Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 109 – Dr Who In The House Of Horrors

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 43m·analyzed·Sep 16, 2019
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Playfield gate update, Ghostbusters code hype, Elvira teaser, and Doctor Who speculation.

Summary

Head2Head Pinball discusses ongoing playfield delamination issues affecting multiple manufacturers (Stern, Jersey Jack), the upcoming Ghostbusters code update featuring Ernie Hudson's promotional video, the announcement of Elvira's House of Horrors with code by Lyman F. Sheats Jr., and speculation about its pricing tier and game model. The hosts also note Sylvester McCoy's (Doctor Who) appearance at Texas Pinball Festival, suggesting a potential new Doctor Who pinball machine announcement.

Key Claims

  • Playfield delamination/pooling issues are affecting all major manufacturers, not just Jersey Jack

    high confidence · Martin and Joe, discussing widespread issues across Stern and JJP machines

  • Jersey Jack has been calling customers directly to apologize and offer playfield swaps as remedy

    high confidence · Joe mentions direct outreach and remedy implementation

  • The new Ghostbusters code update makes the game 'fun again' and fixes the brutal difficulty balance

    medium confidence · Martin citing second-hand account from someone who has played the new code

  • Lyman F. Sheats Jr. is the coder for Elvira's House of Horrors

    high confidence · Both hosts confirm this knowledge about Elvira code assignment

  • Elvira may be a Kapow game or Studio game (not a Cornerstone model) with Premium, LE, and Super LE tiers but potentially no Pro version

    medium confidence · Joe speculates based on what he's heard; Martin later confirms seeing only Premium/LE/Super LE in leaked images

  • Cassandra Peterson (Elvira actress) will be at Pinball Expo on October 18th for an Elvira game reveal

    high confidence · Martin states this as confirmed information

  • Sylvester McCoy appearing at Texas Pinball Festival suggests a new Doctor Who pinball machine may be announced

    medium confidence · Martin deduces from McCoy's guest appearance that a new Doctor Who game is likely coming

Notable Quotes

  • “Ghostbusters is fun again”

    Martin (citing second-hand source) @ ~15:00 — Key positive sentiment about the upcoming Ghostbusters code update

  • “The fact that they got Ernie Hudson to make that video is fucking awesome. I mean, I'm not even a Ghostbusters person, but the fact that they were like, hey, dude, we have code coming out. Can you just make a quick video for us? And he was like, sure. That's super cool of him.”

    Joe @ ~12:00 — Highlights how celebrity involvement elevates marketing even if code reception is uncertain

  • “Lyman F. Sheats Jr. likes the theme and is excited about it. Give me your money. That's pretty much all that's required.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~28:00 — Expresses strong confidence in Lyman Sheets as coder as primary selling point for Elvira game

  • “It's a fan layout. It's very much a fan layout. It is the fanniest of fan layouts you can see.”

    Martin (post-leak audio segment) @ ~50:00 — Initial reaction to Elvira playfield leak; indicates layout is conventional/uninspired compared to designer's usual work

  • “The Walking Dead was the greatest code update of all time for a machine... As soon as you make the code great, everything else is forgiven.”

    Martin @ ~18:00 — Historical comparison framing how code quality can rescue a struggling game

Entities

MartinpersonJoe LemirepersonLyman F. Sheats Jr.personErnie HudsonpersonCassandra PetersonpersonDennis NordmanpersonGreg FerrerpersonSylvester McCoyperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Playfield delamination/pooling affecting multiple manufacturers (Stern, Jersey Jack) across multiple games (Wonka, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, others)

    high · Martin: 'it's all manufacturers at the moment pretty much that have got the problem'; Joe: 'Jurassic Park has got the problem as well'; Multiple games showing pooling in screenshots

  • ?

    code_update: Ghostbusters receives significant new code update promised to fix brutal difficulty balance and unfair game mechanics, with Ernie Hudson celebrity promotion

    high · Martin: 'Ghostbusters is fun again'; Zombie Yeti posted uploading code; Ernie Hudson video announcement

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Ghostbusters community sentiment improving with code update news after years of dissatisfaction; parallel to Walking Dead rescue narrative

    high · Martin: 'I think people are going to be very, very happy with the code'; comparison to Walking Dead code rescue

  • ?

    announcement: Elvira's House of Horrors officially announced with teaser video; full reveal expected at Pinball Expo October 18th with actress Cassandra Peterson present

    high · Stern released teaser video; Martin confirms Peterson's attendance at Expo; leaked images show playfield

  • ?

    leak_detection: Elvira's House of Horrors playfield images leaked before official Expo reveal; shows conventional fan-style layout with multiple shots

    high · Martin discusses leaked images in post-recording segment; describes layout as 'the fanniest of fan layouts you can see'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.309

0:00
The Head to Head Pinball Podcast Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 109 and my name's Martin and with me... Joe Lemire. Joe Lemire, how are you going this week? Good, good. I just spent the last couple hours hanging with my buddy, Joel. I think he's the local artist and such. Calibrating and messing with my TV. Watched some 4K Pacific Rim Amazeballs. Yeah, so doing good. How you doing, buddy? Is that Pacific Rim? Is that the big giant monster type thing? Yes, yes, that's a really good one. And then there was a really, really bad one that we like to pretend that doesn't happen.
1:11
Like a lot of sequels. So let's start. We're not going to spend too much time on this, but let's start by talking about Playfield Gate once more. And we probably won't report on it until we know a lot more about it. But last week, you know, the last couple of weeks we've spoken about it and what we probably didn't do was emphasize enough that it's all manufacturers at the moment pretty much that have got the problem. Yeah, I thought we mentioned that but... I know, I know. So people were sort of saying that we were really sort of picking on Jersey Jack.
1:55
Probably true, I would say. Listening back, it's probably true. But that wasn't our intent. Our intent was to say it's a problem for all machines and in particular at the moment a lot of people are calling out that Jurassic Park has got the problem as well. Yeah, and even an update for what I mentioned before about the issue with Mike and his playfield for his Deadpool.
2:17
He actually just ended up getting, they sent him a new playfield. Yeah. So they took care of him instead of sending the clear coat they did last time. So they're taking care of their people. They are taking care of the people. Remedy is happening and my understanding is that Jersey Jack has actually been ringing customers directly, apologising for the problem and telling them about the Remedy, Playfield swap, whatever it's going to be. So, you know, at least Remedies are on its way. We didn't want to come across biased at all because I don't believe we are biased, but it is happening with Stern machines as well. And it's not just Jurassic Park. There are other games as well that people are showing screenshots of, of pooling.
Dwight Sullivan
person
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Deep Root Pinballcompany
Ghostbusters (Pro)game
Jurassic Park (Pro)game
Monsters (Stern)game
Elvira's House of Horrorsgame
Game Of Thrones (Pro)game
The Walking Dead (Pro)game
Doctor Who (pinball)game
Lord of the Rings (Stern)game
Pinball Expoevent
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Head2Head Pinballorganization
Zombie Yetiperson
  • ?

    product_strategy: Elvira potentially structured as Kapow or Studio game with Premium/LE/Super LE tiers but no Pro version; Super LE possibly exclusive to fan club

    medium · Joe: 'might be a Kapow game because there might not be a pro'; Martin confirms seeing only Premium/LE/Super LE in leaks; Joe: 'Super Elise might be available exclusively through her fan club'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Elvira playfield includes interactive mechanical elements: ball lock on left ramp, moveable stairs with cellar/subway underneath, multi-state crypt, active gargoyles

    medium · Martin post-leak: 'physical ball lock halfway down left ramp', 'stairs may lift up', 'crypt with different states', 'gargoyles do things'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Sylvester McCoy's (Seventh Doctor) appearance at Texas Pinball Festival suggests new Doctor Who pinball game may be announced

    medium · Martin: 'I assume this means that there are rumors that there is going to be another Doctor Who game'; Joe's prior comment about guest appearances typically tied to new games

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Lyman Sheets confirmed as code designer for Elvira's House of Horrors; his involvement cited as primary reason for community optimism

    high · Both hosts confirm Sheets on code; Joe: 'Lyman Sheets likes the theme... Give me your money. That's pretty much all that's required'

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo (October 18) will feature Elvira reveal and Cassandra Peterson appearance; Texas Pinball Festival will feature Sylvester McCoy guest appearance

    high · Martin: 'Cassandra Peterson, who is the actress that does Elvira...is going to be there at Expo October 18th'; TPF announcement of McCoy attendance

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Elvira playfield design departs from Dennis Nordman's typical signature style; layout is conventional rather than featuring his characteristic sideways action and interesting ramp flow

    medium · Martin: 'that's not what I was expecting from Dennis Nordman...he has a lot of sideways action...for this, I just thought, okay, it's a fan layout'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Elvira classified as Studio game or Kapow model rather than Cornerstone, following precedent set by Greg Ferrer designs (similar to Wonka model)

    medium · Martin: 'it's not going to be one of Stern's cornerstone games...it's going to be premium, limited edition and super LE'; comparison to Wonka licensing model

