you're listening to the head-to-head people podcast find us on facebook email us at head Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 114 and my name's Martin and with me... Jeff, not Teolis, not Patterson, not... Rivera. Rivera. Have I got them all covered? No, Jeff Parsons. Jeff Parsons. Who are you, Jeff? I am a guy that loves pinball and has a little tiny little podcast called the Pinball Players Podcast, which has been on a hiatus since just before Pindenburg, but it's coming back. and yeah, I've been playing pinball all my life, love it, discovered that there was a competitive pinball, and there were people that had like 50-plus machines in their homes, and my world has changed about 10 years ago, and it's never been the same since, in a good way. And so the Pinball Players podcast, for those people that don't know yet, and hopefully they will go and listen because it's a fantastic podcast, what's the differentiator? What's the angle that you go for with that podcast? I typically, I'm not a collector. So, you know, the stuff that I concentrate on is playing pinball. It can be anything from tournaments to shows, hanging out with pinball people. The community is a big part of it. And just getting together and playing with friends and going over games I like and things I don't like. And I have guests on to learn more about them. And they can be anybody. They can be no names or they can be somebody you've never heard of that I just think is interesting and has a good story. and I'll have them on. I just do my own thing and I think it's worked out pretty well. Well, I mean, obviously, you know, we did a lot of interviews last year as well and a few this year. Interviewing people is interesting because you've got to build rapport, you've got to find your groove each time you record, but also trying to find a time with them is quite challenging as well, right? That's the biggest challenge is trying to find somebody, well, if I can do this, and like, well, I can't do that, Like I've had people wind up and it just does not happen because we just couldn't find a time to get together. But I do enjoy having people on. One of the things I like about pinball the most is the people and getting to know them when you go out to shows or just in league. And I've made so many friends in this hobby that it's just good to keep making friends. You're one of the people that's known for an amazing voice for podcasting. Well, thank you. Well, you're also on radio. How did that come about? The craziest thing, I always liked the radio. I remember I was probably in junior high. We had an old, you'll remember, eight-track tapes, right? Oh, I do, yes. Yeah, but we had an eight-track recorder, and I would actually record songs on the radio and play them back, and I would introduce them myself like I was the DJ. I loved it. I thought it was great. I also always wanted to be a game show host. I knew that that was never going to happen, which actually it kind of did at one point. But I like being a host for things, I guess. So I just had so much fun doing that. And then at one point I was in high school, and they needed somebody to announce the girls' basketball lineup starting the game. So I went out and announced them, and somebody said, you've got a really good voice. You should do radio. And I'm like, hmm, okay, that's all I needed to hear. and I actually went to school for it and been in the business since 1993. I've been at the station I'm at now doing mornings for over 20 years now. It'll be my 23rd anniversary. It's coming up November 1st. Wow, okay. So you're the morning chat, really, because that's when really it is a lot more of the chat versus the music content, right? Yeah, we still play the music. It's a top 40 station. when I started, the music was great. I've outgrown that now. But the nice thing about it, I've got two partners, and we just mesh together really well. And the biggest compliment we've got is when people call up, you hear them, and you're like, you don't listen to things like Lizzo. I mean, come on. I can tell just by your voice. I like you guys more than the music, and that is just kind of the biggest compliment that people will listen to our station despite the music they may not like for us, which is just, like I said, you can't get any better than that. We're doing something right, I guess. Funny enough, a few weeks ago I said to somebody that I know that's in sort of that industry, I said, you know what, I would have loved to have gotten into radio and maybe a career change. I get into it now and they just looked at me and went, it's such hard work, I wouldn't recommend it. No, and it's just getting harder because of the way radio has changed over the years. When I got into it, my first job was working an overnight shift. And back then, you had to play every single song. You had to load it up. You had to play it. You had to play the jingle in between. You had to play all the commercials. And they were on what looked like 8-track tapes when I started. Now computers handle all of it. They do the whole thing. And so getting into this business now is tough to do because they need less people because it's computerized. But at the same time, they have more for these people to do outside of just doing the show. So when we're done the show, that's like 30% of my day and a big chunk of it. But there's other things I've got to get done throughout the day. And with all that work, that's a big reason why I haven't been doing the podcast as much either. Yeah, fair enough. But do you just sort of start recording and just talk about anything? Or is it really planned what you're going to talk about? Yeah, we plan in advance. every day we have a meeting after the show and we're like, all right, let's lay out what we're going to do tomorrow and then we'll leave we have little boxes for every break we're going to do and we'll plug in, we're going to talk about this this, this, that all goes there and then we kind of fill in the gaps between what might happen in the world between the time that show ends and we start the next one the next morning so yeah, it's there's a lot of planning that goes into it a lot of people think we just go in and just talk and it's all I mean, where we go with the topic is off the cuff, but we have a plan every time we open that microphone. Yeah, well, I would never say podcasting is probably up to that level of production, but you've seen the show notes today and what we have to do each week. You have to sort of plan these things, and it's really interesting. Some of our podcasts will go for three hours. Sometimes they go for an hour. It just depends on how much you've got to talk about and how interesting you can keep it, I guess. Yeah, and that's the challenge in radio, too. It's like every day you've got to come up with something that people are going to be interested in. And trying to find out what that is is a challenge, too. But it seems to work most of the time. There you go. Well, so shall we talk about some news? Yeah, yeah. First news, where the hell's Joe? Oh, well, so I get a message from him at like three in the morning. He's like, hey, when you wake up, I need you to fill in for me. I'm like, fill in for what? So I caught up with him later. He's like, no, I need you to fill in on the podcast. I'm like, oh, okay, sure. I didn't bother to ask. Well, you know, it's like what you said that I sort of mentioned before. When you're sort of trying to arrange interviews with people on your show, you've got to organize your times effectively and we we've got a bit of a rhythm going in that we usually record saturday morning for me which is friday night for you guys and it just didn't happen this week because i just didn't want to do it so early with expo being on in case there was big reveals so i sort of said let's do it the day after and then he had a tournament and that tournament went till after midnight his time which just meant it was just we couldn't we've only got about a four hour window of opportunity where our time zones sync up when we're both awake yeah um and so yeah that's why we're recording now so i've been up five o'clock this morning which is i think still a little bit late for when you normally wake up for radio anyway i'm up at 3 30 yeah we're on we're on by 5 30 so i'm gonna go in and prep for all that stuff yeah so there you go so that's why we just couldn't coordinate our times next week might also be a bit of a challenge because i'm doing a three-day tournament um which is flip out which i'll get to later so we might might not even have an episode next week we'll see how we go but no i know i know i think that'll be maybe the third time except we did have a bit of a hiatus but anyway so you guys have had an impeccable record you know 100 what is 114 this is fantastic going that long not bad Not bad. But yeah, so it was really for Expo because we were expecting these massive pinball reveals. And how many did we get? Wow. Nothing. Nothing. Well, we got the Celts. We finally got to see the Celts from... People wanted a JJP. They wanted JJP news. They wanted Stern news. And they didn't get it. Because I'll tell you what. Honestly, I just don't think this is their show for reveals anymore. The things have changed. It used to be you'd put out your new stuff there because that's where the people are, but now the people are everywhere. So you stream your reveals and then bring them to shows. Yeah. Well, because at the end of the day, it's a lot of money to go to these events, I guess. Stern themselves usually have the biggest footprint. It's going to cost them quite a bit to have that kind of space. We sort of said last week when we did our prediction that Stern certainly wouldn't reveal anything new and it would be all about Elvira. And, oh, it was all about Elvira. I think they had like 20 Elvira machines, something like that, someone was telling me. Wow. Well, that's the way to do it, though. I mean, people have already seen it. They've seen Jack Danger's stream. So now it's like, hey, I want to play it. And I think this is the perfect way to market these games. so really the the new i think there was two if you can call them like reveals one was kelts and i think quetzal had another game as well but you know you're right we were expecting from the big players i think if anything we were expecting jersey jack was going to because really i think wonka wasn't at tpf it was a little bit after but he has revealed at either tpf or expo before so I still think these pinball shows is his sort of avenue of reveal and the timing kind of felt right for another machine but it just wasn't right. Yeah, well, you know, just patience. Just patience and they'll come. Correct. So if I can talk about the... Probably the big buzz that really happened was around Medieval Madness. Someone was saying to me that it's referring to a new edition called the Royal Edition. So effectively, it is the last run of Medieval Madness remakes, but with some enhancements, Jeff. Supercharged is what it is. It's like, what, they've got a topper? They've got... You knew they were going to add the widescreen