coming at you out of st charles illinois the special when lit pinball podcast starts now hey what's going on pinball land episode 51 of the special when lit pinball podcast is on the air what's going on bill not much mr ken how about you when we take a look at the pinball news it's uh It's a little bit of a lull right now. Not too much happening in pinball. Calm before the storm, hopefully. Hopefully we see some new things coming up soon. I think when we get the podcast rolling, we're usually pretty happy to discuss any type of news for the most part. But right now there's nothing happening. In your opinion, is this like a time where we kind of take a little bit of a break, maybe step away from the mics for a week or two? Or do we just keep rolling? You know, would a week or two be nice? I'm sure. But I don't think the people that listen would appreciate that. Maybe they would. Maybe they would be like, you know what? You guys need to take a week or two off. Hey, feel free to send us a message if we should take a week off. Yeah, we'll set up a poll. Because you know what happens when there's not news to talk about? Yeah, we talk about stuff that we think is relevant in pinball, but not really relevant as far as news. Yeah, just talk about things that have happened as of late. And you had something that kind of came up recently that you wanted to discuss, right? A little bit? Dun-dun-dun. So something I saw over the weekend was a guy posted in Pinball Enthusiasts, or one of the groups that I'm a part of. That's a Facebook group. That's a Facebook group, yeah. Sorry, thank you for clarifying that. Hey, no worries. Hey, that's why I get paid the big bucks, Bill. Absolutely. Right. And it wouldn't be a podcast if I didn't cut you off several times. This is true, but if I start drinking, it could go the opposite way, though. That's true, too. So then he posted saying that he had made a deal on a game, and then not too long after, somebody else had snuck in and pirated the game from him for a little more money. Pirated? What does that mean? Pirated, in my eyes, means you made a deal. You had a commitment to purchase. Money was agreed upon, and somebody came in and snaked the game from you. Oh, he got sniped, pirated. Yeah, pirated. We're not talking about Pirates of the Caribbean. We're just talking about my idea of what a modern-day pinball pirate is. So this guy came in, a couple hundred bucks more, whatever it was, sold the game from under him after they had already made a deal, and the pinball pirate proceeded to put it on pin side or whatever it was a day later for double whatever he purchased it for. Oh, so then he was flipping it. Yes. So pinball flipper pirate. Right. Yeah. You said earlier you considered him like he scallywagged it or something, right? Yeah. Yeah, the guy that sold it's a scallywag because you know what? I like that, man. In my opinion, I mean, think about this, dude. What kind of character do you have or integrity when you make a deal with somebody and you don't follow through on that promise? You know what, man? And I think this is probably if you've bought and sold pinball machines with any type of frequency or regularity over the last few years, I think this has happened to everybody. And I know it's happened to me where I thought I had a deal in place. And before I could get there to pick it up, even being the next day, that thing's already been gone because somebody outbid the offer that was agreed upon by the seller. And that's totally on the seller for the most part. I think where the difference is, is if I make a deal with somebody and I say, I'm going to give you $3,000 for this Judge Dredd, I'll be there in two weeks to pick it up. Now, if there's no deposit that's given to me, I don't expect that guy to hold that pin for two weeks and then potentially pass on other offers. Because something could happen on my end where I just don't show up. I could die. And this guy's like, well, man, I could have sold this game. I waited two weeks. I have nothing. But if you put money down or offer to put money down at that point and he doesn't take it, that's fine, too. Sure, sure. But you have an agreed-upon deal. You know, I mean, I sat on fishtails for like five or six weeks before the guy came up to get it. We didn't have any money exchanged or anything. We just had literally a promise. And his promises were very great in his description of the game itself. But nonetheless, you know, I believe in my integrity and holding to my word when I say that I'm going to do something. So people that pull that crap at least have the common decency if you're going to do something like that. say, hey, listen, I undervalued my game. I need a little more out of it because I know that it's worth more. I have an offer of $3,200. Can you match it at $3,200 or do a little better so I don't feel like I got screwed over? But be honest and transparent about it. No one's perfect in this world. But what you say is common decency gets somebody else upset because now they've created an auction style format for their game. So it's like, all right, so are you going to the highest bidder at that point? So if I say, all right, I'll give you $3,300, are you going to go back to the guy that originally offered 32 and say now it's at 34 now you're in an like an auction style format i think where you have to be just to your point man is have some integrity and make sure that you know your word is worth something oh yeah but you know what here there was a a predicament where there was a local guy selling a star trek next gen the one we're actually staring at uh joe s game what up joe and uh literally joe contacted him 10 days before said hey you know i'm looking to purchase your game because he had it set like 4,200. Guy's like, well, I'm accepting offers right now. And I'm like, what the F is this? Oh, hey. Hey. I didn't finish it off. What the frick? Family-friendly show, I thought. So out of curiosity, I sent a guy a message, and he says the same thing to me. So I'm like, forget this thing, whatever. So of course, like 10 days later, he reposts it. You stumbled on that. I know what's coming out. You got some- A little hostility and rage. See, you're talking about pirate stuff earlier. Now you're swearing like a pirate down here. Yeah, yeah. I like it. Let's get you some rum. Scallywag. Where's the Captain Morgan? Yeah, exactly. Let's go. So, yeah, you know, literally, and like 10 days later, he reposted it because he was moving the next day, and he posted it