    • 3:01
    I, you know, had a look at my monsters. Is there pooling? Yeah, there is. Is it major? No, not at all. In fact, I looked at it and went, meh, that's very livable. I don't think that's actually going to crack. You can see it, but, you know, I'm not fussed about it. So I have seen pictures of incidents where it is far worse than mine where they have actually chipped. So, you know, if you're worried about buying a machine because of it, then I would say don't until you know we're all in the clear and that there is, it's all been fixed and everything that's coming off the line now is fine. Yeah, and the, I mean, we focused mainly on Wonka because I had just played Wonka, you guys just got your Wonkas, and a lot of the pictures going around were Wonkas, so that was just the reason why we talked about that. Well, I know.
    3:58
    No, I know. My original, so my original in my defense statement was going to be, the reason why we talked about Wonka was because everybody was reaching out to me via Facebook, via direct message, via email. I'm really only talking about their wonkers, probably because there's so many more that have been released right now, but it is widespread. And my understanding is that they are different issues. The Jersey Jack issue is different to what's happened with the Stern issues, but I'm not technical enough to have an opinion on it, so I'm going to just say read the forum. We're going to link the Pinside thread. Again, if you want to read 28 pages, I read about six pages and just went, oh my God, this is going to take me hours of reading every comment. So anyway, we're up to date. You know, just be careful, guys. Yep. So there we go. So shall we move on to some other news? Shall we? Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Let's do it. So Ghostbusters.
    5:03
    I know, right? Such a cool video. I can't wait for people to get pissed off when the code comes out and it's not what they expected or wanted or expectations.
    5:16
    I know. So anyway, what we know is, so there was a video that was just put out, Ernie Hudson that was one of the Ghostbusters has put a video out saying, you know, something's coming, make sure you watch the Dead Flip stream next week. And it's new code. We know the code is coming. And Zombie Yeti put up a shot of showing him uploading the code as well.
    5:40
    And here's what I know, Joe. Oh. I think people are going to be very, very happy with the code. They should be. And what I know is that regardless of what the code is, the fact that they got Ernie Hudson to make that video is fucking awesome.
    6:04
    I mean, I'm not even a Ghostbusters person, but the fact that they were like, hey, dude, we have code coming out. Can you just make a quick video for us? And he was like, sure.
    6:14
    That's super cool of him and them to think to ask. That was awesome. So I've not seen the new code. I'm putting it out there. I've not seen it. I've not played it. So I don't know firsthand. I may know somebody who has. And what they've said is, Ghostbusters is fun again.
    6:38
    They put a red hat on it, make Ghostbusters fun again? Yeah, maybe. Look, I think it's one of those things where it was, you know, the layout. Let's talk about the layout. Because basically it's not a fun game because you haven't necessarily got the best polished code and you've got a play field that is quite punishing. You've got the ultra big flipper gap, you've got the rails where the ball jumps over, so it doesn't feel like fun because you might be hitting your shots and getting into the rhythm and then bang the ball's gone and it's like, damn. If that physically had changed, I would have enjoyed this game more. Now, you can do a couple of enhancements to your game. The first one is to put the rail guards on so it stops the ball jumping over. You cannot change the flipper gap. That's going to be there.
    7:33
    And the people who put the post in? Shame on you. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think if a game is really frustrating and there's something you can actually do to make it enjoyable for you, go and do it. You do you. Fantastic. Oh, yeah. Obviously, if someone else... I mean, obviously, I'm not saying it that way. It's just... No, I know. It's just like, you know, I guess the principle of it is just being like, well, the game's too hard, so I'm going to mod it so it's easier in that way. Because you can only... Well, that's right. Because you can only change what you can change, right? So you can't change the code because you're not coding the machine. And, you know, the machine's been out, I don't know, how many years? Three years? Four years? 2016, right? So people are changing it because if they don't change it, they'll throw it out effectively. So my comparison I'll do is the greatest code update of all time for a machine was The Walking Dead because that machine, even though physically it didn't necessarily have the same sort of problems or some sort of unfair problems, but it was such a brutal game that because the code itself wasn't that great, it just felt like overall the sum of those two things together are not great. As soon as you make the code great, everything else is forgiven. So that's what I think is going to happen with Ghostbusters. I think that, from what I've heard, it changes the game, it fixes all the problems, it makes you enjoy the game a hell of a lot more. So for those people that have kept their Ghostbusters hoping that one day the code would come, I think you're going to be happy. Yeah, I mean, of all of the physical enhancements you can do to the game, I mean, out of all the things wrong with the game, the flipper gap is not even on the list for me because that's a known commodity. There's tons of games that have huge flipper gaps. I mean, there's tons of old games that have even bigger flipper gaps than that. So it's like, that's fine. It's the unfair stuff and like the dickish shit that the game does to you.
    9:41
    And really, the main issue I have with the code is like they have a, they knew they had a, like a dick layout that just was super mean and unfair with it taking your ball with to no fault of your own. And then they decided, you know what, let's double down and make a really dickish software and rules that put us to emphasize all the crap shit with the game. They're like, oh, so we're going to make all those moments that screw you over, we're going to make them happen a lot. And we're going to make sure that if you mess up at all, you're going to go into purgatory and you're just double shit. So it's like, I don't know why, instead of maybe going, okay, this layout probably is a little too mean, maybe we should shine that around and try and use the code to try and soften that a little. Instead of being like, YOLO, let's punch this dude in the nuts. Like, why? I mean, there's so many things that they can do to make the game better that are really simple, obvious, glaring things that they can do to make the game better that I can't imagine they're not going to. And, like, as much as people complained about the Game of Thrones code, I thought the new Game of Thrones update was amazing. And what Dwight did with that game and finishing it off, like you said, he finished the game that he was never able to actually finish because he didn't have time. And this is the same thing with Ghostbusters. He never had the chance to finish this. I would have left it in a more, you know, if you're going to leave it in a state for years, I'd leave it in a much more friendly state. But no, I think that it's going to be good. Hopefully, I don't, I question whether or not people are going to be happy like you think, because anytime I think that the fan base or the community is going to be happy with something, they're like, hold my beer. I'll be mad at all sorts of things. You have no idea. So, yeah, I don't think it's a cure-all. I don't think it's going to fix everything, but I think that for the casual player, it's going to make it less brutal. For the advanced player, it's going to make it more rewarding the further you go in. And look, I think it's just going to fix a couple of the glaring things that I think frustrate to everybody. And you're talking about, you know, purgatory or in jail, you know, when you accidentally miss the skill shot and damn it, you're back. You lose now and then you look at your opponent who hits it and you go, well, this was fun. Cool. So now I got to live through 75 death shots to just be at the same place that he is. And, uh, yeah, that's it. But that's a perfect example, right? When you've got a brutal layout, which it can be, and you're then forced to hit the most dangerous shot up the middle, the ghost, to light your mode. Yeah, right above the giant flipper gap. Like, who thought of that and said, yeah, like, I've never met the man, and obviously he's a bad person, but Trudeau must have been such a dick. Like, this design, like, he must have just been like, you know what? I'm mad at the world and this is me paying them back.
    12:58
    Probably. But I think, you know, you said it before, I think had this, the code kept going, we might have had these fixes ages ago. It was, as I said, 2016, so it's soured over time. Whether it can come back and do a complete 180, I doubt it, but I think it will come close. and it won't be one of those where you look at it and just go, ugh, I have to play this fucker. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I mean, I wish that people were more understanding and realize that, yeah, he wasn't allowed to finish the game, but this game wasn't super terrible and you could help with some of this stuff, but everyone got Star Wars and they got Monsters and other games that he's working on and Game of Thrones in the meantime. So it's not like he's just been sitting around being like, screw Ghostbusters people, I'm just going to do this whenever the hell I feel like it. It's like he was doing what he was supposed to do, he wanted to do it, but he's got a job, and there's priorities, and this is the way the world works. You can't just sit and do the one thing you want to, sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. And the job said, I got to make two new games. And I think the aggregate of having two new games and two new experiences that play completely different than any other games really, than having your Ghostbusters code. I think that's a nice swap for a couple of years. I just hope people are happy. I mean, they're never going to get... It's always going to be sour, and they're always going to remember how they sat for so long and didn't get their code. And I understand that, but it's... Well, that's what I'm saying. It's the distance between launch and now that is the sting. And I use the Walking Dead analogy again, well, a comparison, because back then people were like, nah, this game stinks, what an absolute letdown. But they fixed it within a few months. You know, I say a few months, I think it was like 12 to 18 months after.
    15:02
    And people have forgotten the dark, bad times of Walking Dead. You only think of that machine fondly, and it's ranked, you know, for most people as the best turn that's ever been made. And people forget, which I believe, that the original coder of that game either left or was let go or something like that, and Lyman had to come in and finish the code and did what he did. So it's like, even then, technically, they could have just easily just said, you know what, the dude who did this is gone, and it is what it is. Lyman is busy making a masterpiece of whatever he was doing, I think Spike 2 at the time, or making Spike. So it's like he had way more important things to do, but, you know, they're like, well, we want to make sure that this game gets to where it needs to be. And the difference is that that game was in way worse shape. So it's a world of priorities. When a game is in really dire straits, that's what's first. And the same, you know, reason that, you know, and also older, you know, Game of Thrones came out before Ghostbusters. And, you know, that made sense that that got its final revision before Ghostbusters did. And they're working their way forward. So, yeah. Yeah. Again, priorities and resources. Yep. Damn real life.
    16:17
    Speaking of lime and sheets, oh, I'm back. I'm back with the segway. You ready? Yeah. So juicy. Everything involved with liming, it just falls together. It really does. So, Elvira is coming. So, which we knew. Shaka, who knew that? No, no. So today, so we're talking, it's Saturday morning, Friday night in the US and wherever you are around the world, hello, kenichiwa.
