thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast i am josh roop with me my co-captain scott larson and scott we are going to be talking about the cactus canyon expanded kit today if you want one of these kits where did you buy yours from uh so well thankfully i got two of them one I got through Zach and Nicole Mini at Flip N Out Pinball, and I got that because, actually, Chicago Gaming Company was very nice to send me a test kit, and so I actually got one from them. But Zach and Nicole Mini can hook you up with that, and you can hook it up to your game and totally transform your game. So definitely reach out to them, Zach and Nicole Mini, Flip N Out Pinball. And we learned that it's not $250. Yeah. That was a pre-order number on the website. Yes, that was the secure your spot number. But yes, it is $12.50. It's basically under the price of a typical topper. And so that's actually a really good thing that adds functionality and it adds a totally different experience to a game. And we're going to talk about that today. Yeah. And the person that brought this to life is with us today, Mr. Josh Sharpe. How are you doing today, Josh? I'm good, boys. I would say I was a cog in the wheel that helped to bring it to life. By no means did I... Okay, you were basically someone who moved it. I was nearly as integral as some of the other people on the team. But what made you... Was this like originally in the game plan for Cactus Canyon in the original Bally Williams? And you were like, we need to make this. What brought this... What made you guys decide to push it? This... There was kind of a weird... weird crossing of Lyman leaving Stern to start his own consulting business doing software for sort of gun for hire business and made a deal. He had talked to me about making a deal with Chicago Gaming to do an update for Monster Bash, signed on to agree to do that and had asked me to help him in that development. And we started down our merry way of working on a Monster Bash update. I think, I don't know, I can't remember timing-wise, because now it's like five years ago, or whatever, but somewhere along the line, you know, Lyman and I were both aware that Doug was making the Cactus remake, and I think there was a point in time where Doug probably realized, oh, I should not have sorted the Williams Valley Classic list by price when deciding on what remakes to do. I probably should have sorted it by quality of game and realized that Cactus was really only that expensive because of its rarity. And it was sort of an Emperor Has No Clothes game. There wasn't a whole lot there. So I know that there were plans from the CGC side to cobble it together and finish what the CGC version of the game was. And Doug had reached out to Lyman and myself about putting the Monster Bats project on hold. And I didn't realize how, insert bad word, cactus is as far as a game. would you guys be willing to step in and help our team get this to some level of quality that can match what we've done with you know what our customers have expected out of medieval and all the other lyman games that that doug had been selling for years at that point and so lyman and i had a you know we sort of had kind of we were talking every day at this point for monster bash that had some ideas of like, I think we could do something here to help and agreed to put the Bash update on hold and jump in to try to take Cactus to whatever level we could to make it the best game we could with the constraints that we had as part of that development. Now, when they announced it, now, there's been many versions of this code. So there's the original one. And we all know that Williams was basically closing shop. And so they did as much as they could on the game. It was their last game before Pinball 2000. So they kind of pushed it out completely unfinished. And if you've played an original, you definitely know how bare bones that code really is. There were other attempts. There was like a Cactus Canyon Continued, so a homebrew type project. Now, you guys also released some version of an updated version for Chicago Gaming Company when this came out originally. We did. It did have some things, but it wasn't the full project. But you had to have something that was better than the original but not quite the full fleshed out version. Am I catching that story right? Yes. So worthy of what Chicago Gaming could have released and what they did release for what we would call their base game. Sure. But Lyman's a crazy. And, you know, when he jumps in, he jumps in, man. You know, the dude was a perfectionist. And, you know, once being a part of that creative process with him and being able to sort of talk about all the things that he wanted to do, not only software wise, but he had like hardware wise trying to get the saloon back back in. You came up with the idea for the lock sign, you know, all this stuff of just like we could do anything we want. And part of the plan that we ended up pitching Doug was, hey, you know, we have this sort of 12 course menu that by the end of the work we want to do is where we want it to be. And we sort of picked a line in the stance of and I still have our Google Doc that we were working with. But, you know, at what point should something be a part of the base game? And at what point would this be added content that customers would not expect? And I think, you know, we drew that line based off of sort of if you did play the original game and you realized how much stuff was not in there, it became pretty clear for our roadmap of like, like, this really should have been in the Williams game. You know, it goes over in this column, you know, this whole idea for the saloon mech integration. that's a part of the update there's no way a customer buying cactus would have expected this thing to be in their product so we sort of the outline for the work was all of it and then sort of it was just placing it in buckets of like is this going to be part of the release game or part of the extended kit okay so the the one thing i i do have i and i will fully admit by the way that i did talk about my own hiccups on installing the game i will totally admit that was totally me misinterpreting what I was supposed to do because I was, I actually stripped two parts on it, but it was because I was trying to install it, um, in a, I guess in a different way. So the one, the one recommendation I would have is when you're putting it in, just tighten the back setbacks. They're the little posts that look like hex things. Just tighten those by hand and then tighten them from the side, not on the top by me trying to do it from the top that's how i actually stripped a switch on there it's uh it's it's hard i mean there and that was a part of sort of coming up with the the idea when lyman was throwing out sort of the hardware and it was like are customers installing this themselves you know you ask all the questions that you should ask which is like i mean these people don't know how to take open a coin door or take the