hey welcome to episode 57 of the spinners lit pinball podcast Heinz57 Heinz57 I'm your host Spencer and with me are my co-host Dan Hey what's up folks and Mark Hey everybody it's great to be back It is good to be back We've had kind of a summer hiatus I forgot what Mark's voice even sounded like Yeah you haven't seen him in a while and you see him a lot more The dulcet tones That smooth radio voice That smooth voice. Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot to catch up on. We haven't done the last episode we did was at the very end of May, which I think we released right at the 1st of June. And that was our, our extravaganza to, to review the Golden State Pinball Festival. Yeah. It was like June, June 3rd or June 4th, I think. It's not like that. Yeah. Cause it took a week to get back and get settled in. And well, so it's July off to do other crap. Today's August, what, 6th? Currently, yes, although by the time that the episode gets recorded and put out, who knows, which is why we're not supposed to say the date. Well, people just keep talking about the date. There you go. No, just one. So, okay, I've got three announcements. Two of them are pinball related and awesome. One is not pinball related and even more awesome. Still awesome. So, first announcement is there's a brand new pinball show starting up this year. It's put on by the Mid-Island Pinball League, and it's called the Vancouver Island Pinball Expo. It's going to be held from Friday, September 29th through Sunday, October 1st. And this is going to be at the Cedar Community Hall, 2388 Cedar Road. Please forgive me if I butcher this city name. Nanamo, British Columbia, Canada. So it sounds like it's right over the bay or harbor or river or whatever it is. I'm not from the area, folks, so don't hold it against me. From Vancouver, Washington. Anyway, so that's coming up the end of September. We're going to have a family free play area, multiple IFPA-sanctioned tournaments with a variety of formats. It's a family-friendly event. Like I said, there's sponsored prizes, a silent auction, beer gardens, food trucks, and more. They've got – so you can visit. I looked at it, vpinballexpo.square.site. And actually, I found this on all events. But, yeah, so that's what's going on. So it's their very, very first show. They've got really cool show artwork. They said they're going to try to have posters for sale ready by showtime, hopefully. I'm going to reach out to them again and say, hey, man, if I can, I'd really like to purchase one of your posters because they've got beautiful show artwork. Anyway, so, hey, man, if you're in that area of the world in that time when it comes up in about a month, support that show, man. It's a brand-new show. That's exciting. You get to get the first one ever. And that's always a fun thing So you can support that and help it grow Reach out to them if you want to Donate a prize or bring a game Or whatever So we've got that going on And that's actually the same weekend Is the Rocky Mountain show Which I should be attending again this year In Denver, Colorado So Up next is A good friend of the show Stephen Griffin and his wife have opened an arcade and eatery. It's the Full Hearts Arcade and Eats, and that's at 328 Main Street Suites 101 and 102 in Half Moon Bay, California, 94019. Steve was a longtime friend of the show, a member of Good Standing with the Capital Quarter of Pinball League, got married last year, and he's opened up a really cool classic arcade. He's got a bunch of newer Stern pins. He's got a bunch of classic video games. They've got all kinds of good stuff to eat and drink. So if you're in the Bay Area near Half Moon Bay, California, stop by, say hey, and pick up some cool eats and play some pinball, some classic video games, support our good friend Stephen Griffin and his wife, whose name I forget. I'm a terrible human. I'm sorry. So those were two announcements. I told you I had three. and one of them. You were doing great up until then. Was I doing good? Okay. I met her once briefly, I think at the last show. You know, because remember, I've been gone for over two years now. I've been in Wyoming. Oh, tonight's beer of the night is Samuel Adams Seasonal Summer Ale and Citrus Wheat Ale. Quite tasty. But that's not my third announcement. My third announcement, again, that's really fun, really important, really exciting, has nothing at all to do with pinball, is I'm going to be a grandpa. My daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first child, and our family couldn't be happier. So Rusty and I, my lovely wife, are really, really excited. My three sons are really, really excited because they get to be uncles soon. And it's just a really cool, joyous occasion. We're going to share that with all our listeners and say, yeah, I'm going to be a papa. Congratulations Spencer, that's awesome Thank you, yeah man, I'm excited This is pretty cool You are probably going to be a disturbingly engaged grandfather Oh dude, I've already got An Amazon list of all the cool Fucking toys I'm going to buy Again, because like You know the Fisher Price popcorn popper There's something seriously wrong with me I'm nearly 60 fucking years old And I still love playing with that thing I love those things I have bought one of those for every one of my kids. So every time I get a new kid, boom, I'm buying the popcorn popper again. I think those things are invincible. Like, don't they never break? I think, no, they never, I don't think we ever broke one, even as much as I played with them. But I think it's just the thing with the kids I grew up and we ended up, you know, yard sale or giving it to a little neighbor kid or something, you know. But, yeah, so I've got that on the list of buy again. And, you know, so, yeah, no, it's going to be really cool. But I sincerely do have that on my shopping list again. Popcorn popper. All right. Every little kid in the history of America has had that Fisher Prize popcorn popper pusher or whatever. See, aren't those great? Yeah, I can totally visualize it right now. Yeah, right? You can visualize it and go, oh, those are fun. So it's the prelude to pinball. I was just going to say that. I was just going to say that. You push the thing along. balls pop, we're happening, man. And then eventually they go, oh, I got to get something bigger with flippers. So there we go. And that's how it all starts, man. There you go. Do they still make little kid pinball machines? Do you remember those? Yeah, they still do, man. They still make them. Well, you know, that gives you all something to think about. It's like, oh, there's a grandkid. We can go buy cool shit. Anyway, so yeah. So, you know, Papa has bought you a pony and a pinball machine and a Simpsons pinball party. Yay! And he's only, he or she is only one. Because you know I'm going to do that. Like you said, Dan, you're going to be one engaged grandfather. I am. So, very excited. Plus you guys actually see eye to eye. Pretty much. Well, Mickey's like 5'9 now. Seth is 6'3. And yeah, well, we were just camping last week. I'll leave you guys with this and we'll move on. So, you know, because we've got Not a lot of pinball stuff going on lately, but we went doing a lot of fishing Saturday. Mick and I went fishing today. Seth and I went to the range and did some skeet shooting. Went to Devil's Tower and camped last weekend with the Trail Life Troop. Good stuff, man. And we hiked around Devil's Tower. It was a good little hike, not too long. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, so we've been doing all that stuff, you know, fun summer stuff. so let's talk about summer stuff nice segue nice adventures oh yes i've been traveling a lot this summer i first started off uh right after school got out and we went to go visit some colleges for nathan because he's gonna be a senior this year and we already got to think about checking out colleges and and going through the uh application process and all those things so we went to phoenix My son wants to go down, not be in Reno anymore. He wants to go fairly close to home, but not all the way across the country. So we were looking at ASU and another place called GCU, which is Grand Canyon University. And while I was down there, I was looking at some places on Pinball Map and one that I did not want to miss, which was Electric Bat Arcade. and it's inside of the Yucca Taproom. It's very close actually to ASU. It's maybe about, I'd say, a 10 to 15-minute drive from ASU. And I was excited to finally visit because I heard such great things about it. And I went on an early afternoon and checked it out. And on the outside, it reminded me a lot of a local bar here that is not in operation anymore called Jub Jub's. and on the outside, it looks kind of shady. It's kind of funny because when you look on the outside, it's in a strip mall, and the area doesn't look too safe, let's put it that way. It looks kind of run down, and I was like, what am I getting myself into? And I know people say this all the time. Yes, exactly. So I was thinking, oh, hopefully this is okay. So I look and there's a door that goes into the bar area. And then there's a further door down that said pinball. And I was like, maybe that's the safe door to go into. So I walk in and I was blown away by how many games there were. It was a really cool atmosphere. It was totally in a dive bar. But the section that was all pinballs was just loaded with tons of classic games, new games. I mean, they even had a Godfather LE that I could play, which was really cool. They also got the Scooby-Doo machine. So lots of new machines. And then they had some classics. One, I wish I could remember what it was called, but I blew it up because usually when I don't know what I'm doing on a machine, Uh, that's when I, that's when I do the best because I'm just hitting the blinking lights. Like everybody says, when you first learn how to play a game, but I wish I could remember what it was called. Oh, it just occurred to me. It is Stern free fall. That's the game it was. Uh, so I had a chance to play a whole bunch of games there. Most of the games were between 50 cents and a dollar. The newer ones, of course, were a dollar to play, but it was nice to see that they were pristine condition. I don't think I played a game that was not working right. It was really nice to see how well maintained they were and having that chance to really see Rachel Bess and Cale Hernandez's collection. Because there's a lot that they have to offer to the public. And the thing that blew me away is that it was open every single day until 2 a.m. Wow. I'm thinking, whoa, I can play pinball until the sun comes up practically. They're open pretty much nonstop, but I've never seen a place open at 8 a.m. Usually a bar opens, you know, 4, 5 p.m., and then it's late until closing. This thing is open at 8 a.m. So you could literally go and get your pinball fix in the morning, come back later, and