    16:46
    So, I don't know where people are. So there's a video that's been put up on Stern, a bit of a tease about Elvira. The organ's back. Hooray. It is. It was such a good familiar sound, wasn't it? So I'm going to link the video. You probably would have all seen it by now. But it's called Elvira's House of Horrors.
    17:09
    So that's all we have. We should have taken that video and then done like a one hour YouTube deep dive into that five second video. Breaking it down frame by frame. Breaking it down and oh, what does this mean? Dude, there's a deadhead over here and there seems to be a stiff in the coffin in the shadow behind the grave. Is that your Aussie accent? I have no idea. It was. That was just an accent. I would say it was somewhat Australian. Blimey. Yeah. I mean, it's just copying Crocodile Hunter. That's pretty much it. Because we all speak like him. That's right. Yeah, obviously.
    17:50
    So what we know is that Pimball Expo is around the corner. October 18th, I believe. And Cassandra Peterson, who is the actress that does Elvira. I know I'm probably shocking you there, but Elvira isn't actually a real person. There's an actress that plays. Oh, sorry. Well, I mean, it's fair that you can think that maybe it's not real because she hasn't aged in like 30 years. She is amazing. It's crazy. She's still just as beautiful now as she was then. I know. Bonkers. Looks amazing. So she's going to be there at Expo October 18th. She is Elvira. I would say my money's on a reveal at Expo.
    18:35
    Probably. No, they're going to reveal it the day after. Just to be like, haha, fuck you pinball people.
    18:43
    You expected this? We're not going to give you what you said. Always be trolling. That's right. So remember, we do know that, well, I say we know, we assume, we suspect Lyman is on code for Elvira. He's on the go. And this wasn't... We know.
    19:02
    And we know that this was a Dennis Nordman and Greg Ferrer's original concept. Whether that's changed over time since Dennis moved to Deep Root, we don't know. It may be different. I've heard it's pretty much the same. Yeah, that's also what I've heard. I just wanted to sound like I was speculating. Oh, pfft. So cute. I can throw things to make it sound like I know stuff.
    19:32
    So, are we excited about O'Vara? Yes. I mean, I'm excited just, I mean, almost solely on the fact that Lyman's working on it. And, I mean, I don't overly like the previous games. I mean, they're fine in small doses, but only in small doses. Yeah, great. Especially if it just gets, those jokes can only land so long before you just start rolling your eyes and going, cool, I'll just keep doing the same thing because this game is super shallow and I hear the same jokes over and over again. I mean, the fact, I just know that Lyman is super, he's really into the theme and he's really excited about it. So that's, as far as I'm concerned, that's the only thing you need to put on the flyer to sell the game, is that Lyman Sheets likes the theme and is excited about it. Give me your money. That's pretty much all that's required. Well, I mean, we'll use monsters as an example, right? So monsters is a fairly, you know, cool theme. I don't mean cool as in, hey, yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, cool as in, yeah, I'm a bit cool with it, you know? I mean, obviously, I love the theme, and a lot of people do, but a lot of people were sort of like, eh, don't get it. Monsters, old person's theme, whatever, it's not relevant. But when you then looked at Monsters, you go, oh, that looks amazing. You have made this theme come to life.
    20:54
    Code aside. So with Elvira, I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of, I love Elvira. I'm kind of cool on the theme as a pinball theme because like you, I, well, you know, the original Elvira and the Party Monsters, I loved and played to death. It didn't age well. Skates, Diff, I never really got into. Kind of like the layout, kind of find the rules just a little bit too basic for its time. So I'm wanting to be pleasantly surprised by the next Elvira. Yeah, and I think it's... I mean, she's into it. She's going to be, I assume, available to do as much speech as they want, which is always awesome and a super rarity now, which is just a huge plus for the game. Horror as a theme is great.
    21:51
    I wonder how they're going to do this one because I don't necessarily know how Scare It Stiff would be accepted now if it came out in this current climate. So I don't know if they just go, you know, well, that's her brand and that's what she does. So we're going to do the same kind of stuff. And then if then all of a sudden people will be fined with it because it's Elvira, who knows? Yeah, that's the wait and see moment, isn't it?
    22:19
    We always say, you know, she's empowered, she's in control of the joke. I've sort of always said that what she's doing, she's taking the piss out of people that find that stuff sexy. So she's almost like holding a mirror up against those people. And I don't know whether that same human people are going to go, oh yeah, you've done it again, Cassandra, you're hilarious. So people are going to go, hang on, not today.
    22:46
    Yeah, there'll be another litmus test for Pinball to see where that might happen. But I mean, I'm curious about, I've heard, I don't know if you've heard similar things, because we don't talk a lot. I mean, we do, but not talk about the show because we have to save it for this. But I've heard that this might be a Kapow game because I've heard that there might not be a pro for this and that it might be the same. Oh. As Batman being premium and super elite.
    23:18
    Which, if that's the case, and there is no part of that, it means it would have to be a Kapow game, right? Because they've never done that on a Cornerstone, and I think they've even, when Gary was on, he said that the Cornerstone, that is the model for Cornerstones. So, maybe it's not a Cornerstone, and if it's not... Then we've got another Cornerstone coming. Then we've got another one coming this year. Sure. So by October we'll know if we happen to be maybe seeing Brian Eddy's game. Or Bort's game early, who knows? Yeah, okay. Well, you know what, it could be one of these things where people go, yes, oh my god, Elvira, I love it. Oh, the code looks great, the art looks great, the call-outs are great, the theme's great. Oh, it's a Kapow game and it's going to be a bit more expensive and it's limited. What do I think about that? I wonder if maybe it won't necessarily, it certainly won't have the price hike license requirements of Beatles. Yes, true. Arguably, it probably won't have the same as Batman either. I mean, I don't know if her brand commands that kind of royalty or licensing money, so it's hard to know. But I would think you're not going to see the big price increases you did sometimes with those games. So it might just be kind of almost regularly priced, but just have these upper echelon models that'll make it even more desirable. Because the sycophants of that probably is the kind of audience you're looking for. In other words, they said that the Super Elise might be available exclusively through her fan club, potentially. So that would make sense when you hear that out loud. You can go, well, just like Beatles, I'm sure there's a rabid fan base for her that that is literally where they group. That probably would be something that would sell well. and it is a market that makes sense to go after in the kapow model, I guess you'd call it.
    25:30
    Okay. I hadn't heard that. So, look at you with the scoop. And people talk to me now too. It's great. I love that. So, okay. Anyway. And if it wrong then I can just be like people are saying you know it not It like it just what I been told you know Just repeat it I can tell you if they right or not I mean, very good people.
    25:57
    Awesome. So guys, since we recorded this podcast, we've now seen the leaked images of Elvira. And Joe's not here. It's 6 o'clock in the morning so I didn't want to wake him up so I just thought I'd do a little bit of an add-on audio now just to give my initial thoughts because you know me, I have some thoughts. The first thing that I thought when I first saw the play field was, huh, okay, it's a fan layout. It's very much a fan layout. It is the fanniest of fan layouts you can see. Also, a lot of those shots are quite far back, further back than I would expect from a fan layout. I mean, obviously to the right, you've got the crypt and all that kind of stuff that's a little bit closer, but it's quite, you know, far back. And there are a lot of shots. There are a lot of things that you can go for. It's quite colourful. It's quite bright. You know, the art does what it needs to do. The inserts, you know, they look very colourful. They kind of remind me of old school, Stern. I kind of want to say, you know, the Avatar sort of era. What I kind of first thought was, huh, that's not what I was expecting from Dennis Nordman. Dennis Nordman for me is somebody that is a really good mix of flow but interesting layouts, if that makes sense. He has a lot of sideways action, ramps that go sideways and all that kind of stuff. So for this, I just thought, okay, it's okay, it's fine, it's just a fan layout. I've subsequently looked on a lot of media sources and, you know, forums, and sort of people are sort of scratching their heads as well, sort of saying, oh, yeah, okay, it's all right, it looks all right. I don't know what it's going to be like, but, you know, it kind of looks all right. So I think that Joe was right when he was saying that it's going to have the premium limited edition and Super LE. We certainly haven't seen a pro at this stage. I don't know whether it's going to be a Kapow. I don't think I've seen Kapow's name anywhere on any of the screens that I've seen. But this is what I've heard is that it's not going to be one of Stern's cornerstone games. So I think, you know, what is it? A studio game maybe is possibly what it is. And that's kind of like Wonelli, if you know what I mean. Like going back, that was, you know, Greg Ferez and he was like, you know, this is a game that we're going to do. And Dennis Nordman, they were like, you can license our design that we've come up with. And this is them again. This is Greg Ferez and Dennis Nordman. So it's kind of that same sort of model where it's not a cornerstone game that Stern have designed right from their internal design team all the way to manufacturing. It sits outside that and my understanding is that, yeah, it's going to be premium, limited edition and super LE.
    29:03
    So here's what else I thought. So after a while, after staring at it thinking, you know what, it's pretty vanilla as far as layouts go. So my second thought went to Lyman Sheets. And I thought to myself, with all these inserts, with what I can make out for it, this is probably a really good canvas for Lyman to now just bash out a phenomenal rule set. So that's where I want people's thoughts to go, away from what we've seen right now, which is just a play field. It is a picture of a play field. I'm sure by the time this gets uploaded, there'll probably be videos and stuff like that. But just from what you've seen, give it time.
    29:48
    I think that there's some things that it does that I'm hearing. Like there's a physical ball lock halfway down the left ramp. I believe the stairs that are up the middle, they may even sort of lift up and there's a cellar underneath there, like a subway, that kind of thing. And also the crypt where that head is, apparently that's got a couple of different states as well. The gargoyles do things as well. I don't know. I just think it's one of these games where, okay, you've got me interested. I can now see what the game looks like so I can resolve that in my mind. It is what it is. Now, obviously, I just want to see the thing playing. I want to see what they've done with the code. I want to see the lights go. I want to see the lights go. I want to see the choreography. I want to hear the sound. I want to hear the whole experience before I make up my mind. But my first impression is, okay, there it is. It's a pinball. It looks pretty. I can see where the shots are. There's a lot of shots.
    30:46