glass off they're going to be installing mechs that and for me i was sort of I'm the idiot of the group of just like, you want me to take this thing and I'm cutting wires off and I'm putting like, are you crazy? How is this going to work? And that was part of like the CGC engineering side of just like, how do we make that? It's going to be challenging. You know, we did too much in terms of changing the game that there were going to be challenges. This is not a, you know, add something to a post and be done and it's decorative and there's one wire that gets power for light. I mean, the functionality for that saloon mech is some serious engineering business. And, yeah, I see it with every pin side post with someone that's having, you know, I'm learning far more about electrical interference than I probably ever wish I needed to in my life. It actually was when I look at it, it actually now that I know a lot more about it, when I go over to my friend's house that's going to install his update, I bet we can knock it out in probably 90 minutes, which is good. And the thing is, you learn anybody who's worked on their machines know that you kind of it's it's a little bit of a when I'm working on a machine. A lot of times after I finish the project, it probably took three times longer than I should have. But I learned something from it. And, you know, it's the same thing. Anytime the first timer is learning how to take the glass off, lift the play field, you know, rebuild a flipper mechanism. And so these things are this is just part of the pinball experience. but i actually did have kind of a blast putting it all in and the finished product really did take this game to a new level and we we've talked a little about behind the scenes uh with uh joel from uh you know and joel does his flipping out streams he also did a tutorial on this and install and he said with the upgrade that he feels this game has has surpassed medieval madness for like a complete fan layout game. And by the way, I totally agree with him because I didn't think that this update would drastically change the product of Cactus Canyon as much as it truly did. And so can you tell me a little bit more about, okay, how did you go all out in basically transforming the game by installing a saloon door, a spinner switch, and code. Because for the casual fan, when you buy a pinball machine, other machines have gone through a similar transformation. And you can think of things like Stern's Deadpool. When it first came out, it was really panned because the code wasn't really up to snuff. Now we know that Deadpool is actually a very good game. But because the code has radically changed how the layout is used, So as a similar process, when you take Cactus Canyon, when you have a basic fan layout that has seven or eight shots, and then you add a spinner and a mechanism, but that can radically change how the game feels. So talk about that. I think, you know, the big thing is realizing, and Lyman was the master at this, was so much, you know, from that era of Lyman games, Lyman became so much better of a programmer and game designer, you know, rules wise and whatnot. The game has evolved since that era, but the foundation of what that era represents and what I circle back to and call the Williams charm was trying to find that balance of offering, you know, risk reward was not a huge thing in the 90s. You know, the depth of content, not a huge thing in the 90s. I feel like the Williams, you know, that is a huge part of the content today. And I feel like what has been lost today is that three minutes to charm you experience that kind of no longer applies because it doesn't matter because people are playing in their basements and they need 65 minutes of stuff. They don't. They don't. They need the same experience that hooked them in pinball originally with those additional layers of onions that you can unwrap. And I feel like that's where with Cactus, we were able to sort of merge both worlds in a way that makes it a very unique product. It can stand up to games in the 90s, being able to present casual players and people that can fall in love with pinball for the first time. We're going to grab you in 60 seconds and make you laugh, make you feel something, make you advance a story in a way that you understand what's going on. And for those that are hooked on depth of content and breadth of content, we got you. Because Lyman and I are still those players today that also want to be challenged in that way with the game. So when you are creating a rule set and stuff like that, are you, I mean, obviously you do tournaments occasionally. Are you taking that into account as well? Because there's a lot of, I mean, like you said, there's a lot of depth to these modern games. And so where do you where do you find the fine balance between the three? I feel like the, you know, not to be the biggest hypocrite in the world, but like tournament players can go F themselves, guys. And what I mean by that really is it doesn't take much to satisfy. It seems like it takes a lot to satisfy that group in terms of like 71 different things to do and combinations that you could do frontwards and backwards and sideways and four ways and whatever. And it's really not like for me, the essence of a balanced competitive game is I have a ball cradle on the flipper. and the game's job is to make me make a choice between more than one option that are both viable strategies. You don't need 71 things. You need two things. I need you to question where you want to go. And there's, if you choose to shoot whatever on the left, here's the pros of what you're going to get. And here's the consequences of what you're not going to get by avoiding the shot on the right. I feel like it's like, let's make a deal. Door number one or door number two, both come with great things. You're going to be missing out on the thing you don't pick. You're going to enjoy the things that you do pick. And it's really that, it's that simple to hook tournament people because you just need, and that was, you know, a big part of, of the score balancing and stuff with Lyman and I play testing the crap out of this thing is, you know, you have a ball in the flipper and it's like, why, you know, why didn't you shoot that? You know, I don't think it's worth enough, blah, blah, blah. And we just organically, you play and you talk through it. And because we're, we would play against each other. Penny would come over, we'd play every week. Wednesday night was play night with whatever the latest code was. And it's like, what if I make the value this? Do you shoot it? No, I don't think so. What about that? And you just start making soup. You know, you turn something up in a way and it's like, now I'm intrigued. You know, maybe I do shoot that left ram. I haven't the last three months, But now I'm considering it. And it just, for better or worse, Lord knows with CGC, the one thing you do have is time. And the ability to have enough time to get it right, it really does take so