LED. They didn't have that in the original, right? It was just a regular standard. Yeah. And, yes, the topper, you know, I'm not big on toppers because it doesn't affect gameplay whatsoever. It's just art. I'm not a player, but that's a really nice-looking topper. I mean, it looks like they just took the Translight and just made it a 3D image, statues or something there. It's really well done. Figurines, yeah. I think they've taken their cues from when Attack from Mars came out with that topper. Best one ever. It was the best one ever. Then when they brought out Monster Bash, that was kind of, I think, the blueprint for this, where you had moulded figurines that don't necessarily move, but you've got a bit of a light show that happens with them, and that's what this looks like. It goes for $5.99. Do you have any idea how much the Attack from Mars topper was? I guess it came with the game, didn't it? Yeah, I think it came with the LA. Could you add it to one? I don't... I don't know. I probably should have investigated this further, but But that's... So, okay. The response from this really is the topper looks amazing. Yeah. Colour-changing GI. Yeah, thank you. We will have that. Because I think the game that really did that well was Monster Bash, when they did the remake of that. And the large display, yep, we knew it was coming. So, if you're not already in on it, I think people are saying, oh my God, that's fantastic, I want. the response from people that have already got a medieval madness hasn't been so positive. Well, that's the risk you take when you buy one of these games. You know that at some point they're going to do something else with these things. Do you want the game now or do you want to wait and maybe miss it entirely? and all of a sudden, you know, it's... I don't blame them for doing new stuff and putting... I mean, they're here to make a buck. You know, if they can do it, they can do it. I think that's a mistake a lot of people think. It's like everyone thinks they're owed something. Oh, well, you didn't have that when I bought mine. It's like, well, you know, it's like models of cars. It's like you get a new model of, like, any car, it's going to have new features. It's kind of the same thing, you know? It's got new features. So I've always looked at the remakes and thought, You know what? You did an incredibly good replica of Medieval Madness with a remake. It looks just like the original, a lot cleaner, all LED, so it looks really nice. But you didn't enhance it, you just replicated it. When Attack from Mars came out, they pushed it further. They added lighting, it just looked that much better. Then Monster Bash was the evolution. so they've then gone back and done all those enhancements. So I agree with you in that it's risk, but at the time when people laid down money for these machines, they didn't know that there were going to be these enhancements that would come as the journey of CJC. Right. Well, like I said, the analogy still comes. I love my car, but the same model of that car now has got so many new features because technology has advanced in cars that I want to have Antonio Cruz control that will adjust based on the cars around me. I want all these extra safety features and new radios that connect to Bluetooth and you can speak to them. I want all that stuff, but I've already invested, so I'm stuck. I kind of liken it to the same thing. Yeah, I reckon that's a really good analogy there. But that had happened to me a few years ago. My previous car that I had, I got at the time it was the top of the range. And then they did a mid-cycle refresh and they actually changed the name. So it was even more, it was higher than mine. And honestly, I didn't feel so good at the time. I just went, oh, I thought I had a great car and now I don't. But I think that we, this is kind of the first time this has really happened. Yeah. It would be different. I might have a little more sympathy if they released these and then like a month or two later this stuff came out. Yeah. But it's been how many years since Medieval Met? It was three anyway since? Yeah. It's like that. Yeah. And similarly, you know, recently I know if we can talk about, you know, Munsters when the premium came out and was black and white and, you know, people sort of missed out on the LE. so they bought the black and white. Then the colour premium came out. People were in a similar sort of boat where they went, well, I got what I got because that was all available and now there's something else that's available but I've already spent my money. Yeah, well, sell it and take a little bit of a loss. Take what you have to and get what you want if you want it that bad. That's really what it is. It's how passionate you are about wanting that new shiny thing will determine what sort of hit you're going to take. Yep, yep, exactly. My understanding is it's $599 for the topper. The GI, it sort of says $99 to $199. I don't know what the difference is. Whether you get the simple or the large. I don't know. Maybe that's just a range they've given. And the display, I believe, is $650. But that's if you've got the colour version. So that's a bit of extra coin to enhance your medieval madness. Yeah, sure is. You could buy a decent used pinball machine for that kind of money. Yeah, you could. And that's kind of, I think, what people are saying, is that that's a lot of money to enhance something. Yep. So, yeah. Frugal Me says no way. Yeah, Frugal Me says I'd be happy the way it is. You know, if I had to do any of those, I would actually do the color-changing GI because that changes the majority of what you're looking at. How does it change based on modes, or how does it work? I believe it is. So it is interactive. So I haven't seen it in action. I've seen photos of it, so it does completely change the whole color of the play field. I don't know what events it's linking to, though. As long as it doesn't become like a disco ball show, then I'm fine with it. because if you're going to change, change to one color, stay with it, mode's over, go back to your other color. Then I'm cool. But when you're flashing all kinds of different colors, my old eyes can't take it. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that, says the guy that's got pin stadiums that just flash all over the place. But anyway, I like a good light show. Yeah. But you're right. As long as it's not over the top, as long as a good light show happens at a moment to accentuate something that's happening. Otherwise, if it's happening all the time, yeah, exactly. So we did talk about it before. I want to talk about Celts because finally, Haggis Pinball did get to reveal Celts, which is based on the Scottish Highland Games. And this has been a long time making. And generally, the feedback that's come from this has been quite positive. It is the first time people got to see the art. they got to see the play field they got to see the machine actually flipping and you'll see lots of media and by the time this podcast gets uploaded hopefully I'll have some further links for you as well here's what I'll tell you because I actually got to play this game I'm going to say probably three or four weeks ago when they invited me down to their factory just to have a bit of a look and a bit of a tour of the factory there's a couple of things that stand out first of all I think they've done a great job with the art. So a few months ago, they put a video out calling for help to do art. And it was, I would say, a modest amount of money that was being offered. But it effectively said, we will pay you, I think it might have been $5,000 to do an art package for Celts. And I was having this discussion with somebody on the weekend. They're like, well, you know, that's not a lot of money for pinball art. I mean, I don't know. Do you know how much money artists get paid? I have no idea. I could ask Christopher Franchi, but that's just rude, isn't it? No, I'm looking at Christopher Franchi, how much he gets paid. I'm going to assume it's a bit more than $5,000. Yeah, I would imagine, yeah. Yeah, definitely. The amount of time that people put in, especially Chris, I mean, yeah, it's definitely more than that. For sure. So this was the kind of discussion I was having. The person was saying, well, you know, that's really not a lot of money, particularly I think design because there's probably more designers than there is design work I think there have been some I'm going to use the E word which is exploitation oh it sounds a bit even when I say it I'm like oh this is going to sound a bit more controversial than it needs to be but that's like you know there's sites like fiverr.com where you can pay literally like $5 for something that would have cost $500. The point I said was this. If you think about how many graphic artists, graphic designers there are out there, or sound guys, or coders, how many of those would love to get into pinball? That's a good question. How many opportunities are there to get into pinball? Not a lot. not a lot is the correct answer thank you jeff so if you want to win you win the opportunity to stay on the podcast a little bit so well done congratulations so so that was my point is that if you wanted to have a pinball machine on your portfolio to be able to maybe get further work and the example i gave was zombie yeti who did the art for magic girl arguably one of the prettiest art packages ever. It is beautiful. Didn't get paid. Now look at his career. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Not everyone's going to have a Cinderella story like that. No. But if you are an artist and you love pinball, how are you going to get into it? This is your foot in the door is what it is. It really is. You get $5,000 to design an art package that then becomes your portfolio. go. So I think that's kind of cool. So the art, I think, looks great. It's a very cartoony art. It's not going to be to everybody's taste. And that's... Some people have... The majority of feedback I think people do like it. There are some people that don't like the color palette, but that's just what it is. It looks like it could be an old 80s or early 90s Williams game to me. It's kind of... It's mostly one level. It looks like you've got to ramp on the left and the right. No ramp, that's Orbitz. That's Orbitz. Okay, so there's no ramp. So it is a single-level playfield, yeah. Okay. I know people that sometimes you say single-level playfield, and they're like, that's not for me, but I love single-layer. Single-layer? Yeah. Single-level playfields. I grew up on them. I mean, come on, that's where I started. Well, actually, to be honest, most games are single-level. They've just got ramps. Right. This is completely single-level. There's no ramps. Yeah. Yeah. It looks decent. yeah it it does and and so i i played it and it shoots well and i know the obviously damien that that um you know is haggis pinball and also the coder greg i bet them quite a bit and the the rules are actually quite deep for a a game of this type and effectively you're trying to do two things you're either playing the scottish highland games things like hammer throw caber Toss, what's the other one? Tug of War. Tug of War. The playground game that started with the Celts? Go figure. Apparently, that's where it comes from. Always lost. You know what? I always lost as well. It was always on the wrong side Yeah Look I was going to say I was always on the wrong side but I think I was always picked to be on the wrong side Yeah, you and me both. Yeah, yeah. All right, fine. We'll take Jeff. He's the only one left. Yes. Or we will leave Martin there on the side. We don't need him on either team. That was usually what happened for me. Yeah. So you're either doing the games themselves or you're doing clan battles. So you've got these two paths to go through the game. Each one of them has a final sort of wizard mode and then there's this big final extra super-duper wizard mode and it's got, you know, multi-balls along the way and other sort of mini-modes and all that kind of stuff. So for a game like this, it's actually got a really deep rule set. It's, you know, they're still developing it, they're still writing code. And, you know, a lot of people sort of did point out the fact that it doesn't, didn't actually, I don't know whether they fixed it later on, but it didn't have pop bumper caps, and there were a couple of plastics missing as well. But it's a prototype machine. But I think overall people looked at it and went, huh, that actually looks pretty cool. And also, it's got, I'll use the word pin stadium, but it's effectively got strips of LED lights down the side as well. and each one of those lights is GI controlled. So you can actually do color patterns up and down the strip because each individual light is controllable. Well, that changes the game a little bit. It really does. Up the ante somewhat. Yeah. What's that in the middle of the play field? Is that scoring? It is a display, yeah. So there's obviously a display on the back and then there's a display there. And that really has a lot of the detail of what you're doing. So if you're in a mode, it will show you everything that you need to do for all of that. And the premise of it being that that's the majority of where you're going to be staring is the play field. So give you all the detail and the back screen will have sort of scoring and some higher level information. I really loved that when Full Throttle did that. I never bothered to look up because everything I needed was right in front of me. I honestly wish that would. Yeah, it took a little bit because, I mean, if you play pinball for years and you're constantly looking up, and the one that I played for the most had both. It had the backbox and the bigger screen as well, but I kept my eyes on the play field, and it helps a lot. It's not having to take your eye off it. Yeah, I never actually stopped looking up when I played Full Throttle. Just couldn't get out of that habit. And also, it was the same information on Full Throttle. Whatever was on that little tiny screen was duplicated on the back. With Kelts, it's not the same. Okay. Well, forget that. Yeah. So what I can't remember is the pricing on this, but maybe we'll report on that next week. Let's call it a boutique manufacturer. I reckon that's a good first effort. Yeah, and not bad. And I always, anytime another company says, hey, we're going to make pinball, I'll always go, yeah. a little nervous. I want them to be successful, but like everyone has seen, it's not easy. I don't care what anyone says. It's tough work to pull this stuff off, but it looks like they're off to a good start. The other point I was making a couple of weeks ago is that Damien from Haggis, he set out to learn how to do everything. So that machine, when I say everything, making and assembling a pinball machine, outside of things like doing the rules and the coding, He's done a lot of it, but the advanced sort of rule set and scoring and all that kind of stuff, that's done by another person. A lot of the sound, he didn't make the sound, but he sort of designed what he wants around the sound. When it comes to, he makes his own inserts, he cuts his own playfields, he assembles them all by hand. He's had to learn how to do all of that. And when I did the tour, I said, well, how much of this did you know before you started? and he said none, none of it. Wow. That's 18 months. Speaking of inserts, did you see, not to get off topic here, but did you see Jack Danger's problem that he had with his play field? No, what was that? Apparently he made all the holes for his inserts but found out that he didn't have enough space between them to actually put the mechanics in. So he had to start, he was going to have to make a whole new play field. Yeah. Well, that's, I would imagine Haggis probably had that same problem as well. I mean, when you are learning as you go, you will come across some very obvious things where you just go, oh, now I get it. Now I see why this is harder than I thought. That's pretty much what Jack says, like, oops, lesson learned. But he's still going at it. So good for him. Yeah, that's exactly right. The only last point I want to say because I did see a picture of some very well-known people playing it at Expo, one of them being Roger Sharp, so I'm keen to see over the next few days and weeks what people thought of the machine but so far the feedback has been very positive. My guess is Roger probably liked this, this looks like one of the games he'd like Yes, that's back from his era, yeah, I saw him and we'll get to the tournament, but he was doing some commentary on the flip-out tournament. And whenever they were referring to old machines, you could see that was his eyes light up and that was his heyday. So I reckon he would have appreciated this a lot. So speaking of toppers, there was another topper that was revealed and I think it got revealed when they did the Stern tour. Have you seen this one? The Black Knight topper? Yes. Yeah, I saw that too. not as impressive as the Medieval Madness, but... You think? Okay. I... You think so? Well... I'll tell you why I do. Okay. I'll tell you why I do. I do. Even though I think the Medieval Madness remake topper, when you look at the detail of the figurines, it's very detailed. Like, it's actually quite high-res if you think about, like, the level of detail I've gone to. but like Jurassic Park with the LE that's still a couple of months away I love robotics I love animatronic so this Black Knight Topper is effectively the head of the Black Knight and it moves around very smooth and it's really a little bit freaky like almost creepy okay I've only seen it then okay Maybe I may have to change my mind. I've only seen the picture. I've not seen it actually move. Oh, well, we should. That may change everything. It will absolutely change everything. It may do. You know what? Black Knight Topper. See, this will make an interesting moment. Oh, there it is. Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. That looks like something right out of Disney World. Wow It's a small black knight world Is he following the ball? Kind of It looks like he's following the ball Oh wow Take back everything I said This is amazing Wow video That's quite a concept I swear to god he's following the ball Maybe not It looks like it I don't know There was just that one moment where He sort of looks to his right which is our left And I'm like well hang on are you following The ball there that would be Very cool and Wouldn't be that difficult to do Because if you know it's hitting a switch On the left side of the play field It knows to look to that general direction Well it's something they've done They did it with Simpsons They did it with Jurassic Park Something's been done before but this kind of takes it to another level with this thing being so freaking huge. Yeah, it is. And so the animatronics, like the movement of it is actually quite smooth as well. So as I said, I think what's happened is they've built the mech for the moving T-Rex and they've gone, huh, maybe if we put a black knight head on this, we can actually make that move as well now that we've built this thing that does movement in all those directions. Okay. This is the new best topper ever. Forget what I said about Attack from Mars. This is it. This is great. This is amazing. I can't stop watching it now. That's funny. When you say before you let, I'm like, huh. Yeah, that makes sense. What a dummy I am for not finding an actual video. Okay, that's good. That's good. It's a big deal. Does it make me want to buy the machine? Obviously not. It does. I mean, that machine is growing on me, but kick-ass topper. There it is, right? Yeah. And they didn't have to wait for, you know, Disney to approve it for three years. Yes, I know. Because that was the other point that people were making again. On the Stern tour, they saw this, and they're like, and we saw the Star Wars topper. It's still just sitting there waiting for approval. Don't, but don't blame Stern, people. Don't blame them. It's not them. No. They would have wanted this out ages ago. Yeah, yeah. It's Disney. It is. Damn them. They own everything now. So, look. Medieval Madness got a lot of airplay. Celts got a bit of airplay. Black Knight Topper got a bit of airplay. There was one machine, however, that I think completely stole the show for Expo. Do you know what machine I'm talking about? It's the one that... And granted, I wasn't even at the show, and I knew this machine existed, but when I saw it there, I'm like, I really wish I was at this show. Kroll. Kroll. Kroll. Oh, man. You've seen Kroll, right? You've seen the movie. Do you know what? Okay. I haven't actually seen the movie, but I think it was probably about two months ago, I was thinking about this pinball machine, which was based on the movie Kroll. so I even went to Wikipedia and looked up the movie and read the plot of the movie saw that it was the big parallel in sci-fi world was the movie Dune when that was coming out that was hyped up it was these great books by what's his name Herbert I can't remember his first name and everyone was expecting Dune to be a massive blockbuster and it was an absolute flop which is a shame because I freaking love that film and one of my favourite films ever. Crowell was another one. It had Sting in the movie. It had Sting. Sting, absolutely. So it was a great film. It was a David Lynch film. It's just probably a little bit too out there for a lot of people. Anyway, Crowell was another one where it was going to be this big blockbuster movie and it absolutely flopped at the box office. At the box office. But when it came out on video, kids like me couldn't get enough of it. Really? I watched it all the time as a kid. I've never seen it. So as an adult, do you think I would enjoy it, or do you reckon it was just a moment? Nope, you would not enjoy it. There's so many movies, and I've done this with a lot of things, even TV shows. Like Knight Rider. I was a huge fan of Knight Rider as a kid, and I went back to it. It was on Netflix. I'm like, oh, Knight Rider. I'm like, why did I like this? And probably the worst part is everything that that talking car could do, now my car