    Just give me something that I can go with. There you go. I don't know. I don't know yet. But it's only around the corner, guys. Not long. A month away. We'll get to see it. So there you go. That is the post-image leak gate sort of insert. So there you go. So, Texas Pinball Festival. It's quite a far way away. Yeah, it is. Well, I'm just making note that they've actually announced that Sylvester McCoy, who was the seventh Doctor from Doctor Who, is going to go to Texas Pinball Festival. He was Radagast. Who cares about the Doctor? He was Radagast. Yeah, he was also Radagast in Lord of the Rings. So, yeah, it's Hobbit. So, I'm not going to necessarily repeat word for word a conversation that we had before recording, but Joe might have said to me, I don't get it, what are these people coming to a pinball festival for?
    31:51
    Well, because, yeah, I mean, I just went, normally when guests come to pinball shows, it's because of a new game, Not because of an old game, which yes, this person has been in two games, but that's something that they would have done when those two games came out. So obviously they're not making another Hobbit game, so I assume this means that there are rumors that there is going to be another Doctor Who game.
    32:18
    Well, except for TPF this year, where you had... John Rhys-Davies. He was there and he did the call-outs in Lord of the Rings. He was in Lord of the Rings and it went down incredibly well.
    32:38
    But this person hasn't done any of that. I don't think he'd add voice in anything. Did he? He might have been one of the voices in the Doctor Who machine. I don't know. Maybe there were some call-outs from the Hobbit movie that were in the Hobbit. I can't remember. It's been so long. Those are just clips though. I know. But the point of it is that Sylvester McCoy is very well known for Doctor Who and for Lord of the Rings. Arguably, I don't know whether he was the most popular of Doctors. I think that there was, they did do like a survey many years ago and ranked the approval and he didn't rank all that well. And it was also, he came out, that particular doctor came out, I can't remember what it was, it was kind of like late 80s and they were trying to make it sort of really edgy and they had some like hip hop music and his companion was this edgy girl who was edgy and it kind of just went, Yeah, you're trying too hard. I assume he was very into multiball.
    33:48
    Because that's his power. Possibly. Could have been. In the game. Yeah. Pretty sure that's what the Seventh Doctor does. You're just looking that up now. I'm pretty sure Seven is the multiball. Yeah, could have been. Anyway, I just think it's kind of cool that us as Pimple fans go, well, he was in Doctor Who, the game. Let's remember that. He was possibly in a clip on The Hobbit, but this is Sylvester frickin' McCoy. He is very famous when it comes to sci-fi and us nerds. There you go. Cool. I didn't even know who he was. I didn't even know that he was Radagast, but that's cool. Yeah. Very cool. There's so much you don't know about him, like the fact that his name, his actually was born Percy James Patrick Kent Smith. That's a long name. It's a long name. Say that five times fast. So, yeah. So, in the UK, here's a bit of a side note for you. So, in the UK, when you get your actor's license, it has to be a unique name. So, if there is an actor already called John Smith and you happen to have been born John Smith, when you get your actor's license, you can't call yourself John Smith. You have to come up with a unique name that nobody else has got. Huh. There you go. He's on the older side too. 76. Yeah, he's not a young guy. Percy James Patrick Kent Smith. That's twice. There you go. Sylvester McCoy. Anyway, go to TPF and say hello to him. So, who's that? So, Jurassic Park Code is out. Go and download it. It's .88, I believe.
    35:39
    And, you know, it's just one of those code revisions where it's just tightening things up and score balancing and choreography and all that kind of stuff. But it's out. Go and download it, guys. Go and have some fun. Still don't have ours yet? Well, actually, no, that's not true. The pros have started landing in Australia. Still not getting our L.A.'s till November. First world problems. Speaking of having to wait a long time for something.
    36:11
    That was buttery. Now audience, can you guess what this is? Can you guess? I'd say write it in the comments, but we don't have that. We'll never know if you were right. Yeah, the Stern book.
    36:26
    Ta-da. So, here it is. So, a big long email came out and I'm just not going to read all of it, Joe. I'm going to spare you this very long email, but I'm going to tell you just a couple of points here. So, it says, hello, kickstartbackers. Well, it says, hi. We've been very cautious over the past six months, not to mention dates because we don't want to set up another situation where we stay at a hopeful date and then not meet it. But we're going to give you a date at the end of this post. Forward to the end of the post. That literally went against what they said they weren't going to do. Yeah, correct. So basically what they've said is they went out to document 90 games and put some narrative around it and turns out that it's actually been a lot harder than they thought. No way. Yeah, but instead of giving up, we vowed to find the games in the wild and document them ourselves. After all, how hard is it to properly photograph a pinball machine? Well, very difficult as it turns out. So, you know, trying to find the machines, trying to find them in good condition, trying to, you know, take good photographs of them has been very difficult. And also what I understand is that a lot of the material that they thought they were going to get from Stern was damaged or not usable. So sort of like, you know, photographs or stock or flyers and stuff like that was just not available. So... Bow bow. Yeah.
    37:56
    So... Maybe. So, do you know what? What I kind of like about this update, I will say, is at least we're getting information that's like, you know what? This is how we fucked up. This is why we fucked up. All these things that we thought we had great intentions, but, you know, we were expecting to have all these, you know, scans or slides and all this kind of stuff, and they just weren't there. Yeah, apparently the archive at Stern was flooded and they couldn't use these things. Is it a little late in the process to talk about what you fucked up at this point? I mean... Yeah, it is. But I think basically what I'm hearing now is they're like, you know what? We now know. We're right at the end. All that we can do. There's still six machines that they don't have at all. Baywatch, Lost in Space, Striker Extreme, Sharky Shootout, NBA and NFL. So if anybody does have those machines and they want to get somebody to come and do a photo shoot, reach out to the paper flock guys and that's all they need. Six machines and they're done. I know someone who owns two of those.
    39:10
    Get in touch. You know who you are. I know you're listening. He has Baywatch and NBA. I like NBA. Just recently got NBA. I kind of like it. I do, too. I mean, it was the original game that had the, what was that, toy box shot in Aerosmith. That's the one, isn't it? It's got a spinning disc and it's also got the shot that throws it over the playfield into the net. Yeah, a magnet grabs it and then it drops it in the net. It was based heavily on Space Jam.
    39:46
    Right, there you go. Same way that Strikers Extreme I think is NFL. Well, NFL is Strikers Extreme, I believe. Right, okay. So that's going to be a lot – NFL is a lot harder to find because it's like a re-skinned – And Sharky Shootout is like April Deluxe.
    40:05
    Yeah, I've played Sharky. The same person we're talking about who has this had one and it's interesting. It's fun, I guess. I've also played Lost in Space. It was rethemed to the TV show here at Pintastic, which was kind of cool. Yeah, okay. So I've played all of them, so I guess, except for Strikers Extreme, I have never seen a Strikers Extreme or played one. No, I don't think I've ever played a Strikers Extreme either, so I'm okay with that.
    40:38
    I mean, I've heard it has some redeeming qualities, but... Okay, well, you know, it was new. I mean, I'm just trying to work out whether that was the very first. Yeah, Striker Extreme was the very first game under the Stern. Even though I think, wasn't it that Harley Davidson was a crossover maybe? Live to ride. Ride to live. Dear Lord. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was. It was a Seager and it was also a Stern machine. But let's call it a Seager machine. The first real proper Stern machine was Striker Extreme or maybe Sharky Shootout. They both came out in 2000. So long ago, guys. Sega.
    41:19
    So, there you go. So, anyway, we'll get our book. They said by the end of the year, I think. I can't remember. Sure. You fell asleep by the time you get to that bottom of that. Yeah. Well, that's what they said. So, we pledged to make this book amazing and get it done before the end of the year. So, people, get in touch with those six games. Baywatch, Lost in Space, Striker Extreme, Shiky Shootout. NBA and NFL and get them to photograph them and get this book done. Because much like a lot of things, if it ends up being good in the end, it was worth the wait and you'll forgive them. Correct. So, there you go. Alright, so, last week we did the Data East Battle Royale and it went completely incident free. Okay. As far as I'm concerned, it did, because I haven't heard about it yet, of what might have gone wrong. So I can't wait. I'm looking at the list and I definitely disagree with some of these, but... Yeah, the problem we had was having to do a top 16.
    42:27
    Because it meant games like Torpedo Alley and Robocop weren't in the top 16. So I called that, people were flipping out about that. Yeah, I think it was, well, this whole thing is a complete bust because you haven't got these games. And it was more so that Secret Service was in, and I get that, but we had to use a ranking system of sorts. So I went with IPDB, no regrets, whatever, it happened. It was never going to win, alright? Torpedo Alley or Robocop were never going to win, but I still don't think that satisfies people. People were like, yeah, but I just wanted it to be ranked higher than The Simpsons. I thought that the whole thing didn't matter because Lethal Weapon 3 went out in the first round and Ron was very upset about that. That's the one thing I saw. He's like, in the first round, clearly this is a bullshit poll.
    43:33
    That's kind of how it happened. But it wasn't so, you know, black and white. In the first round, Guns N' Roses absolutely, you ready for this, slashed Star Trek. No? That makes sense. Slashed somewhat. Good job. Yeah. That wasn't overly apparent the first time, but I got it. It was a good job. So 83% of the vote, like, you know, easy.
    43:59
    WWF, 77% of the vote over Laser War. Tommy, 77% again over Hook. It was always going to win. Yeah, because I mean, Eve, as much as I don't like Tommy, it's better than Hook, so I'll agree with that. It's better than Hook, right. So then we got to the big controversial one, and that was Tales from the Crypt versus Lethal Weapon 3. Now, look, Lethal Weapon 3 is a great game, and it's actually got, for me, more of a nostalgia impact than Tales from the Crypt. But Tales from the Crypt is the better game. I agree. Yes. I mean, I have not, like I mentioned, I haven't had a lot of time on Lethal Weapon, so I can't really, I know a lot about Tails. I know I love Tails, or I like Tails. I really can't say if Lethal Weapon is better than it, because I just don't know. It could be. But I'm glad it won. I mean, to me it makes sense, but I have to see if I can, well, actually, no. Ron has a Lethal Weapon, and I'll be at his house in a couple weeks. It's a good game. It was one of the first, if not the first, I think it was one of the first ones where, you know, if you're flipping away, all of a sudden you've got to grab the gun and do things. So it actually had some interactive video modes with the gun, which were kind of cool as well. But anyway, it got knocked out, but only just like, you know, 57% of the vote versus 43%. So anyway, last action hero absolutely belted Back to the Future. Back to the Future? Which is true, I mean. So what you're saying is Last Action Hero knocked the game to Australia? Correct. Ah, nice, I see what you did there. Anyway, it was nearly 80% of the vote, and then Star Wars completely decimated Secret Service with 90% of the vote. Rocky and Bullwinkle, now he was an interesting one, so Rocky and Bullwinkle versus Time Machine, there was one vote was the difference. So it was Rocky and Bullwinkle, so 51% to 49%. Yeah, right? Why? Why? Why was it that close?
    46:08