much time of playing and putting yourself into these situations while you're playing to analyze the situation. It so hard to do that on a spreadsheet of value and just looking at these options on a spreadsheet and saying this should be pretty good it never it never ends up that good so let talk about the things that you did at it now i i'm just looking at your uh at the manual i wonder if i have one i don't have one here you'll have to wrote me no it's okay i i i'm reading from for you so don't worry about it so it says this upgrade includes 10 new modes, two enhanced modes, many new animations, new sound and music by Rodberry, never before heard original sounds, a saloon mechanism spinner. And so, okay. So I want to go through the modes and tell me how these, because that's actually crazy when you think about it, because most people will buy some sort of mod or some sort of topper and the big selling thing right now is the topper is you get a random exclusive mode that you're not going to use okay that's the big selling thing and with with you know some some plastics and by the way i'm a total sucker for uh for toppers i i have them on every game except for iron maiden if someone has an egypt topper let me know um but okay so i'm gonna start going through and i want you to tell me about how the modes are changed so first off you have a skill shot hurry up and so and and i know about it so basically you pull it it's part of that of that rotisserie thing in the you know in that little spinny thing that it's going through and if you get it you have to shoot the left orbit right very good actually this is perfect if you should be able to talk through these which would let me know that like we did a decent job okay it's understandable for you so like i will course correct as you go but i'm just gonna sit in awe of your ability to explain which by the way if anybody knows about my understanding of rules this is impressive that i've been able to pick up on all this because i got i'm your typical dumb collector that flips at home yeah you know what though you you are you're you're the rule you're not the exception you know the tournament savant people those people are the exceptions man yeah they're crazy when i'm talking to tournament people they're like hey here's all the five ways you can approach i'm like i i don't know any of that okay all right so so i got that right so i i got i got the hurry up okay then you have bella bart now bella bart's been on the back glass before yeah there there was no there there was no confrontation with bella in the past did i get that right correct more okay and so now she's just added to one of the one of the people you're interacting with when you're shooting up the saloon she is part of the gang yes so you shoot the saloon door and by the way so so someone who doesn't look at the mechanism closely you actually have a spinner that opens up and so you know it's a it's a state change so you shoot that and then it opens the saloon door and then you shoot it in okay so she's been added to the cast of characters that you're fighting right okay and so next you have the saloon fight so now you have this and so i'm reading off this it's you hit the spinner so this is how you engage the saloon fight you keep hitting that spinner which is by the way a really hefty spinner and you shoot that it's the the skills it's the marksman shot and so you get that and you spin it and it spins up enough and then once it gets to a point then it's a isn't it a timed mode where it's like you have a certain amount of time to to build up the jackpot and then cash out the jackpot with the with the bear shot right the bear shots okay rock on look at that okay now we have the gunfight so that this is actually interesting because i'm not sure i fully understand this yet but i'm getting it so So you have the – This is definitely the most – I mean this was the first rule that we came up with and by far the most modern risk-reward take of a 90s game that we have ever done. So it's ball-specific, right? And so what you're doing is you're trying to build up the jackpot. Now, I'm not quite sure. Is it just switch hits that you're hitting to build up the jackpot? Because if you build it enough – those familiar with lyman borrowed from himself okay for better or worse it's the acdc song jackpot rule okay slightly modified so you have this gunfight situation which lyman and i you know it was uh the first question we asked ourselves when we started on the project was what's the coolest part of this game you write down your answer josh and i'll write down mine and it's like, okay, Liven, I got it. And he's like, I got it too. And we both, you know, hold up a flash card and we both say gunfight. Because, you know, the drama it creates in that moment is just, even in the Bates-Williams game was like, oh, these guys had something here. This was really a cool moment. How do we make this moment the most important thing this game has to offer, scoring wise and whatnot and so that was sort of the tree trunk to the biggest change we were going to make in the game because scoring wise gunfight was kind of a throwaway mode in the original game well it's a danger mode too i mean half of those shots are are brick shots that you're that you have to rescue because there's four different options and that's actually one thing that's cool you don't know which of the four options is going to be that's right so you have the, what is it, five shot modes? Yep. The shot trees? Mm-hmm. The points you earn in that mode, if you finish the mode, you not only earn those points, but they get banked into the next gunfight value. If you beat a Bart, the points you earn from beating the Bart gets banked into the gunfight value. You can continue, it is, I mean, it is risk-reward at its most primal. right you can cash out anytime you want you can toggle the inlanes to start the gunfight when you want or press your luck for every additional mode or bart you beat the contribution of those points get multiplied as you go so finish a mode those points get banked defeat a bart those bark points get banked at 2x finish another mode those mode points get banked at 3x defeat another bart those bark points get banked at 4x so there's always this next i don't know do you like your your three scoops sunday because this fourth scoop's freaking huge it's always out the next one is always so much bigger you're left balancing do i push it or do i cash out okay here's my question josh you are an elite player what do what is your strategy like how many how many scoops on the sunday do you typically go for i'm curious so i am uh there's two things i really focus on which is i try to never do the gunfight from the left flipper because number three and i hate it it's always number three the target that comes up i find that it's much easier from the right flipper but for me and sometimes it's tough to monitor but i will usually keep going if i am one shot away from another mode starting so you kind of have