What's up Rachel? Sup Cal? Sup Sup How's my dog? Hey How's my dog doing? I'm enjoying a What is that? El Cero El Cero Prickly Pear Paloma The Cero is for Cero percent Zero A B V Um Cero What was your favorite part about Expo? I think my favorite part was whenever Kaneda was doing the November rain. Oh, my God. Both serenade and presentation. And playing Winchester, those things. If anybody missed that, whether you like Kaneda or not, this this was a the hidden gem of the whole show was gold um we're walking back to the hotel room and we hear somebody playing piano we finally get to the piano which is on the way it's in the hallway on the way to the the show for some reason the hotel just keeps a piano like a grand piano out in the middle of the hallway like we don't know why like any good hotel sure i mean that's how you know it's Classy. There's Kaneda in a suit. Yes. Tickling the keys, tickling the ivory keys and playing November Rain, starting out with a history of when Axl Rose wrote the tune. He actually wrote the tune before Appetite for Destruction, but it didn't fit the vibe of Appetite for Destruction. Or so the record execs said. Right. or the zeitgeist right they wanted a hard rock and so we had to save this song and canada's looking us in the eyes going do you guys ever feel this way you know do you ever need some time all alone can you feel me you know and he's describing the song as he's playing it it was a 15 minute thing and he's like kind of keeping it going while he's doing it and we should say like playing it well this was not just right my version of playing something like he who who knew yeah who knew who knew he is an excellent piano player that put a smile on everyone's face he's a true entertainer yeah and uh we were we were lucky to experience that and then whenever uh dirty pool jeff came and then duet like just sat down next to him and started taking the high notes and they were duetting like Taylor Swift songs, Bieber. Oh, my God. All kinds of just pop. And for those of you who don't know, Jeff Dodson. Yes. He has a background in music. He did the music on the smash hit, the Winchester Mystery House. Yes. He sat down and did a duet with Kaneda, and that was absolute fire. it's always cool to see all the things that you don't know about people i mean we knew that jeff had some musical inclination given that that's like what he does right but canada we didn't know and it was just fun to see two people that you know didn't know each other just it just such a great time and and and that's what expo is really all about because we can all play almost all of these pinball machines anywhere. It's really about the people. 100%. And seeing these folks that we only see sometimes once a year and actually get to sit down and spend time with them, chef's kiss. Chef's kiss. Agreed. Absolute chef's kiss. The whole crowd, the new friends we made, the new friends we made like standing in line waiting to play Winchester. Oh, that was so cool. Was it Ron and Michelle Lamb? Yeah. We spent an hour with them just talking about everything. Yeah. Pinball. Industry. The industry, the pinball, the entertainment, the arcade business. They had some experience there. Just everybody we got to talk to in the restaurant, walking through the halls, hanging out during the most incredible pinball tournament we've ever experienced in our whole lives. Until 5.30 in the morning. The longest damn tournament. Wow. Two hundred and what? Fifty people. I don't know how many qualify for this. A ridiculous amount of people. And then a great the women's tournament, the classics tournament. Bravo to first of all, Tom, for streaming the whole thing. Man, I don't know. Somebody send that man some some pie. I don't know. Whatever it is he likes, he deserves it because he stayed up for a long time. He worked for a long time. And his setup, like our stream setup, there's a lot of buttons and things to do. Tom has like five times that. So you and I got a chance to be on stream with Neil McRae, which was an absolute blast. And like just looking at all of the buttons, now whenever I watch people that are also streaming on Fox Cities and like, oh, I don't want to touch the buttons, I 100% get it. because there's like 500 buttons. It's like NBC up there. What is all that stuff for? And I don't know if you noticed, so he had, I think I saw at least four stream decks. Yes. And the big ones. Yeah, for people that don't know, that's like a whole big panel full of buttons that you program to do different things. It's a switcher where you can hot key like anything. Right. Did you notice that the graphics on there were animated? No. They were branded. Wow. Fox Cities Pinball. And anybody listening, please go watch Fox Cities Pinball on Twitch. Give them bits. Subscribe. Because what Tom is doing is really propelling this hobby and sport. And it's much needed. And he's paving the way for the rest of us. Because now we know if we want to have 500 buttons, we have someone to ask. And I still think you should bring it into the office and, you know, do some live streaming of dentistry. Oh, absolutely. That would be a blast. Also, Trent and Debra of Tilt Amusements for actually running this. Oh, that whole crazy tournament. Yeah, this amazing tournament. With a whole cafeteria snack section for all the volunteers. Oh, it was amazing. So kind. Debra's great. go support them too, buy some games from them, Tilt Amusements the hit, can we talk about the hit of the show, I mean it was unanimous there are two hits, one of them is the homebrew section as a whole, which was incredible, and these games have come a very long way, and there's a whole lot of them, a lot of people are participating, and these are truly things that you can really only see at the show, you're not going to see them at your local arcade But then I think what you're talking about, the thing that you and I were extremely excited to see and apparently everybody else agreed was. Winchester Mystery House by Barrels of Fun. Knocked it out of the park. Holy crap. It was so good. So good. Yeah. Worked. Yeah. Shots were beautiful. Yeah. Again, it worked the whole time, the whole show, all the copies I saw. the only time I saw the play field up was when they were updating some software so the play field wasn't up, the back glass was off. Carl, everybody was just congratulating Carl because very few people knew this was coming. There were hints. There were hints because we hung out with Zach. Zach Sharp was saying, now I understand why he's been a little bit ghosting me and not streaming my stuff. Right, right. Not doing the Stern streams. Yeah. Well, doing the Stern tutorials. Tutorials. Sorry. Yes. So now it all made sense. Made sense. It's been busy making the game and bravo to the whole team over there at Barrels and congratulations on selling out. Immediately. Yeah. Sold out immediately. Yep. Yep. Good job. And I want to see what Keith and Carl, I feel like there's going to be some kind of back and forth friendly competition between these two because they're both world class players and now world class game designers. And the two of them really have a unique perspective on what it feels like to play pinball at a top level and now design games that everybody loves. I mean, the shots just felt so incredible. And, geez, can't say enough nice things. Congratulations, Barrels. We are so happy for you and for pinball as a whole. It's great for the whole hobby. It just keeps getting better and better. And I don't want to spend too much time on Expo because we are going to do a roundtable in the next