    I don't think people really cared either way about that game. That's a shame. Come on, man, where are the Rocky and Bullwinkle fans?
    46:16
    Well, I think it got my vote. But then obviously Jurassic Park, 88, nearly 90% of the vote against Simpsons. That was always bound to happen. So round two, it was Guns N' Roses versus WWF Royal Rumble. and it got 75% of the votes. Guns N' Roses, of course, it was going to. Wow. I would not have thought that was going to be that big. Yeah, people love Guns N' Roses, as we will see.
    46:40
    Tommy then beat Tales from the Crypt convincingly-ish, 60% of the vote. Boo. But Star Wars, Star Wars only just knocked out Last Action Hero with 52% of the votes. So that was really close. That's literally only on theme, I think. Yeah, but I thought that... There's way more in Last Action Hero game-wise than Star Wars. Last Action Hero is the better playing game. There's better modes, better action. There's just more game. But it doesn't have the number berries.
    47:16
    It doesn't have the nostalgia that Star Wars has. You've then got Jurassic Park and Bullwinkle, and of course Jurassic Park got nearly 90% of the vote. So then it was down to the final four of Guns N' Roses, Tommy, Star Wars, and Jurassic Park. Guns N' Roses convincingly knocked out Tommy. Jurassic Park also convincingly knocked out Star Wars, 70%, 30%. And then it was down to Guns N' Roses, The Jurassic Park.
    47:46
    There's no bat on that one, so I was, okay. I'll have to remember the next time, so I'll be the bat. You can be the bat. Okay, cool. So I wouldn't say it was overwhelming but Guns N' Roses got 54% of the vote to Jurassic Park's 46. So Guns N' Roses is the winner.
    48:03
    Yarn. And this is how I ranked the 16 and I don't care whether you agree with me or not but this is how I've done it based on total votes and who won each round. Guns N' Roses first, then Jurassic Park, then Tommy, then Star Wars, Last Action Hero, Tales from the Crypt, Royal Rumble, Rockin' Bill Winkle, Time Machine, Lethal Weapon, Hook, Laser War, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Simpsons, and Secret Service. So what I'm saying is that Time Machine's better than Lethal Weapon 3. All right.
    48:36
    Falls in your court, Ron. It was just fun to... I thought it was fun to actually just talk about these machines, the long-lost archives of Data East games. I think now really having a good look at all these games, deep diving, looking at photos, I've watched a lot of YouTube clips.
    48:55
    Yeah. Yeah, what? They weren't really good. Yeah. I mean, for the time, I suppose, if you capture a minute in a time capsule, I guess that they are. But I mean, like now I guess they're really their main purpose now is like member berries and being like, I remember, I remember when I used to play Star Wars. Yeah, I remember. And, you know, but I was surprised that Secret Service did that poorly. Yeah, well, I still think that way. Yeah, it must be. So what I'm going to do then is I'm going to jump ahead to the mailbag because there was a mail that came out that was in response to this survey and asked a very important question. So this is from Simon. Thank you, Simon, for writing it. It says, Hi guys, in your last episode there were many Dada Reef games that Martin loved when they first came out, but his love has since withered and they have not aged well. Yep, I think that was a summary of what I just said when I kind of said I think they're a bit rubbish now. He said, but which games today would fit in that category? So, i.e., games that I love today but may not stand the test of time. So, what I did, I went, hmm, that is an interesting question to ask. So, games that we love right now that we don't think are going to last all that well. And it just got me thinking about games that have come out in the last 20 years, so from Stern onwards, and I've not got all of them, I've just got some of them, mainly Stern and J.J.P. and Spooky and a couple of others, right? And I kind of just wanted to get a flavour for how they've ranked and whether there's games in the back catalogue where I really liked at the time, but they haven't really aged that well.
    50:58
    And I'll actually put this image of all the games that Stern have released and their current Pinside rank. And what it really does show over time is that Stern's gotten better over time. So Striker Extreme is their lowest ranked game at 365.
    51:19
    Well, technically NFL's the worst. Yeah, but NFL doesn't actually have enough rankings to actually get lower than zero. So I think it needs five more reviews to be able to get ranked But anyway but if you have a look at their first I want to say maybe eight games and you got Striker Extreme Sharkies High Roller Casino Austin Powers Monopoly Playboy and Roller Coaster Tycoon All of those games are pretty much ranking 200 and above. In fact, the highest ranked one out of all of those is Monopoly at 200. But then you get in 2003, so that was from 2002 to 2002. So 2003, you've then got Simpsons Pinball Party, which currently is ranked 19. That is pretty good. Then you've got Terminator 3, which is ranked at 154. Then you've got Lord of the Rings 2003, and that's ranked 6th. Right now, it's ranked 6th. What the hell? What's wrong with you people? Remake this machine, guys! When I got into pinball, it was number 1, and it was number 1 for a long time. And then all of a sudden the member berries kicked in and all of a sudden Twilight Zone was number one and then Medieval was number one. And everyone, all the ones from that era started creeping up and we don't like new things anymore and down went Lord of the Rings. So sad.
    52:43
    Yeah. Do you think it is the greatest game of all time? Total Package? Absolutely. Okay, cool. There's no other game that puts it all together. There's not... If you have a list of the facets of Pinball, Lord of the Rings checks every single box and in a lot of ways the best at all of them. Okay. So on Pinside, the five games that are ahead of it are Pirates of the Caribbean by Jersi Jack.
    53:11
    I really love that game. That game is really good. It's not better than... Well, it's not better than Lord of the Rings. I don't think it has the theme integration that Lord of the Rings does. Okay, well, admittedly, Pyrates of the Caribbean has got a ranking of 8.72, and Lord of the Rings is 8.717. So, they're so freaking close, you might as well just say they're the same. But then you've got Twilight Zone in fourth, Monster Bash in third, Attack from Mars second, and Medieval Madness in first. So, I would, for me personally, I would say Attack from Mars for me is a better game than Lord of the Rings. But I'm wrong, aren't I? Yep.
    53:54
    No, I'm not wrong. Everyone has their own flavours. Everyone's got their own criteria that they're looking at. And just for me, I love Lord of the Rings. I really have fallen in love with it. And, you know, 12 months ago I hated it, but I love it now.
    54:09
    But Attack from Mars fills me the most with joy. That's just what it does. But I think that what that comes down to is like, were you a big Lord of the Rings person when you... Well, Lord of the Rings didn't come out when you were younger. So whereas that was right in the meat of my childhood. And I think whereas you were playing Attack from Mars when you were growing up. So I think that really it's theme attachment.
    54:34
    Yeah, yeah, I agree. I have a lot of emotions in Lord of the Rings and such. I totally get that. But really what I love going through these lists because it makes me not just think about the machines, But they compare them with machines around. You'll see. I've put some conditional formatting so you can see greens and reds and all this kind of stuff and how they're ranked. Bottom line is, for Stern, besides a few little nuggets along the way, it really was from about 2000, let's say 2011 onwards. You know what, let's go to 2010. Iron Man is still ranked 33. But from there forward, you get a lot of high-ranked games. Top 50 games, you know, pretty much for Stern happened 2010 from Iron Man onwards. I mean, you had Spider-Man before that, which ranks high, and really the only previous Lord of the Rings and Simpsons People Party. So, what's this long freaking preamble all about? Well, the question was, what games that have been out recently that we love do we feel won't stand the test of time? Specifically off of this list you're looking at here, this Stern only list, for now, before we go into the other ones. Yeah, well let's go with Stern now. So I think, you know, my first one I'm going to say is I don't know whether Spider-Man will stand the test of time. It already hasn't for me, so if that's on the table then that would be my choice as well. Well that's currently ranked 20. I've fallen well out of love with that game. I mean I never really loved it. I mean it was cool at the time when it came out and I liked the movies. I just am not a big fan of the flow of the game at all. Okay. Especially now that all the ones I play now are also Vault Editions, which I hate. Yeah, fair enough. Do you think Iron Man will stand the test of time? Do you think it's got its classic status and it will never lose its classic status?
    56:47
    I don't know. It's in a very niche category that not a lot of games sit in right now. I mean, really, the games in its category really is that and Avatar, and even Avatar doesn't necessarily fit there.
    57:01
    I mean, it's going to age. Like, it's still a DMD game now, so it's always going to look weird the longer the new generations go. It's going to stand out more and more, especially the original edition with no LEDs. These, it's going to look like, it's going to stand out like a sore thumb in a collection with nice bright machines. But I mean, I think that what that game is will always be a welcome addition in a collection. Right, but the reason why I sort of said it's got that classic status, because, you know, you're talking about the fact that it's got a DMD, but there are games that have got, you know, just alphanumeric or not even that are classic, And they will stand the test of time because they've just hit that classic status and, you know, they're always just going to stay there and they're not going to get any worse. And that's kind of what I think with Iron Man. I think it's where it is, it's just going to stay there. It's not going to lose. It's brand cachet. No, and I think that I don't see Marvel going anywhere anytime soon, and, you know, the character has now left us, so, you know, it's, yeah, I mean, I've grown fonder of it the more that I've been involved with pinball. So I mean I think that that'll be fine. I mean looking at the list of games that are just gonna fall off, I mean if I'm being honest, I honestly think that maybe Iron Maiden might fall off over time because I think that Kee's gonna do better than it going forward. I think Jurassic Park is gonna go down as a better game and I think probably the next game he does is probably gonna go down as a better game and I think that game will falter over time because of its theme. Hmm, yeah. I mean, there is further analysis that we could do. I could literally look at all these games and have a look at their ranking over time to see whether they're starting to fade. But I just wanted to, for me on this list, Spider-Man really stood out where I think it's ranking really high now, but maybe in the future it might not. But let's look at the recent ones from that onwards. So Ghostbusters. Will we be loving Ghostbusters in 20 years' time? I mean, I can't believe people still love Ghostbusters, the movie and everything now.
    59:25
    I'm not going to bet against that. And they're coming out with a new movie next year, so that involves the original cast. So I don't see that going anywhere. And then I expect the new code to be just as good. and it probably is going to come with a vault and I don't think that game is going anywhere. Okay. What about Batman 66? No. I think that's an evergreen. I think that that is a... the longer that game gets out there, I think that that's just... as far as I'm concerned, that's an all-time game. Okay. It's reached classic status now, is what you're saying. Yeah, and I think that the more people learn the game and just the different flavors in the code and everything, it's just there's so much there that people will learn to appreciate over time.
    60:14
