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Episode 67 – Everyone Likes Dialed In!

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Nov 2, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Raymond Davidson wins inaugural Heads Up Pinball Championship in Vegas; discusses tournament format, games, and Dialed In production issues.

Summary

Raymond Davidson discusses his inaugural Heads Up Pinball Championship victory at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas, detailing the unique head-to-head game format with Aerosmith, Ghostbusters, and Star Wars. The conversation covers tournament logistics, specific challenges faced, and Raymond's impressions of recently acquired games, particularly Dialed In, which features flipper alignment issues from the factory.

Key Claims

  • Raymond Davidson won the inaugural Heads Up Pinball Championship at Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas

    high confidence · Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale congratulating Raymond on the win; confirmed multiple times throughout episode

  • The tournament featured head-to-head simultaneous play on three machines: Aerosmith, Ghostbusters, and Star Wars

    high confidence · Raymond and hosts detailing specific challenges for each game throughout tournament discussion

  • Raymond won two machines as tournament prizes: an Aerosmith and a Ghostbusters

    high confidence · Raymond confirms he received Aerosmith as prize and previously won Ghostbusters from IFPA World Championship

  • Dialed In shipped from factory with non-default flipper strength settings and misaligned flippers

    high confidence · Raymond describes factory settings being in 'red' (non-default), flipper strength lower than default, and coil assembly having different lengths on left vs right flipper

  • Gary Stern was present at the tournament in Las Vegas

    high confidence · Raymond states 'you got to shake Gary Stern's hand' and was seen 'playing Star Wars' at the venue

  • Guardians of the Galaxy is an upcoming Stern release designed by Borg

    medium confidence · Hosts reference 30-second Stern teaser video from AV Club showing playfield mechanics; designer confirmed as Borg

  • Guardians of the Galaxy's playfield design shares similarities with Metallica

    medium confidence · Ron: 'Just looking at the play, it looks like Metallica, too' and consensus mentioned that 'it's Metallica, too'

  • Star Wars Premium includes a magnet as a feature that Pro model lacks

    medium confidence · Discussion of magnet inclusion: 'There is a magnet. You just have to get the premium model.' Clarification that supercharger does not count as magnet feature

  • Dialed In's newer factory shipments include both SIM and foam protectors, while earlier units had only SIM protector

Notable Quotes

  • “I was probably not going to go until, like, Friday at lunchtime. Then I was like, huh. I kind of talked myself into going. That's pretty good odds. There's only, like, maybe six, eight people, you know, that I have to worry about.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~12:30 — Illustrates Raymond's last-minute decision to attend the tournament and his calculation of favorable odds

  • “It's the stress compounds very quickly. Um, it's almost a relief when your opponent is like, I did it. You're like, oh, okay. Oh, thank God. I'm done.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~16:45 — Captures the unique psychological pressure of head-to-head simultaneous gameplay format

  • “That was by far my favorite challenge. Then we have Star Wars.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~22:15 — Raymond discussing the Aerosmith multiplier challenge as his favorite due to high risk/reward mechanics

  • “Draining, since it was on five ball, you could get those plus fives just by plunging, and it was way faster than hitting targets or whatever. Nobody wins when playing Star Wars.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~29:00 — Reveals meta-strategy for TIE Fighter challenge: plunging is faster than traditional play

  • “Most fun I've ever had playing Star Wars, by the way.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~18:30 — Positive assessment of head-to-head format enhancing even traditionally grindy games

  • “That's what I thought going in. I was like, I'm probably going to get my butt whooped. But, you know, you just have to learn just enough. And then, you know, you go from there.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~35:15 — Demonstrates adaptive tournament strategy despite limited familiarity with specific game modes

  • “They must have been testing it. Because when I bought the game, there was a score of 500 on it, which was kind of funny.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~54:30 — Evidence of factory testing on Dialed In machines, suggesting non-default settings were intentional but undocumented

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonTim SexonpersonGary SternpersonJosh SharppersonCarlperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Inaugural Heads Up Pinball Championship introduces novel simultaneous head-to-head format with goal-based challenges; format deemed successful despite logistics issues

    high · Raymond discusses 'unique, new format' with goals selected by higher seed; matches became progressively faster; format described as generating high stress and excitement

  • ?

    product_concern: Dialed In shipped with misaligned flippers and non-default factory settings; left and right flipper coil assemblies have different lengths

    high · Raymond: 'The coil assembly, the metal plate that it shoots into and the plate stops it, the length was just shorter on one flipper than the other'; 'When you factory default it, you look at the settings. A lot of the settings aren't at factory default'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Dialed In machines show evidence of factory testing with non-default settings; machines shipped with test scores still recorded (500 points noted)

    medium · Raymond: 'They must have been testing it. Because when I bought the game, there was a score of 500 on it'; non-default flipper strength and alignment suggest inadequate QA protocols

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic shifted protective equipment strategy from SIM protector only to including both SIM and foam protectors in newer Dialed In shipments

    high · Raymond: 'They designed the SIM one first, so then they were shipping them out with the SIM protector. Now, newer ones, they got the SIM protector and the phone protector'

  • ?

    announcement: Stern released 30-second Guardians of the Galaxy teaser video via AV Club showcasing playfield mechanics and Groot imagery