you could have a full day of just playing as many games as you want until, of course, you run out of money. But it was really a neat place to go. On Father's Day, I had a chance to go to another arcade because with Father's Day, you can choose whatever you want to do. So what would I choose but to go to an arcade and play pinball? So I actually had my son and my wife go on Father's Day to a place called Starfighters Arcade. And that was a great place because the admission fee was only $10. And it was all you could play. And it was open for about four hours. It was like open from two to six. So we got there a little later, maybe about 2.30 or so. And we stayed all the way till the end. And I got to give a shout out to my wife right now that she stayed the whole time. I know it was a little torture for her because she was like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I can deal with playing pinball this long. But she wanted to go play some classic arcades. And then she got into some games too as well that she had fun playing. So that was really neat. And that was a great way to spend Father's Day. And then I thought, well, my trip is not complete without visiting Electric Bat again. So they had a tournament. And I had an opportunity to see what the tournament scene is all about. and it ended up that there were almost 100 players there. I was blown away how many there were. And this was for league, if I'm not mistaken. So fortunately, they allowed me to play, even though I really wasn't. It was like the last day, or it was the last week of that season. So it really didn't matter how I did, but it was still an opportunity to check it out and play competitively. And there were some really good players in Arizona, really good players. The one I was matched up with, oh, gosh, what was his name? I think Broland, his name was. He was unbelievably good. And I thought, oh, I really got my competition cut out for me because these guys really know how to play. I did okay. I think I ended up like in the top 15 or so. So it wasn't too bad out of 100 players. I was pretty happy with that. But it was a really fun opportunity to meet people. And it was cool because I got to meet Rachel and Kale because they were running the tournament. And they recognized me. And I think they saw me at Chicago Expo. And they're like, Mark, oh my gosh, how are you doing? I can't believe you're here in Arizona. I'm like, I'm not going to miss this if I'm coming to visit. And they're like, oh, cool. Welcome. They were real welcoming and people were cool. It was a real awesome vibe. So two places that I would highly recommend if you happen to go on a road trip to Phoenix is Electric Bat Arcade and Starfighters Arcade. Great places to play pinball. Games are in great condition and a good variety of a whole bunch of different kinds of games that you can play from oldies to new and new releases. So really fun. Then my adventure continued, but not for a little while. I had an opportunity to go to Milwaukee and visit my family. And that was in July, about a week after we celebrated Independence Day. And I had an opportunity to go to a place. If you ever visit Milwaukee, you definitely want to go to a place called the Garcade. It's a place in Menominee Falls, which is a suburb of Milwaukee. and I'm very fortunate because it was only five minutes from my father's house. Now, I came there to spend time with my dad and we went golfing and stuff like that, but I wanted to get it out of my system right away. You know how that is when you go to a place and if you wait too long, you start getting kind of anxious. Like, I don't think I'm going to have an opportunity to go to this place and check it out because the time is running out. So my idea was to say, you know what? I'm just going to go and go the very next day. So I went to the Garkade pretty much the following day and got to play maybe three or four hours. It was only a $15 cover to get in and it was all you could play. And they also had in and out privileges. So you could come back, go out to lunch, come back if you want and play because they give you a little wristband. So that was really cool. They had a whole bunch of games that were insider connected. So they had the leaderboards up there on the screen. And I was like, OK, I want to try to make my mark because one of my names that I have on pin side is pinball on the mark. And I always want to make a mark by putting in a high score or something. So, hey, oh, so I had an opportunity to play Guardians. Guardians. They had Jurassic Park Pro, which I don't play a lot. They had a Munsters, which was a premium because it was the black and white play field. Those are so beautiful. Which are really nice. It's a beautiful game. Actually, I haven't played it for a while, but it is pretty fun. It's not a real deep rule set, but it's not an easy game at the same time. It really can be brutal sometimes. and some of the outlanes were a little bigger than I wanted it to be but it worked out I also got to play a Rush, they had a Rush Pro there so they had really good games and some classics that you wouldn't see like Miami Heat was one of them they had a they used to have a Hollywood Heat which is Miami Vice knockoff which is a straight Gottlieb rip off of Miami Vice And another ripoff game was Gold Wings, which, of course, is a ripoff of Top Gun. Top Gun. Top Gun. Yeah, so they had two Gottliebs there. That was really fun to play. I think that's right, right? Or Premier, one of the two. Yeah, it's Gottlieb. That's Gottlieb. Yeah, Gottlieb. But at the time, Gottlieb, I believe, was owned by Premier, right? Yeah, that's correct. It was like Gottlieb, the Premier name in pinball. That's right, exactly. So I had a chance to play those. They had a firepower there. So a good variety. You can go on Pinball Map and check out all the games they have. But my goal was to try to get high score. So I got a high score, not GC. The GC was a little hard to attain. So I was just focusing on just number one score and not quite GC because I would have to play a lot longer and have more time to try to get there. But I did get my initials on Munsters with the number one score. I got my initials on Iron Maiden. That I did get a GC, which was awesome. And I also got a number one score on Rush. Yeah. And then a couple other ones, I got like the number two score and stuff like that. So that Insider Connected can be really addictive, especially when they have the leaderboards. So I did make my mark. I put in my initials, M-A-S, and I was excited that I was able to accomplish something. So that was a lot of fun in Milwaukee. And that was the only arcade I visited. I wanted to go to check out some others, but family was first, and I didn't want to break my promise to go and play pinball avoiding family. So I picked the right times to go and had a wonderful time to check it out. I wanted my father to go and see me play, but he couldn't stand that long and he would have got bored instantly. So I tried, but I just went by myself and had a grand old time. But a really cool place, the Garcade. We were in Milwaukee for about two weeks and then we went to Fayetteville, where my brother lives. And he's been always telling me about this place, which is called Pinpoint. and it's a pinball bar right in the heart of downtown close to the university and uh it was a really awesome place to visit as well because it had that vibe of a bar down to earth but great games they had 21 games to play and good variety the the prices were pretty reasonable they were pretty much a 50 cents for most of the games for the older ones they had like a robocop there um they had nice that was kind of fun to play um they had a which you don't see a lot a space jam and that was really cool to be able to play that you never see those you never see those shows anymore no no you never see that um so that was cool to play that and it was nice because my brother went there and made it an opportunity to go. Finally, I was just waiting because he's like, oh, we can't go because they're at a convention, basically a bartender convention, and they had to close the place down. So I was waiting for like four days until I could go visit it. But I finally had a chance to go there. Before that, I have a tendency to go on Pinside and check to see if there's any collectors nearby. However, a lot of times when they put their pin side name or whatever, and you see the mark on the map, it isn't always exactly where they live, which I can understand for security reasons. You don't want to just go and stalk somebody, but it doesn't hurt to ask. So I went on the messenger and I said, Hey, I just want to let you know, uh, my, my brother is Dan Scoff. He's a meteorologist. You probably see him on TV and, uh, I'm here in town and I see you have an awesome collection. Maybe we could get together. Now I just left it at that. So what happened is I was surprised, but I did get a response. I reached out to three people. I got a response from one person and they said, yeah, I know Dan. My daughter used to go to preschool and he remembered him. So I was like, no way. This is crazy. So I said, well, where do live. And then my brother, when he found out who it was of his actual name, when he messaged back, it was that he ended up living only 0.5 miles away from my brother's house, walking distance. So we had a chance to go over and check out his collection and play that before I went to Pinpoint So that was cool He had Godzilla with the topper So I had a chance to go right into the wizard mode and play King of Monsters which I have to say is an awesome wizard mode I know we were just talking about before the show that somebody got to it actually earning it but it was fun to get to play it Yeah, Rick Demel, the master of pinball. Just hangs up a casual five-billion-point game on his way out the door. That is insane. I love Rick, and I love pinball people. Okay, it's so cool that like, I didn't know your brother was a meteorologist. Yeah, he is. Really cool. That's really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. And he knows everybody around town. So he's like always getting pictures with people and stuff like that. But that was really cool that we actually had a chance. It worked out and we went over there on a Saturday and hung out in the morning. And that was kind of our pinball day. We did everything pinball related on Saturday. um we also had a chance to go to branson missouri and of course uh we were at first we had a great time and we went out to dinner and went to a show and did the typical things at branson which is a huge tourist trap basically it's a lot of shows it's almost like the vegas of the midwest if you ever been to branson missouri right but one of the things that was cool is there was a place called 1984 and in there they had other games to play as well so my brother made it a priority that after the girls left and went and drove