does. With the exception of driving itself. And we're getting there, too. We're close, aren't we? Yeah. Some things just don't age well. Flash Gordon, on the other hand, I can watch that over and over again. I love that movie. I get another movie. I have not seen Flash Gordon since it came out. You have got to watch that because it is so campy, ridiculous. it's just it's so good because it's so bad okay so there was another one which is i don't know whether the pinball machine was based on it but um black hole black hole had a movie and i started watching that movie i reckon it probably would have been about six months ago i i loved the movie black hole um when i was a kid as i started watching that probably six months ago oh wow i I can't even believe that it got released as a movie. You can actually see, like, wires and things on, like, the robot. It's so lo-fi. Disney wanted to compete with Star Wars, and they didn't have the technology that Lucasfilm had, but now they own Lucasfilm. It's a cool figure. Anyway, so tell me about Krull the Pinball Machine. It, you know, it's a Gottlieb, And the Gottlieb of these eras, for me anyway, they're hit or miss. I either really like them or, boy, that's just junk. But this looks – it's got a lower play field. And from what I understand, it's the lower play field that prevented this from going into mass production because they had issues with the cover, the plexi or whatever is there to look into the lower play field. I don't know what the issue was, but it just didn't work out, so they didn't produce it. but it's got an upper play field. It's got two flippers with the drop targets in the upper play field. It looks like you can get there from two different ramp shots. Actually, the layout seems, with the exception of the left flipper on the left, seems very similar to Flash Gordon. The ramps seem to be in the same place. You don't have that center. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. A little bit. You know, not exactly, but, I mean, it's what I would think is the most similar. But, I mean, it looks like it could be fun. I don't know without playing it, but it's something I've never seen before, so of course I want to try it. Yeah. I think the genesis of this was for Gottlieb of that era, which I'm a massive fan of, by the way. I really – you're right. It's polarizing. You either like this era of Gottlieb or you don't. I love it. So this and Black Hole I love. we talked about before. Haunted House I loved. I think Pink Panther was another one that sort of came out this era as well. Never played Pink Panther. You have to see one. I played one only a few months ago. So it really started with Black Hole had a lower play field, but even though it was a full-sized flippers and full-sized ball, it was a small little play field down there. Then you had Haunted House, which added an upper play field with a lower play field. this is the next evolution of that except that the lower play field is pretty much it's not full but it's about three quarters of the size of a full play field underneath the play field with this magnifying lens which sort of makes it look smaller but it's a full size effectively pinball machine underneath it okay i would not even guess that but i guess i can now see that it does look like a lens maybe that was the issue i mean i don't know but i think the problem was that they They did say it was expensive to make. It was probably more expensive than they thought. And I also think that because Krull was a dud movie, it probably just wasn't going to sell the units that they thought to be able to recover their money. Hope they didn't pay for the license first. Well, I mean, when you think about it, I think Black Hole, when that came out, that was the first machine ever that cost 50 cents to play. And at the time, they said they could because it is just such a revolution in gaming, and people paid for it, even though it was such a freaking brutal game. Oh, yeah. It's like you get downstairs, and you better find your way back up or ball over. I mean, and you can only get bonus downstairs too. So it's like you've got to open that gate. If you don't open the gate, forget it. Game over. It's like every time we have it in League, we play it at my friend JR's, and when it comes up, I'm like, oh, God, please, please, please don't go downstairs. Just don't go down there. No, you don't want to. And you know when you accidentally hit that black hole shot on the top left, you just go, oh, please don't go in play. Oh, there it's in. I'm now in danger. Yep. Exactly right. And it's got an unfair rule set as well. So this particular copy, I believe there was only 10 of them made, and this one just looked absolute mint condition. And the person that brought it was just happy to show everybody the underneath of the machine. They got to play it. And all reports said it's actually quite a fun game to play. It does look like it could be. Again, I want to flip it. Wish it had gone. Yeah. Well, as I said, I think it stole the show. I think of all the Facebook posts or anything that I saw, everyone just kept talking about this crawl machine, probably because it's so rare and it's just so innovative for its time. It was available to play too, right? Not just look at it. Yeah, that's right. A lot of people were playing. So fun with bonus. So Steven Bowden had it, yeah. I imagine the line must have been redonkulous. Yeah, you would say so. By the amount of posts that I saw, I would imagine everyone played it. Yeah. Speaking of rare machines, so somebody actually brought a whole stack of Spanish games to... Oh, there are some crazy games here. Crazy. Wolfman was just... I probably will link it but Wolfman has got a very interesting back glass I don't know whether you've got I've got them right here it's probably going to be the last one I get to Wolfman, Wolfman, Canasta there's Wolfman looks a little like Wolverine dude there what's his name yeah I don't know It's not the guy. Oh, wait, there's the problem. There it is. I see it now. Nope, it's not the guy. Look to your left. Oh, wow. I was just going to say to you, it's not the guy. Nope. That is the guy. There it is. Yikes. How did they get away with that? The Spanish, probably. Yeah, I guess so. Basically, it's full frontal nudity, kids. There you go. Yikes. It's crazy. Yeah. I don't know whether I'll link it, but guys, look up the Pinball Machine Wolfman, in particular, the back glass, and you will have probably the same reaction that Jeff just had. That is just, oh my god. That's crazy. Stern's got a game that did the same. Stern Electronics. it's the one they have at the Sanctum I can't remember what it is but it's a robot but still it's like that just seems a little too much even for a robot the game everybody hates got that rotating thing in the middle and I can't think of what the name of the game is right now but it'll come to me later what had happened with these Spanish games somebody had I believe they had recently bought them and hadn't really played them so they just lined them up and went I don't know whether they work or not and some of them did some of them didn't, but at least people got to see these really rare games. And someone was telling me that apparently, back in its heyday, Spain had about 60 manufacturers of pinball machines. Well, Zachariah, Zachariah, however you pronounce it, that's Spanish too, isn't it? No, I think it's Italian. Italian. It's Italian. So I think you had, I think Sonic might have been one of them? Yep. Sonic, man, you know the thing about Sonic, their playfields were amazing. I know that they would kill you because of the way they're made. Right. Okay. But the Playfield, I mean, what's the one I play at? I think it's a bunch of Sonics that are at Pinberg, and the Playfields look like they're brand new, and they're like 35-, 40-year-old machines. Right, okay. I think Playmatic might have been another one. Hmm. Anyway, there was a few of them there. So I think it's kind of cool that they have these machines for people to actually see almost like museum pieces. So square pop bumpers. Yes. So square pop bumpers was really, if you ever see a game that's got square pop bumpers, you will know that that's pretty much a Spanish game. That was their signature look. Yep. Man, I really wish I'd gone. I want to play all of these games. It's like any time you're loving pinball, you see something you haven't played, you don't care whether it looks good or not. You want to try it at least. That's just the way I feel. oh, just wish I was there. No, I know. So I'm the same, because I played obviously a lot of Pinball Machine in my time, and really it was from sort of mid-70s onwards. Yep, me too. There's not that many games I haven't seen or played, so when I see one that I haven't seen or played, I get really excited. And so I would have just gone absolutely bananas playing these games. Yeah, these look fun. Yeah, they do look fun. Despite the controversial artwork. Wow. it's like all of a sudden when you see it you're like whoa when you see it you cannot unsee it you can't unsee it no it's dark for life look so as I said before it was really a really good opportunity to showcase Elvira and as I said there was I don't know really whether there was 20 machines there but it looked like there was 20 Elvira games there and I saw a lot of video footage It was also in the Flipout tournament as well, so I got to see a lot of it streamed. And the general consensus is that it's a hell of a fun game. Yeah, it looks like it. I still haven't seen anything. I don't know if they've updated code or anything since it was originally streamed by Deadflip. But when I watched the Deadflip stream, it seemed still kind of needed some work because you kept seeing the same animations over again. and it's not animations, I guess it's actually video, but it just seemed very repetitive. But I think it's because it just didn't have anywhere to go quite yet. So I'd like to see updated code how it's playing. But it does look fun. I know there is one coming near me. Well, okay. Rumor is there's one coming near me. I know there's one coming near me. I'll be able to check it out when it comes out next month. But it definitely looks like, I mean, they've stayed true to the two prior. I kind of like that. Yeah, yeah. It does pay homage to the previous games and is very Elvira. And I actually got to see there was a photo of Cassandra Peterson playing the machine. Did you see how good she looks for her age? Oh, man. I know everyone looks at her age. She's 70, right? Yeah. She looks amazing. You would not think she was 70 years old. She's the loveliest person as well. So, good on for that. Apparently, she also got inducted into the Pinball Hall of Fame. She deserves it. Who else has three pinball machines that they are the theme for? We're exactly right. And she's such a huge fan of pinball. So good on her because what she's been able to give to the machine actually makes the machine. Yeah, absolutely. And this one especially. It's like the first time you've actually seen her with actual video. She's kind of retired her. She doesn't dress up as Elvira for anything except that now she did it for this, which is pretty awesome. I was all over the forums on the weekend trying to get as much information as I can. And someone had made that comment like oh you know it would have been good for her to dress up as Avira And someone came in and said no she doesn do that anymore And then someone chimed in and said well she does but just not all the time Yeah, she did. She was in Salem, Massachusetts, obviously. And a friend of mine posted a picture that they had taken with her and her husband. And she was in full Elvira costume. I'm like, wait a minute. And I asked her, like, she's dressed up. She said, yeah, it was a special thing for VIPs that paid a certain something. So I guess for the right price, she'll go full Elvira on you. Well, I think someone might mention that if you want her to come as Elvira, it costs a bit more than to come as Cassandra Peters. It apparently takes her a long time to get into that outfit and makeup and everything to transform herself into Elvira. Right, yeah. I can see why. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's – anyway. She was there, and Elvira the machine got a huge showing. So, yeah, and it turns out it's a great machine, which we kind of expected it would. I'm repeating myself again. It kind of looked like a simple fan layout, but that plus theme plus great rules has made a great game. I like fan layouts. I know a lot of people complain about them, but I like something I'm familiar with. It just changed the theme great, and I still like that I know where these shots are type thing. Yeah, and look, each one of them is slightly different, I guess. They all feel different. I don't know whether it's innovative. I mean, obviously, the mechs and the toys, some of them are quite innovative, but as far as gameplay goes, it's probably not. So you've got to enhance it other ways to make it stand out. Yep, absolutely. Look, another sort of small sort of company that was there as well is Quetzal. So they're the companies. They sort of had a Nemo pinball machine, which I played a while ago. And Takeo Perfect Drift was their machine, you know, the low number. Again, one of those single-level playfields. So that was there to play. And they also had another game. I can't remember what it was called, but they sort of revealed a game there as well. Have you ever gone to Expo before, have I asked you? No, no, I haven't. And I was planning on going next year. So, maybe I might next year. I don't know at this stage. But what I've sort of – because I went to TPF last. So, really, my plan is to do a pinball tournament and a pinball show. Yep. So, Pinberg. Well, if I was going to do that next year – but not the same each year. So, I did Pinberg last year. So, if I was going to come back next year for a tournament, it would be Indisc. because I just, I love Indisc. I just think that's fantastic. Look at all the fun we had at Pinberg this year. We did have a lot of fun, didn't we? Yes, we did. Michelle can't stop talking about you. I know. She's amazing, right? Yeah, I lucked out with her. You did really, really well. Yeah, she liked you. I know. I think she's amazing. But yeah, so we did. But I think that if I was going to do another tournament, it would be Indisc because I still maintain that Indisc for me is my favorite tournament over there. And I wouldn't do TPF. I would do Expo. So you know what I mean? So I'm going to sort of alternate the two, but I don't have any plans to do either next year. I haven't been to Expo either, but it's always been on my list. But the timing never works out for me with work. Yeah, no, fair enough. And so you're, well, I'm going to think, you're East Coast, aren't you? Yes, Maine. about as east coast as north as you can get right okay so look it's obviously easier for you to get to Chicago than it is for me to get to Chicago yes well it's probably easier for me to get anywhere in this country than it is for you to get in this country that is true although you know side note the longest flight commercial flight happened on the weekend from New York to Sydney just over 19 hours in the air. Oh, man. 19 hours. You know what I mean? That's two straight days of traveling back and forth. That's crazy. That's how long it took for me to get to Pinberg was from where did I go? I went from Melbourne to, I think it might have been Melbourne, LA, LA, Houston, Houston, Pittsburgh. So, that was 23 hours. So it's not as easy. So, you know, if I was there, I'd be going to all the shows. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I wish I could. I wish I could do that. Work makes it difficult for me because I can only take vacations. We have ratings periods on the radio. And, like, when you're in a rating period, three months on, three months off, you can't go when we're in ratings. So six months out of the year is like, nope, you're not going anywhere. I'm like, great. Yeah. So there's so many shows I can't get to. unless I can do a quick turnaround and do it on a weekend, but even that's really tough for me to pull off. Right. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Super Canasta was the game that Quetzal released there as well, but I don't have a lot of information on that just yet. That's a card game, right? Yeah, Canasta is a card game, yeah. Man, that's like the signature. Cards and pool. There have been nothing more done for themes and pinball than those two things. No, I know, but not really a lot in recent times. I think the most recent card game that I can remember was World Poker Tour. World Poker Tour, yeah. But, yeah, pool, not really. Sharky Shootout's the last I can think of. That's right. You know what I mean? So we've moved on to TV shows, movies, and rock bands. Yep. Yep. And we're high on the drug. Although I love me some 8-Ball Deluxe. You can't get past that. Yeah, how good is 8-Ball Deluxe? So good. Anyway, that era. we'll talk about that in a second um but the other thing that came out was though there was no reveal of jersey jack and even though last week we sort of said yeah we reckon there's going to be a reveal straight after somebody messaged me and said hey had a chat with somebody from jersey jack they're not going to reveal a machine so they didn't but what they did announce was some connectivity for walker bluetooth headphones yep this is what i need this is what i need i know they've got the the jack but i mean who who walks around with headphones although i'm using them now that have a wire on you know i use them for work i'm standing right where there's is something that's a design for that and you're not gonna you want lighter headphones and that sort of stuff and the only thing that i question about this is if it's Bluetooth, everybody's got to connect to it. So I don't know if all these people connected to one thing. I mean, can somebody else get in on your connection if you're connected? Yes. I'd be a little concerned about that, managing who's connected when, because the last thing you want to do is play, and somebody accidentally connects to the Bluetooth, and they're listening to your game, and you're not. You know what? that was my first thought as well so I would assume it's their first thought as well so hopefully there's some way that you can be the one imagine that, particularly for tournaments, if all games had headphone support like that how good would that be? you can't hear the damn machine that's right you can't hear the call outs this would be fantastic Yep. And in tournaments, I play with headphones, and I would much rather be playing with the sound that's coming out of the machine than music that I have to play with. I think everybody would. Yeah, I think so as well. The other thing they talked about was internet connectivity for software updates. It will be wired, so you will be able to put a network cable through there, or it'll be able to be done via Wi-Fi. There's the future. No more downloads. Stern's going to do it too. Yeah, and apparently it can be always on. So once an update is released, it just automatically updates. You can turn that off or on. That's cool. Walk down to play your machine and your high score is gone, you realize, oh, I've got an update. But I think these days with the sort of the Delta updates, I don't think it wipes scores. Oh, do they keep it now? Yeah. Yeah, they can. That's better. So, you know, welcome to the future, but ultimately welcome to what should have been done five, six years ago. Yeah. true true if you're honest um the only other thing that that jjp showed was the collector's edition in the flesh it was there so what's what's special about the collector's edition art that's it yeah i think so okay if you're an art if you're an art collector this is for you that's exactly right so anyway so that that was really for me that was the major highlights that I really got out of Expo. And sort of as we started with, there wasn't a lot of reveals, which is disappointing. I was hoping Scott Denisey was going to reveal his new machine. Same. We thought he would as well, but not to be. No, there really wasn't. From the major players, there wasn't any reveals at all. But, you know, now the show's over, if it was like TPF, in the next 48 hours, everybody will reveal their new machines. We shall see. I'm looking forward to Scott's game. I mean, with what he did with TNA, I can't imagine he can do much wrong with whatever he does next. I know. And I know he's been drip-feeding some comments basically saying, it's not like TNA. It is so much better. So... Well, there you go. There you go. I trust that man. I do too. It's funny. I trust that man after his one game. But it was so good. It was so good. But it was kind of like Jurassic Park. It's like, ooh, will Keith be able to follow it up? And everyone was like, well, yeah, of course he can, because of the one machine that he's done that's just so good. And he did, I think. Yeah, I agree. Yep. Looking forward to it. I haven't actually played Jurassic Park since. I only flipped it a few times at Pinburgh. Yeah, that's the last time I played. Yep, still have yet to play one. I know there's one down at Flat Top Johnny's in Massachusetts, but I just haven't had a chance to get down to try it. How far away is that? Oh, maybe it's Boston, just outside of Boston. So I want to say maybe an hour and a half. Well, I've moved, so I had 20 minutes. So maybe two hours. Okay. If you loved it that much, you would do a two-hour drive just to play a bit of pinball, wouldn't you? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I've been down there several times. Yeah, cool. So the other thing that happened at Expo was there was a tournament that was going on. the flip out tournament at Expo. You mean a sternament is what you mean. Sternament. It was pretty much a sternament. It always has been. Because it's been put on by Trent Augustine who's what is he? Tilt Amusements which is pretty much the biggest stern distributor so he put stern machines in there and it was interesting because Elvira was in there and the codes pretty early. There was also the Star Wars Home Edition was in the tournament too. I saw that too and I was surprised. I was like, okay, this is really just clearly just a let's show off the new games tournament, which is fine, I guess, but it had its problems, I thought, anyway. It's when it got to finals. You tell me. You tell me. I only got to watch I probably watched about two, three hours of the finals up until the final two were announced yesterday, my time, which the finals have now happened. So for those people, now we did get in trouble for this before. Spoilers. Before we mentioned it. Yeah, spoilers. So guys, if you're listening and you don't know who has won the flip out tournament, forward ahead because we are going to tell you who won. I'm just letting you know. It's going to be revealed. Spoilers are incoming. There you go. You've had your warning. Well, the first big thing we need to talk about is how about the youth of America or wherever? Oh, wow. The top four were Colin Urban, Alex Kuzmurchik. Kuzmurchik, I think I'm pronouncing his name right. Jared August and Escher Lefkoff. Every single one of them under 18 years old. And they are the top four in this tournament. Amazing. And also, I love much about this is they're young kids that are into pinball. And that is, for the longest time, we always said that's what we need to keep this hobby going. And, man, they're here and they're kicking our ass. It is fantastic. They are. And, you know, it's easy for us to say, you know, they're youth. So, therefore, they've got better reflexes. they've got better this there's some truth to that there is and then some just some of the gameplay I saw and I will point point this out because I haven't seen the finals but I believe it happened in the finals as well but Alex Kazmachik playing Black Knight Swords of Rage Sword of Rage I should say was some of the most ridiculous gameplay I've ever seen he had five balls in play and was holding them down the bottom while stage flipping the upper play field to get catapult jackpots and then and on top of that he had four at one point in that whole thing he had four trapped on the right one in play he actually cradle separated them and put two on each flipper while still having another ball flying around how do you even do that i do not know. It was phenomenal. And it wasn't just like, what off luck here and there. He was just constantly doing this stuff, and I just thought to myself, this is it, right? This is where we're going with the skill of pinball. It's not just reflexes. It's ball control. Every time that ball would come in lane, he would post-trap it just as it hit the corner of the post and bring it to a dead stop yep and every single time and then he makes his shot and nails it it's just so amazing to see that play it was just incredible i was watching i was watching on the big screen on tv and i just don't think i've ever had that many out loud gasps from myself as i was watching this i was going oh my god wow oh holy crap oh my god it was just i was just watching this stuff and couldn't help but just yell out this stuff, I was just watching some phenomenal gameplay. It just blew the show away as far as the competitiveness. You haven't seen anything like that, I don't think, and I don't know how long. But when it came to finals, finals were aired today, or played today, and I think it was only just the top two, which were Escher and Alex. And started at about noon. Ball one lasted nearly an hour, it seemed like. I am not kidding. Ball one on Black Knight. It was Escher and he just had, just like Alex, he had ball control that was just godlike. He not only had the ball control, but he could hit the shot. What he did to just grind out all those points. I think he ended with ball one with like almost $1.2 billion as he looped on the upper play field. Loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop. And the most boring pinball you could ever watch for an hour because it's just loop, loop, loop. The ball comes down. If he misses, it goes right back up. Loop, loop, loop, loop. And the ball also kept getting stuck. There was some place right underneath the upper flipper. Under the flipper, yes. Yeah, and it got stuck, got stuck, got stuck. Finally, he figured out how to release it himself, but he had to flip, flip, flip, and it took some time, but that slowed it down too. Longest one ball I think I've ever seen in a pinball tournament. It may not be the longest, but the one I've ever seen. But it was just this, and this is where I think it fails as making mainstream audience watch pinball is because nobody wants to see a guy just hit a loop around the top over and over and over again, goes down, do it again. There's nothing exciting about that. I get it. That's how you win a tournament, and it's not about the stream and performing for the audience. It's about winning, which he did. But that's the struggle that we have in trying to get a mainstream audience into watching pinball when stuff like that happens. Yeah. And apparently that was a premium, I think it was, obviously with the upper play field. So everyone was saying that it was playing really long the whole tournament. And what was really interesting was that, I mean, you just said that he got to $1.2 billion, right? I remember, so the day before, Alex was playing and he put up, he was on like about 400 mil, I think it might have been ball two, and he walked away. He said, no, I'm done. What happened was, apparently it's been clarified, Trent had a mercy rule in effect. And it was a 300 million mercy rule, possibly, and said, I'm going to have to ask you to stop. And if his opponent could match that, then they'd play another game. They didn't, and they were able to move on. But I guess they wanted to keep the game moving, obviously. but where was the mercy rule in the finals? Yeah. There didn't seem to be one in the finals. Yeah. So I don't know. Don't know. So an hour on first ball. Yeah. That would have been so dull to watch. It may not have been exactly. I mean, but it was in the ballpark of at least 45 minutes to an hour that he was playing. Watching a loop. Yep. Yep. It's just not exciting pinball. I mean, like I said, that's what you got to do to win. That's where the points are. If you can keep making that shot, grind it out, But then they went, after that was over, Escher won that round, and then they moved on to Jurassic Park, and that was over in 10 minutes. That game killed them. I don't think either one of them got above, I want to say, 12 million off the top of my head. I don't remember what the exact scores were, but they were low-scoring games. They got drains and outlanes and couldn't get anything done on those. Either one of them get anything done on that game. And Escher came out on top at the end of that one, too, and finals are over. So like an hour. Yeah, because it was the best of three, wasn't it? Yeah, best of three. So an hour of flip on loop on Black Knight and then drain, drain, drain on Jurassic, and there you go, done. I say from now on, do not put Black Knight with the premium that's got the upper play field because that's going to slow you down. And that was kind of what I said when I streamed it a few weeks ago, is I actually quite enjoyed it a lot more than I did previously. But the problem is the upper play field. And they've actually, now that they've got the little sort of bigger rubber, it keeps the ball up there even longer. And there's not that much to shoot for up there. so it just it prolongs the game and you can't toughen it up unless you take the rubber so down the bottom you can pull the outlines off and take the rubbers off but up on that top of the playfield there's not much you can do so don't put it in tournaments guys I think is the rule yep that would be my choice don't put that the last thing you want to do is be there all day yep exactly right and look as I said before we were talking about that the Star Wars Home Edition, I actually thought that played well for a tournament game, surprisingly. Yeah, you know, a lot of people, I think that game gets a bad rap. I mean, everyone will say, why would you buy this when you can buy a full-size game for a little bit more? And my thought on that is maybe some people aren't good at repairing things or fixing things, and they build these games to have less maintenance. than you would have with a regular game because they're trying to get a home audience and that's not going to go out on location. And I like it more to do a video game. You plunk it down and it works. I mean, granted, it won't always work. It'll have its issues, but they are less, apparently, that way they design it to be than the commercial games. But it's still a standard play field, less toys, less things to do, but it's Star Wars in your home. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's easy for some people. Not everybody is a collector that wants the best out there and can fix and repair games. There's still a market for this. Obviously there is or they wouldn't be making them. So, yeah, why not put it in a tournament? I mean, it plays the same as a regular game, just less features. It just doesn't have the deep rule set. But you don't want a deep rule set for a tournament. Exactly. So it was fine. Yeah, I actually quite enjoyed watching it, to be honest. They had Beatles in it too, which I thought, I love seeing Beatles play. I love watching that play. Oh, and what I loved watching was really, really good players play Beatles. Because they just did some amazing stuff as they were playing. Yeah, that is such a fun game. I know people kind of crap on that too because, oh, it's so expensive. but it's the Beatles. They aren't cheap. Yeah, I know. And it's a fun game. It's just a fun game. Yep. Yep. Again, loved, loved watching that. I gave another game that was in the tournament that I just, I just, guardians, you know, it just, it started as being so, just so okay and then bang, it's become this really good tournament slash players game. It's amazing what code updates do, isn't it? It really is strange. Yeah. Monsters? Sorry. I actually played Monsters for the first time at Pinmasters of Massachusetts last weekend. Right. And I really like that game. Sure. I like that it's simple, but it has more depth for people that want more depth. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it is actually, because I can say this now that I've had it and I've sold it. It is actually a really good game. It's a quick, fun game. The only problem with it is in a home collection where, like mine, you don't have a lot of machines, so you need to play it a lot. Because you can just sort of get to where you need to be a bit quicker than most machines. and it sort of loses longevity. So if it's in a tournament, although feedback that I've had from tournaments is that it's actually really quite brutal and people don't like it, but I think in a tournament setting or in an arcade fine absolutely If you going to play it five to ten times fine If like me you played it 400 to 500 times that probably enough And at that point, like you did, sell it off and get yourself something else. That's exactly right. For people like me, all they do is play other people's games. Or in arcades. I've got one. I have a NASCAR in my basement. I like that game. Let me tell you, that's a very underrated game. I agree with you. He doesn't get a lot of love. It's Grand Prix where you are, right? That's correct. There's not that many Pat Lawler games that I like. That's one of them. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. He's got an interesting... It's the only game that you can do nothing and score 4,040 points. Right. Just by launching the ball. Oh, okay. When it just goes around the loop. Yeah, when it goes around. When you first launch, it goes around the loop. and for every two loops, you get 2,020 points. So it goes around twice, and when it finally comes out on the play field, you start the game with 4,040 points. There you go. It's so strange. I don't know why, but it does. Okay. I guess I just felt like while it's going around, I've got to do something up on the display. Yeah, I've got to give you something for it. But no, that's a fun game. I'm striving to get to the wizard mode, but it's tough to get to that. Yeah. I think it's one of those ones where getting 90% of the way is relatively easy and that last 10% is ridiculously hard. Yes, it is. Fun game. Fun. Side note, Wizard of Oz, yet again, I was streaming it a couple of weeks ago, just had one more gem to get to the wizard mode. And it's a similar sort of thing in that seven of the eight gems are relatively easy to get. And then there's this one, which is ridiculously difficult. So it's the same sort of thing. I think a lot of those machines had just that one objective that just stops you from blowing up and getting to the end of the game. Yep. Which is fine because I don't want to get to the end of the game, I don't think. No? Well, I just think once I've got to the end of the game, because I'm a video gamer as well, when you get to the end of the game and you've unlocked everything, well, I've seen it all. I don't need to play it anymore. So by not getting to the wizard mode, it feels like I've got this one more go. And that was the problem with monsters is you effectively get to monster madness, even whether it's level 1, 2, 3, 4, or 50. It feels like you've got to the end of the game. See, that's where video games have solved that by offering DLC. That's correct. Oh, let's add to your game. Well, why couldn't they do that for pinball? You've got a game. Say you've got a game. I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into it, but let's say they sold you new code that changed the game to add something, to add a new wizard mode. Say what they did with Ghostbusters. Oh, could you imagine if they charged people? I know people would freak out. Oh, wow. I mean, granted, there's a bigger difference. You're paying a lot more money for this. But still, if you want to be one of the few people who has these new things that the game can do, don't charge much. Charge like you because it's just software. It's just a software update that has – I don't know. Maybe I'm reaching. But I'm thinking something along those lines that Pinball can add to what you've got to make it – extend the life of it. Yeah, yeah. No. So, you know, it's an ongoing, you know, topic that I talk about, you know, updating code and the fact that, you know, we get code complete. Whereas I actually really like the intervals of updating code because that just keeps breeding, you know, longevity into the game and excitement. It sort of refreshes it every time. So I agree with you. I was sort of just, my mind was just off thinking, what could you do that people would pay for the DLC? well well yeah that's good that's a good question although if if stern if stern starts charging for like code i'm sorry i even brought it up right i look that's what i think i think i think if you do a full code update i i just don't think we as pinball people and the people community uh yet to ever come close to feeling good about having to pay for code because people will people at the moment their default position is that code isn't finished i just i just don't think anyone looks at any of the pinball machines that certainly from stern that are out and say there's nothing you could do it is perfect and there's nothing more so if a new code update come up people would say yep so be it because there's some polish that needs to be done and if you charge for it i think it'd be crazy so that's why i was my mind was off as thinking what could you do could you do custom callouts could you do things like alternate wizard modes or you know like um what was it it was ghostbusters that had you know the the book stacking or the library mode where it actually had that mini wizard mode that they added at the captive ball but only if you'd completed a librarian mode it'd be interesting if you could sort of have you know different mini wizard modes that you could add to games that you could pay for. I don't know. I'm spitballing, but... You know what I think of? I think of games like Pinbot and Jackbot. How you took exactly the same game but changed all totally different rules and you've got a brand new game. Something along those lines. It's probably a lot tougher to do these days because everything's licensed and you've got to stick to the license and everything. That's the closest example of something that I would think of where you have a game, you drop in this new code a pin bot becomes a jack bot, completely new game. You know? Yeah, I guess that's kind of like, and I'm just going to go to the, I think it's pinballcode.com, if I can spell that correctly. So this is the person that does the updated code for those Data Race games, like Jurassic Park, Baywatch. There you go. So this is what I thought. So he's not charging for code. and I don't think he ever could, people would freak out. But you can donate. So that's, you know, that's the way. You know, people put hours, days, weeks, months, whatever it is, into coding these things. It should be fairly reasonable for them to get some money for it. But we as pinball people, just in our mind, we don't expect to pay for code updates. Right. And I get that. like I said just thinking out loud hmm hmm well I like your thought hmm well I we all I say I like your thought because I would love stuff that enhances my game over time but we just expect the manufacturers to just update it and put them out there but you know would people have paid a couple of hundred dollars each to fast track the Ghostbusters code hmm maybe maybe maybe they were angry enough. They were angry enough, but now they've got it and that two or three years it took, people have sort of forgotten. It's like, okay, we've got our code now. Thank you. All done. Anyway. Did you get to see any of the pinball Olympics at Expo at all? No, but I have seen pinball Olympics. Some of them, they used to have them at Pinberg and ReplayFX. The one where you've got to pedal a bike to keep the machine running. You've got your flippers die after so many seconds or something if you don't do something. There's a clock on it. I've played some of them. I've got an idea of what it's like. The ones that I saw, it's a crazy format that they've got where they really just fucking mess with your head playing with a machine. Some of them, it's almost like a periscope. You've got to look through the machine there's another one I saw where you have to you would lie underneath the machine feet first and then you look up to a mirror that's showing the play field there's another one that's got like almost like a telescopic lens that looks down onto the play field but the one that I think is the funniest is you've actually got this thing strapped to your head which has the tilt bob on it I've played that one oh my god is that so hard That is incredibly difficult because you cannot move your head at all and you tilt. Yep. So I just think that's hilarious. Yeah, it's fantastic. I don't know who the guy is that does this but he's genius and he should make this a thing. Well, I guess he has made it a thing, hasn't he? He has made it a thing. He needs to tour with it. That's exactly what I was going to say. He needs to take this thing globally because I only say that for my own personal benefit but I want to be able to play this. I think it's brilliant. So there you go. Okay, so that was Expo. Expo happened. Fun. You know, sure, you missed out. You could have gone. You're feeling really bad because you missed all those great games. What of it? I will say it's great to be able to feel like you're there now with all the video and the pictures that we have that we never used to have for Expo. So that's, yeah. Go to pinballnews.com because that site has done a lot of coverage and I think a lot of the seminars have also been captured there as well. So check out pinballnews.com. There you go. A couple of other bits of news. Riot Pinball, they are the ones that did that. I can't remember. It was like the Greek mythology machine. What was that one? They tried to get it crowdfunded. It was going to get made and it didn't get enough. What was it? I can't, I was just blanking on it, but I know the one you're talking about. Yeah. Well, so they are going to be releasing a new game called Legends of Valhalla. And I think March this year we saw almost like a CAD drawing of what the play field would look like. And the play field kind of looks cool. It looks all right. Does that ramp go? Yeah, that ramp goes behind the back, comes around. Yeah. Hmm. I think it looks all right. Yeah? Mm. Seems like a decent layout. Again, want to see for real, want to play it. Want to see it for real as well. And what they did this, what they revealed in the last week or so was some art for what Legends of Valhalla would look like. We'll link it to you guys, but, you know, Jeff, just based on a couple of little images that I showed you, what do you think of the art? It's not bad. I mean, it doesn't anything that goes like, wow, that's amazing. It has a little bit of a feeling of an old Bally artwork. In fact, I'm thinking of Viking right off the top of my head. I mean, a little more modern, but I like the look of it. Wrath of Olympus was the one that I was talking about before. Oh, right. Yes, that's it. Yeah, which I remember playing that. I think it was a virtual pinball before it became a real pinball machine. but yeah so Legend of Elhalo is the next one really and I really like the look of the art I've got to be honest I like the style also shows a bit of what the animation or what the what am I trying to say the interface for the LCD screen will look like which does what it needs to do it's almost a bit because it's all cel-shaded drawings so it kind of reminds me a bit of Borderlands if you've haven't played that video game it's that kind of style I like it I want I want this to be successful because Wrath of Olympus was from what I played virtually was a great game that I think would have done well it was just I think it was the again the theme that probably just didn't have as much appeal as people would have liked and this may also be like that as well. It's tough to do a non-licensed