said to me during the week was, Highway's not looking really good at the moment because, you know, that's their biggest distributor. there's so many hardware problems with this game and if you can't get them repaired there's no point to having the game well they're not shipping broken I believe but they're going to be broken shortly after I mean are they not surely it doesn't cost that much to send a little part here and there I mean they can't be that cash poor to not be able to send replacement parts or are they not sending the replacement parts because the parts that they're going to send are also going to break up a couple of games or something. They need to redesign it in the back. I don't know. So don't forget, this was a group of investors or some of the original investors in Highway as well that got together and said, you know what, we're going to save this company. And when you do that, there's probably a financial plan you put together, there's an operating plan you put together, marketing, communications, all these plans that you put together. And what you're meant to do with those, and I'm sure these intelligent people did, is do a risk assessment as well. And in one of those risk assessments, they should have said, what happens if we script these games and they don't work? What do we do then? Because I'm not sure they really thought that through. I don't think they did much research when they kind of took over because they were all kind of gung-ho and were posting on Pinside. How hard can it be, right? Well, they rang everyone up, and I think what they thought was going to happen was everyone was going to say, yes, I will keep my order, because they were kind of threatening people with the whole, hey, if you back out of your order, we will give you a refund, but if you want to rebuy the machine, it is now like $1,000 more or whatever it was. And people were like, I don't give a shit, give me my money back now. And I guess it took them by surprise because they haven't appeared back on Pinside and explained themselves. Helmet, which I don't even know this guy. Yeah, I don't have enough energy to read the... I don't like reading depressing pinball stuff. But Helmet, the support guy... Yeah, apparently the only guy that was kind of responding to emails and stuff, he... Has left props. Yeah, he left, so no one's getting a response from anyone kind of regarding anything. And that, coupled with the news of Cointech that are kind of stopping orders and halting their sales of the machine, people kind of like, well, is this the end? Is this where Howard Kimball kind of disappears? But, I mean, if they've got 20, sorry, you know, 30 to 40 machines ready to go, I don't think this is the end if they haven't got paid, because that's a big, that's, you know, how much do aliens cost? I don't know, it's like $300,000 plus worth of stock that is ready to go, which they can get paid for. So I don't think this is the funnel now in the coffin. I think they've still got some life. I'm not sure how much. Oh, God, I don't know. I guess I hope so. I don't care. Okay. Well, no, I say I don't care, but, you know, if, you know, I... Let's talk about my Hobbit again, which hasn't been sold. But, you know, I may have the ability to trade it in, and I could trade it in for an alien right now. Okay. But I wouldn't because of the hardware issues. because I actually quite liked what I played and it may be comparable to the Hobbit experience, but you know what? I'm like fixing machines, i.e. just dreadstones. Yeah. So that would be just an absolute liability if I was to get one of those. Yeah. People have had broken machines for months and it's not fun. Let's move on quickly to Houdini. They had a code update this week. Marty hasn't played it. I've had limited time on it, So all the updates mean pretty much nothing until they're shipping to Australia. So we'll talk about Houdini more, I think, when it hits Australia, which there still isn't any date on that. So we'll talk about it when we know more. Marty, a quick quiz for you. Sure. You know in Star Trek how there's combos, like there's the bones combo? Yes. Yeah? How many combos are there and can you name them? You don't need to name what you need to do To get the combo Just name what pops up on the screen Because I know you love the screen integration You bought a colour D&D But you know I never look at it I only look at the score I never look at the animations I couldn't tell you I think there's like a Isn't there a Klingon combo? Nope I'm just making stuff up Just guess some names And you might get some right Is there a Khan combo? No, there is not. I have no idea. Tell me. Okay. There's a Kirk combo, a Bones combo, a Sulu combo. Okay. I don't know how to say this one. U-H-U-R-A. How do you pronounce that? I'll say Yuhuru. Yuhuru? Yuhura? Yep. Okay. And a Spock combo. Right. Did you know that? No. Why would I know that? I don't know. I didn't know there were so many combos. I saw this post on Pinsider or something. I was like, oh, wow. I've seen maybe three of them. I don't know how to do any of them, because, you know, you get like a million points or something. But here's the thing, right? When you're doing combos, right? Yeah, yeah. Are you looking at the back screen as you're doing combos? Sometimes I do. I mean, okay. They're comboing for a reason. They're at your flipper. Yes. Okay, well, when I've once finished a Star Trek mode with a nine-way combo, and it was like one of the most satisfying 30 seconds of my pinball life, because, and then you look up the screen, and you see, you know, nine-way combo, like, gold medal. Like, holy shit, nine fluid shots without trapping the ball or anything. Yeah. I don't think you can really do that in any other game. Okay, there's the Kirk combo, which is left loop warp ramp. That's really easy, right? Yeah. I don't think that really appears on the screen, because when you hit warp ramp, it says, like, warp one, warp two. That's right. So I think that's, like, a hidden combo. Bones is left loop and right ramp. Right? Sure. Yeah, I guess left loop and right. So you have to kind of catch the ball and then backhand the right ramp. Yeah, or you could do a pass over. Yeah. The Sulu is right loop and then right ramp. See, that's fairly easy. You can do that on the fly. The Yuhura or Yuhuru, whatever he says, is right ramp, left ramp, right orbit. Okay. Okay. That doesn't seem too hard. Spock is the hardest one. It's a four-way combo. Left ramp, right ramp, left loop, warp ramp. So I challenge you the next time... I'm going to copy and paste this to you. Next time you're playing Star Trek, I don't care... I know you've been trying to get to Inspirise Amok, which is within your grasp. You've been getting very close to it. Yeah, just have a break from that, and I want you to try and do all five combos. Apparently, I didn't read the