back home we would go go-karting and play pinball so we went to 1984 first played maybe we were there for an hour an hour and a half or so and then we hit the go-karts so yeah we were we were having basically a boy's night out with my son and his son. So it was really a fun, fun time. So lots of pinball in the area. And there's some really great places in Fayetteville. Like I said, Pinpoint is a great place to go. So I did. What state is Fayetteville? I'm sorry. Oh, Fayetteville is in Arkansas. It's northwest. That's what I thought. So you went over the border from Arkansas to Missouri. That's correct. Yep. Okay. Yeah, because I've heard of Fayetteville, but I thought, well, that's in Arkansas, isn't it? Okay, cool. Is your brother older or younger? He's younger. He's six years younger than me. Oh, okay. Cool. Well, he sounds like a kick in the pants, man. Oh, he's really cool. You've got to get him out to Golden State some year. I know. Believe me, I've tried to do that, but it always messes up with his schedule because he has sweeps sometimes during those times. Gotcha. that's basically where they do promotions and stuff like that. And he has to be, uh, basically be in the newsroom. Uh, but he took his, all the days off while I was there and it was so awesome. And then of course the last day before I left, there was a severe thunderstorm and just like on call, like a doctor, he was on call and he had to go to the news station the night before I had to leave. But I had a really good time spending time with, with my brother Dan and his wife Jennifer and his kids and everything. And he has a new pool that he just put in. So it was a really awesome vacation with pinball thrown in to have it well-seasoned. So it was really, really an awesome time. And then I came back to Reno and I have one more week. And then it's back to reality, going back to school. So I've been gone pretty much the whole summer, aside from maybe two weeks, being here at home. So, yeah, it was quite an adventure, but a lot of fun. And you got to share pinball with your brother and his family, which is really cool, too. I did, yeah. My brother really is into it, too. He wished he could be part of a league, but he obviously has the night shift, so he can't play in leagues because it would conflict with his schedule all the time. But they do have leagues, and they have tournaments over at Pinpoint. Well, you know, he's got great locations nearby. He can go play during the morning hour. Exactly. And the other cool thing when I went to Pinpoint is I got to meet the owner. His name is Bo. And he has a huge collection in a warehouse, so he rotates games every month, like two or three. So definitely a place to check out. So, yeah, it was awesome. Right on, man. You know what? I'm glad you had a fun summer road trip. I mean, we missed you. We missed doing the show. But, you know, it's well worth the wait because we have a lot to talk about. And, you know, you got to meet new people and people are, oh, I know you, you know, and, you know, being a good ambassador. So it's cool. We're talking about rotating games. Dan, Dan's been rotating games. He's been buying and selling. And you've been busy, Dan. I just want to start off by saying, Mark, they obviously just knew you from the podcast. Yeah, maybe. You just got to be like, oh, yeah, yes, I'm Mark from The Spinner is Lit. Oh, yeah, that's true. I should have said that. You're right. The dozens and dozens of listeners identifying you wherever you go. I know how it is. Me too. Anyway, people are really cool in Fayetteville. That's all I can say. Cool people. Yeah, man, it sounds like you had just a heck of a great summer, lots of family and lots of adventures. But most importantly, probably not most importantly, but also importantly for this application, lots of pinball. Yep. So I didn't do anything really exciting so far this summer. It's been a real sticking close to home summer. But I did finally shop out Whitewater, which if you guys interact with us on our Facebook, which we're seeing a little bit more of every day. So thank you. Keep it up. post, you know, respond, let us know what you like, let us know what you don't like. But yeah, it was funny. I pulled whitewater out almost to get to twilight zone. And then it was like, while it was out, I was like, well, you know, I can, I can fix this switch. That's bad. So I pulled off the mountains and then I started taking other stuff off. And the next thing, I had whitewater scattered all over the garage. It was just, it was just a disaster area. You've seen the pictures and I'm like, well, if I'm this far in, you know, it's time to finally shop Whitewater. So I tore it down and I don't take pictures and I know that's not responsible, but I'm just going to put it out there. When I shop games, generally, I can figure out where things go, right? I leave the things that are kind of hard to figure out where they're going to go, where they go, but I don't like to write on all the labels and stuff like that or all the switches. I mean, not that it's not a good idea. I just don't usually do it. And I ended up getting the whole game apart. And I'm like, OK, I need to be done with this project in a week because after a week, I'm going to start forgetting where this shit goes. And I mean, and I know it. I know that's how I operate. So I started off, you know, everything got cleaned up really, really, really hard, you know, and I started, you know, finding the missing hardware. and piecing things back together and placing the parts orders. And on the inside of a week or just over a week, just the outside of a week, I had the machine reassembled. And I was just finishing putting it back together. And through very little fault of my own, I had a mishap where I wired in a coil backwards. And actually, it was I had to replace a coil that the manual called for. The manual calls for a 629 on the upper play field, and it's actually supposed to be a 630. Well, I soldered it back in what I thought was forward, but you have to rotate the coil to get it back into the game, and it turned out that I had swapped two of the lugs, and so I blew up a board, and I was really, really angry with myself for making such a stupid mistake. I knew it wasn't a costly mistake. I knew it wasn't unfixable, but it was just a pain, right? I was so close to it was going to be a week and I was going to be done on schedule. Eric Neff, friend of the show, Eric Neff, Cheddar, I posted about it on our local league board. And he goes, hey, bring it by. I'll fix it for you. I had correctly diagnosed what I had done. I'd blown up a transistor and a pre-drive transistor. And so I took it over to him and he whooped some new parts into it. and we slapped it into my shadow, which I was really glad to see I still have a shadow because I haven't seen that game in like a year. We tested it out and it worked. I brought it home and plugged it into the game and tested it out and it worked. So really, really happy about that. So the game was largely back together inside of my estimate. Spent about another week fiddling around with it. And then I felt confident about it. Buttoned it up, put it back in the lineup. Yep. My wife came out, played one ball and broke it. Oh, no. She it turned out that what had happened was there was a little gate inside of the trough to keep the balls from rattling back. And that gate gave up the ghost on her first ball. I mean, I probably put a half dozen games on it with the glass off and a couple more with the glass on. and I actually played one ball, you know, it drained, shot over, and then the ball just kept shooting back and forth because it just kept bouncing back to the out hole. So I had to pull it back apart and put in a parts order. And, of course, when you need to order, like, you know, a 50-cent gate, but you're going to pay $10 for shipping, you figure, you know, you may as well order some more stuff. So I actually ordered a new shooter spring. It had the wrong shooter spring. And I ordered some rubber, you know, to replace some rubbers that probably weren't the exact right size. And that took about a week to show up. So last Thursday, I slapped it back together, put a bunch of test games on it, played it real, real hard, seemed solid, and had a couple of the guys over today. We had some great two, three-player games that held up. Jamie played it. It didn't break. It does have a credit dot. I'm sure it's the Bigfoot Cave because I don't think anybody got to Bigfoot Hotfoot. Still needs some dialing. Obviously, they always need some dialing. But I think that the Whitewater, after having it for just over a year, finally got shopped. New LED, new rubber, playing real nice, looking real good, real bright. Oh, wow. I can't wait to play it when I get that chance. Oh, it's so much nicer than it was last time you saw it. Oh, man. so I was going to move Bram Stokers up in the queue because I still need to figure out that Miss Multiball and Bram Stokers but and for those of us who've been listening for a while I think that everybody knows that I've been waiting for a year plus for a Multimorphic Weird Al limited edition and I actually had a local collector reach out to me a local pen buddy just be completely honest and offer me a smoking deal on one And so I took advantage of that, and I actually just picked it up today. So everything's on the back burner while I'm playing with Weird Al. And it's really, really, really amazing. I've already posted some pictures on the website, so please check it out. In fact, we've already had a ton of people who've responded to it, which is great. I finally have Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity at my house. And Weird Al for me is, you know, the dream theme, right? It was the dream theme that they'll never make a game of. They're never going to make a Weird Al pinball machine. That's crazy. That's crazy talk. Right. And they did. And I got it. And yes, it was a lot of money. And yes, it's a P3. I don't care what you say. P3 is definitely real pinball. It's real complicated pinball, as I'm finding out, because P3s do a lot. and they're very complex, I think a little more complex than they need to be. And the menus aren't exactly the most user-friendly, as I found out by deleting a file that I needed or an optional file. And I'm taking a crash course that just started this afternoon in Multimorphic. So, you know, wish me luck if anybody in, you know, the Spinner's Lit Land has a Multimorphic and wants to reach out to me and guide me, that's great. The Pinside community for Multimorphic seems really, really helpful. Hopefully, I'll get some guidance there. And, you know, I'm sure that Jerry and his crew will walk me through my problems. I also picked up a heist. So I actually have two modules. That is awesome. Two modules? Wow. Yes, I have Weird Al and I have heist. I need to, you know, install heist. And you got to kind of mate the troughs, right? So