Here comes the ocean, and the waves, down by the sea. Here comes the ocean, and the waves, where have they been? Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George and I'm joined by my co-host Dave. Hello George. And a special guest, Tommy Skinner. Hey there George, how's it going? For those of you who are unfamiliar with Tommy, Tommy is not only a school teacher, a wrestling coach, a pinball tournament player, a classic volley and stern collector, a pinball operator, bartender, and co-host of This Flipping Podcast. Did I miss anything? No, I didn't even realize I do all that stuff, but when you say it, yeah, I'm a pretty busy guy. I believe you might know Dave because he was on your podcast, but with your co-host Taylor James Rees. Do you remember that? It's vaguely familiar. We've been recording for, I think, almost five years now. So time flies. But yes, I do recall. It was about a year ago with Joel DeGuzman and I were out with him talking about some classic sterns and valleys and that kind of thing. Oh, yeah, I remember that one now. Yeah, in case the audience is wondering why we're having Tommy on, it's not only because he does a podcast, but his collection of rare classic stern and volley games. And today we're going to talk about Fathom. Dave, I'm going to let you open it up Alright Fathom, great 1981 game I got mine way back when, one of the first games I ever bought and loved the game it was not very well known in the collective community and they didn't make a whole lot of them but I remember loving it back in the bowling alley I played it in and I just happened to find me or whatever in a in a one ad thing years ago in the early nineties. And it's like, wow, I got it and people didn't know what it was. And later on, they sure did. As I'm sure Tommy, you're aware. Cause what a, what a great game it is. You know? Yeah, I definitely agree. It's my, my favorite classic Bally for sure. And it's right up there as one of my favorites of all time. I was pretty fortunate enough when I got mine roughly three years ago, I scooped it up with an alien poker together as a package deal. And I paid two grand for the package for both of them. And the guy who I got it from said he had had it for a few years and just had never really been able to get it playing, but he didn't know much about pinball. So, you know, no problem, I'll come look at it. And I opened up the backbox, and the back glass of the original is just flawless. Like, I couldn't believe it was an original. And then following that, I looked at the MTU, of course, and it's legitimately probably the most acid damage I had ever seen on an MTU. It went around from the bottom of the board where the battery was located, and it somehow covered all four edges of the board. It was amazing. Fortunately, I had an Alltech sitting at home, So I loaded the game up as quick as I could. And when I got home, I plugged in the alt deck and it booted right out. So I got really lucky on that. How was the play field on yours, Tommy? My play field was missing a good amount of meat right in the center, which seems pretty typical for not just Fathom, but Valleys of that era in general. and so I was very fortunate in getting mine that meanwhile it did play I'm friends with Ron Kruseman up in Michigan who's well known for his playfield restorations and I happened to just know he was sitting on a Fathom CPR playfield so I was able to trade him the alien poker machine that came with my Fathom for the Fathom playfield nice yeah it worked out pretty well i basically ended roughly you know two grand into a uh fathom with a playable fathom with a brand new cpr playfield ready to be installed and i i scored a cpr playfield uh and they made several different uh incarnations of that cpr playfield over the years and depending on which year you got they got better and better the first one they did way back when. I forget who did it. It was, oh, someone in Nova Scotia did it. It was Deaton, but it was their first try, and they shouldn't have gone after a really complicated play field like they did the first try, but whatever. But see if I did a nice one later on, and I still have it. But my original is so nice. Someone did a little, no touch of this, cleaned it up and gave it a quick barithane clear, and it's really nice, a nice original. so I really don't feel like putting the CPR into it. I like the original one, even though it has, you know, the colors aren't quite as crisp and vibrant as a CPR. But, I don't know, sometimes I like the originality over the CPR stuff if the play feels decent enough to go with it, you know. But there is definitely a place for CPR stuff, especially with the playfields beat to death. Like a lot of these Fathoms, they were played to death, so they were pretty torn up in general. so a lot of the popular ballets of that era those playfields didn't seem to last but i don't think that's what they were really you know building before at the time four years that was uh that's the common the common number thrown out uh tommy i'm wondering did you do the play field swap and it wasn't your first or one of many i did not do the play field swap um at this point i've done a couple of the outside edge hard tops on a Valley Flash Gordon and a Valley Frontier. And I can't say enough good things about their product as well. If you're looking for more of a budget restoration on a game where you just simply can't find a play field kind of like with my Frontier. But I have been doing pinball for roughly eight years now and being a teacher I have my summers off and I spend a lot of time in Michigan. and I was very fortunate early in my collecting years to meet a friend of mine named Dane I bought a golly spring break game from him because I have a bull terrier dog and we've just remained friends and I've driven and picked up some games for him because of his work schedule it's harder for him to drive and stuff and he loves restoring games and he basically said he was looking for a project and he would restore my fathom for me if we would enter it into the pinball at the zoo. It's the annual Kalamazoo Pinball Show for a best in show opportunity. So I was incredibly fortunate that I was able to find it, get it, buy it, make the deal for the play field. Then I dropped it off to my buddy Dane in roughly October of, oh I would assume that would have been two years ago. And then I was just going to pick it up for him at the Kalamazoo show, which is always in April. So he had it for about six months of doing the restoration process, and I was just incredibly lucky to be able to drop off this old beat-up valet