proper thread, but apparently something happens if you... The combo value builds up and you... I don't know what you... It's all right. Yeah, there you go. Some Star Trek info there. Yeah. Moving along. Moving along. Are we going to talk about Trincy Games? Sure. Quick story. I had a friend that came over on the weekend, and he played... What did he play? He came over and he said, I want to get to Horde mode on your Walking Dead. And he sat there and played my Walking Dead for like two hours, and he finally got there. And you could tell he was excited. He was full of adrenaline. He was like, oh my gosh, I want this game. and he left my house, and he messaged me, and he was like, no, I don't think I could buy The Walking Dead, because the artwork is really bad, and it's not a cheesy game, it's so serious. And I'm like, one, the artwork doesn't matter, and two, like, who gives a shit if a game is cheesy or not? Like, this guy's collection is full of cheese, right? There's the cheesiest collection out there, and he was refusing to buy it. I ended up talking him out of it, so he's looking for a Walking Dead. So I win on that one. But my question is, Marty, what do you think is the the cheesiest game right not the best game that has a little bit of cheese the cheesiest game that isn't crap like that you would you would accept into your collection okay I've got two I've got two for you the first one's the really obvious one because I've talked about it so many times ready yeah Roller Games ah yes super cheesy right it's like so cheesy It's cheesy because it hasn't dated well from the 80s, right? Yes But there is one other And it's actually a great game But there is actually one that's even probably more cheesy But is a great game And in fact, I was trying to convince somebody to buy this game But they were like, oh, it's just the theme I couldn't imagine that theme in my house Because it's so bad And that is Baywatch Baywatch is a great game Have you played it? Hey, there's one for sale. Would you try to bid someone recently? There's one for sale for four grand, which is a decent price in Australia. I know Americans are going to be rolling their eyes at this price. It looks like it's in really good condition. It's actually, surprisingly, a really, really good gun. You need to buy that house so you can buy that four grand. I know. I need more room. Hilarious. What about you? Well, I mean, I didn't think about it too much, but the ones I listed were shadow because there's jokes the entire time you press the trigger. I thought it was a good game, though. It is cheesy because there's a mode where you're trying to punch some guy in the face and he's like, come on, try and get me. And you punch. It's so fucking cheesy. It's like the cheesiest game ever, right? Not ever, because I'd be number one. Tactic Canyon, pretty cheesy. Pretty much the entire 90s Billy Williams collection is cheesy. but the one I piss and it's just good enough like it's on the border is Roadshow and the reason why I'm choosing this is that if it's not cheesy then it's borderline racism okay wow I mean I'm talking about the taxi guy he's like the Indian guy and he's like I'm not sure if you've heard the call it's like come on come back it's a little bit of casual racism I don't. You have to push that to the side and say it's cheesy and not racist. So I think Roadshow wins it for me. So I'd like to hear what other people think. I'm pretty sure we're missing some of them. Sometimes you don't realise looking at the name of the game, which one's cheesy, which one isn't. Please email us in, headtoheadpinball.gmail.com. What is the cheesiest game that doesn't suck? Okay? So let's go from cheesy games to weird games. Okay. Have you opened up the spreadsheet I sent you? No, the email was titled, do not open. Okay, well, it's now open. Okay. So, as you're opening it up, let me tell you this. So, last week I was listening to the Slam Tilt podcast, and I recommend everybody listen to the Slam Tilt podcast. They are hilarious. Not so funny when Ryan's on, but other times they're really funny. So, although it was actually funny, I think it was the last episode where you were ringing Bruce for some help and they played at the end anyway So they were talking about Hercules, have you ever played Hercules? I have played Hercules So, you have, and so for those people that don't know, Hercules, we had talked about this before Hercules was an oversized game, it is huge In fact, the pinball that's inside the game is actually a pool ball or a billiard ball. It's actually a proper pool ball, right? The white ball. So this thing is massive. And so as I was listening to them talking about it, and they didn't really talk about it long, they just basically talked about how crap it is, and it's not great. And I was in the car and I was thinking this, and I was just driving along and I was thinking, what other sort of novelty games have there been? So I started doing some research, Ryan And I thought I just wanted to go through some games And I just want to know whether you've either seen or played these Because I've played a lot of these Because in actual fact That Atari that made Hercules Wasn't actually the first oversized game That was attempted to be made There was one actually in 1977 called Bigfoot And it was actually an EM and the problem with this game was because it was all electromechanical and it was oversized, because of all the movement that all the components made, it pretty much tore the machine apart. They couldn't actually put it into production because it killed itself. There's only two machines ever made? That's correct. Wow. So there's prototypes. But there was also another one I saw and it's probably more of a redemption machine and I don't know whether you saw this at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. But there's actually a big oversized game called The Flintstones. Yeah, I saw it. I believe I saw it there or it was at TPS or it was at... I've seen it before. It's like a reverse flippers. Yeah. It looks like a... What do they call it? What's their car called? Whatever it's called. The car. Yeah. Penis played it. It's terrible. Walk away. It's terrible. Yes. In fact, all of those three games are terrible. So then I started thinking about other sort of novelty games. And this is just for a bit of information, right? Orbiter One. Do you know Orbiter One from Stern? I believe it's the one with the craters on the play field that Gary Stern said was the biggest mistake he's ever made. So I remember when this first came out. So 1982 it came out. I saw this in 1982 for the first time. and I walked up to this machine and I went, what the hell is this? And I played it and I was very young at the time and even then I was like, yeah, this is a bit bizarre. So it's a bit of a novelty. Have a look at it, Orbiter One. It's actually got this moulded