it's not like you can just literally, you know, they make it look like, oh, you just drop the new module in, but you have to kind of, you know, put them so that they're cooperating. And so I need to put heist in there and get it all lined up so I can play heist. And it's really easy to swap the module. It's not very hard. And then after that, I also have a deposit down on final resistance. Oh, awesome. So we're going we're going all in on on the multi morphic in this household. But honestly, it's going to be hard for me to ever have that thing not be a Weird Al, because just again, you know, I've loved Weird Al since I was a little kid. You know, we go to his concerts every time he comes through town. We've we've got autographs and DVDs and and books and movies and everything that you can have. So it's kind of like the jewel in the crown of my of my Weird Al collection, of course. I mean, it's pretty hard to beat that for a piece of Weird Al memorabilia. So, yes, I own a Weird Al's Museum of Natural History limited edition. Who wants to touch me? Who wants to touch me? I just want to make a trip out to your garage. I haven't seen your garage since you got it finished either. So, of course, I want to play Weird Al. That's a fantastic game. You've waited so long, Dan, for this. I know you've been so excited to get this. And then it's like, oh, I've got to wait longer and longer. And now you finally made it. Finally. One of the funny things about this is, you know, the guy who sold it to me is a guy who I, you know, get over and I see him, you know, usually once a month or so. He's had the game for a few months and he has a lot of other stuff coming in. You know, there's been a lot of games coming out this year and he's picked up, you know, a Scooby and he's picked up a Galactic Tank Force. And, you know, Weird Al, I just don't think that the Multimorphic platform clicked with him. And he just decided, hey, I'm getting other new games. I need to make some room. You know, you've spent most of the time playing it. So, you know, come and get it. Take it home. You know, give me some money and it's yours. And I'm like, great. Yeah, let's do it that way. And so, yeah, I've been playing it since it was brand new out of the box. So while I didn't get the new in box experience that I was looking for, you know, at least it is a game that, you know, I've been there since the beginning with it. And one of the craziest things, I think, you know, to getting a machine like a P3 is it really turns your expectations for what pinball is or pinball should be on its side. You know, because a lot of people go, well, it's got a screen, so it's not really a pinball machine. And it's like, well, yeah, a lot of pinball machines have screens. You know, it's got flippers. It's got steel balls. You know, it's got targets and pop bumpers and everything that a pinball machine is supposed to have. It just, you know, has a screen as, as you know, the play field surface. And so when you play it, you're like, okay, well, you know, this should be pretty much what I know. Right. And then you get underneath the machine and you see this trough that holds a hundred pinballs. Wow. And you're like, you're like, what the hell are these people on? Like, why would you need that? And it's because it's a platform that's basically built for flexibility and, and it's built for people to be able to do their own games on and program for and, you know, basically more than just, oh, I'm going to set this down and play a couple games on it, then wander away. It really is a much more open source solution than I think people think it is. And honestly, I think it's a much more open source solution than it needs to be because, you know, I went in and immediately got myself in trouble. And then you go to the website and the website is very much like an engineering workflow type of website. It's not like Stern's where it's like, hey, you want software? It's right here. You know, click it to download it. Like it very much is like you have to click this and click this and click that. But first you have to do this. And I'm like, wow, man, like I can see why people would have this and just be like, oh, screw this, man. It's a little too complex. but if you're the kind of person who likes complex and who likes to tinker which i gotta believe most pinball people are and who wants to you know bend the platform to your will there's a lot there to like and you know my hope is that i'm gonna spend some time with this you know and in in fixing the problems that i'm having with it i'm gonna learn it inside and out and i can become a bit of a you I can start sharing my knowledge with people. But for now, like I said, I'm the P3 neophyte. I'm just getting started. Getting a chance to tinker around with it. That's good. Yeah, you know. But yeah, man, when you come around, I'll have to show it to you so you can kind of see it. It does some really crazy things. And I know you've spent some time on a P3. I don't know if you've gotten too much chance to go under the hood on it. I have not at all. It is definitely not, you know, coming off of your Hot Wheels and your Game of Thrones and, you know, whatever other games that you've owned. As soon as you open up the, as soon as you pull off the glass and you open up the play field, you're just like, what in God's name is that? Yeah. It's like a four inch thick play field. Wow. It's insanity. Like, it's huge. It seems like almost like a parody of a pinball play field. Oh, that's funny that you say that. You got to see it to believe it. It really is. It really is some next level stuff, man. Now, is that coming with the servos or is that the new flipper kit? Because I know there's a there's one. The older one was just more like a like a solenoid. Right. And then the newer ones with the plastic scoops that raise up or whatever, that back part. Are those servo-based or are they the older version? I think it's the servo one. This is a brand new P3. It's only a few months old. Great. So it's got the newest of everything. And it was all factory installed because it was a factory Weird Al limited edition. So when it was shipped to the original owner, it had all the stuff with it. Oh, good. Okay. And all installed and the speaker lights and the fancy coin door and all the goodies. So, you know, just the one that I would have wanted to buy, but probably would have cheaped out on a little bit of that. Because, you know, you look at the price tag and you go, oh, that is not cheap. No, it's not. That is an expensive toy. So my hope is that in terms of the actual hardware, I'm in good shape. I know that we have some other good friends who've either fought the losing battle or have been fighting the losing battle against their P3 from a hardware basis. But for me, my biggest problem at this point is while everything is working and I'm happy for that, yeah, the software definitely has a menu and then it has a submenu and then the menu will be different if the coin door is open. Oh, wow. Sometimes the menus are really good at telling you that this button is left and this button is right. This button's up and this button's down. Keep in mind that thing has six flipper buttons. Right. That can get complicated. And like one flipper button is advanced and one flipper button is back. One flipper button is up. One flipper button is down. One flipper button is select. One flipper button is back. And then the launch button is also select and the start button is back. And it's just like, great when you're telling me that. Wonderful. But like, I don't know if it's just me being stupid, but like, I just don't retain that all the time. So when you take away that little legend telling me what everything does, I just sort of default to, okay, this is left, this is right. This is, this is, you know, ahead and this is back. And so I go into this menu and it's all like assets. And I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting. So I go in and it shows a file and I go, well, I don't want to mess with this. So I hit the button to go back and it goes, oh, do you want to delete this file? And it's got no, yes, and no, looks like it's highlighted. So I say, no, I don't want to do that. So I click the button to go ahead and it goes like, okay, delete it. Oh, no. Who knows what I've just deleted, right? So I go out to the menu and I start the game. And all it did was it changed the title screen from the limited edition title screen to the standard edition title screen, which I'm supposing is probably hard-coded in the game software where the LE is like an option. So I'm like, well, that's stupid. So how do I get that back? So I go to the site and I'm looking around and I'm reading through stuff. And finally I find that it says, hey, if you want to download software from us, that's super cool. Send us your serial number and your email address and your login and we'll take care of that for you. And I was like, okay, so this is step one in the multimorphic process. So do you think you just reinstall the code? I hope so. I mean, hopefully I can just, you know, once I'm registered, I can just go to the website and just say, please download the file that I need and it'll put it in the right place. Other than that, you know, probably have to put it on the USB or something or maybe someone can send it to me. I mean, worst comes to worst, I'll just email Multimorphic and say, hey, I'm registered. Can you guys help me get this thing where I want it to be? part of me would love just to, you know, abort, retry, fail the whole thing and just reinstall and start from the beginning. Right. Then I know, you know, what went into it and what didn't, but that also sounds like a lot of work and I don't want to take the risk of just completely borking the whole thing. So, so I'm assuming you had a chance to play it a lot before this happened. Is that correct? I mean, I've only had it for what's at eight o'clock. So we got it home probably one o'clock, you know, had lunch and then came back and started playing it. So I got about five hours into it. Okay, well, that's good. And I can play it right now. You can still play it. Yeah, I just have a different title screen. How do the flippers feel, just out of curiosity? Because I think the newer flip Macs are better. I don't have a lot of basis for comparison. I've played P3s sporadically, right? I've played them at shows. I played them at Brad has a P3. that's where I played heist with Spencer and that's where, you know, I think we all kind of saw the potential of how cool P3 is. Um, but I don't, you know, have like deep, deep, deep knowledge. I've always thought the flippers on the P3 felt fine. Okay. Oh, they're definitely not stern flippers. They're definitely not even Jersey Jack flippers, but considering the engineering and the genius that went around, like making suspended flippers work, I think they're, you know, I think they're, they're kind of