couple of days where we really do a deep dive on everything Expo. And you're going to join us on that. I'll be on that one. We're going to talk about the panels, everything in the homebrew section, what Stern was doing, what they were showing off, the Jersey Jack, all that good stuff, even Space Hunt. Space Hunt. We played a game. We'll get into all that stuff. So look out for, I think we're going to record on Thursday, is that right? Yeah, so it'll be coming up later this week. Yeah, because the crew's still traveling around and we got to get everybody in, not in one place. Just like not at their jobs at the same time. Yeah, just in a place where they can get two hours to hang out with us. So stay tuned for that. Let's get into it. Let's get right into it. So we left off with still a bunch of questions, but we also have the latest earnings report. And for what month would that be? September. September earnings report. We need to tell a little story before we get into anything else. This also kind of pertains to Expo. Before we left for Expo, I think it was two days before we left for Expo, So we got Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. Yes. We set it up and then immediately had to leave. Yeah. And it should also be noted that there was like the storm of the century that took out power for a day. So the game was not on for a day. It took off part of the roof of Yucca Taproom. So there was also, in addition to setting up, there was a lot of turmoil. and we had some electrical issues for a couple of days before we got all that resolved. And your whole point is that all that Carl Weathers interrupted play. Interrupted play. Even when we were gone, there were still power issues. There was a lot of stuff we were dealing with. If you guys didn't hear about it, we had hurricane force winds all of a sudden. Actually, we got in the truck. We went to go pick up Star Wars because we heard it had come in. So we drove 40 minutes to Game Room Goodies to go pick up our machine. Got a call that the arcade is flooding. And it was sunny when we left. We left the money. We left the game. We just got the truck. Money on the table. We got the truck and left. Yeah, it was sunny when we left. When we got there, it wasn't even raining anymore. Right. But half of the roof to Yucca Taproom, which is the bar we're connected to, was in the shopping center across the street. There were gigantic, massive trees down in the roads. And that's across six lanes. It's not like across a little. And to this day, so over a week later, there's still gigantic, like three-foot diameter trees on top of apartment buildings. There are a lot of people without access to where they normally live. For sure. It's a huge deal. And this was in the middle of the desert. When I saw security footage of what happened, we were gone for like an hour. Yeah. When I saw the security footage, it reminded me of the hurricanes I've been through in New Orleans and South Carolina. And I mean, this was 95 mile an hour winds just out of nowhere with rain. Yeah. Destroyed a lot. It leveled a warehouse. Yeah. Not far from us. Yeah. So. Still. So also, if you saw me at Expo like frantically on my phone and it looked like I wasn't paying attention to you, it probably had something to do with the fact that I'm trying to like secure electricity and all that. Talk people through it. Yeah, there was. You did a fantastic job. Bravo. And thanks to Patrick Swayze for holding down the fort while we were gone. She kept it calm and working. And we got a lot of compliments about that. Patrick Swayze and John Shappell, the dream team. Anyhow, back to the story. Before we left for Expo, we set up Star Wars, and then we got on a plane, went to Chicago. Yes. we're in chicago from wednesday night we return on sunday okay return on sunday as soon as we get to the arcade one of our friends is playing and said neither coin slot is working on star wars we're like man that's really i was like is it jammed is it rejecting she's like well it's just like it's not working i was like oh okay you know sometimes with new games there's there's a little bit of like breaking it in period so i figured that's what it was that's not what it was what was it well i opened the coin door to work on the coin max and then a bunch of money just fell out of there because the coin box was overflowing yes it had so much money in there it could it could not accept anymore this is like pac-man like Ms. Pac-Man days. Right. We haven't seen this in, I don't know. Well, it's possible that when we had Dungeons and Dragons, I probably emptied the coin box after a couple of days, anticipating I want to make sure that people can put the money in. Right. But five days, and especially given that some of that was kind of without power or sporadic power, that's huge. It's huge. So for all of the naysayers about Star Wars, Fall of the Empire, you're wrong. I don't know. That's the easiest way to say it. 100%. If you are an operator, get one of these. Get two. Yeah. These things are burning up the charts. And, of course, they're not going to be on this most recent. Will not be in this earnings report. Earnings report. But anyhow. There we go. I thought that was an important story to tell because we have not seen anything like that in a while. I have notes left over from last time. And I want to knock those out because I don't want to miss anybody. And I don't know if you remember, we addressed a question from Amy who wanted to start an arcade. Yeah. And had a mask. She had like 40-something machines. Right. We met her. And then she had 50-something machines. She had more. It was only like a couple weeks later. She'd gotten like a dozen more since she wrote this. Right, right. In the last show, she wanted some advice on like social media and promotions. And, you know, we got into a discussion on that. And she said it was great help. And she's doing it. She's actually making this happen. She's a lovely person. Absolutely incredible. Yeah, yeah. Thanks again to everybody that came up and said hey to us. It's really cool to put a face to a name. So here we go into let's get right into it. This is from Kelly via email. Love the podcast here at the pinball palace and enjoy the dealer perspective and earnings reports. We're just operators, not dealers. That almost gave me a heart attack. Do you know what your most played game ever is? Ours is Stranger Things at 47,831 plays. That's baller status. Absolute baller. I think I could go grab my phone because I think I took a photo of Godzilla. Do you remember what it is? I don't remember off the top of my head, but Godzilla is definitely our most played game of all time. And I want to say it's around 80,000 plays. Yeah, something like that. Give or take. Yeah. Yeah, so that's it. And it's still working flawlessly, which is amazing. We've had no major issues at all other than some welds popped in the building, and we just had it welded back together. That's about it. I'm willing to take that for 80,000 plays. You can do the math on that. We've had to do that with Williams machines or replace stuff. Yeah, thank you so much, Kelly. let's get into brook via instagram hey electric bat that's us got a question for you we've been hosting tournaments for a few years and typically see a crowd of 20 to 30 people we always had prizes to give away but never dipped our toes into cash prizes What are the positives of this Are there any negatives Do you see a difference either way when playing for cash? Thanks. Oh, this is from Brooke. Spraddling with pinball. Oh, we met. We met before, but we saw