sort of plexiglass, kind of almost fibreglass type thing, so it looks 3D and it's got the, instead of having bumpers, they actually spin so the ball sort of ricochets off them It's very interesting But you'd only play one game It's terrible It's really awful But there's another game You know, sort of at that time You had Black Hole and What was the other one? Haunted House That had that underneath playfield But did you hear about the game Kral? I have never heard of Kral I'm looking it up now So it was based on a movie A movie called... Horrible Back Last. Yeah, it's... So, K-R-U-L-L. So, it was a 1983 movie. And I'll read it. This is from Wiki. It's a 1983 British-American science fantasy swashbuckler film. What? Follows the journey of Prince Polwen and his group of outlaws on the planet Kral to save future queen Princess Lysa from a creature named the Beast and his constantly teleporting lair named the Black Fortress. It had a budget of $47 million and it made $16 million. Oh, that's like Waterworld levels of... Yeah, it was really bad. But the thing about this, right, so imagine, you know, Black Hole and Haunted House have got a playfield underneath, right? but it's a mini playfield. Yeah. Imagine underneath you had a full-size playfield underneath. Is that what this machine has? That's what this machine has. But there a little window you can only see a little bit of it No I know because what they used is this really weird sort of magnifying thing so it narrows it down but what actually underneath there is a full playfield Full or, like, just bigger than the window? There's no way it could be full, like, all the way back, could it? Yep. Wow, what a waste of... Is that an IBDB? It is. They only made ten of them, so it never went into production. and I know, I think Ron may have almost seen one from Slant Hilt and this is the machine of all these weird machines that I'm talking about. I would want to play this. I just love that concept. Designed by John Trudeau, 1983, I believe. Never actually made it into production. Oh my God, that is a massive play field. Yeah. Holy crap. I know. So people, look it up. This is Troll. This is a really interesting pinball design. Okay, just to explain to people that might not look it up, the window is the same size as a Congo window or a big Lebowski window. Yes. But the place underneath, it's maybe three-fourths of a normal pinball. It's not the full one, it doesn't look like, but it's huge. It's a massive pinball underneath it. It's got two ratings on IPDB, and it has an average of 5.3. Yes. Those two people didn't like it that much. So this last one sort of comes under the category of weird layout And this is Capcom's Flipper Football Which was a Python Anghelo game I don't know if you've ever played it Is it kind of like Joust? No, it's a single player game with only one playfield But the playfield itself is meant to look like a soccer oval or court or field I guess is probably what I'm trying to say Okay It's a weird-looking game. So that is under my category of weird layout. Weird rules. My weird rules goes to Goin' Nuts, another prototype. So 10 of them, but you can actually play this one on Pinball Arcade. So this was 1983 Gottlieb. And what was interesting about this one, it was a timed game. So once you hit start, it did a countdown of five seconds and then three balls into play. the more you hit the banks of targets down, the more time you would add. When you would get down to one ball, it would then start counting down until it was game over. Okay. Really interesting layout, just typical of Gottlieb of the time. But the next ones I'm going to talk about are pinball with video. And I remember the very first one I ever saw was a game by, again, Gottlieb called Caveman. And Caveman is a full-size pinball But it's actually got a video screen in the back of the playfield And a joystick on the apron And the game itself, the video game that you would play Was a bit like Pac-Man In that you had a maze and you were trying to, I don't know, get through it or something And then it would go into it And it was just a terrible game I remember seeing it for the very first time at Manly Fun Pier all those years ago and I went, oh my God, what is this? Is it video? Is it pinball? I don't know. It's crap. That also then paved the way for Baby Pac-Man, which you've probably played. That is sort of a mini play field that's got a, it looks like an arcade cabinet. And it's a mix of playing actual Pac-Man and video games. And then there's Granny and the Gators, which is a very similar sort of design. The video itself is Granny and the Gators. As in like grandmas and alligators For sure What the F So and the game was terrible You were paddling left and right And once you got to an exit Then the pinball game would start It was belly midway as well Yep The chosen ones I know They had some duds But similar to that was Varkon If you've ever played Varkon Oh my god sorry It has a picture of a granny With a shotgun In a safari outfit and a gator behind it. Oh my God, this is so bad. Yep, that's the 80s. That was my era. So welcome to the 80s. And I'll tell you now, Granny and the Gators wasn't the worst thing you would have seen in the 80s that I can tell you. But again, similar, upright, sort of arcade machine. Varkon. Varkon's probably a bit more popular. There was 90 of them made. I have played that. Yeah, how have I? I played that. at... Yeah, I bet Chicago. It was cool because it was different. But just going back, you know Caveman, right? Yeah. 1,800 units. Decent amount. Like, think about that today. 1,800. Oh, yeah. Is a lot of units. He'd be gagging for that. Baby Pac-Man, 7,000 units. It'd be like the best-selling game from like the year 2000. Exactly. But back then it was a piece of shit. Well, so, back then I only made 90s. And obviously, we talked about Pimple Circus. This is under the weird cabinet. Total Recall is an interesting one. We can probably show a picture of that where it was like a V-shaped double sort of game. Never got out of prototype. Never got out of prototype. That was Joe Kamenko's game. And Joust, we spoke about before, that's 402 units of those were made. And then, I know you talked about Punchy the Clown. Yeah. That was a little small redemption one. 103 units made. Love that game. Super Mario Brothers Mushroom World. 509 units. 