a miracle, right? Like, you know, how do you, how do you make these things work? I think that the, the big mistake that I think that, that P3 has made has been rectified with final resistance. And that's that they, they really try to lean into the screen and people don look at you know they look at the changing graphics and stuff and go oh it video pinball It virtual pinball But Final Resistance basically just emulates a pinball play field with some fancy effects. So I think that when people see that, their gut reaction is just like, oh, yeah, that's pinball. That's what pinball looks like. There's arrows pointing to where the ball goes and they're always there. Where with Weird Al, the arrows will move around depending on what you're supposed to shoot at the moment. That's right. They do. And it's hard for pinball people who just scream that they want innovation, innovation, innovation. When the innovation shows up, they're like, oh, yeah, but that's not the innovation that I want. I still wanted to have a wooden play field and traditional flipper mechs and pop bumpers and slingshots and everything right where I expected. I just wanted to be innovative. Sure. What was your favorite mode? Just out of curiosity. On Weird Al so far? Yeah. so I've gotten to dare to be stupid, uh, once or twice, which is a great song and a fun mode. And I've gotten to, uh, UHF multiball, mostly just through the mystery award. Cool. And I would say that like of the song modes, probably the funnest one is traffic jam. Yeah. Traffic jam is good. Yeah. Traffic jam. Like you hit a target and then it, it starts a turn signal and it blinks, blinks, blinks. And so you have to hit a ramp on one side or a lane on the other to then move into that lane. Yep. Oh, that's pretty cool. And it's got a move your car call out, which works great for me as a creature fan. So traffic jams are really fun. One weasel stomping day seems to be pretty lucrative, especially if you can bring a hardware store into it. My bologna also seems to be really, really lucrative if you can bring a hardware store into it. In fact, I think Jamie did that on her game and just stomped me. Like she just beat me pillar to post. So it was pretty funny. And it's got, you know, for a Weird Al fan, it's really hard not to like, you know, it's got a great selection of songs. Not everything that you'd want it to have, you know, doesn't have eat it. It doesn't have fat, you know, because obviously the Michael Jackson songs are a little bit more problematic these days. but you know it's got a great selection of songs uh it's got the real voice of we're now all over it you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of quotes maybe thousands of quotes um you know it's got i think 17 or 18 full songs in it that's pretty awesome yeah it doesn't have video but it's got animation uh the ground you know the art's great you know just it's just it's just an amazing amazing thing in this day and age that a pinball platform came out that gave us Weird Al Yankovic. That's cool. As much as I would love for it to be just like a stern, like for Foo Fighters to have been Weird Al Yankovic, so I didn't have to dive into this new platform, it was a smart move by Multimorphic to pick a fan base who is probably enthusiastic and doesn't get so much stuff with Al on it that they'll spend some money. to get it. Right, right. I think if they find more licenses, man, you know, if they find the stuff that, like, the fans have been starved and they just don't get it, you know, they can probably get some more people. But as you saw by my experience, you know, I reserved it, you know, the day it came out, not the minute that they started the reservations, but the day that they were taking the reservations. And, you know, I waited for, you know, over a year. Yeah, you waited a whole year. Yeah, and was probably real, real close to getting my call and ended up just finding one sooner and cheaper. That's awesome. So there you go. I'm so happy for you, Dan. So happy for you. It's great. I'm so excited for you. I'm happy for me too, but I've really got to sell a game. Yeah. I'm just overstuffed. Didn't you ask me how many games I had earlier, Spencer? I did. yeah so i've got 16 at home whoa and at least two on loan and two and a half on two and a half because me and adam have a halfsies fireball too i'll take it so i'm somewhere in the 19 range so you got okay so so uh fireball too because you own half of it with adam and that's at adams right now. Yeah, Indianapolis is at Adams, and Shadow is at Cheddar. It'll probably go over to Adams, too, for league use. Right on, yeah. And you mentioned Cheddar earlier. Shout out to Cheddar and Adam, man. Adam, who just keeps the league chugging along with a great collection of classics and new titles. And Cheddar, who is like, he's like the NorCal National Treasure of pinball, man. Oh, you know, so many people in Northern California. There's so many But I just want to give a shout out to those two. And Cheddar's just like, both of them, Adam and Cheddar, righteous dudes. I do need to give a huge thank you to Task Force Weird, who are the guys who woke up early with me this morning and took a trip out of town to pick up this game so that we could beat the heat. Mike Garcia, Adam Pressler, who else did it? Oh, Rick, Rick Demmel. those guys definitely answered the call and came out and helped make it happen because I will say this about a Multimorphic that sucker is heavy. You think your Pirates is heavy? You think your Next Gen, your Indiana Jones is heavy? Your Twilight Zone? No. This sucker. You need four people to carry that sucker. You know what? But you probably, if you have a good lift and, you know, skates or something and, you know, are feeling young and strong, could do it with two people. Okay. You know, like it's not, you know, 600 pounds or something. But, you know, we've all moved pinball machines and they're awkward. And getting them in and out of the truck without, you know, banging them up and banging up the truck, it's not the easiest thing. So it's much easier, you know, when you have a set of hands on either side, you have a set of hands at the end, you got somebody lifting, you know, and you can get the thing up above, up above and onto your piece of cardboard or your blanket or whatever, you know, to, to get this thing in. But, you know, a lot of it was just, you know, there's so much cargo with a P3 because we had to move the playfield modules and stuff too. We just needed to dual vehicle it. Sure. I didn't want to just shove those things in the back of the truck and call it okay. So we moved those in a little SUV. So it worked out pretty well. Right on. Yeah, you know. And it's exciting to, you know, finally have finished that journey. And I'm going to rearrange the game room to accommodate Weird Al so that I have a spot that I can load modules in and out from. And I'll probably flip-flop everything in there. And we'll do some pictures. I'll document it on the Facebook, you know. You guys need to start sending me some Facebook pictures, by the way. I'm sure that our dozens and dozens of Spinner's Lit fans are going to get tired of what I'm doing. Meanwhile, we got dudes at like Electric Bat and arcades all over the country and with grandchildren and stuff like that. They're not giving me pictures, but on Facebook. Good point. I have some. I'll get them. I'll get them on there. You can upload them, too. I think we gave you access. Yep. Just click the little thing that's on Facebook to the Spinner's Lit. I'll definitely do that. We'll both do that. Yeah, that's been my summer so far. I think that we've done a show since I got Ninja Turtles, right? I picked up a Ninja Turtles in there, too. By the way, I hate that game. Wait a minute. Did you pick that up before? Did you pick that up before GSP? I picked it up the day after GSP. The day after. Okay, and I think we did talk about it briefly, but that's on the auction block now, right? It'll probably go back to the guy who sold it to me. Okay. He bro-dealed me, and I feel inclined to bro-deal him back. If not, there's a couple people who want it. But, man, I've tried so hard to get good at that game. Frustrating as hell. Oh, like, I mean, it is good. When you get it going, it is a good game. Oh, yeah. Like, it's not like you play it and you're like, ah, it's crap. It's junk. It's got great sound. It's got great art. If you like Ninja Turtles as a theme, it's well-integrated. I put the cartoon ROM on it. It's a little older model, so it doesn't have Insider connected, so I don't have to worry about that. And, again, if you were a Ninja Turtle kid, I'm sure it's one of those super elite themes. But, man, it is such a face melter. It is. It is. And if you don't finish three episodes on your first ball, you may as well just hold down the start button and start over. Because you're not getting anywhere in that game. The scoring is so deceiving. That's the problem. It's like you're working and working, and it's like, what? Only 10 million? That's it? Yeah, it's hard to get it going. Yep. It is. But if you're Rick and can get it going, boom, you're in. I don't think I've even seen Rick really hang a gigantic game, at least not on mine. I'm sure he's probably beaten up on a Ninja Turtle somewhere. I haven't played it enough to really get deep into it, but it shoots beautifully well. very fast, but you know, she's beautifully well, I mean, it's a board, you know, since we're talking real quick, I forgot to mention this, but I did play a monopoly. I never knew how to play that game. And, um, I got to the wizard mode. I got all the properties and I scored 49 million at the one at pinpoint. So that was pretty cool. That, uh, didn't know, have a clue what I was doing. I guess I was starting the modes when I was shooting for that saucer all the time. And then all of a sudden, they all blinked. And then the balls started coming down and it was like the extra ball light was flashing the whole time. Shoot again. And then all of a sudden, they went dead. I'm like, that had to be the wizard mode. And it was. I'm trying to remember what the final mode on Monopoly even is. It's called... Oh, shoot. What was it called? I can't remember, but you'll know. because it's kind of like Tour the Mansion. It shows all the things you can earn trying to gain all the properties in a certain amount of time. So it's kind of like, maybe not Cherry Bomb, but it's more like Lost in the Zone kind of thing. Yeah, and it's a lot. So it kind of has that same feel. Dan had the nicest Monopoly I've ever seen, and he sold it, and I'm still mad about it. It's at Comic Kingdom. That's the one. yep that's not the one i got that was the one i traded for doctor who that is a beautiful monopoly but he has it set up really hard that one is 49 million dan got that for a song from a guy who's like had it since it was new and maybe put what 300 games on it oh my no i