Brooke again and we're going to be carrying some electric bat pinball at the bat bar shortly how about that okay thank you for your question brooke what do you say cash cash tournaments cash gets a little weird positives negatives there's positives and negatives um just like with anything sure so the positives are that people win cash and people like to win cash the negatives are that you probably have the same maybe five, six people that win your tournaments every time. So if people are paying $5 to play and the money all goes to the winner, then those people feel like they are just donating $5 to one of five or six people. And it kind of feels like a disincentive for those people. It also, even though it's only, let's say it's only $15, something about money, about hard, cold cash, makes people a little bit crazy, right? Like if you're giving somebody a $30 prize cash or a $30 valued prize, you'll find that the people act much more like sane human beings whenever it is for like a physical prize. if it's for the cash. And these are people that like do not need the $30, but there's just something about money that triggers something in our brains that just makes it so that if you have to make a call against something as a TD, that somebody is going to like freak out and like start taking it personally and feel like you're really screwing them over. I don't know how to explain what it is, but that happens well haven't you seen this like a 100 yeah i i prefer i prefer not to to fight for cash yes um because it does seem like the same person usually wins you know and and they didn't play for cash like do a tournament yeah because you fight and i was thinking people you know oh yeah yeah i don't yeah people know you as a fighter right right right um never won any cash have i had to pay you know when you do a tournament you always pay like 150 bucks i know and you win a it's a medal a gold medal gold medal um so in whatever region you always hear these stories whatever region you know there's always a joke or just hand the money to blah blah blah right so it's usually like there are like three or four people who are always going to win the money. And so a lot of people feel like, well, you know, my five to ten bucks is going to so-and-so. I think the coolest thing is Chewy's, the way Chewy structured his tournament. You mean the world-famous bounty knockout? Yeah, Chewy's world-famous bounty knockout. That's coming up this Sunday? It is coming up this Sunday. good uh at noon what do they call that when you slide something in a promotion yeah that's a great plug i'm the plug yeah oh yeah wait so uh if you haven't heard yet the way he structures that that cash tournament uh you you pay six bucks a dollar of course goes to the ifpa and then the five dollars goes to a poker chip that is worth five bucks it's a knockout tournament it's the way he structures this it's a it's a four strike knockout and when the in a four player game three three and four get a strike correct in a three player game the third person gets a strike if you are the person who gives somebody a strike let's say in a four player game somebody gets uh their their fourth strike and they get it's a four strike knockout and they get knocked out, you win their poker chip. You can never lose a poker chip you win. So if you win the poker chip, which is worth five bucks, no one can ever take that from you, which is cool. So I like, that's my favorite cash tournament. Right. So let's say that you won my chip, but then you got knocked out later. So you had to give that person your chip. you still retained the $5 chip you got from me and you get to cash that in for money. Right. And the key is you do not have to win the tournament to win money. Right. And sometimes you don't even have to be like a phenomenal player. No, sometimes it just works out. It's important to not do Swiss pairing when you do these tournaments. If you do Swiss, then that kind of messes with how the money gets distributed. So not Swiss, do some balance pairing. Right. I don't think we're going to get in. That's all I want to say about that. We're not going to get into the weeds of what Swiss means and all that stuff. The TD will know. Yes. Anyone setting up a tournament and match play will know. So I like that. Locally, we have a friend who's been doing big cash tournaments at his home. $20 entry and all of it goes to the winner, right? And people seem to really love that. Because they'll have like the winner will get like a couple of hundred bucks, right? And then they always have an interesting prize for the – is it the second or third place? I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I remember that there was like a turquoise chainsaw. Yeah, somebody won a chainsaw. One of them. So there's really interesting stuff. That's funny and cool, but it's like a private thing. And there's also a lot of like food and alcohol provided. So that way people don't people feel like even if they're giving their twenty dollars to somebody. Right. Right. That they also got dinner out of it. But I don't know these tournaments. I see very successful tournaments around the nation where there's like five dollar buy in. Yeah. And so, I mean, you just kind of have to like feel it out. Gauge your audience. Yeah. For us, though, I think whenever people come and play with us, our emphasis is really the fun, the community. And I think that's easier to build if you're not also distributing money, if you're not redistributing wealth amongst people. Correct. Correct. We and we kind of like we like the the whole deal where it's just if you want to come play pinball at one of our tournaments, it's one buck. And then you're probably going to need like five dollars in tokens. So, I mean, you come with like 15 bucks. You can play and then have a couple of beers. And, you know, it's a cheap, fun time. And that's what we kind of enjoy. And there's no money goes to the winner. You get a prize. We always hook up a prize. And then, you know, people love the Whopper points. Yes. I think that's what our crowd really likes more than anything. They like the Whopper points. They like the Whoppers. And people like their picture when they win. Absolutely. it all over cool i hope that helped you out brooke we will be in touch soon to uh order some pinball yeah we're gonna collab do a little collab um this is from matt via email hey bat cast there's a long one i started operating games three years ago and have now gone from one location to two i'm going to stop at two as this is my hobby with three to four games at each location, my lineup has started to shift to almost half the games being Gottliebs. This is not by choice, LOL, but rather outside factors like local availability and price. Awesome. We love Gottliebs. Yeah. Two of my Gottlieb lineups are System 3s, Silver Slugger and Big Hurt, and one is Night Moves. Actually, pretty fun and great music. That's funny. Yeah. Once again, I recently had the chance to pick up some System 80Bs, Rock and Arena, for cheap. I recall a former episode where you discussed not having 80Bs on the floor at the back. Could you describe a little more about operating systems you avoid and why? Is it the edge connectors on the 80s Gottliebs? parts availability for Gottliebs have probably been the toughest hurdle so far in my experience, but the games themselves have been pretty solid. System 80s we avoid. I would really prefer to have no edge connectors, but System 1s I am willing to make the exception for because I just love that era of games so much. System 80s Those games weigh as much as