to track because the inserts you know once you start a mode your insert progress goes out yeah so once you finish a mode it's like if you can find a way to trap up and it's like oh you know the the ride them cowboy mode is next i'm gonna do that at 3x and then you come out of that it's like oh the marksman mode is ready to go that's it for it that's one shot bam next i find if i'm like two shots away it's like the the idea of like i might get nothing starts to to wane and and i'll usually bail that's the uh was the the willie wonka code and you get nothing yeah no i and i the the one thing that you just subtly glazed over is you can actually defer the gunfight mode because you are selecting it with the flippers and so if you don't want to start the gunfight mode you can actually flip it quickly to the other in lane and okay so so that that's definitely the the risk reward on that yes okay so then we get to the shootout topper mode yes now i okay this one i I've been playing this for about a week, and I don't get this all the time. So how do you engage it? And this is actually because before the other topper mode was you'd actually have to hold the button, and it would cycle over until you shot it. And so there's like some light bars up there that tell you exactly where you're aiming. So that was the old topper mode. This one is actually just a person pops up, and you hit the button, and you shoot them. So it's just a left, right. It's a, it's a, it's a quicker, it's a quicker mode, but there's, there's a cow in one and there's a girl in the other one and everything else is bad guys. So basically you have a quick second is like, do I shoot left? Do I shoot right? And is that a target? Correct. And so how do I engage the topper mode? And, and the thing is the girl and the cow, they're always in the same spot. So do you just memorize those? You just like, okay, don't, don't shoot. It's amazing how often they'll still get you. Yeah. Well, I shoot them all the time. I'm still, again, terrible. Okay, so tell me how to engage the topper mode, the topper shootout. It is one of the beer mug awards that are on that train of awards that are, I think, shootout two is first because that is the new content version for anyone that has the update, which in our notes is the Dracula video mode done in topper form. and then the original one that shipped with the base game which is shootout one that was 20 bear shop modes yeah something like that yeah it was actually a lot you had to try the awards you know depending on if you have extra balls on or not you know the award tree hits at different times if you have like extras available or not at any given time okay yeah and And that's actually – for a second, I got a little tripped up because I was expecting the hold the – like hold the button to get the – to track that shot thing. So that was a little recalibration of my brain. It was just a quick tap. Okay. Now you have showdown. So you hit all of – now this is where I haven't played it enough to figure this out. So is this just you hit enough of the of the barts until you get to is that word or maybe you can explain it a lot better because I keep going through the bart modes and I get a little hung up on like a bionic bar or that one. And so tell me more about the showdown. So showdown is your multiball that's related to quick draws. so your targets on the side right spot those glowy orange spot targets will light your corresponding in lane it'll pop up a target the targets are so fun they're used for multiple purposes which is confusing but it's uh you know it was part of our frustration in trying to solve this puzzle is is having these things lit for different things but the uh short answer is finish a quick draw on all four targets and you will reach showdown multiball okay and that's the one where all of them pop up and you gotta clear them you have to clear them okay yeah i i've done that i've done that multiple and then if you clear them don't you get another ball added so yes and so so it keeps getting harder because you have to clear them you keep getting more balls added but it's pretty hard to keep all the balls to track all the balls once you get more and more balls so you have to clear you get three balls is the max so you have to clear all the targets and then the jackpot inserts will light on these five main shots you actually have to hit one of those shots to add a ball and if the next time you're playing or someone else is playing this multiball at your place you can watch the topper will have the bad guys you know you as you make progress shooting the jackpot shots you're defeating bad bosses gang members okay as you're progressing in that multiball so you'll see you know once you hit all four drops and the jackpots are lit you'll see a bad guy flashing on the topper hit a jackpot shot you'll see a red x go over that person clear the four drops again you'll see bad guy number two on the topper start flashing hit one of the remaining jackpot shots bam red x on that guy and you got to progress through all of them until you can get to the uh the end which is at the saloon the saloon shot is the super after you clear clear the deck of all the bad guys it's pretty it's it's the hardest thing to do to reach high noon now okay so that would be six that's six bad guys and two good guys up there right did i count that right yeah ignore the good guys they're not used okay so so you have so you have to do that six times and then shoot the salute wow now you do get to uh it saves your progress so if you do four guys the first time you get back into that multiball oh okay clear the clear the drop targets you'll have the remaining number of jackpots available if that's only two you'll only have those two left and you'll be on bad guy number five okay actually that that's good to know because i i have okay the problem is with multiple as everybody who's playing never looks up because they're just trying to keep you know their eyes down so oh yeah that could be a good thing if you're playing with a buddy that they can shout out how many you have you should hopefully the inserts on the play field will also you know when when you go to try to shoot a jackpot shot and you notice oh man only the marksman shot is lit you're getting pretty close oh okay so as you shoot the jackpot shots they are those shots are eliminated from Okay. Okay. All right. That's good to know. Okay. Gunfight Ball Save. I find this awesome. This is so fun because this is a little bit like the – other games have this. You have like Wizard of Oz where you have like Save Toto and you have Godzilla. You have the – Oxygen. Oxygen. Yeah. So okay. Now the thing is I don't know how to qualify it. So I'm trying to look at this real quick. So after reaching the rank of deputy – okay. So you have to reach a deputy. There you go. Okay. And then you have the, uh, okay. So wait, wait, wait, hold on. Pop quiz. Scott, how do you, how do you advance rank? I'm lucky. And I get one of the stars when I plunge. There's two, there's two other ways. Okay. One is about one of the bounty award. It can advance your rank and winning a gunfight advances your rank. A single gunfight. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have noticed that I have moved upwards in ranks on the new code way faster than I did in the old code. So either I'm a better player or the code is allowing me to – The game is helping you. Yeah, I think – Either way, take it. Take it and run. Okay. No, absolutely. Okay. So once you get to that point and you have the gunfight ball save now the gunfight ball save does it alternate between an out lane or is it only a single out lane It only the only insert we had was that left insert that like that was one of our puzzle piece puzzle pieces that we needed to solve we have this we have this insert that says of course it says gunfight because it's everything in this game there's so many different gunfights why is this gunfight different it's red and and just sort of being able to riff on what can we do here and hearkening back to like the million dollar shot on fast break that uh mr gomez did way back in the day and uh trying to do something fun and charming with that rather than just giving your ball back well the fun thing about this is there are penalty shots yeah so you have so it shoots up all four of the of the uh the draw the gunfight shots and three of them are red and one of them is green so if you hit the green one great you get your ball back but if you hit the red ones they're like ah you're dead yeah so i actually find that fun because it's um it it harkens a little bit back to uh when i've gone to pinball olympics before where they had where they have the penalty shot where you you shoot you know they they have the games wired to each other. And I, when I was on Metallica, if you shot, uh, the, the, I can't remember the, the fuel shot, the left, the left upper shot, and you would tilt the other guys. So it was brutal. I'm surprised those guys wouldn't be, and you actually electrocute your opponent for real. Okay. So that's the gunfight ball save. Um, does that, um, can you relight that as, or is that like a single, So that's a single throughout the game. You just get that one time. Okay. Okay. Now you have the Frank and beans one. Okay. This one is, is hilarious for all the kids out there. Cause it's all the fart jokes. So, and that came from a cactus Canyon continued. Okay. Mr. Pripty. That was one of the modes that he had in his game. And I had reached out to him early on about, and let him know what Lyman and I were doing pretty early on in the, in the process. and definitely wanted to make sure that he was cool. If there was any overlapping of stuff that we thought he did that fit within our universe, what did he think about us being able to borrow some of that stuff? And he was super gracious in letting us know whatever we wanted to use or reference or whatever was totally cool by him. Yeah, that's really great. Okay, so it looks like that you hit enough beer mug shots, and then you qualify it at the saloon. So is there like a certain amount that you hit on the beer mugs and then shoot the saloon? Yeah, it'll be one of – when you hit it and it's like shoot out at 10 or whatever at 15 or whatever at 20, it will be one of those things in the tree where you'll hit the beer mug, and it'll say Franks and Beans at 20. Okay, and then it's just – this is a switch hit mode where you keep doing that. And then you build up the jackpot, and do you cash out the jackpot? You don't. You don't. It is just a base-level scoring frenzy. Okay. Rip the spinner for many farts in a row. Okay. It's not once. Okay. Then we have Drunken Multiple. So, okay, I actually don't even know if I've gotten this one. So tell me about – oh, your flippers are reversed. They are. Also borrowed from Cactus Canyon Continued. Okay. Lyman for a while he didn't, Flippers reversed is so played out guys at this point it wasn't as surprising as I know when Keith P. Johnson did it on Simpsons I definitely was like oh my god this is insane not quite that level of dropping a mic but and so Lyman had this idea of well instead of crossing your Flippers why don't we do like you're drunk and the flippers are slightly delayed and it just turned out to be a really terrible idea like it was not fun and it just seemed like the game was broken in some way yeah right like you were playing video pinball with the lag and so that was one of the uh you know sounded interesting written on a piece of paper not so much in practice you're telling me theater of magic video mode isn't what we're attempting for here it felt a lot like that okay so how do you so again you hit enough beer shots to qualify this mode at the saloon so it's it's it's in that tree it's in that tree okay then you got saloon party i actually don't don't know if i've played this one yet okay so that is at the back end of once you defeat all the barts and You're kind of in this state of play where all the bad guys are done. What do we do now? And what you do now is you have a party. There's nobody else that's going to be messing up your world in that saloon. You've taken care of all the bad guys. So continued hits to the saloon will advance this rule. Okay. now i the one thing that i bionic bart seems like i'm getting to bionic bart a lot more in this version than i did in the previous version am i getting a better player or is it is it closer in the tree it's not close you have one more you know with bella oh yeah there's one more bad guy to get through so you're i'm putting you i'm putting it on your pinball skills maybe maybe i'm better than I thought. Good talk. But with Bart, the interesting thing is the bionic part. Okay, walk me through bionic part because it seems like you hit him and then you have to hit all the jackpots and there's increasing amount that I have to hit before I hit the saloon again. Is that... Am I understanding that correctly? So you hit him to start and then you've got to shoot a minimum of one jackpot shot before you can land another punch on him. And risk-reward-wise, every punch you land on him is the value of the jackpots you hit in between punches. So you're welcome to go to town and shoot jackpot shots for an hour if you want, and then your punch will really count score-wise. Or you can do one shot back to his chest, two shots back hitting him again. and then I think it's I think it's one two three or it's one two three and four and then like that end of that will destroy him yeah so what what I thought at least my understanding is that you hit one jackpot then you hit him hit two jackpots then hit him three is that is that still how it is or yeah but that's just a minimum you're welcome to keep shooting jackpot shots okay so you can you could hit like four jackpots and really like give a land a big uppercut okay all right okay so So that's what I – well, okay, at least I understand it, but I didn't know that you could go beyond that. Okay, so Marshall. So the mini wizard