and pick up a game that looked better than brand new six months later. Did he also do the cabinet? He did. I don't fully understand his exact job, but it's something within the automotive industry up there, and he's higher up in the company, and he's allowed to kind of use whatever areas of the facility he would like, which gave him access to a really nice area to paint and sand and do all the cabinet stuff. He's done a few of his own restorations, and him and I have very similar taste in games. He had done a flashmort in the year before, so he liked working on that era of Bally, and he was really excited to get a chance to work on one of these, because just the reality of Fallon's being so hard to come by, and knowing that he'd get to have access to play it whenever he wanted, whenever we're near each other or if I were to ever for some reason get rid of that game, which I find hard to foresee, but he's got first dibs on him too, that sort of thing. That's a pretty – that's a good friend for somebody to go and do that. That's amazing. Cannot thank him enough. On his end, he said it was awesome because he got to do the side of the hobby that he liked, and it didn't cost him any money this time. So it was just me going online and buying everything, having it shipped to him, and he's still got to do the work on it. He just seems to really enjoy that. He's actually in the process right now of working on a game that you guys have previously covered on one of your episodes, but he's doing a scratch build of a Quicksilver using one of the playfields from Mirko. I saw that on Pinside. That's Dane. He's incredibly talented, and he's, you know, suckered me into doing the same thing actually. Since he was going through the process already and documenting it, I'm getting ready to order my own play field because I've got the spare drop target banks and everything else. It's just a matter of doing it. So he suckered me into that idea as well. He can convince you that it's doable, but he's got a great skill set. He does really nice work on his stuff. He always, you know, whenever he brings up anything, I'll do anything I can. for the guy because I couldn't have done what he did to this fathom for me and I have no way to ever in my mind properly thank him because I love the game so much. It's my pride and joy. It's right in my living room. First thing you see when you open my house, my front door, you come in and there's a fathom that just looks brand new, all chromed out. I had Chris from Hot Rod Arcades, Mike Chestnut's protege, do all the chrome work on the game. And it was one of those things where originally we were just going to do the side rails and the coin door lockdown bar and then it was like well it looks really good let's see the legs and then we did like the vent grill between the cabinet and the head next thing we knew like anything that could be chromed on that game was wow it was shiny yeah i wonder where you got the rails from yeah that was that was the hot i think it's hot rod arcades i mean it's what it's called but it's chris royalty um he was trained by mike chestnut kind of took over mike's business from Mike passed a few years ago, and Mike was always regarded as the best guy in the business for Chrome or Brass Glading work. And essentially that title's just gone over to Chris now. And I will say it was not cheap. It's not something I would do on every restoration. But if it's a game that, you know, for me, Fathom was a game that I intended and still intend to keep forever before spending that sort of money on. well you've got quite a few games I'll I'll move into that and before I do I want to rewind Dave and I did have the opportunity at uh uh Pintastic last year to see a hard top on uh Flash Gordon and that's a that is a really you know inexpensive way of bringing a game back and it looked real good. Remember that game, Dave? Yeah, it's a good option. It's a lot better than this generation versus the playfield overlays they were doing a couple years back or whoever was doing them weren't so good. They had opaque areas for light to shine through and it wasn't really shining through. Not so good, but I guess this other company, I forget who's doing them, learned from that and their stuff looks pretty darn nice now. Yeah. yeah i did my my flash gordon last spring to get ready for last year's been all the zoo show um and it literally went we finished it a couple days before the show it went to the show and it got 400 plays in the show over two three days and i brought it straight back and put it on location and uh i literally have not cleaned the play field specifically so i can show people kind of like how well the hard top product holds up and it's it's just amazed me how great of a product it is and it's to me it's far easier than an overlay because what it is you have the artwork reverse printed onto a very thin sheet of plastic with adhesive and whereas the overlay was very pliable and it meant you could easily misalign it really this product just makes it simple you have to tear down the top side and get your surface prepped very well but then when it comes to actually is sticking on the hard top product, which is essentially an overlay that's just printed on plastic, it lays down basically perfect as long as you take a little bit of time. And it does help to have an extra set of hands and eyes to make sure you're aligned properly with all your inserts and stuff. But having done two of them now, you know, without a doubt, when it's a game that's either going on location for me or something that doesn't have a play field available or I'm just not sure I want to put that kind of money into in time of a full play field swap, I'd use them in a heartbeat. And I've heard about the star rollover insert part of it. They have it so it smaller and you have to round those out yourself to get the alignment exactly right to customize it Is that true Okay They basically print a blackened area so your key line may not line up perfectly with the artwork just because, you know, play field to play field, there's variances, and they're essentially building it off of one or two prototypes that they have or playfields that they have in possession. But you put it on, and there'll be a little hole there, and you just use, like, a Dremel tool with a little sanding drum on it to perfectly make that star rollover hole match your play field. And you could reuse your star rollovers, but for me specifically on Flash Gordon, I used clear star rollovers that I got through Pinball Life. The reason being, I think that game is honestly very colorful, especially