a Jersey Jack Those are the heaviest games That you can buy Think Haunted House, Black Hole What was that machine we didn't want to Take from that lady's house Because it was so damn heavy Volcano I don't like working on System 80 boards System 80 is not a preferred era for me for a variety of reasons, both from the play standpoint and the operating standpoint. So I just choose to not have those games. But I love those Gottlieb System 1s, so we'll buy up all of those as we come across them. And there are plenty of easily available replacement parts, electronics and hardware for those. We prefer the Pascal boards, the Flip boards. All-in-one. The all-in-ones. It's an expensive board replacement. It's like $400 or $500, but it takes care of every board in the game. Right now, because they're made in France, they're not being shipped to the United States because of tariff stuff. However, they are shipping, I mean to individuals in the United States, they are shipping to Marco. We talked to Marco about this specifically at Expo. So you can buy those boards from a retailer. Yes. I know Marco Specialties. I don't know about any of the other ones. So if you have a system one, get those boards. They will really bulletproof all of your the boards. There you have it. And also we also love operating the classic sterns because same deal. All your electronics are readily available, all the hardware readily available. And those things just last. Yes. With very little maintenance. Yes. When it comes to the right, I mean, the king of reliability is stern. You know, you're modern stern. If you're operating, just get a pro. But you can get like used pros at great prices right now and put those on location. A consistent issue we've seen and a lot of other people have seen with Jersey Jacks is the light board issues. and we think it has something to do with the connectors they're just using like usbc connectors which apparently aren't all that reliable but godfather was just horrible with that we had issues with avatar and with elton john all of them and then that's where we're like you know it's too much of a headache we don't want to deal with this anymore um the bad part about it is whenever there is an interruption with these light boards, a huge warning pops up on the big red warning comes on the display. Right. And then that freaks people out. They think they've broken your machine. Yeah. And they and they it's broken. So they turn it off and then and then like lights will lock on or not work at all. And that's just a shame because these are beautiful machines. Yeah. And I've been hearing people say that it's the same issue with Harry Potter. Man, this would be a very simple fix. I know it affects the way that they're addressing their LAMP program, like the way that all of that is done. But I think that for them, if they truly want to get back into the operator market, that is going to be a key thing, having that reliable. Use a Molex connector. Forget USB-C. This doesn't make sense. I appreciate that they have an operator-priced game, I guess, their equivalent of a pro. but if it doesn't like work reliably then i still can't i still can't buy it so and i heard there's they're going to do that with sonic also the molex or um usbc the arcade version oh okay well let's use molex yeah so i can buy that game because i am excited about uh Steve Ritchie doing sonic hell yeah um and then with with spookies i mean it's no secret they've had reliability issues for years which they are getting much better at way better our evil dead has tons of plays and it has had zero and it's had just small regular pinball type issues like we had to resolder a wire stuff like that but no show stopping issues we replaced one servo which came with the game yeah this is an extra servo yeah uh and that game has that game has what like 25 000 plus plays 30 000 so it's had some significant play it's something crazy i have it in my phone yeah it's yep um who who oh barrels of fun of course the only barrels of fun we owned was dune which was riddled with so many problems we returned the machine for a refund um and actually David Van Es at the show we when we returned the game we never heard anything from They were kind of busy apparently making Winchester, right? So I got a chance to talk to him and he said, hey, we figured out what happened with your game. We had a new guy learning to, you know, doing the crimping for the wiring harnesses. And it turned out like maybe he didn't practice enough first or something. So basically what had happened was our wiring harness had a lot of loose crimps, like all over the place. So it wasn't just one connector. I mean, that's like your umbilical cord from the computer to all the hardware and the boards. And it's very hard to track down if you have this issue everywhere. If you have it on one connector, then, of course, you're like, okay, well, I'm going to see this issue here. But if just random crimps all over your wiring harness, what ended up happening is electricity is going or not going to places when it should. And so you're just seeing all kinds of seemingly random issues pop up. Correct. So they got that figured out. And I hear that those Doom games are much more reliable now that they, you know, these are just growing pains of a starting company. So they figured it out. Good for them. For sure. Yeah. And I'm really happy to know. Like, I like the update. I want to know because I looked at that thing like this thing is I can't figure out why nothing is working or everything is working or these three things. It was just bizarre. Correct. Yeah. And one thing David told me, he's like, look, you have to realize spooky took like a decade to get where they are now. You and barrels of funds just getting started. They're still learning and they're still growing. And you haven't seen the best from them yet. Well, I'm excited. Yep. Anita Winchester what you got for me next Matt has one more question also another question if you need one let's go with it this connects to your days at Marco's Specialties I've come to realize a majority of the coin door keys sold by places like Marco, Pinball Life and others are very Where am I going? Oh. Are very common keys and are all keyed alike. Could this increase the chances of random pinball people being able to get into your games on location? Do you make specialty keys for your games? If this could give people an idea of how to easily break into your games, feel free not to read this question. Thank you both. Love the show and hope to make it to the bat someday. Thank you so much. This is funny. This is very timely because yesterday I walked out of the office just as somebody was saying to his friend, you know, I probably have the keys to these games. And I just looked at him. I was like, no, you don't. Well, you know, the funny thing is, like, you have you don't carry it around with you. You have a massive key chain from working at for what, eight years at your own convention. and you have keys that will work for almost any arcade, especially around here. Yes. Yeah. And some of those are on purpose. Like some people do give me keys to their games or tell me what key they are and I do have that Because as Matt writes the keys the locks that you get from most of the pinball retailers all of the pinball retailers, are going to be for home use. So those are going to be the common keys that people have. Do not use those for games on location for exactly this reason. So we have our keys, and I'm not even going to say where we get them. but even if I did tell you it wouldn't matter