519 units of those. Still never played... Oh, wait, sorry. But there is another Civil Mario Brothers, right? Civil Mario Brothers World. Sorry, yeah. And then there's Mushroom World, which is a little tiny kids one. Introducing the world's first convertible redemption game. Finally, a fully adjustable game designed for any size, any age, any location. I love how they say, finally, Like, everybody's been waiting for this. Well, hey, pinball takes up a lot of space. It's so funny. Like, when you see a picture of Granny and the Gators, and you just cringe, but I'm not even looking at the playfields of this game, which is probably a turd, but since it's Mario, it just looks cool. It looks cute. I'm like, hey, I could have had fun playing that. I've, like, no idea what it is. No. Have you never played that one? No, I haven't. I still haven't played the normal Mario one. Which is terrible. They're both terrible. Okay. Okay. And there was also, this is for people in the 80s that don't know these games, there was also two games that were kind of pinball but not pinball that were released just about the same time. And the first one I'm talking about is a Steve Ritchie game called Hyperball. Do you know what I'm talking about with Hyperball? I either know Hyperball or Rapid Fire where you've got a million little pinballs and you just have a machine gun and you shoot something in the back. Correct. So... Never played it. Always broken when I see it. Always broken. I've never played Rapid Fire. I played Hyperball a lot when that came out. But both these machines, so Hyperball by Williams, and then that was in 81, and then 82, Rapid Fire came out. Both of these machines sold 5,000 units. But what I want to do, I just want to... The game wasn't that successful, right? So 5,000 is a lot in today's standards. But the initial sales forecast for Hyperball was 50,000 units. 50,000? 50,000. They thought it was going to be the most successful pinball of all time. Ever. How cheap was it? I don't know. You have to look it up. I remember someone tagging Steve Ritchie on Facebook and saying, I just bought the Hyperball and he's really excited about it. And Steve Ritchie just like, I can't remember what he wrote back, but it was like he didn't care about it. He was like ashamed about it. He was just like, it's not pinball. I'm paraphrasing, but it was like he didn't give a shit. It was a fun game, but it wasn't pinball. Can you imagine the dimpling? Can you imagine the pin-side outrage after throwing a couple of hundred balls on the play-foot at one time? I know. But here's the interesting thing I found out about Rapid Fire when I was doing this, and I did not know this till today. So, obviously they didn't sell as many of the Flock Rapid Fires as they thought they would The lessover cabinets were used to produce Mr and Mrs Pac-Man, April Deluxe Limited Edition and Centaur II Centaur, I'm looking at it now, I'm like, ah, is that why they didn't sell it? That's why they've got those weird cabinets, because they had to use these cabinets somehow I think I've heard that before, but it didn't kind of click until I'm looking at it now I know. Until I saw it today, I went, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So that's how you can reuse these things, guys. Anyway, we played Centaur 2 only last night. Yesterday. That's right. We'll talk about that a little bit later. So there you go. There is my little bit of a summary of 21 different really weird games. So thank you, Slantil, for mentioning Hercules, because it just had me thinking for days. And I've played Hercules. I've played Orbiter 1. I've played Flipper Football, Black Hole, Haunted House. I haven't played Donuts. I've played Caveman, Baby Pac-Man, Granny and the Gators. I've played Varkon, Pinball Circus, Joust, Hyperball, Super Mario Brothers, Punchy the Clown. So most of those I've actually played. This is like... The point I'm really making is, back then, so many pinball machines were being made that you could make these risky games and you could still sell 5,000 of them and it can be considered a failure. Yeah. Well, I guess if everyone thinks it sucks and it's the next game that gets affected. Like people say that Twilight Zone only sold so much because of how good Addams Family was. It wasn't actually a good game. But if they bring out a third, it's the next game that suffers. But that's really interesting. You know what would be cool, Marty? You know, I was listening to Mrs. Penn on one of her first podcasts and she talks about how she printed out a list or whether it was a spreadsheet of all the games that they've ever played. Yes. I kind of realised, like, I should have that as well. And you know how there's, like, a pin side, like, your collection? Yeah. It'd be cool if there was, like, on the top 100 list or whatever it was, there's a little checkbox, like, I've played it. Like, you know, you might not want to own it, but at least, like, you've checked off your list and you've played, like... Because there's so many games to play and it'd be fun kind of, like, seeking them out. Like, you go to TPF and you're like, okay, I've got like, I've still haven't played 800 games out there. Let's see how many I can knock off my list. And you just go through and at least experience. Yeah. I love that idea. Someone needs to do it. I mean, Pinside would be the best way to do it since that whole game list is already there. Yeah, make it happen. Robin. I know Robin totally doesn't listen to the show, but I think he does every once in a while. Yes, maybe. Okay. All right. So, in a time for slap and slam, the top 100. Did you say slap the top 100? I didn't know that. We can do it. Let's slap it. Let's rename it for one episode. Slap the top 100. The time for slap the top 100. Who won slap the top 100 from last week? It was me. Yeah. It was you. You still did pretty well. I... You know what? I tried for like five minutes to try and find you a better gif for Stargate, but they were all horrible. so my Tommy Pinball Wizard one was amazing it was like Elton John the guy looking like he's like coming playing pinball the Stargate one was the best I could find I didn't want to give him inferior gifts I reckon I got 37% of the votes because of that awesome gift it is so good you're saying indeed? yeah, just his face everything about that is just amazing and I think that's why people would have gone oh I've got a kick on that because it's really bad. All right. Shall we get straight into it? Let's do it. Okay. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Coming right up. 44. 