    Here's a game that I currently really, really like. I love playing it, but now that I think about it, I think this is going to be one of the games that's going to disappear, and that's Aerosmith. Hmm. Probably. I mean, it is for me. I just think it's a great game. I love playing it. But when you think about those that just have staying power, that get cult status or just stay as absolute classics, I think it's just going to be, you know what, it was a really good game when it came out. Yeah, and again, most of these things, I think when they falter, it's going to falter because of whatever their brand is, whatever their theme is. Listen, Aerosmith, I don't see that having lasting power. It's not going to last like Kiss, which I don't agree with, but I accept its prevalence.
    61:09
    I think stuff like Beatles is going to go up because I think there's going to be more of them out there because they're going to drop in price and stuff like that. So of the bands, if you have to pick one of the bands that's just not going to have lasting power, if Rolling Stones are already out of the argument, then it's got to be Aerosmith, right? Like, what other band would you pick out of these lists and go, nah, not that one? I mean, Iron Maiden, but I mean, they still have their sycophants right now, so. Yeah, their fan base, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's tough. I think that, I mean, there's some interesting games in here that maybe, because I would say that you could say Avatar, because I honestly think that there's going to be a new one in the next year or so. A new movie or a new game? A new game. I think that when the new Avatar movies come out, I think that they're going to make another Avatar game. Because they have such an amazing relationship with Disney. I could picture Disney coming to them and saying, hey, want to do another Avatar game? And I don't picture them going, meh. I mean, if the movies do well, which they probably will. Well, we don't know. It could be a Matrix 2.
    62:23
    Well, I mean, even if it doesn't do well, they're done. So they're coming, regardless. So, I mean, people have gone and loved the world in Disney, and that's a huge hit. So, I mean, I'm hoping it does well. I did enjoy the first one. And at the very least, they might vault it and maybe do, I don't know, a premium edition of it or something like that. and maybe expand on the rules.
    62:48
    Looking at its ranking, I just don't think so. And this is what was really interesting about this list that I did. I'm shocked it's as low as it is. I know. You've got Iron Man. So these all came out in 2010. Iron Man, Big Buck Hunter, and Avatar. Iron Man is currently ranked 33rd. Big Buck Hunter, 284. And Avatar, 159. And I feel that I know so many people who love Avatar. Yeah, I know so many people that don't. And they scratch their head whenever I say that I like it. But I like the theme. So that's what covers it for me. And some people just didn't get the movie either. Yeah, and I don't know. And I think that it has, I mean, in a quiet environment, it has great music. It has great call-outs. I wonder how many outside of Buck Hunter I imagine there's not even close to as many avatars as Iron Man, especially now since they've been vaulted. That's why there also might be an exposure thing as well. And I'm sure that a lot of people who get exposed maybe to Avatar for the first time might not see it if they go to big tournaments like Pinnberg or something. and they have to play a Pinberg pop-up avatar is not going to necessarily be an enjoyable experience.
    64:05
    Yes, I have played that one and it's not fun. Yeah, on this list I kind of find it funny that Disney forced them to put Disney Tron Legacy. I know, or James Cameron's Avatar, right? You know what I mean? That one makes more sense than the other one. I know. And so just before we then move on to some of the other manufacturers, there's just one other one I just want to question. And I'm not saying that it won't, and I won't love it in future, but what about Deadpool? That's an interesting one, I think.
    64:36
    I don't think so. I think that just on the gameplay alone, that's going to last. I mean, that game is amazing.
    64:46
    It's just, it's such a different playing experience than any, really honestly, any of the games on here. What you do in that game is very unique. The play field is very unique. Honestly, it's the poster child for everything that people bitch about. They want different layouts. They want different rules. There's Deadpool. Deadpool is everything of that in spades. So, I mean, and I mean that Deadpool is not going away as a character. There's going to be more movies. He's going to end up in the MCU. So, it's, you know, I don't think the character is going anywhere. And so, I think that that's going to be sticking around. I think, I could actually, I could see like maybe, like Black Knight maybe going away over time. But just because I keep on hearing more and more people start getting pissed off at that game. So I can see that when stuff like that happens, it tends to turn into a movement that then starts hurting the reputation for games.
    65:53
    Speaking of, did you get yours? Did that happen? By what? Aren't you swapping? Well, we'll get to that when we do our week in Pinball. I have news there. Okay. All right, so now we're looking at the other manufacturers. Yep. So let's look at Jersie Jack. So really, Wizard of Oz, Hobbit dialed in, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Wonka.
    66:17
    I'm proud of this just because, I mean, the Hobbit's 31st. It's nice to see that the game does get some of the love it deserves because it doesn't deserve the hate that it does get. I mean, of two people who've owned it, we appreciated what it was. We but bagged the absolute shit out of it though. We did, but it's still, it's only because we had our own expectations of, obviously both of us are Lord of the Rings, huge Lord of the Rings fans, it just didn't meet my expectations of what I needed for the one modern game that I owned. So if I had more money and I had a collection, I would have never sold it. I still would have it. But because it was the only game in my collection, it just didn't meet that criteria, unfortunately. Okay, but do you think it's going to stand the test of time? Are we going to love it in 10 years' time? I'd like to think that it's people will start to, you know, once people start getting over the pre-conceptions of what people said about it and, you know, people just being like, I don't even want to bother, I don't even want to bother to learn the game. I hope that over time people will try it and, you know, it is good for what it is. It is different than a lot of games. It does have some of the most, probably really the most amazing, Amazing thematic package in it for like as far as take a theme, put it in a game. It certainly has the most of it, 100%. That's not even an argument. It has more theme in the game than any other game that's ever been made.
    67:56
    So I think that it deserves its place in pinball history. So I'm just happy that that's somewhat high ranked, so I appreciate that. Yeah, well I think if you think of Wizard of Oz, I think Wizard of Oz is going to remain a classic. I think that's going to just be something that people play whether you like it or not. I think it's just where it is and it'll stay that way for years. Yep, agreed. Dialed in.
    68:25
    I think that's going to drop. I think. Because there's nobody who loves, I mean, who has ever said that they like dialed in because of the theme?
    68:33
    Yeah, that's right. So it's not going to have that nostalgia feel. Although, for a different reason, it's like, well, you know, it was the original theme that came out, has an amazing layout, great rules, it's fun to play. It's not original, I don't think it's original.
    68:48
    It's Pat Lawler. It is, but Pat Lawler is the license. I mean, it's... Mum Jeans is the license. Mum Jeans, yeah. The red button is the license. You pay for Pat Lawler, Pat Lawler is the license. But I mean, unless people are going to be like, yeah, remember when we used to have cell phones? Yeah, there used to be a game about cell phones. Yeah, I remember.
    69:12
    Is that how they're going to talk? Yeah, I assume you don't know what that reference is from. It's from South Park. Oh, okay, cool. Right, there you go. So Pirates of the Caribbean, which we talked about before, is currently ranked number five. It's not even on this list. Well, it is. I just put it in after. Thanks for sharing, Maren. That's alright. So it's five. So it is the highest ranked Jersie Jack Machine. Which I agree. Will it always be up that high, do you think?
    69:42
    Well, it matters. It's weird because it could go either way, right? So if they don't make, if they just, for whatever reason, they don't make any more. So then that leaves the game as a rather rare game, which we found out, and I think that this holds across all rare games, is that when games are rare, the people who own them love them, and they end up in the hands of the people who really appreciate those games, so therefore they get ranked high. So it's weird because I think that if it stays rare, it will stay ranked high because those people will continue to rank it high, but if they make more of them, it could also get higher because there's a ton of people who want them. I would argue that Thunderbirds is a rare game. Yeah, and I would argue that My Box with a Rock is also rare.
    70:36
    It is still ranked the lowest ever game on Pinball. Still more feature-based. 376. There you go. With a rating of 4. Yeah, why isn't Thunderbirds here, man? Well, because... You don't think that's going to stand the test of time? Well, we could be talking for hours about this. So, Wonka, for me, Wonka is probably too new to know what sort of last ability it's going to have.
    71:06
    I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm warming on the game. We'll see what next time I actually get to play more time on it. But I mean, the theme is a evergreen, like classic theme that's never going away. I mean, we went to go see a couple concerts in local casinos here and there's Wonka fucking everywhere. So, I mean, everyone loves it. So, by theme, it's going to last. Whether or not the people like the game, it seems very, very mixed on people's opinions on the game. So, we'll see if that gets flushed out over time. Yeah. Alright, well then let's move to Spooky. Just because they've got four machines, not including their sort of little boutique-y ones they did like Domino's and Jetsons. And did they do another one?
    71:56
    Anyway, so really you've got America's Most Haunted, Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper and Total Nuclear Annihilation.
    72:05
    I think TNA will always remain a classic. I think we'll always enjoy that game. Thank you, S. Okay. But, I don't know.
    72:16
    I think Nightmare Castle will last. I think that that's a good game. I think Rob Zombie, I think the longer it's out there, I think the more people are going to realize it's not a good game at all.
    72:31
    As much as I love the theme, it's just, the play field is just really bad, I think. It's funny that America's Most Haunted is higher than that, as it should be. I think America's Most Haunted is a better game. And especially if they were to re-release that with their now much better build quality, I think it would be a better game and maybe deepen the rules and give a little more call-outs. I think that it's a fun theme and it's fun, so I think it's actually as listed here. I mean, I like Haunted more than TNA, but I mean, I think it's kind of in this order.
    73:09
    I know I'm in the minority, but I actually really, really like Rob Zombie. Really like it. I do like the layout. I like the rules. I love the music. I love the call-outs. I love the video. I'm a big fan of Rob Zombie, and I think that it's underrated at 157 on the Pinside list. I think when it first came out, the code was really basic and broken because you could just repeat the middle shot over and over and over. But then they changed that and they opened up the rest of the game.
    73:45
    I think that's still the biggest problem which you can't fix is the playfield on that game. Like, yeah, the rules have gotten better, but I mean, the game has like three shots. And the other shots open maybe the longer you play and other shots aren't even used. So it's like, yeah, I think it gets a bad rap. I think it's better than people give it credit for. But, you know, you're not agreeing with me and I don't think there's anything I can say to change your mind. So a lot of people are like that.
    74:14