for the era. And I inserted color-changing LEDs into those clear star rollovers just to give the game a little bit of personal touch and add some bright color to it, that sort of thing. Nothing necessary. You could have gone with the original orange or red or whatever you want, but it does give you that ability, and that way your star rollovers are perfectly level with the new hard top since it does add a little bit of thickness to the playfield, and you won't get any ball hang-ups. that was the part of the process that made me most nervous at the start and i think a lot of people and uh i am by no means a great tech or super good at working on these things and uh it was it was really easy as long as you take a little bit of patience with it and pay attention to what you're doing i had no problems in flashboard and i think as i'm looking at it actually right here i'm at my location right now we just got done installing a stranger things here but it's got seven star rollovers so i don't think there's a lot of playfields that have that many unless you You get like a Strikes and Spares hard top one day or something. Yeah, that is a bunch of rollovers. And I don't know, I forget how many were in Fathom. What is it, five rollovers? Or maybe less than that. Fathom, I do believe you have one, two. Yeah, so you got three going up the left orbit, and then there's one right in front of each of the saucer ball locks. So, yeah, that would be five. Okay, yeah. Not bad off the top of my head. I'm not in front of mine right now, but there you go. I'm going to shift gears a little bit. talk about Tommy's collection that I'm quite envious of. Four Bolly games that I would like to own, one being the one we're talking about, two, Viking, three, Frontier, four, Flash Gordon. All highly collectible, all down very expensive. Wish I would have collected them back 20 years ago, but that's a whole different show. Tommy, why don't you tell me a little bit more about your collection, because I know some of it's at home, some of it's at your on location i don't know if you store any or house them with other people but if you could tell us a little bit about your collection yeah well i started roughly eight years ago with a uh gotley james bond the time-based game that's kind of rare because it was so bad that a lot of locations just got rid of them or destroyed them it's the story i've always heard um and i got that because i actually was a big james bond fan and uh didn't really worry about the fact that I have like a really addictive personality when I got it but that was like my gateway drug into pinball and from there just like everybody who seems to be into our hobby it quickly expanded and for the first couple years I was just buying whatever was cheap and close and you know learning a little bit about fixing them as I went but getting whatever I could upgrading selling those and upgrading to games that are more desirable or things that I wanted to try. Eventually, probably, I don't know, four years or so ago, I just really started to appreciate the classic games a lot more. Not that I don't really enjoy because of my competitive side, and I do a lot of the tournament play, the modern stuff, the deep rulesets, but something about the, I try to describe it to people, it's almost, to me, it's just heart and passion that I see in these old games with the artwork and the rule sets and doing what they were doing with the limited technology they had at the time period really amazes me. So I just started getting into those more and more. Now, unfortunately, we have a Main Street Amusements Arcade that opened in town. They actually just had their eighth anniversary this past weekend, which is how I know I've been in the hobby roughly eight years ago because I started going shortly after they opened, and that's what got me into it with picking up a game. but they always have a good lineup of classics in there. As far as the games that you specifically mentioned, I've been really lucky, and I got my flash board for about $700 a couple years ago. Less than a topper. Go home and drink. Less than a topper, yeah. That was one of our shows, Tommy. all machines we bought for less than a Star Wars topper were $750. Exactly, yeah. It was just located, you know, 45 minutes or so from where I teach high school that night on my lunch break. I happened to check the Facebook marketplace and got it. You know, I told the guy, come right after school if you need me to. And he said, and he was, I don't know, I had something going on. He's like, no, no problem, man, I'll just hold it for you. I don't want to spend easier for you to get here. The guy stayed true to his word, which is not something we see a lot. I'm good at pinball deals nowadays. But getting it cheap, it was playable, but not great. And went through and fixed it up. Obviously, I ended up doing a full cabinet restoration on that one, as well as the hard top. The Viking game, oh, man, maybe six years ago now, I played in the tournament at the Texas Pinball Festival. That was the first time I'd ever seen it. It was in the Classics Division. And I somehow got to the finals in the Classics Division. and basically playing that and Dragon Fist over and over whenever I got a choice. And for whatever reason, I was just kind of naturally good at them and still didn't know a ton about the classics. And I was like, man, I'd really like to go find a Viking and a Dragon Fist after this tournament. And then I looked them up and realized how rare they are. I ended up putting a want-to-buy ad on Pinside for Viking at some point. And I think it had been up for three years, maybe, when I got a message from a Pinsider that said, are you still looking for a Viking? And I was all set, and I clicked on the profile, and they'd been a member for one day. So at this point, I thought it was somebody, like a friend of mine, just trying to mess with me, made up a fake profile, but I replied, yeah, you know, I still am, and their reply to that was, I have one, do you want it? And that was it. So I messaged them back again, I was just like, yeah, I'm definitely interested, you know, do you have any pictures, where are you located, kind of what's the story on it, and they just sent me a phone number to call. And I called him up, I think, and I can't remember the guy's name, it was Kevin. And he, it just sounded like a scam, but basically he was in California, but the game was in Tennessee. It was the game he remembered playing as a kid. So when he became an adult, he bought one and had it restored roughly like 15 years ago, which in my mind, I didn't really