for like $3,800. And I'm like, Joe, dude, this guy looks like he hasn't had any hits on it. So everybody that came out to see it either didn't want it or saw something they didn't like. Well, I showed up because Joe was out of town, and I'm like, Joe, dude, you know, this thing has a cracked insert, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, dude, I think 33. Joe got it for 33. Yeah, right. I mean, what a great deal on the Star Trek next gen. And it was pretty damn clean. Yeah, I don't like the bidding between buyers and stuff like that. That's not really what I think is a great way of doing business. But if you're going to do that, at least be honest about it. Out here, if you come to an agreement over the phone or over text message or over email, it's in your best interest to get to that place immediately with cash on the glass. otherwise because it's so competitive here with with people that are you know some people are legitimately looking for pinball machines for their collections whereas there's such a high volume of flippers out in the chicagoland area and i imagine at this point nationwide internationally people are looking to flip games i don't have a problem with the flipper um i guess i have a problem with the ethics where if somebody that wants to flip a pinball machine knows that Hey, the guy that I'm trying to buy this ACDC Lucy from already has it sold for $4,200. I'm going to offer $4,300 and come pick it up before this guy can. That kind of, you know, I don't like that. But it is what it is, man. It's just the dirty inside and outside of pinball purchasing. It can suck. Oh, for sure. I just hate that stuff. You know, I mean, if you're going to be that way, you know what, whatever. That's the part that gives a bad name to a lot of people in this hobby or industry. Yeah. When you go back on your word, do you play games like that? I've kind of limited myself. When I get a machine now and it's going to be for sale, I think we've got a pretty nice little network of people that we can be like, hey, listen, I have this Stern Galaxy, and I'm going to get rid of it. I'll give anybody here first dibs in the group before I post it maybe for a little bit more to try to make a little bit of money. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of how I handle it. And then you know that you're selling to a friend. Now, some people prefer not to sell to a friend because if something goes wrong, you don't want to have any type of a friction within the relationship. But, I mean, friends are friends. You should be able to trust me that I'm not screwing you because if I was screwing you, you would see me on a weekly basis. It's not in my best interest to do that either. No, but you know what, though? Any time that – and I've purchased a game from you, you know, and we had an issue with the game and you, like, felt terrible. But I'm like, listen, for anyone that's just tuning in and doesn't know, the Baywatch that I bought from Ken was originally Ken's. And I bought it at, you know, a great price. and I think a month or two later the DMV went out and Ken's like, oh crap, dude, I didn't mean to screw you on $400 display, this, that, and the other. I'm like, dude, if it's broke, it's broke. But you didn't. No, I'm kidding. I'm glad that didn't come out before I sold it. But you didn't know that. I'm kidding, by the way. Oh, I know you are, but you didn't know that it was going to go. I mean, dude, these are all used cars. I mean, you can only state what you know as fact. Right. I mean, you can't tell what's going to go wrong next. And, dude, it turned out to be a very simple fix. so nothing wrong there and uh but you know i mean you go into it you know when you buy with uh people that you trust in the hobby that they're going to come with the best of intentions and disclose everything that they know is wrong with the machine yeah i think that's probably i think a lot of people battle themselves with how truthful they are we've had this conversation i think we are more so brutally honest or to a fault almost when describing machines but in our defense i don't want any surprises especially when we're shipping games out of state or something, you don't want a game to show up on the West Coast in Seattle and somebody be like, well, you didn't explain that there was a little bit of ghosting around this insert or something. That's just the worst thing. You never, never want to be in that situation. No, but you do a lot more shipping on pinball machines than I do. I would love for you to walk through for the listeners what you do just in case they don't have experience with that. Anybody that has experience, sorry. No. You know what? How do you protect yourself when you're shipping a $10,000 Elvira to Texas? So what I always will do is I will take as many pictures as I possibly can of that pinball machine at different angles with the machine on, with the inserts all lit up, and with the machine off. Because I think that you can find flaws in games with lights on and with lights off. So I might take 30 pictures of a play field with the lights on, 30 pictures of a play field with the lights off. Same thing with the cabinets, the head. I open up the, you know, the back glass area and I take pictures of all the boards, close-ups. open up the play field. I'm taking all the pictures underneath there. And then what I'll do is I'll upload it all to like an online, like a cloud storage, whether it be a Google Drive link or a Dropbox where that way they can just kind of pull in there and see everything easily instead of me texting cell phone pics that, you know, when you text a pic to somebody, a lot of times it gets compressed. You're not getting the quality of a photo that you're seeing on your phone that the user on the other end is getting something that's lesser quality. And a lot of times it's just not good enough to make a judgment call on a pinball machine. And then finally, I will go ahead and take an HD video, and I'll record in 4K on my phone, and I'll walk around the whole game, and I'll take gameplay footage so that you can see that the game's working. And at that point, I've covered all the bases that I can. Also, I've got my description as honest as I can, and I have never had an issue. And I've even seen you take video and pictures of the machine all wrapped up, covered in blankets, and you know... I do that too, because when STI picks up, STI is who I've normally used as far as like buyers are always arranging the shipping as a seller. It's not my responsibility to arrange shipping to your residents. And yeah absolutely I will show them wrapping the game up I want to take the latest pictures and video of that game before it gets in somebody else hands So there never a discrepancy I don want to be accused of taking pictures that were older or outdated And I will take pictures of them wrapping that up, loading the truck. And then when it's gone, it's like you've got literally a diary of from the point you started talking to me all the way through that game, got on the truck to go to wherever you live. You've got it all documented in photos. So, I mean, that's what I've always done. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, one of the best pictures that I've seen you post or seen when you've shipped a game like this is literally the game on the back of the truck going onto the truck. Yeah. Dude, my hands are clean. You know, right. This is you know, I put in the best faith that I could to make sure that you got that machine the way that I described it and everything else over described it. And, you know, if there's now an issue, you have pictures to compare when you get it to when it left here. Yeah. I mean, it's you cover all your bases. Be honest. And more times than not, you're not going to have an issue. But if something does come up, at least, I mean, you can refer back to the tedious effort of photos and video to confirm that you kind of had that listed as best as possible. I mean, that's just how I am. The guy from STI could have another scared stiff on the truck, man, and swap it out for the wrong one. Could you imagine? It's like, hey, this is a routed scared stiff. Well, not that there's anything wrong with a routed scared stiff. I miss scared stiff, man. Yeah, dude. I think it's time for you to get another one. Yeah, that would be number three. The problem with Scared Stiff is that they don't come up very often, and when they do, they're still pretty high, man. If you really think of the 80s, 90s Bally Williams stuff, still holding strong with value. Hey, if you got, you know, like 400 or 500 hours to spare, you could always build one like Wally did. No, I don't have 400 or 500 hours, and I think Wally ended up spending more building that. It was like 700 or 7,500. Okay, so he's probably right at... For a... Dude, okay, that... Well, that's going to be brand new looking. It's absolutely brand new. But tell me that that machine is not worth $10,500 the way that it's set. Yeah, it could be. No balls ever played on that play field, machinery, cabinet, nothing. Well, he's your guy. We've got to get him on the show to talk about a little step-by-step process and what it takes to take an NBA fast break. And is it a fast break he's using, an NBA fast break? He started. So that was originally what he started doing is taking NBA fast breaks and converting them to, like, Medieval Madnesses and everything else. Right, right, right. On this Scared Stiff, though, he wanted to use as many new parts as he possibly could. So that's why he wanted the new cabinet, new play field. I mean, honestly, I think 90% of that was all brand new, if not 95%. This guy is so in-depth with this that he actually builds his own wiring harnesses for these machines. Oh, my gosh. It just sounds like everything. It's my worst nightmare. All of it. Dude, he's my idol, man. And literally one day I want to, sooner or later, I would like to build a game and build a wiring harness for it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? Let's have him on the show at some point. I met him at, where did I meet him? Texas. Yeah, Texas, TPF. Yeah. And he's a local guy. Yeah, he lives an hour in here. We met him down in Texas. Maybe we go do a remote show and check out his place, see what's going on. We'll work it out. So if you remember, we've been looking for the special willet correspondents to cover the manufacturers. And we have our first correspondent on board. It is Dr. John. He's out of Australia, and he's going to be covering Spooky Pinball. I wanted to go ahead and play his first contribution to the Special Elite Pinball Podcast. Getting the news from around the industry in this week's Industry Buzz. Spooky Pinball. Hi there, Dr. John over in Australia. I've been given the honor of being able to report on the latest goings-on in Spooky Pinball. Of course, Spooky currently is all about Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle, which is in the process of being built and shipped. I asked Charlie about how they're progressing with the build at the moment. So Charlie, from the horse's mouth, can you let us know what you're up to with the Alice Cooper shipping? All the Alice Coopers going to Australia are now sitting in the warehouse with the exception, I think, of one or two, and they're all getting ready to go in the container here real fast. So everybody in Australia will be getting their games real quick. Jeffrey Starr up here in the States just got his Alice Cooper. He was very excited about that. and yeah, we're, I believe, over 100 out the door so far. Nice. I saw someone else got there, Alice Cooper, that you may have dropped off or updated the code. Which was that? Oh, Alice Cooper. Yeah, oh yeah. Talk about that guy. Yeah, he was so happy with his game, he let us stay with him and took us to the Cheesecake Factory. That's how cool he is. It's a tough life you lead, Charlie. Thanks for chatting and I'll catch up with you probably next week. Sure, that was the best minute of my life. That's what she said. Ha ha ha. Thanks, Mike. So there you have it. 100 Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castles have been built, including the Australian contingent, which are on their way over from next week. So 100 down, 400 to go. Next week I think I might chat to Bowen a bit about programming and then maybe Scott Denisey about the future titles. Thanks for listening. All right, Bill. So it sounds interesting. One, Spooky Pinball, they got 100 games out the door on Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle, and that's pretty impressive. Well, you know what? I just saw that post of the container getting loaded up to go to Australia, and it was actually leaving today. Yeah, so that was nice and refreshing to see. Look at Dr. John right on it, like up-to-the-minute news. Dr. John isn't playing, dude. He is on his stuff. He is. He's on his stuff. He's professional. He sounds great, and he's Australian. I mean, you can't go wrong if you're Australian. Dude, yeah. That