mode. So tell me about the Marshall mode. So in that advanced rank tree that you get from your gunfight wins or your skill shot or your bounty, once you reach the end, there was nothing in the game. So this was another rule pretty early on that we knew, you know, this should be something special in some way. You just advanced this thing to the end and there's nothing. So the the rule there, once you get to the end, you'll see the have you reached it or you have not? No, I haven't reached it yet. It's hard. the gunfight inlanes will start to sort of pulse quickly, and both of them will be lit, which is different than the rest of the game that you're playing. You'll be able to alternate them. You will notice a difference. These are both lit at the same time, and they're not going away. Go down to either one of those, and that martial mode will start. And I think, what did I, I wrote up some garbage for that flyer. Read my verbiage. Yeah, okay. It's a wonderful story. All right. Story time, children. A mini wizard mode has been added once you reach the rank of marshal. Boss Bart sends a group of bad guys to hijack the train and it's headed home to Cactus Canyon Station. Shoot jackpots to help bring the train home and send those bad guys to jail. However, just when you think everything is safe, the bad guys escape, triggering the start to marshal multiball. Hit jackpots and drop targets to complete to capture those bad guys and send them back to jail. So the train starts on the right, and this is another part where the train was only integrated in the poly mode. The save poly mode, yeah. And technically only the save poly from the train mode, I think. And so trying to get another point in time where we can integrate the train in gameplay as not just a timer, but sort of as part of the story was sort of the foundation for how the rules of this mode supported that. So it starts on the right ramp, which is your train starts all the way to the right. And there's a drop target that pops up that gets in the way of making that right ramp shot harder. if you can your goal is to shoot the right ramp before your timer runs out if you can do it without knocking the target down that's blocking it you get more points it's not necessary for advancement of the story but if you shoot the right ramp the train will move and something else will get in the way and the display will have you know it's a boulder it's a cow or whatever ends up getting pulled in front of the train and so it'll move to the marshals uh the marshal shot and it'll stop. The drop target, drop targets number three and four will come up, and that's sort of your next interaction with the bad guys of, oh no, you know, they've taken over control, shoot that marksman shot before the timer runs out, get more points if you do it without hitting the targets, if you can thread that needle on that shot, and it'll advance to the center ramp. Targets two and three will pop up, and you're advancing that train all the way back to Cactus canyon station with the final shot being on the left orbit if you can make that you will get the train home safely and then have this multiball aspect of like the tier two level of the mode okay and by the way you you said drop targets three and four i'm assuming you're naming them from left to right and they i'm naming them from left to right okay all right so now you have high noon okay so now this is this is a mode i haven't got to so you'll have to tell me about it man it's been a while since i've gotten all right i'll read the fly about it okay high noon had you fighting boss bart's entire gang but the question hasn't been answered in 25 years is where did boss bart go where's polly this update brings a second stage to the high noon battle After escaping with Polly and taking her hostage, it's time for the ultimate showdown with Boss Bart to save Polly and to bring peace back to Cactus Canyon. Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. Sounds like something I wrote. I like the accent. Thanks, man. During stage one, which is still what was in the original Williams game, you have a certain amount of time to hit as many bad guys as you can. I think it's like you need to hit 30 in 30 seconds. So unlimited balls. they keep coming every target you hit they keep popping up and as you get down to like four bad guys left out of the 30 they will not come back up so your final four will be you know one two four and then your last one to hit would be number three because number three sucks it's always so hard to hit you hit that one in the allotted time and you'll hit you'll enter this stage two which is new stage two is pretty simple you gotta hit bart but drop target number three which blocks bart you need to hit that down and then it's only down temporarily so you gotta hit that down and then get it back into a shot on bart before it pops back up and do you have to hit shot three before you can't like scoot around it oh no you can i mean the whole game where you want to hit drop target three and you miss it and shoot the saloon you can do that the entire game okay and you can certainly do that here at the end and uh you won't because now you want to hit it into the saloon back and you will find yourself just hitting drop target three over and over again yeah okay three three shots into uh into the bart into the bart we'll we'll knock them dead okay the peasants will rejoice yeah okay so so that is and now speaking that is we've we've just spent basically 30 minutes going over a complete rehaul of the of the code which is is super impressive so what else do you want people to know about the update and i'm assuming that people who have the cactus canyon like why wouldn't you want to get the update i i don't understand why people would not buy the update it's a good quote i think you know it the overwhelming question and the and obviously the hardware is what the hardware is but a lot of the conversations that lyman and i had with cgc is really we're really going to learn what is the value of software if there are no costs of goods right it's it's free and i feel like software and this goes for all you know when you see software updates from other manufacturers the idea that i anything it should be free because this is now the complete game right and dealing with that narrative of if stern or whoever else were to put certain features behind a paywall, how do you deal with that narrative with your customer base that, well, now they're just artificially picking a line that's 1.0? You know, all the conversations we were having of like, are customers going to feel like we intentionally held things back that they should have gotten with the product that they purchased? So that's, I mean, that's a real thing. and there's certainly a fair share of people that believe exactly that. And we have this outline for the project, and we did pick a line, right, that was content that was included in the base game you purchased and content that, like, it's behind a paywall, and it's like we're