know what a restoration 15 years ago entailed, especially when you couldn't give me a name of who did it. But it was at his father's house since he had moved, and his dad just needed it out. He needed the space back. So I asked him for some pictures, and he sent me pictures. It was definitely a Viking in a house from about 10 feet away. So I couldn't really – I could see it was a Viking, and that was for sure. But I was still a little nervous, so I asked, as long as he would be okay with me having shippers come pick it up. This was in the middle of wrestling season. and if I could send it with PayPal so I was protected. He was fine with both of that. So at this point, I'm pretty convinced it's real and it's coming. And shippers ended up dropping it off one of the nights I was bartending. And they were supposed to come earlier in the day, but because we had a winter ice storm, they were delayed. So I was able to talk to the driver, and he was literally going to bring it to the arcade, Main Street Amusements, because the bar I work at is right next door. And Dan, the owner there, was going to unload it for me. so he does all this while I'm working my shift so I still don't know exactly what the game looks like and I finally got a free minute in there to run over and look at the game and it turns out the guy was absolutely right it had a new old stock playfield that had been clear coated in it new old stock back glass and the cabinet was not restored but it was a very nice original so I got really lucky on that one that one cost me two Star Wars toppers almost with the shipping still you have one yeah I got one and I got a pretty good deal on it and then uh Frontier I got roughly a year ago for just a little more than a Star Wars topper but it was really rough having to get a new cabinet built for it um and I did have to get a back glass from BG Resto so it's not mirrored like an original I'm really hoping CPR redoes those at some point so I can get one that has mirroring But for the time being, the BG Rastro back glass looks great, and it's far better than what came with it. I was missing half of the paint, and I did the hard top on that one, and I'm not quite done with it. I got it all assembled, oh, well, that would be about six weeks ago or seven weeks ago now, right before Thanksgiving. And everything was working except two of my pop bumpers are firing together, and I haven't been able to figure out why exactly because we were having people over for Thanksgiving, and my house being small, my kitchen was my workroom. So I folded the game up and moved it to the side so we could have our friends over. And I haven't unfolded it yet because we're wrestling season. So at some point I'm hoping to get in there, finish that up, and that's going to go on location as well. And then I can't remember, what was the last game you mentioned? I think you got them all. Flash Gordon maybe? Flash Gordon, Frontier, yeah. And then I've got the – Fathom and Viking. So I think you covered them all. Plus you have a bunch of games on location. right at the bar? Yeah, yeah. The five-score is actually at the bar, the front two will be here. At home, for some of the other classics I have, I've got a Harlem Blow Trotters that I restored as a new old sock play field, and I redid the cabinet. Skateball I have. That one is playable, but I've got a CPR play field waiting for it. So whenever I get some time, I'll get to that. And then I do actually have a Centaur. and I sent an original play field that was really beat up to Mirko so he could reproduce them. And that was over a year ago now and I got tired of waiting so I ended up buying a CPR play field that turned up on the second-hand market a couple months ago and I sent that to Ron Kruseman. He's actually almost done touching that up. The little defects obviously look far greater than the original play field that's in mine because it was missing like half the paint, but Fathom and Centaur are kind of like my dream machines. So I plan to do a similar restoration on Centaur as the Fathoms and kind of go all out on that one. And those two machines will, wherever life takes me, I plan on those coming with me. So that's some of the stuff I have in the pipeline. It's always interesting to hear Ron's comments about playfields from CPR and others and that they aren't perfect, but they are when he gets done with them. His work, from what I can see, and I've never seen anything up close, his work is outstanding. Yeah, Ron is, you know, whenever I try to explain Ron to someone, Ron is a very unique guy, and to a T, he is an artist and a perfectionist. He sees things that 99% of us would maybe never notice, and even if we notice it, we wouldn't be bothered by on a production play field or a reproduction or original. What Ron does is he takes these things and he makes them perfect. His services aren't cheap, but, man, you know, when it's that game that you know it's going to be here forever type of game, that sort of thing, it's well worth it to me. And, you know, I've seen him take playfields that looked great even after his work was done, and he'd find some little thing that he missed, and he would, you know, sand off a layer, clear, retouch, and get it perfect. He's really, really impressive workmanship that he does. He has a thread on Pinside, I think it's just Cruiseman's monthly play field update or something. And if you look in there, he actually just posted some pictures of my Centaur this week. And now my Centaur is a CPR Gold. and you know to me it looked good but again I'm not in a rush to do this one and I do what we're on to do to it and he posted very up-close photos of several of like the orb inserts the orange arrows there and the green arrow inserts that are on the right side for those drops and just where basically the alignment is slightly off and there's a little bit of white showing around the edge of the inserts and then he posted the after pictures where he's you matched the black and touched it up. And the most impressive thing I've seen is obviously we have sort of a dimple gate or whatever you want to call it on a lot of the new sterns and games from Jersey Jack and the issues with their clear coat. Ron's been doing nothing but clear coating playfields for, I think, almost 15 years now as his full-time job. And a big part is, as he's explained it to me without telling you his secret formula up for his clear and stuff is just the reality of these playfields that are coming from new manufacturers. They're being mass produced and they're getting all their clear coat at once. Ron basically lays on a layer of