is definitely a winner in my eyes. And then I think this is pretty cool, right? So Spooky Pinball, they make Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. Alice Cooper has an Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. And then Charlie and Bug go over to Alice Cooper's place, update his code on his Alice Cooper. And Alice Cooper's like, yeah, let's go get some Cheesecake Factory. Nice. Hey, you can't go wrong there. That's pretty cool, right? I like it. So, hey, Dr. John, thanks for the contribution. And we are still looking for other manufacturers to be covered. And, again, you don't have to go out and interview these guys. Dr. John's got a little bit of a relationship with the guys over at Spooky. so he's got a little inside access, which we can appreciate. But we just need somebody to go ahead and cover the week at Stern or the week at American Pinball. So let's have some other people step up to the plate here, and we'll get you on the show. Absolutely. And you know what? I really do hope for a lot of good things coming out of Spooky, man. I mean, I think that as we look at the progression of what they've done, it's really starting to grow and looking forward into the future if they keep growing at the rate that they are with how they've improved our playfields, how the ball flows, and, you know, code. You know, I think that they could be a strong contender to make some really, really wicked stuff. I mean, they're making nice stuff now, but I can only see it getting a lot better. You know, I mean, they don't seem to set the bar and keep it there. They keep trying to raise it on themselves. So definitely looking forward to seeing what Spooky brings to the table in the future. Yeah, Spooky Pinball, their last episode was number 110, and they had Jack Guarnieri on. And it was interesting to hear those guys talk because Jack, the first time he was on that show was 100 months prior. And he was announcing that he was going to release Wizard of Oz. And now when you think about what's happened over the last 100 months, Charlie went into pinball manufacturing with Spooky. Jack's on his fifth game. A lot's happened over the last 100 months. So I would recommend if you're interested, check out the Spooky Pinball Podcast and listen to that interview. because it was fun to hear those guys, how they started working together and where they are now. And it was just, it was all in all a pretty good interview, man. I liked it. Hey, so we had another submission, a surprise submission by somebody that is a friend of the show and it got in just past the time when we uploaded. So it might've been a little bit more pertinent time-wise to play this last week, but I certainly wanted to go ahead and play this this week. Here you go, Bill. Hey, Ken Cromwell and Bill Webb, this one's for you. Happy birthday special when lit I heard that it's your 50th Hey, it looks like you're a hit Your show is great It's not a pile of bad Keep the show going longer Let's play some Willy Wonka Happy 50th to you Happy birthday, Special One Lit! Yeah! Aw, man. See, now that, I love that. And that's friend of the show, Mr. Marc Silk, who's done a lot of work for us. Renowned. Yes. Professional voice actor, Marc Silk. And I wanted to take a couple minutes. One, so Mark did a couple things for us. When we did the holiday show, he did our voice work for that. Yep. And then when we did the Jersey Jack pinball making of Willy Wonka, he did intro and outro and outtakes for that. And, I mean, we've both spoken with Mark on several occasions for a long time. He's a big pinball guy. Big pinball guy, but just the most genuinely nice guy that, you know, just an awesome guy. You know, I'm sorry, words don't describe what a nice guy he is. So, I mean, the reason I like to bring Mark up is because he is a pinball guy, right? Yes. And if you take a look at this guy's resume, and you can jump on Wikipedia, it's Marc Silk. It's M-A-R-C-S-I-L-K. And just look at everything that he's accomplished. I mean, and I just pull it up right now. Star Wars Episode I, the Phantom Menace, the voice of Oxmo and Sil-unch, and I probably mispronounced that. Doctor Who. Scooby-Doo, voice of Scooby-Doo and Shaggy on the Cartoon Network and Boomerang Network in the UK. Danger Mouse. Bob the Builder. Voice of Bob the Builder in the United States original. I mean, it just keeps going on and on. If you think of things that he's just done recently for gaming. Two Point Hospital by Sega. It's the BAFTA nominated best British game of 2019. He did voiceover work in Black and White. That was a real popular computer game. And I'm skipping around. You are so skipping around. I mean, if you go through and read this, man, it is quite the list of accolades that he has been a part of. I mean, seriously, just an incredible list. He was the presenter of the Star Wars Symphony, and that's with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. I mean, he was presenter there. I mean, so he's a celebrity over in the U.K., and he's done a lot of work in the United States. The thing I like about Mark is that when he does his voiceover work, he can go ahead. I mean, he's from Britain, right, so he's got a British accent, but he can Americanize his accent if he wants to. He can switch it around. This guy needs to be in pinball, whether it be in some type of creative project, because he knows how to dissect the sound package. I want to have Mark on the show and walk us through from somebody with a professionally tuned ear what he would approach a sound package with. Because I've had conversations with him on this off the air, and it fascinates me. He's made me aware of things that I never was aware of before, and it's changed the way that I've looked at sound packages for music. I'd love to have his voice talents in a pinball machine And the guy's a pinballer So again, we overuse the word passion Sometimes he's passionate about playing pinball You get somebody that's got some creative direction And can contribute that passionate with pinball Please if somebody looking for somebody And it works out for Mark a busy guy right oh yeah it got to be the right situation for him i would absolutely recommend checking him out Marc Silk absolutely man i mean especially with uh his list of accolades i mean there's stuff that he's helped us with on the show that have definitely made a difference in our uh oh absolutely yeah yeah i mean and that was one of the first things that we did right like we we get the podcast going we buy