really sorry about that. But there's a lot of money spent on development, on software, art, sounds, you know all that stuff that while doesn't it doesn't go on the bill of materials it does need to be paid for yeah but i i would argue that uh even with other manufacturers you're starting to see that i mean with the topper exclusive modes that stern's doing like you're already seeing that people are like well okay so i'm not getting the full game if i don't get like goat frenzy or or whatever the shark is broken. And so this is not something that's unique. But, but move, you know, I mean, in your mind, move that line. I mean, X-Men just had an update, right? Let's say four months ago, they called X-Men 1.0. Right And now this new update that is free you know for people that have the game what if it was being sold and dealing with that feedback with the community of you know oh man are we get you know what is the contract with the buyer in terms of what they deserve versus what they deserve based on what they have already paid for and how can that customer, should that customer be monetized additionally for content? Right. And you do see it a little bit. You do see it a little bit. Now, there are other games where I have wondered about buying. Actually, and this is something near and dear to your company. So Big Buck Hunter. Oh, yeah. I thought about buying Big Buck Hunter a few times. One, which I think I just barely found out that you can turn off like the the the hot checks uh transition mode uh between and so that actually is a plus for home environment by the way i get it i get it so uh so i did just find that out i'm like huh that may be interesting but then there is if you buy something like that and they're like okay so now to get the full game i believe that you can still play a single mode without the subscription but if you want all the other stuff you pay it's like i think it's like 40 40 bucks a month to get the full unlimited thing do i do i understand that correctly yes so our model is you either can pay for and hold on let me since i'm at work i can actually i can actually oh there you go at work so there is a base game that is our base game is online so it's heavily subsidized it's a much cheaper product right and for forty dollars a month you get our base buck hunter game with all of the additional animals and levels that have been built onto that additional game. You get our Terminator game. You get our Walking Dead game. You get In Search of Monsters, In Search of Zombies, and Duck Dynasty. All of that content is included in the online game that you pay per month. If you don't want to pay per month, you can buy what we call the offline version of the product. It is way more expensive because you are buying it with everything included. Yeah, okay. Basically, if I were to describe this to anybody else, I would say their model is, if you're doing the subscription-based model, they're basically selling you a game that's roughly their price for the game. They're basically giving you the hardware and hoping that you buy the subscription And so they can make whatever money off that. That's right. If you want, if you want to do the other one, then you can pay a lot more, but you're not like each module is going to be significantly more expensive because you're buying a standalone module. And, and so that, am I understanding that? Yeah. And it's like, I would recommend this to you personally. I recommend it to anyone who else who puts a big buck hunter in their home is buying an online version, sure play the online content and decide what you think speaks to you and then turn it offline and buy the content you want a la carte which we also allow you to do right and then in the future you can always like resubscribe you can unsubscribe you can do that so you and you're you're looking at this type of thing with video games a lot you're looking at microtransactions you're looking at and some games have been able to bridge that mode successfully without pinball's hard man it is yeah pinball man pinball drew that line in the sand they're like no dang it i bought this game i i bought this used game for four thousand dollars ten years you know that's a 10 year old game and dang it they should be keep updating it for free well and honestly my my p3 though has kind of but it's got the integration with the screen like it's been able to you can add more content for a little bit more of a cost but it goes back to that whole like there is it's software you're buying versus hardware it's it's hard with pinball like what we what we started with at the very beginning of this episode as scott has alluded to with installing the new kit there you're expecting people that have a hard time opening the coin door and taking glass off that expect hardware with pinball when it comes to paying more of a price at least with toppers it's literally you stick it on top you screw two you know two three screws in right it's a harness and you're done yeah yeah it's like you're done and so it's like where it pinball definitely has an uphill battle when it comes to dlc and content like that you know yeah we've learned a lot with you know the the cactus kit see seeing the kind of numbers that that we're selling on it and hearing back, you know, whether customers believe it's a good value, whether they believe it should have been $250, whether they believe it should have been free. You know, I've heard all of that different feedback. And it'll be interesting if there is another update down the line that is less hardware intensive. What does that mean? You know, out of the $1,250 for the value of that cactus kit, how much of that, if it was a saloon Mac that didn't have any rules functionality besides opening and closing, what's that worth? What is all of the content worth that has nothing to do with the hardware? I don't know. And, and, and all anyone can do is give their own personal opinion of what you, like I, for me, I think the software is far more valuable than the hardware in terms of the gameplay experience, but can completely feel that someone having the opposite take is completely reasonable. I will also point out that if anybody is installing the kit and they have questions, you can definitely get a hold of me on Facebook. I can definitely help you out with the landmines that I ran into because I'm an idiot. So I'm going to put a plug in there for it's more complex than it really should have been also flipping out uh with joel ingerberth he did a full install video awesome his video is awesome the one part that i messed up on is he kind of skipped over the setback part and so that that's that's where i got i got screwed up on so okay so we're running out of time but i do have one question that is not cactus canyon pertained josh it's been two three years now since we've seen pulp fiction is there another game in the future coming from the mind of of Josh Sharpe and play mechanics is there something you could wet our whistle with when it comes to that of course