because there's like thousands of options do not buy your keys for operating from a pinball retailer buy them from a lock retailer yes and then yeah so people don't have your keys right that's pretty important and you get them all keyed alike and they'll have your information on file and so if you need to order more they'll be the same keys and there's even like i know you wouldn't want to do this like mark who one of our buddies who operates the machines at the back he got some super expensive locks those things were like 40 bucks a pop and they were really like bizarre shaped keys it was so i don't know where he got those from call a lock manufacturer they can they can hook you up but uh if you're really worried about that. There are some expensive locks if you're concerned about stuff like that. Ours only have mostly tokens. There's some quarters in there. So just the incentive to break into our pinball machines is very low. But if you're operating, if you have bill acceptors and don't check your location often or the games are somewhere where they are not maybe visible by staff, take more precautions. For sure. And we keep in touch with a lot of operators across actually across the world. We we never hear about people breaking into arcade machines because I mean, it's not even worth it. You know, no, it's not like the old days where you had to, like, secure the bottom with with some sheet metal. Right. A padlock. Yeah. Yeah. The steel bars, the padlocks. Yeah, that's a lot of work to get some tokens. okay thank you so much for the question we're going to go into m and retro gamer you know we saw him we sure did you know he did a whole panel and talked about how i like mixed up his name and he's explaining how he's not new mexico uh retro gamer oh we'll have to watch that panel on the it's on pinball news is who yeah showing all the panels from expo man we had a good time we had a good time he wants to talk about coin mechs let's talk about them how often do your coin mechs get jammed do you have a routine for checking for jammed mechs or just rely on your patrons to tell you i only route four pinball machines and i usually check them once a week or so but i can't imagine with how many machines you have doing it that off often also if you do check the coin mechs by putting a quarter or token through it to make sure it works, how are you adjusting your statistics for the end-of-month total coin drop per machine? First off, I don't do it that way. So if you were going to be putting coins through the CoinMack to see if there's a jam, you could put it in test mode first, so that way it doesn't go into the audits every time you put a coin in there. but it's much easier to just visually inspect it. So we do rely on patrons telling us if something is jammed. But also every time we collect tokens, there's little holes in the shoot, in the coin shoot, and I just look. Are they jammed or not jammed? But there's a reason that there's two on almost every pinball machine, two coin necks. Some of ours even have three, the older ones. Take the Susan B. Anthony, the middle slot. So, yeah, I just look at it or rely on people to tell me. One thing, so with the – there's two different main CoinMax people use, the black plastic Imanex ones and the SuzoHap metal ones. With the SuzoHap, this is going to be kind of hard to explain verbally, but at the bottom you'll see there's a little loctited screw. There's like some blue stuff around it. Basically, we adjust that slightly so that the gap looks more like a moon shape instead of the long gap that it is. This would be a good thing for maybe an Instagram post. Yeah, we'll do that. Because it will allow the coins to come through a little bit easier, less jams. And then also there's a little restrictor at the top of both Imanex and SuzoHap coin mechs. and I always remove that just because it helps with the velocity of the token or quarter to get through the game. Now, if you're putting those in upright arcade games, I don't ever do that because they are just vertical, but I think there's a tiny bit of incline. Unless you have those weird sideways, midway. Oh, yeah. I hate those things. so that helps prevent the jams. Yeah, cool. That would be great for a video. We'll do something, a little thing on Instagram and Facebook so people can see that. Cool. And sometimes on the classics, you know, we've got to take the Dremel to the actual coin door slot, the coin slot because it's quarter-sized and a token is slightly too big. It won't fit a token. Yeah, so many operators talk to us that they can't – people who have switched to the card system, they can't believe we're running 80 machines with CoinMex. Yeah, it's a lot. Like 64 pinball machines and a bunch of video games. But, man, it's not – I don't know if we're just so used to it. Like it's not as much work as you would think. We really don't have as many coin jams as you would think. Partially because of what I was just talking about. Right. But we also love it. We love Coindrop. It reminds us when we were kids at the arcade. I don't mind working on Coinmex. I remember vividly when I was as a child at arcades and seeing the operators, the techs, like dealing with the coin machine. You have to go get them. Hey, this thing ate my quarter. and it just brings back a good vibe and a good feel. I enjoy doing it. Yeah. Even if the memory is of like a sort of crotchety tech. I don't want to. But it is. It's such an important thing for me, and I feel like universally the sentiment is I love that you do that. I would never do that. I can't believe you still do that. I feel like everybody prefers it, But most people aren't interested in doing that, what it takes to do that. For sure. And that's what makes us different. We're special. We're a certain type of special. All right. Let's move right along. Okay. Scoots S. Remember him on Discord? Yeah. Question for an upcoming Batcast. I really enjoyed the quick video of showing proper desoldering technique with the board standing up. It got me thinking, what is your favorite tool? Every time I use my desoldering gun, I'm so glad I bought it. What is your favorite tool? Well, the tool that I use the most is a very sharp hook tool. And John Schaubel and I were both talking about this the other day. He came in and said, you know what? This is the tool I use the most. This is my favorite tool. And I said, same. Yes. And this is what we use to get coins out of coin jams. It's also what you can use to kind of move around wires, hold stuff, get into tight places. So it's a we'll show it on Instagram, but it's what it sounds like. It's like a screwdriver handle with four to six inches of metal that goes into a very sharp hook at the end. But it goes into like a right angle. Yeah. And there's a point. Yeah. Yeah, my absolute most favorite tool is the Harbor Freight hydraulic lift that allows me to move machines around. Yes, okay, that's fair. By far. Yes, I didn't even think about that, but that is the most important tool in the arcade. You have to have something like this. And I know there's many different options. people use the coffin lift but every time i use one of those at a show i feel like i'm going to lose an appendage um they scare me me too but i like the the cheap hydraulic lift from harbor freight is amazing and ours is like the most busted looking one we've got like hinges welded on and then some of those welds broke and so it's like welded again we've got pool noodles wrapped around that so you don't cut yourself and get tetanus. It is like the most punk rock road worn, but it works. It has a