these microphones and we have this uh mixer all this high-end crap if you look at a mixer at least when when i looked at a mixer for the first time and there's like 970 knobs and you're just like are you serious man like what am i going to do with any of this and and i i pinged mark took a picture he's like well you you want to be at the you and i'm like the you what what the hell is the you and he's like walking me through everything and then we we made some adjustments and yeah i owe a lot of the uh the fine tuning of our audio quality to mark and in his assistance so yeah i'll never forget that was the first time you really uh we talked about, Mark, was when you sent him pictures of what all the settings were, and he helped adjust that and make our sound better. So we really owe Mark and everyone that listens, hopefully you appreciate Mark for helping us be better at what we bring to you. Yeah, so Mark, friend of the show, friend of pinball, and nothing would make me happy. You know what he's doing right now? And he was talking to me, he just picked up a Flintstones in the UK. Now he's doing a custom remix with a pin sound with Flintstones, because guess what? He does the voices of Fred and Barney. So he was already telling me that he had some kids over, and he did Barney voiceovers for the kids' names instead of saying Player 1 or Player 2, and the kids were all stoked because of their names in the pinball machine. I mean, how cool is that? I want to have... I'm going to have to buy a Flintstones now so that I can get a Marc Silk Pinsound Flintstones package before he gets too famous in pinball where he doesn't want to deal with it anymore. He's already famous as it is with all of his voice acting, but in pinball... Pinball's his hobby. Yeah, pinball's his hobby, but it's his passion too i i know that he would be solid if he was working in pinball you know on the side uh because he just wants to do it he wants to get involved and i want to see him involved so this is our problem do we need to do our homebrew so he can do the call outs man yeah well we gotta get the homebrew up and going we have no time for any i don't even have time for home much less a homebrew right now yeah no kidding yeah so we've got some news to announce uh a little bit later here in the show but before we do that bill are you ready to play a little drain it or save it i love draining stuff so let's do it It's time for this week's edition of Drain It or Save It. Drain It or Save It is brought to you by Lermods.com, offering custom quality playfield mods and lighting for your pinball machine. L-E-R-M-O-D-S. Visit Lermods.com today. So the first item we have, for those of you that aren't familiar with the segment, we bring up three topics. Myself and Bill, we either drain it if we don't agree with the subject matter, or we save it if it's something that we do agree with or something that we support. And the first item we're going to discuss today is replacing cabinet decals, pinball cabinet decals, due to wrinkling in the decals in the leg area. Why don't you describe what's going on with wrinkling where the legs are at? So when they switched from how they were doing the decals to the more modern-day stuff, what would happen is you put the leg on without a protector there, without the metal corners, to protect the cabinet from wrinkling. Which just keeps the leg off the decal from making a direct contact. So you'd tighten the snot out of these legs onto the cabinet, and it would start wrinkling the decal. So unlike your 2011, 2012s, that kind of stern, it was more common to see that. The Transformers that I have has that same issue. The one that's still from the factory. So the one that I'm building has the leg protectors, and that's fine. But, so, you know, I think to answer your question on the save it or drain it. Yeah, so do you replace all the cabinet decals because you've got some wrinkling in the leg area? Drain it or save it? If it's a player condition, drain it. Okay, so you're going to drain it. Yeah, you know what, it's still going to happen unless you get goofy with it. So, you know, let somebody that really loves the game do it. And it's not because I'm not a stranger to replacing decals and stuff. No, no, no. You know, some things are going to happen. So, you know, I mean, that's my feelings. I don't know what your thoughts are. No, I'm going to drain it, too, because I would never buy a game that had wrinkling leg decals. I would never be in that position, ever. Ever. All right, so let's ask you this. If you were going to buy a Transformers and the legs were wrinkled, but they had another set of decals with it, would you then purchase a new? No, no, no. Or you're out on re-decaling a game. Yeah, that's, you know, I can re-decal a game. My livelihood is vinyl decals, so application of vinyl doesn't fear me or doesn't deter me. But it's just not worth the effort, man. I'll just go find out. I mean, there's a little bit of an undertaking if you're going to be doing cabinet decals, taking everything off, moving it outside, especially where I'm at, and then having to get everything off, make sure there's not any debris between the decal and your substrate and hoping for the best. I'm just going to sell the game and look for something else. You know what? It's just not worth it to me. Okay. All right. Yeah. Instead of me spending $150, $200, I'm just going to buy a whole new game. If it was an ACDC Lucy that had some wrinkling going on, not that I think that's prevalent on that game. Guess what, dude? I'm buying it. Yeah. Don't care. Boy, and a lot of times you can kind of trim out that decal and possibly kind of spread the rest in there and put some protectors on there. So there are different options, but I'm going to drain it as it stands. I'm not replacing all the decals for some wrinkling. Second, keeping the overhead lighting on in your game room while playing pinball. And that is you go downstairs, you go in your game room, do you play with the lights on? Do you play with the lights off? Now, I'm assuming you're talking about direct lighting as in like can lights above your pinball machines. Absolutely. Overhead lighting, drain it or save it in your pinball room while you're playing. I'm going to drain direct overhead lighting. Yep, me too. Me too. Well, a lot of people like to keep the overhead lighting on because they feel that it illuminates their play field. But you end up getting some glare unless you go ahead and maybe get some HD glass or PDI glass or