44 is the bang bar. Have we done that yet? Nope. No. Okay. Please generate a number from 0 to 100. Coming right up. 92. Yes. Dirty Harry. Well, Dirty Harry. Okay. Okay. I'm all right with that. I feel like we've argued that Big Bang Bar before. We really need to write these down. We're going to get to the stage where we're not going to remember. We haven't done Big Bang Bar. Okay. I'm ready to go. I know this game. I've had it in my house before. Let me know when you're ready. Okay. Here we go. And you? Three, two, one, go. Big Bang Bar, an amazing pinball machine that was about to elevate Capcom into serious contention of pinball manufacturers, except it was never made. So it was remade by someone, and now they're going to remake it again. That's how good this game is. The artwork is beautiful. The cabinet has a UV glow that has never been done before. It has a UV light in there. You have a ramp that diverts into multiple areas on the pinball machine. You have multiball. We have so many different multiballs and modes, and the game is full of cheese, and it's fun. Get that F-U-N, fun. Something that other machines cannot do. Really? Yeah, the game is fun. No other machine can do that? No, a lot of machines cannot do it. Every Data East game, okay? Every Gottlieb game, soulless, okay? This game has it. It has the it factor. Okay. I love how you ask me questions after so I can just keep on talking about the machine. It's like getting time. alright you ready let me get the timer out ready set go so Dirty Harry has got to be one of the most underrated games that's ever been made it's designed by Barry Osler and it's a great theme and it's got call outs by Clint Eastwood really nice satisfying layout there's a lot of flow it's got the great ramp shot up the almost like an old version of the warp ramp. It's got a gun. It's got plastic moulded buildings. It's got a great rule set as well and a really fun layout. Great art as well. This is actually a really good game. I would buy this. Fucking lie. I would buy this. You would never buy that game. I'll let you go for an extra six seconds to hear that lie, Marty. I knew the lie was coming. Oh, gosh. What year was Dirty Harry? It was 94, 95. Okay. I feel like I should look up the machines that were made in the same time as Dirty Harry just to show how shit it was. But I don't know how to do that. I know another IPDB expert. Let me know when my time is ready. Go. The thing about Dirty Harry is that it's one of the cheapest Bally Williams games to buy now, because it is one of the most average ones. I'll give it to you that it's still a decent game, but the quality of games that Bally Williams was producing at that time, Dirty Harry doesn't hold a candle to it. It's got very average modes. The layout kind of sucks. The gun that moves back and forth is weird. It's an ugly machine. The artwork kind of sucks compared to other games. compared to Big Bang Bar Stop That was 30 seconds Yep Oh my gosh I talked too slow You did talk slow that time Wow Okay You can talk about Big Bang Bar You're going to bag it You're going to bag the sex sounds Come on What are you going to say about Big Bang Bar? No Alright I'm going to first of all apologise to Lucas who's got this machine Yes Big Bang Bar is a beautiful game to look at but the rules are terrible They really are not great. Whereas Dirty Harry has amazing rules. It's just, I don't know, it's got great multiball, it's got the super jackpot up the ramp from the gun. Oh man, and I love the return to the right into the safe house or whatever it is on the left-hand side or HQ. Just a really good satisfying shot that just, the value keeps coming up. I'll let you go for 10 seconds more five seconds more each time. You cut me off right at 30 seconds. You need those extra five seconds, Marty. You need them. I mean, you can read out the flyer and say things like, do you feel lucky? You should, because Dirty Harry just arrived on the scene. He's packing his famous 44 Magnum, a steely take-charge attitude, and a long list of players' most wanted pinball features. Wow. Everyone knows that the big buying market in pinball are, you know, middle-aged guys. Big Bang Bar is almost like a sex simulator, right? Yeah, but it's $30,000 versus Dirty Harry, which is $3,000. Yeah, you can't put a price on amazing-looking pinball machines. These are collectors that are buying it. Lucas, when Lucas bought Big Bang Bar, do you think he wants to feel like every peasant and plebeian that has a Dirty Harry? No way. He's got a Big Bang Bar. What sounds cooler, right? You walk up to a pinball meet and like, Hey, I'm Lucas. How are you going? Oh, what have you got in your collection? I've got a Dirty Harry. That sounds like you've got a dirty dick, right? No one wants to see Lucas' dick, hey? Lucas walks in, he's like, yeah Big Bang Bar Yeah And this is the cool thing about the Big Bang Bar Is you get sex instructions, right? I mean, what's more frustrating than being in the bedroom And you look at your partner's face Sex pinball, that's not very cool these days, Ryan You should know that It was back from a time where you could be sexist, okay? 1996, whatever it was sexism was cool, okay? It was fly. You know, making love to your partner and they, you know... Hashtag me too. Move it on. I'm just... I want to do this. Disgusting. Okay. I'm just trying to win, okay? It's very important to me. This is how I validate my existence. Winning is lambdas of 100. I'm sure there's other ways. Okay. What have we got next? Stumble, stumble, stumble. He's working pinballs. I just know I can't do it this week. You've got a more manly voice than me, Marty. Really? Yes. What are we both doing? Last night we went to the Ross Town Arcades, which is a cool name for a shed in the back of some guy's house. It really is. It really is. I was funny. So I also streamed there last night. So I streamed Atari Superman and Zachariah's robot. And what was really interesting, I said, oh, do I say that it's the Ross Town Retro Pinball Arcade because it's really on your house? And he goes, no, I love the fact that people think that there's this pinball arcade around here and they search for it, but it's just in my house. I can't find it. Yeah, nowhere to be found. That's awesome. So I wasn't going to come, but then at the last minute I could. And this was the place, if you remember, back to episode whatever, where I first started getting into tournament pinball with Marty. it was a this guy has just all all the games I guess ranging from from EMs to solid states and I guess the newest pinball he has is Bright of Pinbot only like alphanumeric everything else is all just solid states so no ball save is his motto because no game has any ball save at all and I qualified first by complete fluke and accident last time and I ended up coming second in the comp Marty you won it the year before the competition is about to start again. You have to kind of qualify, and there's finals on a separate day. He invited us over to test out his machines because pinball machines aren't board-proof, and the older ones are more susceptible to die than others. Yeah. So if you are interested in that, go to Aussie Arcade and look up Ross Town Retro Pinball Arcade Comp there. So, yeah, that was good fun. Love his selection of games. Spent a lot more time on Superman than A, I've probably ever had before, and B, that I probably would ever want. Not a fan of Sipman? Um, I tell you what, I'm not, I actually appreciate the machine for what it is. It was a Steve Ritchie game from when he was at Atari, and Atari, they have this really weird, I don't know how you would describe it, but a very weird wooden clunkiness to it. Does that