Supreme sticker on it. Thank you so much, Scoots. Hope we answered your question about our favorite tools. This is from Eric via email. Hi, you've talked about techs being a limiting factor on growth, but I assume you have the scale and skills to make keeping your machines up a bit more predictable than smaller proprietors. I wonder if you could comment on what a smaller location or router should expect. Presumably, maintenance and repairs are a function of manufacturer, age of game, title, condition, etc. And certainly, the work is lumpy. You could go weeks or even months with a machine needing nothing. Then one day it needs a few hours of work. Notwithstanding all that, can you estimate how much maintenance a game will take on average over time? Perhaps for new sterns and classics, for example, is a new stern an hour of work a month on average or 10? I'm trying to estimate the effort required to maintain a route, but not sure the size of my current home collection and home playing conditions really give me an accurate idea. I love the show. I'm a thousand miles away, but excited to visit the bat someday. This is almost impossible to answer. And why is that? Because there's just really no telling. Well, it's so dependent on, number one, how much are your games getting played? These games that we have at home, you know, these games will be fine for years, most likely, without us touching them. The games that we have at the arcade, we may have to put in a lot of hours on them, but they're getting, you know, they may have 80,000 plays on them. Yeah. And the other, I would say the primary thing is what sort of preventative maintenance are you doing? And by that, I don't mean rebuild your flippers every thousand plays because that's ridiculous. Save that as needed, but certainly always be tightening any sort of screw that is loose. You're going to start to have things shear off. Yeah. So top side and bottom side. Top and bottom. Keep everything tight. I think that's my number one tip to not have to be spending hours and hours replacing things, drilling things out because it sheared off inside the play field or something. Right. Troublesome, wouldn't you say? Yeah. And you're there's no exact science to calculating how much time you're going to have to spend maintaining. because the reason is, yeah, it does have a lot to do with how much play you're getting at your specific location, even if you have just one or two pins in a bar or a music venue or what have you. The certain things that happen, and they still happen to us, and they happen to us from the beginning, you're going to get a machine that just something doesn't work properly, and you cannot figure it out. And you're going to have to, like, talk to some friends. You're going to go through, you know, threads on pin side, discords, whatever. And sometimes it could take a few days to a week until you isolate it and figure out it's this and that on the board or it's multiple things. Those things are just going to come up. Yes. that's the reason we have a back room for those games that we just like cannot can't figure it out and don't want to try and troubleshoot on the floor um and then other things with classics you have brittle drop targets you may or may not maybe they've been replaced before you got it maybe um just all of a sudden you'll start having one after another after another go so if if you have an instance on a classic game where a drop target snaps, replace all of them. You're going to be taking off that mech anyway. It's going to be quick to replace them all. Save yourself the time down the line doing that. John Schoppel would tell you that if you have a flipper link that breaks and you've got to rebuild one side, rebuild the other. You want them to play evenly and nicely. You don't want to have one flipper that's worn and goes up to here and the other one only goes up to here. Keep your games playing nicely. If one part breaks, chances are the comparable parts on that same game are going to go soon. So take care of it before it's an issue. Sure. And that just takes experience. You're going to learn that there are certain parts you need to keep on hand. We know even like in modern games it's an issue like the micro switch on the grandpa scoop in Munsters. that thing always breaks. So we have like a dozen of those that we can just swap out. So all that just comes with time, and you're going to grow slowly. You're not all of a sudden just going to have 60 to 100 machines that you're having to take care out of nowhere. It starts with two or three machines. Yes. So you're going to learn over time. Yep. And there you have it. Where was I? Oh, here we go. This is from Adam via Discord. Batcast alert. I assume you have touched the multimorphic P3 platform. They have some games that look fun. Weird Al, Princess Bride, et cetera. Portal. On that assumption, what do you view as pros and cons regarding the platform and game interchangeability? intangibility. Do the shots feel interesting? How about the feelings of the flippers? Crisp like a stern or slightly spongy and weird? Real estate wise, it seems like smaller locations or home gaming is where a P3 would make more sense. And finally, did you ever consider one for the bat and what constraints, if any, about it hold you back? P.S. I don't expect to see one myself until I finally make a trip to Expo. What do you know about those things? Well, I know that there is, we have a buddy in the Valley who has a P3 and it is great for a home game. It is not great for a location. All of the people we know that have run these in locations have talked about how it is not great for a location. There's just several issues that make it not ideal. One of them having to do with ball sensors because the game has a bunch of balls in it, and if it detects that one is not where it should be, it kind of screws up the works. The way that the flippers are mounted because you're on top of a display, that hardware is a little bit different. You have to keep on hand separate hardware for P3s, and I don't care to work on that. I think there's a few other reasons as well that may be for operators not ideal. But home use, people love them. I think they're great, and I think especially if you live in a house, a small house or an apartment, don't have a lot of room for a machine, how cool is it that there's a module that you can swap in and out? We have both played them, and I think they're cool. I think they're fun. I enjoy playing them. I don't care to operate it. Yeah. From talking to people who actually own them, they say the biggest deal with operating them is there are – it's not like a Stern or Jersey Jack or Spooky or Barrels of Fun where there's like six balls in the machine. There are a ton of balls in this machine. And I don't even know what the trough looks like. I've heard like 30 balls or something crazy like that and they get jammed up in the trough to where you have to like shake the machine to get get a ball to launch which isn't a big deal if you're used to it and it at your house right but if it somebody a few beers in at your arcade that that ain gonna work out That game considered broken And I know they tried to operate at least two of them at the wormhole and they constantly had issues with them So I don't think there's something you really want to operate. Ace Goge also tried to operate them and sold them to people we know. Yeah. so fun fun very cool fantastic idea definitely has a spot in the market there is a need for something like this very cool yeah love playing them don't want to own them yeah uh yeah so