Invisiglass. But you still have that hand light over there. I'm going to drain that too, man. I want to see the pinball machine. I love playing in the dark. That's just how I am. I like to see light shows, and overhead lighting just kind of takes away from that for me. All right, so now I'm going to have to dive into this a little bit. Yeah. So at my house, we have a row of pinball machines, and then above the pinball machines, there's crown molding that's mounted like two and a half inches down from the ceiling with rope lighting behind it. So you have indirect lighting, so you can still see where your drink's at in the basement, but it really does not affect the game. No. So how does that? No, well, that's ambient lighting. That's not direct overhead lighting. That's a soft light on yours that goes up towards the ceiling before it does anything else. It's not shining down on your game. I like the ambient lighting in your basement, actually. So ambient lighting is okay. Ambient lighting is fine. Direct lighting sucks. Yeah, cam lighting is shining down or fluorescent lightings or lamps shining down on your game. It's not for me. Now, pin stadiums, people are like, well, you're illuminating the game. No, no, no, but you can take a pin stadium kit and you can dial that in to the perfect settings for brightness so that you're not overdoing it. So, yeah, I'm going to drain it too. Man, we spent a little bit of time on that one. My fault. Lastly, scattering pins throughout your game room instead of setting them up in one row. And that means maybe you've got a nice 20 by 20 foot room and you've got six pinball machines. Do you put them all on one wall or do you put them all in the corner? So do you drain it or save it, scattering your games versus lining them up? Drain it. I like rows. Rows are nice. Rows are uniform. Yeah. You know what? If you would have asked me this six months ago, I would have also drained it. But I'm going to save it now because what I'm starting to see some pictures of game rooms with some games that are kind of tastefully scattered throughout the room. And it breaks up that monotony of having all games in one row. And the other thing that I like is because I'm so OCD about making sure that as the best I can, depending on manufacturer, that all the lockdown bars kind of line up and all the heads line up. nowadays you know you've got an oktoberfest that has a different looking head or you've got an older game that's got a higher lockdown bar it's almost impossible yeah class 18 12 it's like totally different or baywatch so yeah so i'm kind of enjoying uh being able to have the opportunity to kind of space things out maybe even theme some different corners where a pinball machine might be lying so i'm gonna save save that scattering the games and i well the one thing about rose that i like is like mine is uh typically when you know things are not crazy they are uh chronological order so from whirlwind to wizard of oz um that that's how i i like my games by year yeah no and that's cool i like how you had that set up and then you know nothing looks more impressive than a row of pins though i i will say that i love seeing a row but i don't mind scattering up so you know to kind of sum it all up here drain it or save it brought to you by lermods.com Replacing cabinet decals due to wrinkling, we are both going to drain that. And then we had keeping overhead lighting on in your game room, we are both draining that. And then scattering pins versus displaying them in a typical row-like fashion, Bill is going to drain it, and I'm going to save it. Yeah, we'll have to do a picture of my indirect lighting, too, just so people can see what we're talking about. No, it's cool. I like how you have that set up. But that's going to be drain it or save it. All right, thanks, Robin Kim from Lear Mods. I just got a, as we're recording here, I just got a Facebook message from our buddy Rorden Osborne from Australia. We've got, you know what? Australia is becoming the place for us to kind of have our buddies, man. I'm digging it. He says, congratulations on getting the new game stream from Zach. That is brilliant. For those in Australia on the East Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, that'll be 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Looking forward to the first one next Tuesday in Australia. May try to sneak in some of the stream while he's at work if he's not on the road. And for those of you that might be wondering, thank you, Rardon. I appreciate that, number one. I love when you check in. Rardon! For those of you that are wondering what he's talking about, real quick, I wanted to touch on this because I think it's important. Zach and Nicole, many, from Flip N Out Pinball, they're starting a streaming channel under their Flip N Out Pinball brand. And the idea behind the streaming channel is to literally have the newest games as they're released streamed so that people can get a better idea about the game as it's still brand new and it's still hot. So, I mean, I think that's a pretty cool idea. It's like you've got brand new games coming out. Now, Zach had talked to us, and he's like, I really need to find somebody that can do the streaming because I don't have the time to do all the streaming by myself. But I need to find somebody that knows how to stream, that has streamed before, that can hold a conversation, has some personality. And he's like, do you know anybody like that? You think it'd be hard for me to find somebody? I mean, we check most except for personality. But, you know, we're going to try. We're working on the personalities. Yeah. But, you know, we talked and I was like, this is a pretty cool opportunity for somebody, Bill, because you're going to literally get the newest games at no charge to stream. And then when the next new game comes out, that new game that you were streaming gets taken away and replaced with the next new game. And I said, it sounds fun, you know, and you're like, yeah, you're what did you say? You're like, what kind of like a dream come true, man. You get to play a game and not even have to go through the hassle of selling it. But, you know, I mean, for us, it's playing the new game, but being able to stream a brand new game and give us our thoughts and opinions on that game. Right. But before that, I mean, we were still trying to figure out what would make sense. And you're like, yeah, that's something that we could probably do. Oh, yeah. Well, we're local, too. So, I mean, getting