make sense? So instead of it being like a metal clunkiness, this kind of feels wooden clunkiness, and it's not very bouncy at all. They never were. And it's a very awkward layout. It's a very challenging game, and it just kind of felt a bit unfair. I did manage to get the hang of it, and got up some good scores, but I just don't love it. If you head to pinballnews.com, you will see an article written by Dennis from the Collectors Gamers podcast, and it's on this very fact about how video games behemoths failed as tradition. And it's basically about Atari and their failed venture into pinball, because basically only two people, I believe, in the whole pinball division actually knew what pinball was about, and everyone else was kind of like engineers and stuff. So it's not a very long read, and it's very well written. So we'll look at that in the show notes, and have a good read of that. so what did you get up to this week? just on the Ross Town Arcade I enjoyed all the machines there for some reason I really like Last Lap maybe because it's louder than any of the other machines but it's just fun hitting that massive row of drop targets I think I've mentioned this before and it really affected me yesterday I really hope I don't get picked on Fathom because in that low light I can't see the ball something happens with my eyes that I just get totally dizzy like a 3D magic puzzle where you're trying to go cross-eyed. I can't track the ball, and I don't know if it's the light or my eyes are messed up, I have to go see a doctor. I can't play that game. So I'm crossing my fingers that that doesn't come in my random allocation of games. What did I do this week? Any podcasts you go on this week without me? Yeah, totally. Three. I went on... Okay, one of them... Who's counting? Me. One of them was Geoff Tillerson's podcast, and that was like a month ago. He just happened to release today. That was really good. I actually enjoyed that one. Yeah, there's a lot of editing involved with that as Jeff Teal has always heavily edited all of his content to make him sound like he's an amazing podcaster. He might be dead. That was fun. And I went on the Eclectic Gamers podcast and the Eclectic Gamers podcast is the most underrated podcast in the Timor world and I'm not just saying that because I was just on it. I listen to every episode. You look at the numbers of what other podcasts get and what they get, and I don't know why I don't have more people following them because they're incredibly funny to me. It's a different type of, like, more of a dry intellectual humor. But Dennis is amazing. Tony's amazing. I will link it in the show notes. I want everyone to at least give them a go. I'm not sure if people have tried before, but listen to the podcast. It's very different than us. They're not just kind of like reading the news and doing Slam Top 100, although we kind of did a variation of it. And it's different than every other podcast. And they do talk a little bit about video games at the end of every podcast. If you love video games, you don't need to listen to that bit. But please give it a go. Subscribe if you like it. And we might get one of them on the show at a further date in the future. Maybe not. Marty's upset that he didn't go on the show. So, didn't ask me. I didn't get fucked. Dennis, you've got your next guest. This is the cool thing about Marty. If you get him on your show as a guest, you can request Drunk Marty. You can say, Marty, can you please come in character? Yeah, and even if you don't request, chances are. Yeah. Well, I had to wake up at six in the morning to do it. I know. if you listen to the first 15 minutes you can tell I'm pretty crushed so when I first heard I went oh I'm not on there and then when you said 6 o'clock in the morning I went oh fuck there's no way no way I was doing that committed to pinball what else did I do I called Bruce again for some help that was pretty funny because he happened to be recording a podcast at the time and he didn't tell me and he just added it on the podcast I played Batman today Yes, and you told me you were playing Batman today. How'd you go? Okay. I have to put the little asterisk there, right? The first thing I want to get the negative stuff out of the way. There are so many ball hang-ups in Batman. It is still, like, unbelievable, like, fucking unbelievable to me that... Obviously, it's not code, it's hardware. And I want to put it out there to you guys, because the guy that I was playing the machine, he's an amazing guy, an awesome dude, he's a friend. He's not a tinkerer. He's like going to sit there and check out forums and tinker with the machine. So the machine kind of out of the box is still the way it is now. There's like little mods on it and stuff like that. But can you play a Batman and can you own a Batman 66 and have the ball never get stuck and go into ball search mode on the turntable? Because the ball got stuck in two different places. One on the right side of the turntable. It goes kind of wedged between the ramp and the turntable. and the other spot is where it's been hung up on like all five or six Batmans that I've played, which is on the mini turn, the bat U-turn spinner part of the turntable. It gets stuck on there. I'm not sure if it's a leveling issue or something. Is it possible, or it gets stuck not behind the level, but gets behind the two posts that spin around? Is it possible to have like a Batman that doesn't have the ball hang up? because that's like you're seeing that world on the glass and all that bullshit and getting sucked into the game and look at all the animations and the sounds and you can do so many episodes in this. As soon as the ball gets stuck, you're taken out of that. What happens? You're kind of like, oh, I'm playing pinball and you have to slap the side, you have to wait. That happened like in the three or four games that I played. It happened at least like two or three times every single game. So the last time I played Batman, I think I mentioned on the podcast, it was probably about two, three months ago and I played this game solidly for an hour in an arcade and didn't get a single hang-up the whole time. As I said, maybe it's the setup, but every game that I played on location in the US, I played it a lot. Every time there was a Batman, I just played Batman full stop, had that issue. So is it the angle? Is it the levelling? The main one is... Is it the way in? Yeah. Well, he's put a lot of games on it, so what is he doing wrong? Let me know via email if you can, or you can private message me if you have me on Facebook, and I will pass it on, because it's a buzzkill. Besides that, the game is so different. He showed me this cool thing. You know how you can play continued versions of, like, you know, do you want to continue or do you want to cash out? You know, when you get super