    I love the theme. I will agree with that. Do you even have any Americas Haunted over there? Did that ever make it there? Yeah, it did. I've played that quite a bit. I streamed it many years ago as well, and I quite like it. Are those still holding up?
    74:33
    This many years older? I mean, those were really rough games, physically. There's none in this area at all, which, sadly, I do like the game. I wish I could play it again, but I'm curious how it still is doing.
    74:48
    Because I've seen inside of it, and it's scary. Yeah, okay. So, what do you think about Oktoberfest or Houdini?
    74:59
    They're really close. I mean, I love Houdini. I love magic as a theme. I think the pinball machine is 100% more beautiful than Oktoberfest. I think it has more interesting rules in it than Oktoberfest.
    75:21
    But Oktoberfest is fun. I've spent a decent amount of time on it. I mean, they're both good. I think that it's hard because if you compare it to really anything else being made except maybe Spooky, I mean, those games really stand out for, like, not necessarily build quality, but, like, they really need to step up their game on their graphics, on their display, because some of them are just, like, laughable. Like, some of the graphics on Oktoberfest are just, like, you see it and you're just like, I had better graphics than that with Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 in middle school. What is that? There's just some things in there where you're just like, what is that? Of a game that came out in 2018 and you have graphics that look like they came out of... I think that was the style they were going for and they have improved a lot of those graphics. In fact, I'm going to be streaming a production model of Oktoberfest in the next couple of weeks. And I haven't played it since the prototype came out, which is a very long time ago. So I'm keen to see what's actually been changed and improved. And that's, I mean, honestly, that's the only, like, deficient part of that company, I'd say, is that their visual, their video assets are lagging behind the rest of their ability, you might call it, in my opinion. But it's compared to the competition, really. That's all you can compare it to. Yeah, fair enough. Okay So Joe I think it time for Joe tips the top 100 but you can see I put a little bit of a footnote here in this section because I did I covered where I was going Maybe it was Stern of the Union that I was looking at as well Yeah that what it was But it shows the current Stern pro rankings and it the top ten And guess who number eight
    77:29
    Me? It's you! Oh my god! Oh my god, so don't fuck it up, man. I still got one... well, I mean, Pimberg's going in, eventually. So, I mean, that's... I think I'm 23rd in Pimberg. I'm not sure at the math at the time. But I mean, I still have 24 hour coming up and I mean, push comes to shove, I might try and fit in one other thing at the end of the year. But I noticed my rank dropped to 35 today too, so I think Northwest came off the books from last year.
    78:01
    Well, that's what happens. You get a good result, your score goes up and then week on week you watch it slowly whittle down until you get another good win.
    78:10
    That's the nature of it. So, anyway, point is, you're top 10 in the Stern Pro Circuit ranking, so when you're tipping the top 100, you should know yourself. So... I should. Don't pick another shit game, though, this time. That's what I'm going to say.
    78:26
    Alright, here we go. You ready? Sure. Pick a number between 1 and 100. A random number between 1 and 100 is 82.
    78:39
    No way! Okay, like, how do we always get games we're talking about in that episode? Like, this is legit creepy.
    78:49
    What the fuck? 82. Well, so it's 82. And for those people that just, Google lady stopped picking a number between 1 and 100. She just kept giving me random facts about random numbers. So we've had to go to Siri. So that's why we've had the voice change. So, Siri decided to pick Doctor Who number 82. So, Joe, go for it. Alright, so Doctor Who. So, on this game, there's, I would say that there's three distinct strategies on this game.
    79:24
    There's one that, if you're really accurate, there's one that gets used more than others, But there is at least a couple other strategies that you can decide when you play this game. So one strategy is going Sonic Booms, and that's more or less kind of a ramp strategy. So on that specific strategy, what you're going to do is you're going to pick Dr. Six, I believe, which is going to give you your play field multiplier twice as fast. and you're going to shoot the hang-on lane over there and then you're going to be hitting the side ramp as much as you can after I think 10 shots or so. You're going to go into Sonic Booms which is going to start getting you paid for a lot more for hitting ramps. And I believe it finally diverts to the bottom, hit the W, hit the H, and then go back to O's. And then you just rinse-repeat that, and the more you do it, the more it's worth for loops. So that's one strategy. If you're accurate enough and you can repeat those and the feeds are good, some upper flippers are a lot harder to hit that reliably. So that's one strategy.
    80:41
    For those accurate ramp hitters, another strategy, the most basic strategy. I don't go for that one. I try it. I just give up because I never can get it right. But on the copy that the only copy I have access to regularly, the upper ramp's hard. The flipper's not strong enough. It'll go up halfway and then you're in trouble, so it's like, meh.
    81:01
    So then the other strategy you can go is multiball, which on this copy is the most valuable because the other strategy is also hard to do. So on multiball, you pick Dr. Seven. You lock each ball in each of the eyes or whatever you want to call those things. And what 7 does is when the playfield rises and you get your little white nipples that you're going to be pounding on, it gets you double credits for those so you don't have to get through as many hits. And then once you get into multiball, the playfield will raise again. Well, it'll light roll multiball. And then you'll have the three robots. Yes, Doctor Who fans, I don't know the dead, what are they called? You know. Dailix? Dailix, yes, the most annoying sounding things in Pinball ever. They're called Dailix. Dailix? No. It's an old guy. They're called annoying robots is what they are.
    81:58
    So, yeah, the middle shot is worth more for your multiball, whatever your jackpot value than side shots. You'll see it on the DMD.
    82:08
    The two sides are worth less than the middle one, I believe. And then once you get a multiball, you're going to be trying to knock down those three. Once you knock down all three, you'll get a jackpot, rinse, repeat, and that's roughly what that strategy is. After the first multiball, you're going to have to hit the middle target to relight your locks.
    82:24
    And that's pretty much the end of that. The other strategy, which is one I tend to go if the game is suited for it. Again, the prick of the cup I have, it seems to lean left, so the ball does not go where it's supposed to during this. But for this strategy, you're going to be going for video mode. So you're going to be picking Dr. One, which what he does is it gives you double credit whenever you get escape letters. And once you complete escape, it lights your video mode in the back corner, underneath the pop bumpers, and there's a lane to the far right that if you go in there, you'll start multiball. So the way you can do that is you can either hit those targets, which give you points, but also risky, Or you can just hit the bonus X loop on the left of the middle multiball area and it'll bring you back into the pop bumpers and then you're up left to the whims of the game. Either the game will be nice and the ball will go to the video mode start or it'll be a dick and it'll throw it out the left and you just gotta get the ball and keep doing that. Some games, it just won't go in that hole. Other games with less active pops or games that are level or maybe even leaning right. Video mode will be a very lucrative strategy. And then pretty much the video mode is jumping over stuff using one flip or two flips. A good strategy to use on this is to always, if you're not sure, always start with a single flip because you can turn a single flip into a double flip mid-flip. To jump over bigger objects if you realize that you fucked up and it was supposed to be a double. Once you do a double, there's no coming back, so it's a little safer that way. Another special bonus is that if you make sure you jump into the phone booth at the end, you'll get bonus points. So this strategy can be very valuable, even more valuable if you do it with the 4X playfield. If you take the time, if you light your video mode, then go get your playfield X and then go into the video mode. It can be very lucrative. As you complete and rescue each doctor, you're going to get the other doctors as well. So you're going to get all the bonuses for getting the other doctors. So that's another benefit of this is you're going to get all the – instead of having to pick only one per ball, you're eventually going to save them all and you're going to have all of them, which gives you a 20 million bonus, which can be 80 million if you have the 4x playfield. And then also destroying the machines or whatever is a big payday that can also be multiplied to be like 100 million, which is also valuable. And then the more you go to level 2, level 3, they can get huge points. And then again, all can be multiplied.
    85:14
    And then plus your bonus X, which can be worth a decent amount at the end of the game, and plus you get paid out for having all your Doctors after every ball. So realistically, those are really the only strategies in the game. If you start off and you haven't lit your Doctors yet, after I pick on one, I pick one for Escape and then say you mess up, you don't get any more Doctors. On Ball 2, I pick Doctor 4 because Doctor 4 will make your repair letters worth millions. And if you're shooting for that lane, 10 odds are you're going to be missing, so might as well get paid for missing. And then after that, you can pick Doctor 5 because Doctor 5, I believe the bonus gets paid up more from the Pop Bumpers, which then allows you to Transmute, which is worth a lot of points. I'm not overly sure how that works. I think that's the other way you can get Doctors if you're not doing the escape stuff. I mean, that's pretty much it. I guess you could go who, you could spell who a ton, but it's a lot harder to do because every shot is a new feed.
    86:23
    But I don't see a lot of people doing that versus just going for Sonic Booms. But I think that's the entire game, unless I'm missing anything that you can think of. No, no, that's it. I think what you really hit on is that it really depends on how the game is set up. It really, you can just tell by, you know, if you get your 30 seconds warm up or if you're watching somebody else play, you can see immediately what feeds work well, what shots work well. If that ramp shot, the side ramp shot is really hard to get, it kind of does, I don't know, it sort of cripples the game somewhat as far as the points exploiting goes with the playfield multiplier. But generally, if it's bad for you, it could be bad for everybody and they'll all try different things.
    87:17
    So what I'm saying, like if you, let's say you get a couple of loops up there and let's say you get the playfield multiplier up to 2.5 or 3 or 3.5. Maybe that's enough. You don't have to keep going. Just do that. Start your multiball with a multiplier because that makes a big difference. And I've seen that a number of times where people that really don't know about the playful multiplier will just lock the two balls up the middle, bash down those targets to light it, and then start multiball. And, you know, they might get three or four jackpots and bang, somebody comes along and gets one jackpot with a multiplier and all of a sudden their score's completely over the top. So you've got to weigh up what you're doing there and how safe these shots are.
    88:01