the games isn't hard. And for some of the things that we want to set up this really lends itself well to some of the things that we would like to do with these games Right So then you know when I went back with Zach and I was like you know we would probably be interested in doing something like that instead of helping you find somebody else And Zach's like, man, that that could actually work really, really well. So long story short, special when lit pinball podcast, myself, Ken and Bill, we're going to be streaming under the flipping out pinball channel once to twice a week, Mondays for sure, from like 8 o'clock Central Time, it's about 10, and we're going to have our podcast mics open like we've done on our stream channel, and we're just going to be playing the new games that Flip N Out Pinball allows us to stream in the Special Inlet Pinball Podcast Studios. We will still have our Twitch stream channel because what will happen with that is we're going to use that for company panel streams where we can get a whole team of people that worked on a pin to come in and play their games. So both channels will exist, but you will see us weekly at least on that flipping out pinball and i wanted to thank uh zach and nicole for you know asking us to do it absolutely thank you zach and nicole uh appreciate it very much and uh glad to be part of the the team this is what i think is cool because i mean we we're such big pinball guys right and we're we're pinball enthusiasts we love playing pinball and it's just it's not it's not easy to get your hands on the new stuff all the time So, yeah, I'm absolutely thrilled to be doing this and look forward to doing this. So, Zach, last week, he's like, while I had him on the line saying that we'd like to do it, he's like, well, why don't you run over to American Pinball and pick up an Oktoberfest and bring it back? So, like, I'm driving the American Pinball in Streamwood. It's about 25 minutes from the house. And I'm picking up a brand new Oktoberfest, new in box, bringing it back and unboxing it here. And we're going to get ready to stream it on Monday. and this is something that happened that I haven't even told you yet, but I reached out to Josh Kugler at American Pinball and I reached out to Joe Belser at American Pinball and I said, hey, we're going to be streaming this under Flip N Out Pinball. Would you guys have any interest in coming by and maybe streaming with us and getting on the mics and answering questions in real time with the viewers? And I think it would be real fun. And Josh said, yeah, I think I can make that work. So Josh will probably be here Monday. and he said, I'm going to get with Joe Balcer and see if he can't make it out. So if everything goes as planned, we'll absolutely have at least Josh Kugler, who coded the game, and potentially we will have Joe Balcer, who designed the game, on stream with us on Monday night to kind of kick this Flip N Out Pinball stream off. Absolutely. That sounds like a great time. Yeah, so you can go to Twitch to Flip N Out Pinball and search there. Follow the channel if you can. anytime that we go live or if Zach's streaming on his end. You'll get notifications. You'll get pinged. You'll know where it's at. And then go to FlippinOutPinball.com and check out what's going on over there. So it's going to be fun. It's going to be exciting. And, you know, please consider joining us and hanging out. You know how our streams are. They're pretty laid back. And grab your favorite beverage or two or three or four or four, and we'll see where that goes. So thank you, guys. I wanted to take a minute, a quick congratulations. If you remember, when we were in Texas at TPF, we were at the Indigo Hotel, and there were a couple guys there from Minnesota. And it was Michael and Wes. And they were cool guys, and they were talking about, hey, we're helping. We're opening up this barcade that's going to be in Minnesota and Duluth. And we're like, hey, you know what? We hear these stories all the time. It's like if it ever happens, let us know. We'd like to help promote it if possible. And guess what? Well, it came true, didn't it? Yeah. We got a message. Bill and Ken, first thing, thanks for the shout-out and the re-shout-out because we had a name correction that we had to make there on one of those guys. I called Wes Ashton, I think. Right, right, right. It was a long weekend. My bad. He said, also, you guys had me going on your April Fool's joke for about five minutes, and I realized the date well played, guys. So today our soft opening is going on. We're still on track for Cinco de Mayo. So officially opening Sunday, we're starting with 15 pinball machines and nine or ten arcade games. will be open 11 a.m. to midnight. It's in the Craft District of Duluth, Minnesota. And he just said that he appreciates us being advocates of pinball. The name of the bar is, and you're going to like this, Bill. Oh, I think I know what it is. Do you know what it is? I'm pretty sure I do. It's Taco Arcada in Duluth, Minnesota. So they've got 15 games on the floor right now. Police Force, World Cup Soccer, Big Guns, Flintstones, Strength Science, Comet, Hurricane, Fishtails, Hardbody, Spares, and Strikes, Make that strikes and spares. Fire, Pinbot, Teed Off, Dale Jr., Surfing Safari, et cetera. Now, they also have a plethora of games that they are selling that are not going into that. So if you want, maybe we can post a little classified ad for those guys. Yeah. But they're going to be serving Mexican beer and authentic tacos open 11 a.m. to midnight, man. You know what? That is my kind of place. When we were talking about this, when we were down at TPF, I'm like, damn, man, I wish we lived closer to that. I know. And, you know, here's the thing, you know, besides all the effort that they had to put in to get all these games ready, right? And, you know, we spent some time talking about this, and they were really just, you know, taking a break, going to TPF. But, I mean, they'd really been, you know, busting their butts to try and make this happen because they wanted to open on Cinco de Mayo. And for how many times in this hobby we hear, oh, two weeks or, you know, next week or whatever. Two weeks. And they actually fell through on what they had attempted to. attempted to hit their goal, and they hit that goal. So you know what? I mean, that's like a double hats off on top of the Mexican food and pinball. We need to stop out. There's a pretty big pinball scene in the state of Minnesota in general. I'd