that's it for that i got one more question here before we get into september earnings report you get excited about that one don't you yeah uh this is from razor crest via discord again we we took a question from razor quest earlier i'm about one episode away from finishing all the batcast episodes and i have another question for the batcast if each of you were to start the pinball hobby today what would your first pin purchase be does this answer change if you want to learn how to work on pinball machines or have intentions of routing pins in a city that has minimum pins in good shape? My first pin that I would buy would be Star Wars. Because I'm assuming that I'm going to operate. That would be it. That would be the first one. The second one would be a classic Bally or classic Stern. And I would not be particular about which one it was be whichever one was available and in my price range that i could get my hands on right right i think i would i mean at first it would be a used game um so i don't know if i would go with the star wars uh i would stranger things earn incredibly well across like everywhere like kids love they see stranger things like oh my god let's put some money in that thing um any classic Stern or classic Gottlieb. Those are fun and easy to work on. And people like those. I mean, it's really funny when we see even young kids coming to the arcade. And I say young kids, I'm talking in their 20s. They come to the arcade, they love playing Sinbad. They love playing Nitro Groundshaker. And I don't know if it's just because it's 50 cents or what, but they really, Andromeda, they freak out about these classic games. So it would be a fun first game to own and also like throw in a bar and see how much money you could make at 50 cents a pull, you know? Yeah, I think you're actually right. I think your answer was better than mine. So I'm going to defer to what you said. I'm just still thinking about opening that coin box yesterday. That swayed my opinion. But I think that you're right. It does make sense, especially in this market, to get a used Stern. You can pick them up in the four thousands. And and the classics, all the classics are always a great idea. For sure. Yeah, for sure. One last question. This will be a quick one from Bay 78 via Discord. Thoughts on the new Stern Star Wars pro versus premium pro. yeah pro hands down pro hands down pro as an operator pro that's why they make the pro is for people like us occasionally we buy the premium just because you and i just there's some kind of bell and whistle that we personally want right but financially it it's always a better idea to buy a pro work wise it's better to buy a pro you and i don't really need the the java with the ball the java nightlight yeah nightlight thank you and um while that that save is cool the the the yoda the magnetic yoda save yeah um that doesn't do very much for me correct and uh and lots of times we've gone with the stern premium because it might have a uh mechanical ball like for example in bond we really like the mechanical ball like lock and bond that's why we went with the premium on bond um and the the jet pack is cool too you know um but in star wars you get them both you get the mechanical lock that which is the death star in both copies um king kong we did not go with a mechanical lock intentionally with the pro because we we like Because of the gong. Yeah. Well, because of the gong. And we like seeing that upper right play field that's blocked by the mechanical lock. For sure. Yeah. But with Star Wars, all the shots are exactly the same. There's no upper play field. With the premium, you're getting the Jabba. The nightlight. And you're getting a ramp, the jump ramp that goes up and down. Which I don't want to deal with fixing. Yep. And then you get the force save, which a lot of people have said it's, you know, it's not a guaranteed save. You have to time it right and you have to have enough juice or like the Rick and Morty magnetic save. And so you have to be a real player to even know that that's there and use it. And we have so many casual players that are going to miss that feature completely. They don't have any idea that it's there or if they do, how to use it. So for us. Right. But now also code wise, there's one reason to go with the premium or LE is an extra multiball. Oh, that's how they get you. Yeah. So but for us, we dig the pro. Yep. Okay. I think it is time for the people's favorite for the people's favorite. but what everybody's been waiting for, the earnings report from September. All right. So the first update I have before I even get into the earnings report was we did a thing last month as an experiment, some A-B testing. We put Congo on 75 cents. So it was on a dollar. There's a reason behind all that. But we wanted to see would it earn the same or better or worse at a cheaper price. My hypothesis was that it was going to earn more at a lower price. And I was right. So Congo did earn more, even though the price per play was slightly lower. It wasn't a huge increase. It was like 4%. So, I mean, that really is within the margin of error. But it did not earn less. So I think that tells you something. So I want to keep following this and see if that was just a bump because people were excited. Oh, now I can play it for cheaper, and then it's going to fall off. We'll see. So that's the update on lower prices versus higher prices. So far, the experiment worked. So far, the experiment worked. Now we're getting into the numbers. In 10th place, we have Attack from Mars. Nice. That is also on the list of highest earning games of all time, along with Batman 66. Number nine, John Wick. This is a game that we constantly see people we don't recognize gravitating towards. So if there's people walking into the arcade, they very often go to John Wick. And they have to go all the way to the third room to see it, too. So it's not like you just walk in and see it. Oh, I'll play this. People seem to be searching for this game. People like it. In eighth place, Dungeons & Dragons. People are still loving it, trying to unlock the various guys. I am so excited about this code being finished and seeing the whole thing fleshed out. Yes. I'm going to probably just take a couple days off work and just play it all the way through, even if I have to set it to 10 balls so I can see it all. Number seven, Pulp Fiction. Consistent earner. very good game great game can't wait to see see the next one yep halo halo halo is the next one and it's going to be amazing yeah i have no idea do you know when it's going to come out no i don't even think they know when it's true right it could be could be three years from now but we're looking forward to it yeah um in sixth place big buck hunter not the pinball machine the shooting game number five metallica remastered number four king kong oh king kong down in the fourth spot interesting yeah wasn't king kong number one the other month oh you have your notes here i have i have because this uh king kong was second in august okay uh in third place Jaws. In second place, Evil Dead. Way to go, Spooky. Good job, Spooky. And in first place, Godzilla. Godzilla's back at the top. It doesn't make sense to me except that we have multiple people that put in like a 10 or 20, it seems like, every day just playing that game. It's hard to do the coin collect because it It feels like every time we go around, there's somebody on it. Here's something interesting about the numbers from this month and last month. The 10th spot last month was medieval, which I view is almost an equivalent to Attack from