yeah twins 2031 we are in two days it'll be five years away okay okay sounds good yeah i i don't believe you by the way you're you're a bald-faced liar but yes I don't know. We, until, I'm a results-oriented dude, and Pulp Fiction shipped seven years after we started it. So until proven otherwise, we are a one-game-every-seven-years company. Prove me wrong. Yeah, okay. Prove me wrong. You can't. You can't prove me wrong. You just looked at your calendar. You're like, Pulp Fiction released this day, so. Now we're good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The other, the other obvious questions that people are going to have is I have three CGC games behind me and I have attack from Mars and storage. So, and you started this discussion saying that you were working on different code things. Okay. I, I, for one, I'm going to put a big, I wish and, and pray and hope that you are going to continue the upgrades for the other games I have. Is it like a dumb and dumber situation? Like one in a million shot? Or do we think we have a better shot of getting those things? I am with you that I also hope that as a consumer, I have all of those games. And the outlines for, I mean, Lyman and I were obviously working on a Monster Bash update, a Cactus update, a Medieval update. an attack update, an ACDC update, and he was going to be the programmer on our game that's coming out in 2031. So we were working out a lot of stuff together for his little side business. So as many of those things that can see the light of day, knowing that it may take 15, 10, 15, 20 years before all of that can be birthed to the universe, I will fight as long as it takes to see all of that stuff come to life. Unfortunately, all I can do is fight. I don't, you know, this is where it kind of stops. I'm mostly a cheerleader. So for me, it's trying to motivate the people that can get the work done to want to do it let's do it please so that's that's where i'm at now i got off the phone with someone who has uh about 40 games by the way and that was his number one question is hey are we gonna see updates for other games because he is on board with buying these so if there is if there's any way that i can help be a cheerleader i'll put on a skirt i'll grab some pom-poms i am happy to push that envelope to get these things done. You need to start creating like fake email addresses and emailing CGC of like, man, I enjoy all of your games. You know what I would love to see is a Monster Bash update for the game that would take it to the next level. You know, just start spamming. Yeah. What are you talking about? I have their phone number. I call them constantly. Get Jim on the phone and yell at him long enough. He'll make it happen. Yeah. Oh my goodness. There is There is an official proposal that CGC had me write up that they have our full sort of outline of another project. But that could sit now for years. So I've done my part. I was asked to update, you know, polish these. Where is it? I still, I, these are, these are the notes. This is, this is the, the folder from Lyman's house with all of our garbage in it. And I was happy to pull out some notes from stuff and get it into a place where I could email the CGC Lords about what I feel would be an excellent update to one of their other games. You know, and actually I have another question to your 2031 game. Yeah. With Quentin Tarantino, you were kind of handcuffed because he wanted something more 80s. He didn't want ramps. He wanted that solid state feel, right? Is your 2031 game going to be more in the modern take of pinball? I feel like we are overcompensating in a way that, as the financial head of this company, is not great. I feel like it's going to be very great for pinball enthusiasts and buyers. I got six ramps, six ramps and two under playfields. It's actually three games in one. It's a mega wide. We're going all out. And it has a VR headset, right? They got the they got the rights to the pin bar to stick on. There you go. It's a mega wide pin bar. Yes, a mega wide pin bar. You know what? It's definitely not Pulp Fiction in terms of aesthetic, but it is going to be – it's our own aesthetic. It is definitely our own modern take, and it's not going to work for everyone. I know that, but we're going to take a swing. We're going to take a swing. So it's going to be the pinball 3000. It's pinball 3000 VR headset. We're talking like King – your guys's king kong game where you sit inside the car and put the vr on yeah it's augmented reality you were going to be the ball you're going to be shooting yourself around wait actually lyman had a great idea for the matrix where instead of and it was never going to work but it was pretty cool was uh instead of playfield glass it would be a uh translucent see-through LCD in place of the playfield glass, and you could have all the ones and zeros of stuff. All of a sudden, you'd just be playing and you'd think it was normal, and then you would just see the playfield glass just totally get colored in that, and then unveil something underneath the playfield when it went away. Oh, that'd be cool. That's cool. He had a lot of good ideas in that brain of his. He was a freaking genius. Well, I got to get my butt back to work. We appreciate you coming on josh um if you want something to get a hold of you what's the best way to get a hold of you ifpa pinball at gmail.com still still works for the time being so uh hit me up there i'm pretty i'm available facebook messenger you know raw thrills j sharp at raw thrills.com you can bug tim sexton at playmechanics.com in my absence he'll i'm sure he'll love getting getting messages from anyone out there oh i don't know if we're letting him eat or not yet yeah yeah awesome yeah that's awesome josh thank you again for coming on where i am super excited to get get this and but i'm not kidding this has moved up on my pecking order into going above medieval madness for how the the basic fan layout is and i'm not kidding when my daughter comes down and says hey, I want to play games. She picked three games. Two of them were your guys' games. Hey! So that is her gateway. She picked Medieval Madness, she picked Cacti's Canyon, and Jurassic Park was the other one. There's something about those games, man. They just, they tickle. They tickle in a way that works. Yep, you have to have some sort of clear guidance to the goal, and they're the perfect mix. If you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com on all the socials at LoserKidPinball. If you want silver ball swag, we still have the baseball jersey, the hockey jersey. It's hockey season. You want to look stylish at the game. Also, if you want to hit us up about Scott's blasphemous comments that Cactus Kenyon's better than Meville Madness, leave it in the comments below and hit a like. Climate agrees. It's true. It's true. Oh, well, I'm in good company then. So, yeah. Give us our last word, Scott. You know what? Definitely buy the upgrade, and if you have to wait for it, it's worth it. Thank you.