clear and then he waits a really solid amount of time in between adding another layer of clear in addition to doing block sanding in between every coat too. And he said it just allows it to get so hard that his playfields virtually don't dimple, which to me sounded crazy. and then I've seen a few of them installed and I can't find a dimple in the things. It's amazing. I know he's actually working a little bit with Spooky Pinball right now in that some of Spooky's specific customers who also are customers of Ron they sending the playfields before they installed in their machines to Ron so he can clear coat them I know he done a couple TNAs that way a couple hours hoopers and he just got notified that he going to have some Rick and Mortys coming in for him as well to put his clear coat on before they ever get assembled at the factory. Wow. Well, it's machine or mass-produced versus boutique. There's a big difference. There's a big difference. It's really cool, and it's neat to see him. I've been fortunate enough, he lives roughly 45 minutes from where I have my late cabin up in Michigan. And in the summer, he's offered for me to come over and see him work and learn a little bit from him. It's not something that I think I have the artistic talent and ability to do, what he does with his touch-ups on some of these old dual-stock playfields or brand-new things. But it's really, you know, just like when we watch professional sports or pinball tournaments, It's really amazing to see the people that are the best at whatever it is they do, do their thing. You know, that's why the Olympics are so popular for television still, I think, where it's amazing people who can do anything at an excessively skilled level. That's what Ron does with his playfields. It's really neat. So that's coming, too. So, yeah, I do have a very impressive collection of ballets if I have to chew my own horn. I'm very happy with it. you mentioned tournaments did you participate in your state tournament I did I'm actually the IFPA director for our state as well so I guess we left that out at the beginning that's one other thing I forgot so I've been doing that for the last four years I think organizing that and we had it hosted by a really unique location in Indianapolis this past weekend called the Pitbull which is actually located in an old building that's been kind of converted it into modern office spaces and a bunch of different things, but their portion of it is in an old bank vault. So you actually have like a giant old bank vault door that opens up into a pinball arcade. And they had a pretty cool lineup that included a, unfortunately it went down right before the tournament started, but a future spa that had a hardtop installed on it. They had a stern electronimo. A stern catacomb wasn't ready in time for the tournament, but they had one of those there. Valley Embryon was in the tournament. So it had a really nice eclectic mix of three brand-new terms, Black Knight, Jurassic Park, and Game of Thrones, and then some nice 90s Bally Williams stuff, and then some older solid-state stuff too. So it had a really nice mix for players to choose from. Any EMs in that mix? Any old-school EMs? There were no EMs this year. We have, since I've taken over, kind of made a point of moving the state tournament around from location to location. So it doesn't sit in any one part of the state where people can claim there's an advantage, that sort of thing. So we've had years where it's been hosted at locations that have absolutely everything, you know, EM, solid state, moderns. And we've had a year where it was at a location that was almost all brand new modern stuff. Last year was a location that had everything. This year was just DMDs and, well, LCDs and solid state. And we're already working on a host location for next year. The southern part of Indiana, people don't realize, but basically from top to bottom of Indiana, it could be roughly a six-hour drive. It's a very long state. And they just got a location this past year that started hosting tournaments. And based on what the IFPA calendar is looking like for this year, they're going to be our second busiest location across the whole state in the coming year. And they'll likely be our host for the state finals next year. And that's one of the things that they've done a pretty good job at is having stuff from a little bit of all areas. So as of next year, we'll have some EMs in the mix again. Challenge week. Form feature. Sequence feature. Chamber feature. Audio feature. Bonus feature. Back to the Centaur thing. I have a Centaur. Actually, I have two of them. I got a Centaur 2 and a Centaur. I got on early when CPR was doing these, way back when, and they were offering to do a send in your old Centaur worn play field and we'll send it off and put our artwork on it and clear it. Yeah. And I really, I liked that because when I saw their, because I actually had a real CPR playbook they did back then. It was nice. But I'm pretty particular about stuff. It was bugging me about the inserts I used were kind of, the blues were kind of a clear blue. They weren't like nice and opaque-ish and that kind of thing. So some of the inserts, I wasn't that crazy about the CPR I was using. I loved the original inserts and the original play field. So I said, okay, I'm going to send this to you. Do your artwork, but don't put your clear on. Because at that point, the clear they were using, I wasn't psyched about CPR clear either at that time when they were, it was kind of a matte finish setting. It didn't really look that great. And so they sent me that back with the artwork on it. It looked nice. I sent it off to Bill Davis. Have any of you heard of Bill Davis? Yeah. Okay. I sent it off to him. He did his thing. So I basically had all the things row in a row. I had a beautiful play field with beautiful inserts in it, done with great artwork by CPR on old-school wood that's not the newer wood that could have issues. Then I had Bill Davis, who does an awesome job clear-coating. So I get his minty, looks like new old stock, Centaur play field ready to go into my game. And I can't wait to do it. Yeah, that's just with that and Fathom, which brought me here today to begin with. I just look at those art packages, and they just have so much greatness in them. Just the unique themes, the artists were clearly pushing some boundaries and stuff they were keeping on there. To the point, I sincerely love the Fathom's artwork so much. I actually haven't, I don't think I've even talked about this in our podcast yet, or really posted photos. but my left leg, my entire upper