jackpot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Did you know that before you plunge the ball, you can hold down, I think it's either the right flipper or the left flipper, and you can choose which episodes you want to start with for every single major villain. So you kind of like, you flip through and then you press and then you do it again. So you kind of spend like 20 seconds before you plunge the ball, if you want to, choosing which path you're going to take, which I thought was pretty cool because you don't need to use the... Actually, do you need to use the button? I can't remember. I just thought it was a cool thing, a cool integration into the thing that you can muck around with. I still feel like it's a great shooting game, but I'm intrigued. It still feels... It's because of that big turntable in the middle, it turns it into a bit of a clunky feeling game. It's not... Okay, put that on side by side with a boring layout like Star Trek. I'm saying boring because there's nothing crazy about Star Trek. And on a shooting level, which one would you rather shoot and sort of ball around with no codes. Star Trek, you know, 10 days. Yeah, sure. The rules, obviously, there's a lot of nuances. You can press a button to change between minor villains and major villains and what's on the TV screen and episodes. There's a lot going on there. The funny thing is, it's really complex and it takes a lot to explain, but it's been so long since it came out, people are kind of accepting it. Like, oh, it's really good now. It's really good now. if they revealed this in its current state and it's still not at 1.0 it's kind of like what people are doing now with Pirates of the Caribbean like yeah it's too complicated I wonder if that is probably the delays it's not about necessarily the the code and the rules it's more about making sure that the that actually engineering and all the toys and it'll actually work well they still don't what do you mean what toys yeah the the the microwave anyway I think I will get one one day, whether it be a swap or a temp swap or buying it or what's going on. But it's too pretty not to have it in my collection at one point. It is the prettiest machine I've ever seen. Yeah, I do like it. I like pink. I don't know why. I like pink in pinball. It looks good. And the artist as well? She's pretty good. Yeah, she's a great guy. That's all from me That's enough talking from me today So I've only got a couple of things to talk about I streamed Wizard of Oz during the week And, oh my god I was so close to getting Somewhere of the Rainbow Wizard mode All I had to do was get One more Fireball Jackpot And I had the Mega Jackpot Lit on Rescue Multiball All I had to do was start Rescue Multiball and get that and I would have had it. So I've never had Summer Over the Rainbow Wizard Mode at all. It's hard to get for those people that don't know the rules. Have you ever... Was this on the stream? Yes. Have you ever completed everything, but not in the same game, but have you ever got the Mega Jackpot on Rescue multiball? Yes. Okay. And have you ever finished all the Fireball Friends? You probably have, right? Yes. Yes, okay Alright, so you've done everything You just need to get all together I did it all at once Is really There's eight different objectives That you need to do To get the final wizard mode So you've got to kill the witch So hard You've got to get ten jackpots In viable frenzy You've got to start munchkin multiball Yellow brick road fifty times Complete emerald city multiball Which is you've got to collect Three gifts I think it is Flipper frenzy So that's the fifth mode On the What is it? On the crystal ball Like the reverse flipper one complete the rescue multiball by getting a mega jackpot and haunted forest multiball I mean the two that you still had left are probably the two hardest ones that I always struggle with because some of the other ones would just happen like eventually if you have a one hour game eventually you're going to traverse down the yellow brick road 50 times and you know if you flail around you should get enough of them if you have a one hour game which is very hard but fireball frenzy is the one that you really have to concentrate on and the the mega jackpot is literally you have to start rescue multiball, which is pretty hard in itself. You have to hit every shot three times to get a triple jackpot. Yep. Then you have to get the ball up to the upper play field, hit every single target, which is six targets, start rescue, knock down the door, and get it in there during multiball. Yep. So it's so hard to do it. I've never done that one. So I had all the rescue targets lit red. Did you hit any? Oh, like you hit them all You said knock down the door And I actually had I think it was at some stage I did actually have a ball up there And the door And I just I didn't You just got nervous Yeah You felt Keith P. Johnson breathing down your neck I did But also it's just one of those things where It's really interesting I mean the left upper playfield Is probably the more challenging of the upper playfields But in multiball That's really hard when you're managing balls on the bottom blade field as well as those at the top. It's actually quite interesting how something so easy becomes really difficult. Yep, you need to learn stage flipping really well and not panicking. You watch Carl D'Python Anghelo do it, he looks so calm. I'm sure he's not calm, but you need to be calm to play that game really well. The other thing that happened, I managed to watch Pinball 101 on the weekend and I would recommend buying it if you can. I think Seedy Baby is where I got it from. And it's really interesting because it talks about, you know, basic flipper skills, intermediate flipper skills and advanced flipper skills and then it's got some tips on certain machines and it's got this little mini sort of camera that goes on the playfield that shows you like a bird's eye view of it going around the playfield. But my favourite section was Pinball Etiquette which was sort of done like a 1920s sort of silent movie type thing with an old sort of jangly sort of voice overdubbing it. And they talked about certain things and they gave these characters names. My favourite is what I'm going to call out was Pawsport Mort, who's somebody that really doesn't like winning or losing. My absolute favourite is Wide End Ben. He doesn't realise how big his arse is, rubbing everybody's hands as he walks past the pinball machines with his ass. Rubbing their hands? Yeah, like with his butt. Watch the video, guys. Pinball 101. You will understand how hilarious. Like, this is a serious video, right? This whole thing showing you clipper skills and all this. That was a massive laugh out loud moment for me. It was just freaking hilarious. I'm not going to give too much away. You can relate to that, Marty, can't you? You know a wide