    One thing I don't know, mainly because I've never done that, but what I know is that when you're in multiball and you've got to shoot down the Daleks, The first thing is you get a row of Daleks. Once you've got them all, then I think the Emperor Daleks come up, but they keep going up in value. And then right at the end, you finally get to battle Davros. Oh, I've never lived that long. Yeah, I believe that's the case. Well, that's what I wanted to know is what happens after that? Once you've killed Davros, he is the head of the Daleks. He then did get overthrown at a later stage, and they didn't really like him anymore. Oh, wow. Inside knowledge. Look at you. Nerd alert. I mean, maybe, I don't know, I mean, this game could be set up, maybe they go to a Megavisor-esque thing. Or maybe it just, they say fuck it and restart it. Yeah. Which is probably more likely. Yeah, it probably is. I mean, I've never even seen that done. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. So, I mean, unless you have a really friendly set-up game, this game is really mean. It is really mean. It also helps, I know that there are, you know, here there's a second chance. Lightning flippers too, we forgot to mention that. Well, yeah, most of the time the machine does come with lightning flippers.
    89:23
    Yeah, which makes it obviously more hard. But there are some machines that are set up where, let's say, a ball that comes out of the two ball locks up the top will give you a ball save. Sometimes that's set, sometimes it's not. So it depends on how someone wants to set it up. At our local arcade we had here at Pimbo Wizard, which was super nice of them, they had no ball save on the game. And they also had a plunge where sometimes it would moonwalk straight to the outlane. Right. Just super cool.
    90:02
    So then you just plunge the ball and literally right to the outlane. Like, cool. That was a useful... Here's another thing that can happen in this game to be mindful of. And this is when you are what's called lock blocked. You know all about this, don't you? It's not too bad. Well, it's not too bad for someone that is currently eighth on the Stern Pro Circuit.
    90:27
    I mean, just it's technically easier because, I mean, you have to hit the center target, which is the easier of them, right? I've seen a lot of people play Doctor Who that don't realise because in multiball people lock one and maybe other persons lock the left. So you'll actually start the ball and you've got two balls sitting up there, right? So the only way you can register the locks is by hitting the stand-up target in between the two locked balls. Correct. But also don't forget, that's a shot right up the middle with lightning flippers. So it can be pretty tricky. And I've seen some people go for it and it's just death. That's just pound ghost. What's the worst that could happen, right? No, I know. But the reason I'm saying that for those people that, you know, don't play Doctor Who all that much and all of a sudden you've got it in a tournament and you're there going, hang on, how come I can't lock balls? You'll actually see that it's the stand up next to it. And sometimes, I mean, most of the time, you know, Doctor Who came out when you've got incandescent globes in it, and sometimes that insert doesn't actually really light bright enough for you to realize that that's what you've got to hit. So it's called Lock Blocked. Yeah, another thing that makes this game super dickish and hard is the fact that there's no rubber in the outlanes. It's literally just metal. So anything that goes in that area, it's gone for the most part. Don't miss people. There you go, there's Doctor Who. I like Doctor Who. I think it's a great game. I think that middle mech up the top, the elevator that goes up a couple of levels, it's freaking awesome. I think it's one of the most annoying games to listen to.
    92:05
    Shut up. When this game is loud, I want to burn it. It's thematically correct. The Daleks are the Doctor's biggest enemy and they are nothing. Why do they have to be that loud and annoying? They're evil because they only speak at 11.
    92:27
    Yes, they do. They don't have volume control. It's one of those games, whenever you're watching a stream of a tournament and Doctor Who is one of the games that's not playing. Yeah, you can hear it no matter where it is. Always hear it no matter where it is. You're in the bathroom and all you're hearing is, don't talk to dark dark dark dark dark dark dark. And you're like, um, this is, it's like, why am I hearing this right now? No matter where you are. It's because what they've done with all the other call-outs, those ones just of the Daleks, they have them twice the volume. It's almost as bad as the scream from Ghostbusters. Yeah, it seems like deliberate trolling. It really is. And it's got its own topper that can move around while it's annoying. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's very cool. So, there you go.
    93:20
    So, Joe, what's happened your week in Pinball this week? Let's see. We're in League now, so I had League on Monday. I put up a 36, possible 40. Probably like 4 million on Oktoberfest. So that was fun. I've been preparing all week for Critical Hit, which is tomorrow.
    93:50
    Great and early, so after this. So if anybody wants to sign up for that Critical Hit, where do they go?
    93:57
    To the past, because we stopped the recording last week and didn't do this week in pinball, so after I heard the episode, I went, you know what? It might have been useful to mention that we had a Critical Hit tournament coming up. So now we can say you can sign up for the next one that hasn't been announced, unfortunately. But yeah, it's a fun format and it's unique. There's nothing like it. And it's probably the most stressful tournament you can run as a TD because it's a very hard format to run. It takes a lot of practice and getting used to to make sure it runs efficiently. And I haven't run one since, I want to say April or something like that. So I'm kind of making sure, hopefully I remember every thing that I learned from last time that I did not write down because that's what professionals do.
    94:53
    And then, you know, so there's all sorts of challenges. I mean, this is probably one of the best critical hits you can go to. It's at Mystic Pinball and he's invested a lot in this event to be mainly, it's really the only tournaments he has and he spent, he laminated the cards to make sure that they never get damaged even though someone fucking took a card. So we're down one card for one of our decks which is another annoying thing with this format. But we have some custom designed magnet trophies which are super cool which are local artists and the one I was hanging out with earlier, Joel Tiosman.
    95:34
    We got custom tins that have the art on it and on the back it has the so everyone has their name on it so you can keep your cards in there. It keeps them safe so no one can see them. And also within it we have all the rules and all the phases of the tournament. So if you ever have any questions about when things are, he made big posters of all the cards. So you can always look and reference so you know what all the cards are and if they're available. We have custom dice trays that he had specifically made for the event with giant dice to be able to roll to figure out position each time. And it's all, a lot has been put into the event and it's super cool. People support it and it's really, really fun. If you've never done it before, you might be intimidated by it, but it's not that bad. And then, so then, yeah, so it's just, it's match play for this one. I've run Knockouts in the past, not a big fan. Have you played the Knockout version? I've not played Critical Hit at all. I've got 15, I've had 15 packets of Critical Hit cards. I've never played the game. Do you have packets of both or just the new match play tech? I think the new match play one. Yeah, I've run, I ran one knockout. Knockout is way harder to run. It's way more mean. And so I will probably not going to run a knockout again until the new version comes out. But match play, it's much more streamlined, a lot easier to run. And pretty much you play, at least what we do, is you play like four hours of match play and you just get points and you can earn cards. We have goals on all the games. For instance, you could, you know, you can, ah, some goals, just defeat the power on Twilight Zone.
    97:26
    All sorts of different goals have on different games. But that's how you earn cards and then after that, top half make finals and then fight it out Pinberg style and see who comes out. It's really fun. You should try running one over there. I want to, but we'll see how we go. Yeah, so that's pretty much my Pimball. And then, yeah, that's it for Pimball. Until next week. League again. So for me really the two things that happened this week one is I streamed Walking Dead and Attack from Mars and so just such different games but oh god so much fun just brutal and fun and oh just the connection to these machines. That sounds fun. I'll link that. It's just really good. I don't know. I've just got such a good spot in my heart for both of those games. I hadn't played Attack from Mars for quite some time, so it was good to play that, and it just reminded me why I think it is, besides Star Trek, obviously, my favourite game of all time. So, there's that. And the other thing is, I may have sold my monsters. Mmm. Oh, you sold it? Yes. Nice. So... That's better than the trade, I guess. Yeah, and look, all it is, it just gives me comfort that I've got the money sitting there, so when my Jurassic Park finally turns up, bang, you're paid, you're done, give me my machine. And I may get a special message on my game. I know, I saw you begging. I wasn't begging. Asking and begging are two very different things. Yeah. Well, I pictured it in my mind. I was hearing your voice doing it. I was like, oh, please, please, can you just write something special on my little thingy, please, would you? That all went from Australian to Scottish. I know.
    99:33
    Did you hear it as well? It wasn't just me. Oh, no, I realized it halfway through. It started off really good and I'm like, okay, that's much better than The Simpsons did when they did the Aussie accent. But then it went Scottish and I'm like, hmm. I know, I have a lot of accents and sometimes I can't keep them apart.
    99:51
    Speaking of Scottish, oh, my last segue. Also I just noticed, and this was not even on the list. Social media watch.
    100:02
    There you go, last minute social media watch. You love it, don't you? It was that this week, Haggis Pinball just put up a picture on Facebook with effectively one graphic that says, The Celts available November 2019.
    100:28
    So, basically, they want these machines ready to be purchased November 2019. It is going to be at Chicago Expo. It is going to be a flip out, the event where I've got my tournament, so we'll be able to see it and hopefully I'll get a bit of a flip beforehand. But there you go, that came up on social media. Joke's on you guys. No, they're actually just selling kilts. That's it.
    100:52
    That's it. Kelt or Kelts? Kelts, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, see? Mm-hmm. Yeah, cool. Just making sure. Yeah.
    101:03
    It's going to have the name on it and everything, but that's all you need to do. They show up and be like, what? We said we were having these. Don't get mad at us. You guys are the ones who looked way too far into that.
    101:16
    Read the fine print. That's right. So there you go. That was a last minute note. So there you go. We're done for this week, Joe. Thank you again. I gotta go to bed. I gotta get up in like eight hours to go run a tournament that better run well. Yeah, and you're playing in it as well, so hopefully you win it.
    101:36
    Of all the tournaments to where I can run, and this is a really, really hard one, this takes way a lot of my energy, and this one, out of all of them, I tend to not be able to have enough left. It's very, very taxing to run. Okay. All right. Well, enjoy it and we'll all hear about it next week. Don't forget to write in, guys. Headtoheadpinball at gmail.com. You know, why don't you write in and tell us some games that you love now that you don't think will stand the test of time or you think that they will. They'll be an all-time classic. I don't know. Let's just start the conversation going. Yeah, I mean, I think mainly we need more Lord of the Rings questions because I think that's been the highlight of everyone's game. That's when you get excited, isn't it? I know. You know, I got so many comments of just people being like, you know what? Hearing you talk about Lord of the Rings just makes me want one and be excited about it. I'm like, yeah, because I love it that much. You do love it that much. That's right.
    102:32
    Awesome. All right, guys, we'll speak again next week. Later, guys. Bye-bye. Iron Maiden, Deadpool, Pirates of the Caribbean, Black Knight.