thigh, I got a Fathom artwork tattooed this past summer covering pretty much my whole leg. Which part of the artwork did you use? What did you use for artwork? I actually used, because I believe that's Greg Freres that did the art for Fathom. Yes. And through Circus Maximus, the group that's working on rebuilding Pinball Circus and Cat Thomp's Kingpin. They've been releasing some prototype artwork from different games. And I got sort of a mixture of the prototype back glass with the production back glass. There was just like slightly different poses for the mermaids. But I'm fairly well covered in tattoos, actually. Being a teacher, they're all kind of hidden. But I've been getting tattooed for a long time at this point. And I had my artist kind of do a mixture of the production back glass with the prototype back glass artwork and come up with something a little bit unique. But if you were to look at my thigh as a pinball collector, you'd be like, oh, that's the Fathom artwork. And I actually, Greg, who is working at Stern now, and me knowing Zach Sharp a little bit, was able to get a picture sent off to Greg so he could see it. And he was nice enough to send me an email back, and he said, you know, you're not the first person who's got some of my artwork tattooed, but that's definitely the biggest thing I've ever seen. Wow. Well, we've talked about almost every other game of his. Why don't I throw hot dog in the mix? And that's the only clear-coded play field I have. And, again, it was done by – help me, Dave. That's a game you're supposed to possibly buy from a guy in Colorado because I like that game a lot. I know it doesn't get the love that, oh, man, Paragon gets. Paragon, yeah. But Hot Doggin is a little bit more fun to play than Paragon. Yeah, it's a smiler game versus Paragon, definitely. I was so tempted. I got a Paragon up right now, and I got a beautiful clear coat of play field, new old stock, blah, blah, blah, same thing with the Hot Doggin. I was so tempted because it's ski season, winter, of taking Paragon down, putting up Hot Doggin. And I still might do that because, I don't know, it is the season for hot dogging. And I was thinking the same thing this morning. I'm like, you know, we should do a show on hot dogging because of the time of year. But like anything else, we'll get to it eventually. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I know the feeling. I think we're all in the same boat, sort of. Me, not as much as you two guys. I've got a lot of time on my hands. Yeah. I get my summers where I'm a lot more free, but during the school year, and especially in winter when I trust them to use my stage, I'm pretty darn busy. I've got two full-time gigs going on, a day job, and I've got my PIMO restoration business as my second full-time job, so I'm a busy guy. Yeah, I would imagine so. Restoration is a hell of a lot. No matter what time you give yourself, it seems like they always take doubles. Exactly, especially when you're detail-oriented, you want to get everything just right, and then I dial them in and optimize it and so forth. And I keep buying up either CPR playfields or new effect playfields and getting prep code. I just did a count the other day of how many playfields do I have ready to go into my own games, and I got about 20 of them. So I have 20 restorations for myself to do that I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them by the time I'm 100 years old, but I got them. I've got about five, and I thought I was screwed. pulling down. I'll send it to you privately. Dave and I were on TV recently in Boston. You need to see Dave's warehouse. It's his basement, but it's just incredible. I'm sure it is, and that's one of those things where spending a little bit too much time with Ron Kruseman, I've started to just accumulate some playfields because to me, I know a lot of people that hang up posters or paintings, you know, photographs in their home as works of art. To me, you know, personally, I'd rather look at playfields than them because I just think the artwork on them is so beautiful and lets you know that they're functional art. They can literally go in and become a game if I were to find the right machine or whatever eventually. Those things I really enjoy. And then kind of a fathom. Going back to fathom, we actually did a little something on the show Boston Chronicle did on my biz over here. I put it on Fathomton as a unique game. I don't know if you were aware of this. Maybe you are. It's the only game I know that actually depicted a murder on that back glass. It's the only game that did that as far as I know. Yeah. That's off the top of my head. I certainly can't think of anything else that's done that. That's... Yeah. that's definitely probably accurate and like I said on the show I said if you gotta go it's not a bad way to go oh yeah it's like I said a beautiful art package I never really thought of it looking at it as a murder but it's definitely taking place oh yeah he dropped his knife and everything that took his mask off and he wasn't in a good situation or maybe he was I don't know yeah who knows murder by mermaid Mermaid by Mermaid, yes. Help me. Help. Surface. Surface. Air supply gone. Help me. Air gone. Great game. Great hour package. Fun to play. In fact, out of my line upstairs right now, I have a pinball pool, a Paragon, eight ball deluxe, a Xenon, and a Fathom. And when I have people come over, the first game they go to is right to Fathom. That's what they play the most right now. yeah that art package absolutely draws everybody in I think um the layout is unique and although I think the rules to that game are relatively simple I mean you know you're playing for your multiball and locking in that bonus at the 55,000 which is kind of unique for the valleys it doesn't have like the 20 40 60 80 that a lot of them have um I enjoy that aspect of it a lot but just trying to get to that multiball over and over again is really fun and then I really appreciate the spotting of your bonus multipliers from the left six drop target bank I think that's really well done with the alternating colors since you have the double bonus system of green and blue and how you can increase your multiplier either from the inline drops or from clearing that left side bank the designer Ward Pepperton he I really like a lot of his stuff and uh he's somebody I think would be really cool from my understanding is he is still alive he's you know was at least or still is a fireman in the Chicago area uh I think it'd be really neat to have some company approach him about coming in and doing a design because