game and get people's attention with it, I think. You say, oh, we're going to make a Goonies game and everyone's like, oh, I don't care, I want to play it. You know? But Valhalla? No one's going, oh, wow. That's exactly right. I think it looks really cool. You might as well just call it a Vikings pin, I guess. But Vikings, I think, was already done. The old Viking valley. Yeah, that's right. So, it looks good. From what I've seen of what the CAD drawing of the playfield looks like with this art, this could be a good game. I don't know. Just bring it out, guys, and let's see what it looks like. I don't know. Like I said, I wish everybody luck in making these things happen, but I don't believe it until I see it. yeah that's exactly right and we've just been burnt that many times yep so yeah so speaking of which I think I saw the kingpin was there at expo again but still no word on the kingpin remake from circus maximus also they were supposed to do circus the pinball circus too and that correct they're just again let's do this and years later still nothing I think the point we've always made is that making a prototype is so much easier than going to production. Yep, absolutely. So there's a summary there. A couple of little small code updates. So Jurassic Park's got a new update. Elvira's got an update. Just update your machines if you've got these things. So, if I had, I would. Same. I still don't. Did you also see that Jack Danger from Deadflip was on TV this week? Oh, I sure did. I can't help but laugh at these segments that news people – I mean, it's not anything as Jack at all. He was great. But I can't help but laugh at these news personalities when they try to talk pinball and have no clue what they're talking about. It's just so much – because, first of all, you know they're going to call Jack a pinball wizard. They did. Yes. They just know that's coming. And then they have this almost like cheerleader type thing to them that is like, you guys really don't care about this. but you're acting like you do. Every article that I've seen on these things just still treats it as a novelty, as though you guys, oh, look, you're so cute for being into something so weird and just different. And they have no time for these segments. They've got like basic, they got usually two minutes, two minutes to tell me everything you can about pinball. Good luck. First thing, don't flip the flippers at the same time. Oh, we're out of time. Yes. That's pretty much it. So, you know, I still report on it because I think, A, good on you, Jack Danger, for getting on TV. Absolutely. And B, it's good for, well, he had a Jurassic Park machine there, so it's good for Stern to get that out there. But, of course, it's just good, I think, for Pimble in general for it to just be more and more in the public conscious. And he's promoting it, you know, for Expo, and he's on a Chicago TV station. So, I mean, that's perfect to get some people over and play. Yeah. So, anyway, good on you. Well done. That was actually Social Media Watch. You didn't have your little thing. I didn't have my intro. No, I'm on a different computer, so I don't have my little thing in there. So, I'm sorry. Social Media Watch is over. Oh, that was awesome. Thank you. I'm not Jeff Teola, but I try. No, you're not. So, awesome. Nobody is. Nobody is. So did you get up to any pinball-related shenanigans this week? Oh, it's been crazy with pinball. Last weekend was Pin Masters of Massachusetts, which I am the TD of. Joe is the one who has put this whole thing together, and he's done a great job with it, and he needed somebody to beat TD. And I'm like, sure. The problem is, and I know a lot of people have said this, When you're a TD and you're a player at the same time, you might as well just kiss your game goodbye. Because you're playing and all of a sudden, hey, we need a ruling. We've got a stuck ball. And it's just, I think next season of this, next year, I think I'm just going to do the TDing and just say, I'm just going to not play and concentrate on just managing it rather than playing. But we played it at Mystic Pinball in Turner Falls, Massachusetts. It's a great little place. They've got some great games that span pretty much all the eras. They had Munsters, and then they had things like they had a Black Hole. They had, I'm drawing a blank on some of these, but a really old game that I hadn't seen in a long time. Anyway, they've got a great collection. You can actually look them up, Mystic Pinball, on Google. You'll find their lineup. But, of course, guess who won? Joe? Yeah, sure did. He sure did. It's a shame that we couldn't have him on this week to gloat about it. Yeah, I know, isn't it? Don't worry. He'll come back and gloat. He's got plenty of time. He's already got a lot of time. He's playing well. And this is all part of the series where we played in Maine, we played in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. And then the top 35. Was it 35? No, top 16 possibly. I don't remember. I should, I'm the TD but they'll move on to the finals which we'll have in December and then that's where all the big money and prizes comes out it's a lot of fun, have you ever played the Pin Masters format with 18 holes and 18 games yes, pin golf, yes I have yeah, pin golf, yeah it's basically a part of what they do for Pin Masters IFPA and it's kind of like a franchise, I guess the winner also gets a discount on their entry to Pin Master's IFPA version, which is kind of cool. So that's been a lot of fun. I've been playing League. We're about to finish the eighth week of New Robert Englunds Pinball League. I'm like, eh, I made it into A Division, which is great, but I'm now scraping to make my way up to finals. It doesn't look like I'm going to make it, but give it a shot. But what I've really been enjoying more than anything else is my son is playing League now. and playing with him is just, I can't explain how much fun that is because he had pinball in his life since he was born. In fact, I've got a video of him when he was, I think, four years old and my friend JR had let me borrow a Funhaus and a Terminator 2 and snuck them into the basement on him and told them to come downstairs because I had a Ms. Pac-Man down there. You want to play Ms. Pac-Man? Oh, sure. And he turns the corner and sees these games and just about flips his lid at four years old. So he's loved it ever since. But now he's really getting into it even more and actually playing well. And, I mean, he knows ball handling skills. He knows how to trap up and drop catch. I mean, he's really improving. And just to see his skills continue to get better as he plays is just so much fun. And being able to play with him. He'll be coming to Pinburgh for the first time this year. I finally said, you know what? You're 13. I think I can not worry about you every second of the day. I can play my games and not have to worry about how you're doing. So he'll be out there this year. So, yeah, it's just been so much fun playing with him. That's pretty much all I've been doing with the pinball this week. Oh, 24-hour battle coming up in two weeks at the Sanctum. I'll be in that too. Okay. Really looking forward to that. I don't know why I submit myself to this, but for some reason, it's just a crazy amount of fun playing pinball for 24 hours straight. I have never done it. I don't know whether I could. Yeah, that's what everybody says. And I do okay. I don't really get that tired. I mean, I'll nod off once in a while. In fact, I think I was sound asleep when Bruce Nightingale tapped me on the shoulders. Hey, here we go. I'm like, oh, geez, okay. That's the only time I ever fell asleep. But I seem to either I'm playing better or other people are playing worse when it gets to be about 3 or 4 in the morning. I don't know what it is, but that seems to be where I do the best. But again, it's still about hanging out with the people and playing and having fun. And doing it for 24 hours is just ridiculously fun, even though you wouldn't think it would be. And I'm looking forward to that coming up too. One day. One day I'll give it a go. You should. It's fun. Okay. We'd love to have you. Awesome. Look, for me, streaming this week, I had some interesting games this week to stream. I streamed for the first time a production version of Oktoberfest. So I hadn't played that for a while. I love that game. I love it too. It's an interesting game in that it's, how do I describe it? Lots of targets, some really indirect shots you need to get. That side ramp is very difficult to get. But I like it. As an overall package, I think it's a great game. Best thing I like about that, and I finally got it for the first time at League last week, the corkscrew multiball. Yes. When they come out and they go, and it seems like it takes forever for them to get down to your flipper. That's just, I don't know why that's just so cool. And then all three of them are coming at you at once. Yep, absolutely agree with you. It's fun. It's a good layout. That curly ramp or whatever it is, it's very, very cool. yeah um and then centigrade 37 and xenon i streamed last night which was sunday night here um two great two great games centigrade 37 you know it looks great and it plays well after a while i was like okay move on to xenon and then xenon i just love that game so much that one has got memories for me because i remember playing it as a kid i had to be nine ten years old and just could not. That and Flash Gordon could not get enough of those games. They were so much fun. Even though they both just destroyed me as a kid. Yeah, correct. But yeah, you know, Zeno, barely games of that era, like you mentioned before, 8-Ball Deluxe. I love that era. Oh, so do I. So do I. And I think there are a lot of people that don't have an appreciation for what pinball was then. Exactly. And we grew up with it, so we're used to it. But it's evolved so much now that it's, I mean, and for the good, but I mean, going back to when it was just simple and basic themes and beeps and boops, it's just, it's like childhood for me. I just love it. Yeah, same. But the main thing really is, we mentioned before, Flipout 2019 is this weekend. So that's a big sort of, well, you would call it an expo, but it's a big pinball show. I think there's going to be over 70 machines, which is cool. New machines being added all the time. I'm running the tournament there. the Melbourne Silver Bowl Championship, which will be great. Are you playing too? Well, people keep asking me that. I don't know. We're probably going to get 70, 80 people in the tournament. It's a pump and dump format. And I'm streaming the whole thing. So it'll just depend. Day two, if I feel that it's running smoothly and people have put their entries and there's some time, I might give it a go. but I just want to just spend my efforts making sure that it's a good tournament for everybody else to play. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. So we were going to have Jersey Jack out, but he can't make it, so we're going to do a live cross with him for one of the seminars. The seminar schedule should be out in the next...