think that the story was like he worked for a guy like a like a guy in napa or something who bought like some country and western singer's estate and the guy basically gave him the pinball machine and a truck and it was in his garage and he didn't want to move it up to his game room so he put it on facebook marketplace and it's the only time i've ever had it work out where i just basically said hey this pinball machines for sale in your area and i called him up and said i want it and he said okay and i said i can be there in an hour with cash he said okay and i ran down there and bought it. And yeah, he was super cool. You know, he was like, yeah, I've gotten a lot of calls. I must have underpriced this. And I said, it's very fair price. Like, I'm not, you know, going to debate you that it's a very fair price. And he's like, okay, great. You know, so yeah, it was, it was great. And I played it for a few months and eventually decided I wanted to turn it into something else. But like Monopoly is actually a game that I think is, is probably a little underrated. Yeah. It's Cody's taken really good care of it. And it it's in the same condition is when you sold it. He was so funny too. I think he feels about Doctor Who how I feel about Ninja Turtles. He's like, oh yeah, Doctor Who's great. I hate that game. It's like, I want to love it because it's a great theme, but I just can't play the game with the damn. Everybody has that one Achilles heel, like I want to love this game, but I just can't because it's just so brutal to me. Everybody has that one game. So with that, we can talk about this if you guys want to shuffle forward and on. I put together a little game. It's build a lineup for 10K. You have $10,000 to play with. You buy one early solid state, one alpha numeric, and one DMD. So you get a three-game lineup, nice mix, and keep it within the 10K. Everybody knows current pricing-ish. You know, we're not going to get down to the pennies But, so Basically, I'll tell you what I picked And why I picked it And then you guys can take turns So, for my solid states One I own, Flash Gordon Okay, Flash Gordon, you can pick those up We'll say between $2,000 and $2,500 Okay, for a nice working one Decent shape Um, that's all I need to say about Flash Gordon I mean, if you've played it, even if you haven't You know, it's a really sought-after, really fun game. My second choice would be something real simple, like, say, and really affordable, like Mata Hari, Valley Mata Hari. Real basic, early solid state game. Still a lot of fun. It can be had sub 2K. My alpha in America I picked is Pimbot. I also own. Great game, well-known, well-loved, lots to do, and it can be picked up between 2 and 3K, you know, regularly. They really run right around 2,500. My second choice on that would be an earth shaker. A little more for an earth shaker these days. You're looking at somewhere in the 3 to 3,500 range on average. A ton of stuff to do in that game. Let me think about an earth shaker. Man, it's got a shaker motor. Duh. It's got the states that crack apart for the ball, three-ball, multiball, you know, three flippers. You got side ramp, main ramp, spinner, drop targets, you know, up kicker. I mean, it's got a little bit of everything. For my DMD, my first choice was, and I changed it because I thought, Dan's going to bust my balls about this. Then we talked about it earlier. He goes, oh, no, totally cool, dude. You watch on the show now, he'll bust my balls. So I picked Last Action Hero, okay? So again, so I got Flash Gordon, 25, we'll say 2,500. Pinbot, we'll say 2,500. So I got 5,000 left to play with, which puts me at Last Action Hero somewhere between 3 and 4K on average. Okay. The theme is mediocre at best. The music is what it is. But it's got a decent light show. It's got super deep modes. I mean, you know, it's got a ton of modes. It's got like 13 modes. So it's got a good rule set. You've got everything in that. You've got drop targets. You've got spinner. You've got, you know, sellers. You've got ramp. You've got a crane toy. You've got vertical up kickers. You've got a kickback. You've got a gun shooter. You've got video modes. You've got, I mean, you've got literally every feature you can think of. You've got magnets in that thing. I mean, it's jam-packed with pinball goodness. Or, you know, somewhere between 3 and 4K. So somewhere between $8,000 to $9,000, you got a solid lineup. Now, my original first choice for my DMD game was going to be Stern Star Trek Pro, which within the last year or so, I've still seen them used ones on the market for right around the $5,000 range. And, you know, so that's a pretty good value. But that's what I've got. You know, so if you really think about it, there's a lot of great games in each era that can still be had And for $10,000 or under, you can put together a pretty solid lineup. Mark, what do you got? All right. So the one that I love, and I'm sure you love this one, is Alien Star for the early solid state. I believe that's not alphanumeric, right? No, it's early solid state. Okay. I love that game because it's so simple to play, but yet trying to get that five-time spinner is so addictive. and it's such a good one to have in a lineup just because when you rip that and you get that score just going and going and going in the millions, oh, it's so awesome. Very satisfying. It's a great game. So yeah, that one. So I'm using pinballprices.com. If you've never heard of that, I heard that on a website. I'm sorry, on a podcast. I was like, hmm, let's see. This shows the actual average cost of what people are selling it for. It came out to $28.32 is what Alien Star came out to. The other one, and Spence, I'm glad that you gave me this suggestion, but I really like it just because of the fast-paced gameplay, and it is Johnny Mnemonic. That's your DMD choice? That would be my DMD choice, yeah. Okay, great game and still right around the $3K mark-ish. Yeah, $37.25 is what they're going for about on average. Um, it's just a, it's, it's got a really neat Mac. Um, obviously it doesn't always work the best, but that's, uh, regardless of that, it is a really fast game. So if you want a really fast, uh, flowy game, it's right where I would definitely choose that one for my DMD. and then for my alphanumeric i love high speed um maybe i like fast games but high speed is just a really fun one because when you hit that that left upper ramp it's so satisfying to get the jackpot or um it's just kind of neat how the uh the mode of how they have the multiball it's kind of almost like a two-stage like you have to get away and then you fire the balls you know with your plunger, and then it holds the balls, and then it releases them. And then it's cool because the jackpot changes throughout the game, so you're not always automatically getting a million. You have to hit it at the right time, and it's really awesome. The sound is awesome. It's got the call-outs in it. Just a really awesome game for an alphanumeric. So those are my three. Alien Star, Johnny Mnemonic, I can never say that word, Johnny Mnemonic and High Speed. Great choices. I find, well, okay, the Alien Star I love, it's a rarer game. Yeah, I don't believe that price for a minute. Well, if you can get one for that, I'll give it to you. I mean, because I love that game. For the same reason you do, Mark. But, like, yeah, it's like, I've seen those trading a bit higher only because they're really hard to find, the two people I know that have them would sooner part with a finger than part with those games. And when you said high speed, no, perfect choice. And then I thought, oh, or when you were talking about Alien Star, I thought, because somehow it came up earlier, Firepower would be another great solid state choice. Made a ton of them. They can still be had. You don't say. Yeah. Well, because I just, I just, yeah, that's what you picked, isn't it, Dan? Yep. Those are easier to find. And I never thought about that until literally just now. So please, Dan, I'm sorry. Go ahead. So if I was looking for your under $10,000 collection, and I just use pin side average sale prices. That works. So I went for Firepower for $2,200. God, great choice. And, you know, like, let's just be honest, right? Like, you know, Firepower is. Firepower. Right. Firepower. It's dirt simple. It's unbelievably brutal. It's just good fun to play. It's that Star Wars knockoff theme. It's fantastic. It's a Steve Ritchie classic. It would be really cool to see Firepower revisited as a theme. There's just not enough generic space combat in our lives. but yeah just a super super fun game you know and i i absolutely love firepower you know for my alphanumeric and this is probably just like either super early alphanumeric or pre-alphanumeric i went for space shuttle oh good one which anyone who knows me knows that i have just you know a real a real you know legacy love for space shuttle i was a space shuttle kid you know i grew up in that appropriate time where, you know, the space shuttles were really super, super cool. And space shuttle was one of those games that like it was in every arcade everywhere, uh, literally saved pinball. Um, you know, we went to a pizza place not far back. They still had a space shuttle and it still worked. It was, it was whooped, but it worked, you know, space shuttle will set you back $2,500. And, uh, you know, it's just, again, good, good, clean fun. You know, you just, you can't not have a good time. You can't walk away without a smile on your face when that bell rings and the heat shield pops up and the little gate comes up to save the ball. And, you know, it's got the first plastic ramps. It's got the first plastic toy. Um, you know, we got it, you got an easy to get to multiball. It's got some pretty decent, uh, pretty decent sound. And, uh, me and me and Mark must be on the same mental wavelength because my DMD game for the robust sum of $4,100 average was Johnny Mnemonic. Yep. There you go. Which, you know, I've owned before. I would happily own again. I think it is one of the most underrated, fastest shooting. It's got a toy that even to this day, you know, when you hit the ball up there and it shoots six inches straight up and that glove grabs it. So cool. Right. you take it over to that matrix matrix thing, especially in a multiplayer game is just a deceptive amount of strategy. Uh, because, you know, you can block moves. Like if you can get three in a row, you know, you can get triple jackpots. But if Mark had one in a row or two in a row, and then I put mine in the sweet spot to knock him out of the triple jackpots, it gives me an opportunity, um, you know, to, play spoiler and to grab the good power up, whatever would happen. So I think it's just, it's, it's an underrated game based on a pretty, pretty tacky nineties movie. Um, very early Gomez game. And, uh, it's very memeable, right? You know, you got the mnemonic recovery, which we always called the