he did GoldenEye, Mousin' Around, BMX and Hardbody which are essentially the same layout for Bally. And then, you know, I think Favre is probably his most famous design. But all of his games I really enjoy shooting. I think he just did some great layouts. So he's up there as one of the underappreciated designers, I'd say. It's funny that you started doing a quick rundown of gameplay. Are either one of you familiar with a gentleman by the name of Bob Matthews? Oh, yeah. I've played with Bob. Okay, well I got to meet him again out in California last week, and I just so happened to have printed out his guide to fathom, the quickie version. lock balls in one or both saucers shoot the drop targets in front of either of them to start multiball at that point if the spinner is not already lit shoot the light spinner stand up target to the right side of the green target channel once the spinner is lit and the multi is running shoot the spinner all day try not to re a ball Pretty good advice Pretty good advice but good luck doing it Say mine, it feels like, I don't know if there's any game that has shorter multi-balls than Fathom. It's just, it does to you, you know, you didn't specifically mention there, but if you need to cue ball multiball, you have two X-play field scorings, your spinner's at 10,000 to spin if it's lit. and if you have three ball, multiball, it's 15,000, three X-way field. But it's just – it's a game that's so hard to control multiple balls on at once. You've got the reverse inlay and some minor – I don't know about yours, but minor freaking brutal. Like it's just hard. But fun. It always sucks me back in for another game. Dave, you still out there? I'm here can you hear me hello hello what are you doing me my stupid phone my phone went to sleep again so I just woke it up oh okay I was going to say about home ROMs have you done any home ROM stuff with your fathom my fathom is running in all tech so I have not done any of the home ROM stuff I don't believe oh it's great stuff I actually helped Oliver you know Oliver I was going to say his last name yeah early on when he was doing these things I was one of the collaborators he put the word out there does anybody have any ideas what we could do for sounds on 8th Ball Deluxe and Fathom and some other ones so I kind of early on was kind of saying yeah how about this and this and this and different sound call outs for this and this so he took some of my ideas which is great to see for different things he used the sounds that weren't used on the in the game but they were they're there to use and he used them for certain things. Like if you don't get the extra ball, if you, the extra ball is lit and you miss it within the time, it'll say air supply gone or, or that kind of thing. It'll say different things that these call outs would never use, you know, utilize. So a skill shot up top ABC rollovers, we would keep moving around, you know, when you first shot the first ball out kind of thing. So it's something to get yourself a regular Valley board and try some of these, try some of the home runs out. It's a version three and a version four out there that add a whole new aspect to the game. I'll give that a shot. I think, I don't know if you're familiar with the Weebly boards from Andrew. Yes, I love his Andrew. Yeah, I think his new Universal one has some of the home run versus non-there team. So I tend to use that most of the time. I really like his stuff. He's been super helpful from time to time when I have had questions. So I'll have to check that out. Same here. I give him lots of my business. I buy all the NVRAM stuff I buy from him. I also bought a bunch of his boards. And a real nice guy, very accessible. I'll email him a question or a tech question. I'll come right back with an answer. So he's a great guy. Oh, yeah, he knows. He knows his stuff. Well, we're approaching an hour, a little over. Dave, do you have any other questions? I don't want to take up too much of Tommy's time The only other thing to comment back a quick second is you mentioned Viking and Dragon's Fist and I had two Vikings both with New Ulstock playfields in it and two Dragon's Fists with a super sweet shape go about maybe five, six years ago. But I wound up moving them on because I didn't really, for me, they didn't really grab me like I thought they would. So I moved them on for probably cheap money. Probably today they're probably going for more, you know, these days. But I had both those games. And a lot of people love it. I got a friend of mine up in Maine. He said, Viking is the best one-ball valley ever made. You know, he likes that game a lot. It's up there for me. That's one of the games where a couple years ago I installed those 7-digit displays but they were a little finicky with mine for some reason George was all about that right George? yeah you're being way polite anyway I don't have a conversion kit for putting 7 digits on some of those games so I was thinking about doing that again with the Viking because that's my only complaint on Viking is it can be a little easy to roll to where of seven digits would actually come in handy because I think my high score on that one's three millions range um yep so it'd be nice to see that whereas like Flash Gordon and uh Harlem I have are in the seven digit gear Flash Gordon is a seven digit game and it's very rare that you get it on my machine at least and Harlem the kind of the same thing it's a six digit but I I can see how that one would be a seven digit game that sort of thing but uh weren't you commenting on another company that is releasing a product on your Meteor? Did I see that correctly? That was Taylor. That was... Oh, okay. We talked about Weebly. Yeah, he's got a conversion kit now where you still need seven-digit displays, obviously, physically to put in there, but he has added an adapter to his universal MPU board that just allows you to make basically any of those six-digit games, seven-digit games. And I know Meteor and Dolly Parton, which I had just sold, were two of the most talked-about games as far as really needing to be converted to those seven-digit titles. Dolly Parton's another one of those. I didn't know a ton about her as a musician or anything, but the game was kind of fun, and I had it for a little while. I really liked that layout. It's a game I would buy, and I tried doing the seven-digit with Embryon and failed miserably. and that's in one of our episodes. But I would, you know, if somebody had a working product, I would love to upgrade mine to seven digits. That's an easy roll. That's an easy roll or two. Yeah, check out