Mars, which was in the 10th spot this month. The other nine were all the exact same games, just kind of flip-flopped around in a different order. So those games, I think, can be trusted as, at least at the bat, as being consistent high earners. We'll see how that pans out next month. We also added a new game, aside from Star Wars, but we added a new non-pinball machine this month. And the earnings report is going to be very interesting to see how that goes. We added a pop-a-shot basketball game. So much fun. I had some hesitancy originally putting it in because, you know, balls. I was just nervous about balls flying all over the arcade. You know, sometimes balls do pop out. It's not a big deal. So that's been good. I also thought it was going to be fun for the people. The thing that really persuaded me to change my mind and just get one was because I thought that it would be great for casuals that were not comfortable with pinball. This was going to have broad appeal. The thing I didn't know was how much I would love it. Right. I play that game on days that I go to work and don't play any pinball at all. And like, you know, I'm athletic. I'm not a sport. Oh, I don't watch basketball. I don't care about basketball. I can't name basketball players aside from like Hakeem Olajuwon or Michael Jordan. Right. I'm not. Carl Malone. Carl Malone. Patrick Ewing. I've heard of these people. Spud Webb. Sure. Yeah. So Isaiah Thomas. Yep. Yep. I mean, so what are we talking like 80s, 90s, Magic Johnson. Dennis Rodman. Dennis Rodman, you know, Madonna ex-boyfriend. Scottie Pippen. Yeah. So, okay, Bulls era with the song that we all like. Larry Bird. I was in like fifth grade. Pistol Pete Marabitch. Don't know who that is. This game is super fun. It is really, really fun. And I think it's going to swap around. I really want to see what it's going to do in the earnings report because there are a lot of people playing that. One of the cool things about this is that there's a leaderboard. It's in the game. What do you call that? The backboard? The display? What is it on a basketball? The backboard, right? The thing that the basketball bounces off of to go into the hoop. This is how much of a basketball player I am. It's a digital display. In this game, it's a digital display that you can set With your own graphics. So you've done that. And then also you can have a global leaderboard or a local leaderboard. And we've chosen to do a local leaderboard. So same sort of insider connected thing. You've got a QR code. You scan it in. Right. Keeps track of your average score, how many games you've played. And we'll put your name on the leaderboard whenever you. And I'm glad I talked to some people who know about Papa Shot at Expo. We can't even use the global leaderboard. Because I've changed the settings. Right. You have to have default settings to show up on the global leaderboard. We make it a little more fun and easy where it's easy to get a bonus round. I want to make it so that I can get a bonus round. Right, right. Two bonus rounds. It defaults to you have to have 40 points after the first 45 seconds or something. And we've changed it to 20 to make it a little bit easier. And this is just like Big Buck Hunter. You have to have those entry games to where, like, casuals immediately know how to use them. Like, this works with sit-down driving games or even stand-up driving games. You put an off-road in a machine, people know it's a steering wheel. I know how to do this. So this works with the driving games. This works with shooters. People just – everybody knows how to pick up a gun, point it at a screen, and hit things on the screen. And it works with basketball. Yes. One thing I'm really excited about, they're working on different modes. Yeah, because there's some up and down arrows that currently don't do anything outside of menu navigation. Right. So you're going to be able to select different modes and play different games that will be based on the display. And then if you hit a basket, a certain thing will happen in the game. And if you miss, something else will happen. So I'm really excited about that. The mini games. The mini games. These new modes that are coming out for Papa Shot. Yeah. And this is, for anybody looking at it, if you go to the Papa Shot website, the machine we got, I believe, is called the Papa Shot Elite. Yes, that's the one we have. Right. And it has the display, and it's super, super cool. And if you're thinking of basketball games that you've played in the past, you think that thing is giant and it's taking up so much space. The nice thing about this game is that it is the width of a pinball machine. it's eight feet long so it's sticks out three feet more roughly than a pinball machine but it's the same width so it really didn't take up any more room in the arcade than a single pinball machine yep um for us i think it's worth it so far we'll see we'll see what the um we're loving it yeah i'm loving it i want people are people are loving it especially me cool well that wraps up another fantastic episode of the electric bat cast uh we're going to be later this week we're going to be joining uh ralph and jamie on the round table you're gonna this is this is gonna be your first time on an action you've you've joined us on live round tables yes this is the first time on a recorded one because we want to get everybody's opinions on what was going on at expo it's going to be the expo extravaganza the expose expose round table expose uh look for that dropping probably Friday because we're going to record it on Thursday so I'm sure Jamie's going to get it ready for Friday and so you'll have something to enjoy for the weekend yeah so if you have questions or want to send us something you can join the discord and they can do that where go to electricbatarcade.com click on the podcast tab and then there are many ways to listen or watch the podcast along with a link to join the discord and you can just email us at electricbatarcade at gmail.com. That's it. And follow along on our adventures on Instagram and Facebook. And if you want to buy some parts, you can go to Marco Specialties. Absolutely. And if you use the code EBA150, you get free shipping on parts over $150. Also, if you're an operator, don't forget to use Stern Insider Connected. Not only that, they've released these new accounts where you can do... The premium account. You get home leaderboards. Your name is highlighted in gold on the leaderboards. And you get some other perks like free shipping on accessories. And I'm going to call Roper today to see if we can get one of those accounts hooked up so we can... I want to see my name in gold. Yeah, we want to get all the details. People really don't care about anything other than seeing their name in a different color. And the home leaderboards. Right. Yeah. Everybody's been wanting the home leaderboard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to dive into that ourselves and set up a home leaderboard so we can tell you guys all about it in an upcoming episode of the Electric Badcast. And I think the deal is you get that price break. Like, it's normally $99 a year. But if you do it, I believe, by Halloween, then it is $79. It's like $80. Yeah. Yep. It's a deal. Pays for your Amazon Web Services to host your leaderboard. Yeah, that's right. That's really what it is. Yeah. All right. Good deal. Okay, we're going to go get some coffees and croissant. Croissant. And then we'll actually see you guys on Friday on the roundtable. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. The bats are out. Bats out.