moronic recovery. you've got the uh you've got the terrible terrible like they're not the worst like impersonator voices you ever heard but they just say random shit like i making a long distance phone call who are all these people um you know long distance phone call Nobody cares about that anymore With the color DMV in it it still comes off like a very modern game It's one of those games that I think feels more like a modern game than a lot of the other stuff from the 90s. It was extremely fast. The ball almost feels light. Yeah, that's a good way of describing it. Yeah, it just propels the ball around there. It's got some very exploitable scoring and it's got a wizard mode. Like, I don't know if you've ever seen power down. That's what I want to ask you. Is there a wizard mode in that game? Power down. And it's one of the cooler wizard modes of that era. Really? Yeah. And it's not, even though the game doesn't have like a whole lot of modes, like it's not an easy one to get to. So it was always fun when you would get the power down. So yeah. Mnemonic, you know, and again, that, that gets you into a collection. of three very decent games for just under nine grand. You know, of course, trusting that you can find them. A lot of times when you're trying to operate in that lower range, right, you're dealing these days with what's around me. So don't get fixated on the title and the price online. You know, if you see, if you really want Johnny Mnemonic for some reason, but you see a Ripley's Believe It or Not, which we just saw a recent ad for, and it was a topic of conversation in our circles for $4,000. Hey, man, you know, give it a chance. Maybe it'll tide you over or maybe, you know, you'll find a swap or, you know, maybe you'll sell it and make a couple hundred or lose a couple hundred. And, you know, when that Johnny Mnemonic comes up. But, yeah, you know, the moral of the story is, you know, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. Absolutely. You know, we're talking about, and we all love Mnemonic. I love it, too. and that's why I kind of shot it to Mark. I'm like, great game, especially for the price. Yeah, I was having a hard time trying to find a DMD. I mean, yeah. Ripley's is my absolute favorite Pat Lawler game post-Bally Williams, and that includes anything he's ever done with Jersey Jack. And that's not a slight against anything he's done with Jack. I just love that game. I love everything about that game. I wish I would have bought one where you can pick him up right around 3K. Yep. because I thought, God, that's expensive. That was exactly what I said, too. I was just like, man, I really regret missing out on these things when they were coming off route, and they were like dirt-ass cheap. Yeah, $2,600, $2,500. Oh, gosh. And that game is so deep, too. It is. It is, man. That game is super deep. Super deep. Try throwing Ripley's. It's a nightmare just to get ripped. Oh, my gosh, yes. But it's not like a chore. You're like, oh, I'm doing this, because it's such a fun game. Yeah. When I think about it, aside from Wonka, I think that's one of the most deepest games from Lawler is that one. Maybe Dialed In is pretty deep, too. Both of those are great games. I love those games, too. I love the theme. I love the gameplay. I love the features. I love the shot matrix. I just love everything about that game. That's a good one. It is a good one. All good lists. And even though technically Space Shuttle was a couple years prior to actual alphanumerics, it's such a great lineup and a great title, Dan. I'm totally going to allow that. Yeah, so Space Shuttle is not alpha, right? It's just numeric? Yeah, it's just – because that was – Okay, I was trying to remember if for sure Space Shuttle was alphanumeric or not. I thought it was. It's not? No, it's not. It's solid state. It's 1984. Okay. And then 86 were, well, like, well, 84 was actually the first Alphanumeric with Gottlieb Premier, actually. I could be wrong, but if I'm not mistaken, it was Bounty Hunter was the first actual Alphanumeric. I think that was 84. And then High Speed is the first Alphanumeric Williams, System 11. So I'll swap it out for Space Station. Oh, yeah. I'll spend an extra 50 bucks. There you go. Space Station, unusually fun game. Great game. If I had a choice of the two, I'd still take a Space Shuttle, but I like Space Station. I would, yeah. I'd definitely take a Space Shuttle over to Space Station. And totally allowable, because you look at that lineup. You got high speed. Well, high speed is great, too. But you got firepower. Like I said, man, brutally difficult. It's one of those games, once you lock like that in Sorcerer, once you get multiball going, If you can keep multiball going for any length of time, you can just put up huge scores with that thing. Space Shuttle, too. You know, you get, like, you get your 5X bonus and then just get multiball and just keep racking up the bonus points. You can, it's, all those games, you know, it just, like, I mean, think about it. If you go over to somebody's house, like, yeah, I got this freaking collection. Oh, what do you got? Well, I got a Firepower, a Space Shuttle, oh, and a Johnny Mnemonic. It's like, dude, great lineup. Or, you know, if you pick, you know, Mark's lineup too. Dude, you got an Alien Star. It's one of my favorite games. You never see those, hardly ever. And then, you know, oh, Mnemonic. Love that game. Fast as hell and brutal and fun. And then what was your other one, Mark? High Speed. High Speed. High Speed. That's like, okay, High Speed, Pinbot, Space Shuttle, Sorcerer. you know, there's Earthshaker, Whirlwind, Funhouse, Pinbot, Bride of Pinbot. I mean, any of those, you know, you look at that and go, oh, damn, right on. We're going to have fun tonight, you know. Just any of those games. Any of the system levels, pretty much. But I mean, you know, except Millionaire, that game sucks. No, because some came up for sale, like, really cheap. Millionaire sucks. I agree with that. The sub-2K was like $1,600 or 1700, I'm like, I'm seriously considering that. Because like any fucking System 11 under 2K, I mean, unless it's Buzz Bunny's birthday ball, then you're like, yeah, I can't do it. You know, but actually, even that one. It's not 2K for a System 11 these days. It's like, where do I decide? It kind of is. And, you know, I remember some years ago, a guy had a new inbox on Mr. Pinball. It was like, somewhere in the Bay Area. This was probably 10, 12 years ago. Had a new in-box millionaire, and he wanted $800. And it sat for like two months, you know. But, no, I've played them at shows and stuff, and it's not a great game. But, you know, if you can pick it up cheap enough, you know, and you can always have some fun with it and then pass it down the road, take that money and put it in something else later. But, no, all great choices, guys. And our listeners, think about that and think about, oh, if I just had 10 grand or you might have 10 grand, like, oh, okay, well, I want to build a pretty cool lineup. There's a lot of good choices out there. And you can build a really – still, even today, you can build a really cool lineup for just under 10K. Cool. It's a tough world to be a low buck pin man. It is a tough world to be a low buck pin man, man. But there's still – and here's one. I was going to – and this is – I want to say it's over in Denver or somewhere. It's over – is it Colorado or is it Utah? Forget it. I think it's in Colorado. No, it's in Cheyenne. And it's been on – I've got to go check again. I might be off now. But it was on – oh, by the way, Caps Pizza and Tap House, 8760 La Riviera Drive in Sacramento, California. that's the place that has Space Shuttle that's where we played it and they have some really cool I haven't been in there in a while they have really good pizza too yeah I went there not too far back with Brian and the Garce and yeah we were like oh dude there's a Space Shuttle here and in fact the funny thing was we tried to get Will to come too and Will loves Space Shuttle just as much as I do and he declined he had some car work or something to do and I was like ah dude you missed out and he's like, yeah, the pizza's not good. I was like, no, but they had a space shuttle, and the pizza is good. And he was like, ah, damn it, man. We got to go back over there. But we didn't make it back over there before I skipped town. The game that didn't come to mind, and now all of a sudden, and I remember you telling me, Spencer, like, oh, you'll come to mind when you don't think hard enough. How much does Roller Games go for? Right now, probably about $2,500. Okay. Yeah, so you're still on Roller Games. games would be a good one too for uh for um alphanumeric perfect yeah yes yes it would uh perfect 80s late 80s actually game actually came out i believe in 1990 but um you know 2,900 bucks and it came out in 1990 which is later than i thought because i thought roller games was off the air it was yeah it was okay so they had okay so they're like look at their options and roger sharp is talking about it's like oh do i get because i got two options do i go roller games or do i go american gladiators and he picked roller games to go after right and then by the time Steve Ritchie had the game complete the show was canceled off the air so steve was kind of pissed off about that. It's like, the show's not even on anymore. What the hell are we going to do with this? Bad attitude! Don't flip! Yeah, I used to own that game. Head for the ball! And I miss it, man. God, that's a great game, too. See, that's another good choice. You can get behind anything that has ads for Slice on it. There was a Flintstones for like $2,800 listed for like four days in Cheyenne. But it just looked like a stock picture. So like, okay, this has got to be a scam. But it's off there now. But it might not have been. I don't know. Curious how much the licensing was for that game with all the ads on there. For war games? Probably not. Well, because you had Slice and Pepsi. Okay, right there, there's your, you know, like, wow, like this didn't age well. Slice, right? I'm just making money back to be honest Yeah yeah Great game though man I mean you know that I mean we talked about that Like shout out to Practical Steve Practical Steve shout out Because he has that game or had that game For a long time he loves it too Because he's a big Steve Ritchie fan We're talking about it one night And it's like yeah This should have been if you think Just look at the layout and take All the artwork and everything else away just look at the layout, that should have been high speed too. No, I mean, if you look at that game, right, and actually I think if you look at any of Richie's system 11s, they're all genius. Yes. You know, F-14 Tomcat I think is one of those games that, you know, I don't think, I mean, I know people like it, but I don't think people understand that F-14 Tomcat sold almost as many units as Adam's family. It did. It was like 17 or 18,000 sales. Yeah, yeah, that game's a monster in sales. It was huge, and it was everywhere, you know. You know, you saw, I mean, I know Roller Games wasn't quite as big, but you saw a lot of Roller Games out there. You know, you see a lot of those machines that people were just like, you know, I mean, again, you couldn't give those suckers away in the DMD era because they were just so dirt common. Pinbots and high speeds and that stuff. You know, there were always those rarer System 11s, your Elviras and whatnot, kind of a little bit more desirable. But, man, you know, people forget that, like, Steve Ritchie was on a freaking hot streak. And then Lawler came in, right? You know, Lawler came in and he did – he only did one System 11, right? It was just Banzai. No, because he did Whirlwind. And Earthshaker. And Earthshaker. He did a few big titles as well. And those games were just freaking everywhere. And then, you know, yeah, WPC came along and DMD came along and the whole world changed. But, yeah, some of those like late because they were the last of the alphanumeric displays. So nobody cared about the alphanumeric display. They had to put all of the genius into the play field. And, man, that was Steve Ritchie's jam. Don't flip flip seems stupid, but it was cool as heck at the time. Well, the magnet was cool. You know, I just stopped on a dime. This is so cool. I was looking. Yeah, exactly. I was looking on pin side and they had F-14 listed at 3,000 units. I'm like, that's not right. So I had to go over to Internet Pinball Database. 