Andrew's website. Ambrion was actually, like I said, in our state tournament this weekend. And I had a game on there on ball two. I was player two, and I actually locked a ball, which I didn't know you could do on that game. And then I drained. And player one came back up, but we didn't know that the ball would release from the saucer when he hit the flipper. And that caused him a game. And we actually had to call Josh Sharpe up to get a ruling on exactly what that was. And Josh was unaware because he goes, I've never played that game for a multiball in 20 years that I've been playing it. And so we looked at the instruction card, and it was right on there. You press the flipper and the ball would release. So it was ruled as a legit ball and just an unfortunate turn of events for that player. But it let me win the game. So I wasn't too upset. I'm not even quite sure what you're referring to. So on Embryon, somehow you can light the upper right saucer for an actual physical lock. Right. And then I released my next ball and was playing for a while. And when it drains, the ball doesn't kick out to the shooter lane for the next player. Correct. Yeah. So when he pressed that flipper to release the ball, he didn't know it was going to fall. We had no idea. We were just playing kind of tournament strategy where you just light the spinner and he tap pass over and keep shooting the spinner. We didn't really know about the multiball rules. The tournament players don't play that way. So basically, the next player has to steal the lock. He steals a lock, the next player, right? Yeah. It doesn't steal it. it just kicks the ball out of the lock for them instead of coming from the shooter lane. Right. But then the player that actually locked it, he loses that lock. He's going to relock it again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to have to take the glass off and play, play a second player. Cause I'm usually playing it by myself. So I would never see it. Yeah. That makes sense. But we didn't know. We learned a little bit there. Nobody else had to happen all day. Cause nobody plays that game to lock a ball. Apparently. No, no. You were talking about short ball times for extra ball. That game, it's not really a multiball game. Not my opinion. But you just taught me something, and I've owned that game for probably 15-plus years. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. And to elaborate further on Embryon, there's actually another home run on that game that makes the game like Fathom. So when two balls are out, play field multiplier is two. Versus a stock ROM, it's not. It's just one times. But you still need seven digits. You can't do seven digits if you're smart like that. Yeah, you do. But I've actually did my own seven-digit convert on Viking when I had it and on, I think, Harlem and Galaxy. I forget. You actually made your own little breadboard with a chip on it, and you run a wire and then get, I think Oliver had a ROM. So you can make it, you can cobble it together and make it happen yourself. But someone like, you know, Andrew's thing on the Weebly site makes it a lot easier than what we had, you know, years ago. Yeah, for sure. I know, like I said, Taylor just installed his specifically because he was hosting the Virginia State Championships. So he wanted to make sure he had that installed and done before the tournament. And from everything I heard, he had no complaints and no issues with it throughout the tournament. So I'd say it's probably just like most of Andrew's products or all of them as far as I've had any experience. Just top notch. Yeah, yeah, those are stuff. Agreed. Dave, I'll give you a last word. Well, actually, let me, Tommy, I'll give you last word. Then I'll give Dave last word. I'm pretty much done. I got nothing else, man. Just thanks for having me on, guys. And for those of you listening out there, if you ever get a chance to play a Fathom, definitely do it. And if you ever happen to be near Lafayette, Indiana, come check out Vine if you want. Hit me up. I'm T-S-S-K-I-N-N-E. I'm Pinside and fairly active over there. And on Facebook, it's North End Pub Pinball. That's my location. We've got 22 games down here now. So we stay busy. Dave? Kings Island you ever go there I like roller coasters so if I ever go out to your way I'll do some roller coasters as well as visit you and your place out there sounds good to me but yes great having you on great talking about Fatima with you and all the other classic games that you're into and the restoration stuff good stuff I want to thank you as well Tommy I've followed you for a long time. You've been kind to me as far as replying to personal emails. And I wish you and Taylor a lot of success. And I hope you're a little bit more frequent in your podcast. I know life gets in the way. You're both busy. but I enjoy your podcast and just the camaraderie it shows between the two of you I really like that about your podcast it was one of the first ones I ever listened to and it's probably why Dave and I are sitting here today so I want to thank you I really do appreciate that and like I said, Pinball brought Taylor and I together and even outside of Pinball now I'd like to think we're pretty good friends because of what pinball has done for us. We enjoy talking, and we just try to do an unfiltered show of our opinions on things. We know we're not for everyone, but there's definitely a small group out there that enjoys us, so I'm sure we'll keep doing it. I do think we plan to record this week based on a text I got yesterday. We should have something new out for everyone post-holiday season here. All these new machines have been announced and come out. We'll give some impressions and do our thing. Thank you very much. That does mean a lot to us. it's one of those things like I said I hope anyone who is doing one of these shows is involved it takes time to reply to someone who's willing to email you or text you or any of those things because it's about the community that's what pinball is great with so be a part of the community and be the positive part of it that's how I feel I'm hoping I get the chance to put the face with the name and the voice you have yourself a great day and we'll talk soon thanks again guys we'll talk to you later Take care, Charlie. Thank you. No problem. Bye. I want to tell everybody to keep those spinners spinning and have a blessed day and be grateful. Don't go near the water. Don't you think it's sad? What's happened to the water? Our water's going bad. Oceans, rivers, the lakes and the streams Have all been touched by me Now you've done it. Danger.