love to go out and check and see what's going on. But, hey, you know what, guys? Good luck. Keep us posted. If anybody else is listening and you guys are opening up something that's going to add to the pinball community, feel free to reach out to us. Happy to kind of go ahead and promote and bring people your way. Love to support the pinball people that are making it happen. So absolutely, absolutely. Bill, before we end the show here, you have a little bit of a whirlwind update or what's been going on with you in general? What's been going on? So let me think here. Literally, I'm still waiting for the ramp flap and waiting to hear back from Chris Royalty at Hot Rod Arcades getting some stuff chromed. Oh, yeah, that's right. Cool. And other than that, dude, I'm just waiting. You know, everything else is taken care of. You know, I take that back. I've got four stickers that I have to put on drop targets. Other than that, dude, all of the gremlins are dealt with. Nice. Everything that I needed to get done is done. The trans lights were placed. I mean, it's literally ready to go minus those couple of things. That's huge. So you are literally at the finish line. Well, yeah. I played a game on Saturday without the ramps. Obviously, it was very generic. And I put the first dimple in the play field. So I was like, all right, job well done. Hey, you've christened it. It's broken in now. Yeah, not the first little dent. Now my daughter, when she drops balls on the play field, I won't care. Yeah, that's right, exactly. So all good. Perfect. Yeah, so other than that, I think that's about it. Oh, Walt bought a Demolition Man. Yeah, you got a Demo Man. Yeah, we let one go around October because it wasn't the one that I really, really wanted. It was definitely a player's condition, not a bad machine, just I wanted one that was a better example. Yeah, right. You were always pretty fond of it, and you always said, if I can find one that's nice, I'm going to grab it again. That was my biggest downfall. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy that game. It was just I feel like Ken's saying this. I couldn't look past the faults of the machine with the cabinet and other things going on with it that I couldn't just appreciate the game. Right. So bought a new. That's not a bad thing, Bill. That's a good thing. Yeah. That's a bad thing. It's for good. But our local buddy, Steve Beattie, some of you guys might know who we're talking about. Yeah, Steve. He's been on the show. He actually had it, so bought it from him. And a real clean example. Dude, boards are numbers matching, which is awesome. Clean cabinet. And when you say boards are number matching, for those that don't know what that means. All the serial numbers are, the Williams numbers are all the same. So it's the same board set that they came with almost 25 years ago. Right. When you look in the board set behind the translight of these pinball machines, they each have their own individual serial number, and they're all issued with linking or matching serial numbers. All five or six boards in there have that same number. What happens over time when a game gets routed or you start swapping parts, some of those boards get swapped into different games and the serial numbers don't match, which isn't a huge thing. But from a collector standpoint, it's nice to have everything original in that game and know that it didn't have to under – because they're a huge undertaking as far as swapping boards. So I like to see that. Yeah, and it was from a local guy, I guess. And so it sat in the same home for like 15 years or something like that. So it's nice to know that it didn't have a hard life the last 15 years. I agree. And it should clean up real well. Only 600 plays in the last 29 years. Yeah, exactly. No, but you think about that, dude. I mean, a majority of these machines get played after you have them for a couple months. Yeah, agreed. Holidays and stuff like that. Occasional here and there use, but nothing crazy. So, yeah, really looking forward to cleaning that up and bringing that back to life and throwing it in the row. Awesome, man. I actually connected with Brian Holderman today, as a matter of fact, Because if you guys remember, I'm re-theming an old Stern Meteor, and we're going to make a space-themed pin with Brian's kind of stylistic approach to artwork. And he's finishing up some – or he's working on a couple big murals that are going to take him into the summertime. But he's already been working on characters and stuff for the pin, so we're going to be able to – I'm going to be able to see some of that at some point. And then he wants to start with the back glass to kind of get the overall feeling of the pinball machine, and then he wants to kind of evolve and progress from there. So I'm going to be excited to have the freaking back glass done first. How cool is that? That's awesome. We have to officially name this Ken's Meteor Corner. Oh, well, I don't know that the updates will be as frequent. I mean, Brian's so busy. No, but occasionally. Yeah. It is a project that you're working on. It is a project that I'm working on. It doesn't have to be every week. But if everything goes as planned, I'll be bringing it to Expo 2020. So October of 2020 is kind of my completion date. So looking forward to that. I want to take a few minutes and thank everybody that's joined us on episode number 51 of the Special One Lit Pinball Podcast. I want to thank our new correspondent for Spooky Pinball, Dr. John from Australia. Dr. John. I wanted to thank a great friend of the show, Marc Silk, and I hope to have him on sooner than later. and I wanted to take a special shout out to thank Robin Kim at Lermods.com You can go ahead, if you go to Lermods.com check out their mods for all these pins, Black Knight, Sword of Rage Munsters, whatever it takes and then you've got a coupon code that you can use, SWL10 SWL10 put that in a cart and get 10% off your order Can't go wrong there That's special and let's end I wanted to throw a shout out to a listener that I've been corresponding with back and forth for, I don't know, a couple months now. Midway Man in Germany. We talked about some whirlwind parts and some Ghostbuster stuff. And yeah, so good dude. Just wanted to throw a shout out to him. Awesome, man. So I think that's about it, though. I mean, it sounds like that's episode 51. That's it? Anything to add on that, Bill? No, 51 in the can for Bill Webb. I am Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.