14,502 units confirmed. Whoa. So I was good. I was going to mention F-14 too. It was a toss up between high speed and F-14. That's the power of a theme because you know how many roller games they made? Yeah. 5,000. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I thought they made even more F-14s. I thought they made a ton of F-14s. I mean, not that 14,000 is not a ton of games. Right. So I'm looking for high speed now. I forget how many they made of that. A lot. Yeah. Maybe 13. I think they made more of those than they made F-14s. so high speed was was a ginormous hit oh you know what yeah firepower firepower they made 17,410 yeah they made a ton of those i knew there was like some game that he made that was like you know besides terminator which i think also made like just a bajillion but it was like right up there in like that you know more than 15,000 just about in the adams families okay so yeah uh High speed, 17,080 units. Wow. Not funny. Those are two titles that were not licensed, and the other one was. Right. And there were more units made. Isn't that funny? Well, that's back in the days when you could still make a really hot game without a lot. I mean, and F-14 Tomcat. You know the story about that? He wanted to call... I forget who he was talking to. The artist, I think. He was like, oh, yeah. We should call it F-111 Starfighter He's like no man And then he comes back like the following He goes I just saw a Top Gun F-14 Tomcat it is There you go And that was it And it was pretty much Yeah it pretty much was Top Gun For the most part even the plot of the game is Pretty similar Except you don't Knock off that many enemies But yeah it was cool so okay by comparison black knight 2000 which i thought there was more of these 5703 units approximate so you know wow so yeah that's a great that's another great one yeah well now they're all coming to me well and that were and that was all of uh Steve Ritchie's uh system one so he did four um and then uh well you look at okay yeah he did four and uh And then Lawler did three, technically, because Funhaus is actually a WPC, even though it's still alphanumeric. Right. Now, that same year, we round out with Pinbot, and that's another one of the high numbers. I'm pulling that up right now. So, Spencer, you were mentioning Roger Sharp, right? Yeah, he came to Reno. No, bastard. That's what I had to tell you. Yes, they had the film festival. It was called the Cordillera International Film Festival that took place July 27th through the 31st. And Roger Sharp was here showcasing Pinball, The Man Who Saved the Game. I think that's what it's called. Yeah. It's a great film. It really is. It's a fantastic film. Not only is it a fantastic film to us, but it won the best film of the festival. Nice. So that is pretty cool. Putting icing on the cake, he went and played pinball with Jim Martin and other people in the Reno area at Playfield 76. Yeah, I saw that posted. That was awesome. That is so cool. I was not here for that because I was in Fayetteville. And you would have been there. If you had been home, you would have been invited. Yeah, you would have been there. I would have been there. Hansman was invited, he posted about it Somebody's like, oh, where do I go? Oh, I think it was Alex or something I forget, somebody They're like, dude, even I can't invite anybody You know Yeah, no, that's awesome It went till midnight too So they played a lot of pinball Playing pinball with the godfather That was so cool I was really happy for Jim Yeah, I got to play a couple of games with Roger I'm like, no way, that is awesome, the legend How fitting, right? I mean, Playfield 76, that's when pinball became legal for New York. Yeah, yeah, exactly. On his birthday, August 1st. Yep, exactly. It's definitely true what you say, by the way. Yeah. Roger Sharp got to play games with the legend. Yep. Jim Martin. Jim Martin. Jim Martin, the Reno. Good for Jim, man. Good for Jim. Yep. Yep, it's awesome. That's awesome, and that's a really good way just to take us out of the show. Yeah, it would have been cool to have gotten to go there Thanks for screwing it up for us, Mark Yeah, Mark I'm sorry, I would have told you But I didn't even know about it I actually knew about it Because Joe had posted about it Oh, really? Yeah And so I was just like, oh man What a day not to be in Reno And I didn't realize that it was like, you know More of a private engagement I was like, I know enough people in Reno I could have scammed my way in You could have got in We would have got you in Hey, we're press, man We're media Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. They have to let us in. We're the media. Roger would have been like, yeah. Yeah. We're the pinball media. They have to let us in. Yep. Podunk podcasts are my jam. Yeah. What were the spinners like? Get the hell out of here. They were like, the spinner is lit. That sounds amazing. I love spinners. No doubt, right? We picked a good name. So let's, you guys got anything else before we Wind up the show? Oh man, I'm ready to take a nap Let's take it home Let's take it home because yeah, I gotta I gotta get up early So it's getting late So Shout out some thank yous to my lovely family For putting up with all my nonsense You know And loving pinball You know To you guys, man Who set aside, you know, time from your very busy schedules and so we can make this show and entertain people for free. To all our listeners. There you go. To all our listeners, man. Who waited all summer patiently. They've been very great, very patient for us to come out with a new episode. So, Mark, you got to start doing editing tomorrow. You'll probably hear lightning. I tried to click the mute button. I missed it the first time. we had a little lightning storm come through. Oh, okay. I didn't hear it on live. I didn't see it registered, but I saw it flash through the basement window in the office. You know, Mark, this is a great opportunity for some fun with editing. Yes. There you go. Yeah. Like a big zap sound and then Mickey would be like, man, we told him he should have taken off his headphones. It's alive! Yeah. We've had rain almost every day for like the last 10 days. It was 105 degrees here today. It was like 72 here today. What the hell is going on in Wyoming? Everything is still green. We're getting rain almost daily. Last week it was like low 80s and all this week it's like low to mid 70s. Yeah, so we're actually going to go raft and we had planned to go rafting on the river this weekend. Like guys, it's not really hot enough. Let's just go do other stuff. So like, okay, And we'll go fishing and we'll go to the range and just putter around. So that's what we did. Anyway, that's my shout-outs and thank yous to everybody. Thank you for everybody who keeps listening and posting on our Facebook page. Mark, what do you got? Well, shout-out to my brother for having a fantastic time. Also my brother-in-law, sister-in-law in Milwaukee. It was really a great time spending time with family. And thanks, Dan, for taking me out. I mean, my brother, Dan, thanks for making time to get my pinball fix. I know that's sometimes hard to juggle around different things when you want to do as much as you can with a short visit. But that was really awesome. Shout out to you guys for being patient with me being gone and postponing our show for a month. Sometimes we get really busy in the summer and now we're making up for it. So thanks, you guys, for understanding. and thanks to all the listeners that are listening and keeping our show going. All right, Dan, what you got? You know, I want to just kind of start off with like the usual, you know, the usual usuals, right? You know, CCPL and all the coordinators, all the guys who are running the show, you know, I just, you know, you guys have been shouted out so many times that, you know, it's getting a little bit ridiculous. You guys, of course, for showing up and to yak about pinball for a couple hours. All the listeners, especially those who are interacting with us on Facebook, please, please, please, we're really trying to build a presence. Tell your friends if they like pinball and they want to listen to three guys who are probably not the jerkiest guys in pinball who want to talk about the positive sides of pinball and the esoteric sides of pinball and the interesting sides of pinball rather than just complaining about how they don't like things, you know, but let people know, you know, pinball is a positive thing. It's, it's for positive people. We're not always the most positive, you know, I had some, some things to say today, but I hope that they came from a, uh, hopefully they come off like realism and not like, like bitterness. So, you know, let, let your people know that, you know, we're, we're trying to, to spread the good word of pinball and not, not the bad word, you know, and whether that gets us the reaction that we want or not, you know, uh, Just a big thanks to everyone who keeps pinball positive, something that we want to do, not something that causes us stress and consternation and disappointment. And a big thanks to our friend Kaneda, who will not listen to this podcast because it's over an hour. So he's not going to hear my wonderful heartfelt thank you. No doubt. So that's awesome, man. All right, man. I'm going to take us out, play pinball. Keep America Strong.