end, Ben? I'm not saying anything You know A game Gamehog Gary I know a gamehog Gary So Is there a A smelly No shower Smelly No I don't think They have one of those They had Billy Button Pusher But we all know There's those little kids All those people that You know Put four games up Yeah Fuck those kids It was It was It's a very good video So this weekend Hopefully I'll get to Pinball 102 Which has arrived as well So there you go That was my weekend Let's head To the mailbag. Have we now got a call out for that as well? It's just boards. All right. Well, you can read out the first one from massive friend of the show, Stacey. Stacey, a boy or a girl? He's a boy. He's a boy. He does have nipples though. Hey, HGHs. Sorry. That's just to make Stacey laugh. Massive news last week with the triple spinning disc being removed. Wow. I knew there must be some serious issues behind why it's being replaced at the center disc. The mechanism was so elegant. Just three stepper motors driving some cogs. Beautiful. And the motion of the ball was something to behold. Sideways all day. I think the single spinner will be way more random. For me, the ridiculous number of mystery awards was at least a good part of the disc that remains. Hopefully all of the tech they developed with clear layers, the top coating, and the highly caressed, the lightly caress of the ball. The top trophy that lightly caressed the ball. Yeah, very simple. Right there in black and white. We put back in a lab for future releases. Anyway, still great times ahead for pinball with machines like Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man coming. Cheers, Stacey. Yarrr! That's why I wanted to That's how you know it's a happy It's a happy email, yeah. So this next one is Bruce Now so last week we did ask for some hate mail So this week we got some So dear Franton Martin I swear if you give me shit about my Walking Dead code comment Six or seven more times I'm going to fly down there dressed as Warwick Capper And piss on your garage door It's really funny The people in the US need to know who Warwick Capper is I'm going to link down the show notes Warwick Capper Okay for those people Warwick Capper You will see the picture He said, I can't think of anything hateful for Ryan. Give it some time. But if I find out he wears gloves playing pinball, I'll start making a list. Regard Bruce, P.S. Love the show, guys. I still don't know why I commented on something I know nothing about. My parents said I fell out a two-story window when I was little. Okay, this is Bruce, not Bruce Nightingale. This is another Bruce, by the way. What was his comment on Walking Dead? Did he come on the stream and say something? Nah, I don't know. have no idea what he's talking about. We could get more hate mail. Yeah. Yeah, that's disappointing. I got excited when I saw hate mail and it was to fart and mutton. Come on, guys. Give me one bit of hate mail. Here's what it is, guys. Hate mail to me is actually hate mail to Ryan because the lack of hate mail is the thing that shits him the most. Yes. I'm aversion to hate mail. I want my cherry to be popped. Nice. Okay. Ezra, thank you for your contribution to our workday. This is my favorite pinball podcast by a mile. Thank you, Ezra. Well, have a listen to the Clip the Gamers podcast, and you might change your mind. There's a discussion topic. Anyone who rates this pinballo 6 out of 10 has no heart. Anyone who rates it above 8 out of 10 has no brain. What are the sum of the machines that the quote applies to? I can think of four or five. So, Marty, you can go first on that one. So what we're really saying is games that really shouldn't be underrated or overrated. Is that what we're sort of saying? Yeah, it's not that good. If you say it's the best game ever, you're a bit crazy. If you're saying that it sucks, you're not being very kind to the game because it doesn't deserve the hate. So I guess middle-of-the-row games. Okay, so there's two games that come to mind and they're both Stern games. Okay. The first one is NASCAR, or known as Grand Prix in Australia. It's actually better than people think it is, but it's not the best. Okay. And the other one I kept thinking of is, and another Stern is Rollercoaster Tycoon. How about Avatar? Do you think Avatar falls within that line? You haven't mentioned Avatar in a while. I didn't mention Avatar, because I totally understand why people don't like it. And, you know, again, I can't remember what someone was saying about, you know, what was it, Big Buck Hunter, right? No, I love that game, but I know that people don't like games. But games of that era, I really like because I do actually quite like a simple rule set. Okay. I basically looked at the Pinsire Top 100 and just kind of went down until I found a game that suited that. And I only need to get to five. It used to be four, but I may put that to five. And that's Twilight Zone. Because I don't think it's more than an eight out of ten simply because of the rules. I mean, the more I play it, the more I realize that the modes are pretty much pointless. And there's other things that people hate about the machine, but I can't fathom the hate that the pinball machine gets. And I think the hate is because of how much people like it. So I think it sticks somewhere between a 6 and 8 out of 10 because the sounds and the technology and everything that machine did for its time, 1993, I think it was, amazing. It kind of threw everything out of the water. You have to appreciate it enough to not give it a... Even though, you know, numbers are stupid. I can't give it below a 6 out of 10. Yeah, well, look, I've been on record. I don't like it at all. At all. But you appreciate it, right? Well, I... You appreciate something about it? Absolutely appreciate it. And I've sort of said many times that I don't really like many Pat Lawler games, although I did just mention two Pat Lawler games a second ago. I'm not a big fan of his stop-and-start sort of games. And so, you know, Twilight Zone is a big miss for me, and Adam's family is a big miss for me. I do not like either of those machines. But I know why people love them and I appreciate that people love them and I know that it's a good game. It's just not for me. Yeah. I'm not sure if there's like a pin-side threat or something. I haven't looked at it, but it rings a bell, that whole saying that he put in the email. If you want to email us, it's head, the number two, head at gmail.com or you can find the contact page on our website. you can subscribe to us on Stitcher, iTunes, any podcatcher that you use Google Play and if you jump down our website head to headpinball.com you will find all the links there to Instagram, Twitter, everything awesome I think we're done are we in the stream now did you forget about that Mark no wait for the stream it'll come after don't hate us for it ok bye Thank you.