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.338

0:00
Uh, we need to learn about chicks. Yeah. I assume you mean the 51% of our population known as women. Uh, no. We want chicks. Yeah.
0:14
In the words of the great feminist anthem, I am woman, hear me roar. But it, I think she wants you. Yeah, probably.
0:30
Coming to you from beautiful offstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Yep, and we're starting our new film series This is episode 67 And we're starting with Rocky The original And he goes He doesn't do that in the movie That would have been funny That would have been great during the boxing scene But we're not alone we're not we have a guest and I'd like to think that we are the podcast of champions our guest was a virtual unknown before he was on our podcast and soon after appearing he won the IFPA World Championship and then after that he won the Northwest Championship and now he has just won the inaugural Heads Up Pinball Championship Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did we have on Josh Sharp?
1:53
Oh, yeah. Womp, womp, womp. I guess you can't win them all. You can't win them all. Oh, okay. Okay. Welcome to Raymond Davidson.
2:04
Yeah, hello. Congratulations on your win. Another one. Thank you. This is becoming a trend. And you keep winning machines. Yeah. Well, you know, those are the only two machines I've won, or the two I just got this year, so maybe I was due, you know? Apparently Tim Sexton is just, like, at machines all the time. Yeah, he's won a couple. Yeah. Yeah, Bruce, you're the only one who doesn't win anything. I'm a loser. I mean, I won one, Raymond's won two, Tim's won one. What's the deal? Two.

high confidence · Raymond discusses evolution of protective components: 'they were shipping them out with the SIM protector. Now, newer ones, they got the SIM protector and the phone protector'

  • The Heads Up format had a significant production issue during the final match where goals were not visible to viewers

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discuss that 'nobody saw' the final game goal, with Johnny Monica handling stream controls blamed for technical failures

  • “Aerosmith is a much better version of Kiss.”

    Raymond Davidson @ ~08:45 — Comparative assessment of recent Stern music games showing design iteration and improvement

    • Tommy Floyd
    person
    Borgperson
    Trentperson
    Slam Tilt Podcastorganization
    Heads Up Pinball Championshipevent
    Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegasvenue
    Dialed Ingame
    Guardians of the Galaxygame
    Aerosmithgame
    Ghostbustersgame
    Star Warsgame
    Metallicagame
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Multimorphiccompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Nitro Amusementscompany
    IFPAorganization

    high · Ron: 'I think Stern dropped a 30-second video today...in the AV Club'; hosts discuss seeing playfield details including magnets, double in lane, Groot head

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Guardians of the Galaxy features magnets, reversing apparent trend away from mid-playfield magnets seen in recent Stern games like Star Wars Pro

    medium · Discussion of Star Wars lacking magnets in Pro model while Premium has them; Guardians confirmed to have magnets; hosts note 'they seem to be making a comeback'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Guardians of the Galaxy design details being speculated: rumored three flippers, two ramps, large Groot head, ball-eating Groot head, magnets in mid playfield

    low · Ron and Bruce reading Pinside speculation: 'It's rumored to have three flippers. Rumored to have two ramps. Rumored to have a large Groot head...rumored to have a Groot head that eats balls'

  • ?

    event_signal: Heads Up Championship experienced significant production issues: goal visibility not broadcast to viewers during final match; audio interference from DJ; stream control problems

    high · Ron: 'nobody saw' the final game goals; discussion of Johnny Monica handling stream controls blamed for 'Monica plague'; Carl dealing with loud DJ interference requiring bleeping decisions

  • ?

    content_signal: Raymond Davidson sought out Slam Tilt appearance to discuss tournament performance; example of competitive players using podcast platforms for community storytelling

    high · Ron: 'Raymond actually messaged me before...Raymond's like, hey, do you want me to come on this weekend, and I'll talk about the IFPA championships?'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Discussion of Guardians of the Galaxy pinball music licensing strategy; hosts speculate about inclusion of ELO or generic space music based on previous examples (Mustang with actual song vs NASCAR without)

    low · Ron and Bruce discussing whether Guardians will get actual Guardians Vol. 2 songs: 'They're either going to get the songs, or they're going to have just a generic, you know, space-founding, like...Oh, no. Yeah. It'd be like NASCAR'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community perception that Aerosmith represents meaningful design improvement over Kiss; both are music-themed games by Stern with similar architecture but improved execution

    medium · Raymond: 'I had nightmares after I saw Kiss...It's Kiss improved. Okay, Kiss 2.0, yes. Okay. Which is much better music'; hosts acknowledge Aerosmith as superior iteration

    • 2:35
    Tim's won two. And Steve Bowden, he's won one. I mean, what's the deal? I suck. So what games do you got? So you won, it's an Aerosmith, right? Yeah, I think that's what they're trying to give me.
    2:55
    Well, what does that mean? I mean, that's the prize. I get an Aerosmith. Yeah. Wow. The other one you won was Ghostbusters?
    3:09
    The other one I won? Yeah, I got a Ghostbusters. Do you still have the Ghostbusters? Yeah, it's holding out hope. I'm going to wait for this last code revision to see if there's any possible, you know, something you can squeeze out of it, you know, something good. We'll see. This doesn't sound very positive here. No, it does not. It's funny. I mean, two of the three games they had, you own.
    3:36
    Yes, yeah. Well, one you do now, the other one you didn't. Yeah. I might actually get into Aerosmith. I just haven't really put much time into it. And I had nightmares after I saw Kiss, and then Aerosmith came out, and I was like, oh, it's just Kiss.
    3:52
    And then I just never played it, and I just kind of hated it without even really giving it a shot. So maybe it's good. I don't know. It's Kiss improved.
    4:01
    Okay, so it's better than Kiss. Kiss 2.0, yes. Okay. Which is much better music. Sorry, Bruce. I don't know about that. Okay. So I like it when our guests ask us to come on. So Raymond actually messaged me before. I think it was Thursday night. Raymond's like, hey, do you want me to come on this weekend, and I'll talk about the IFPA championships. I'm going to be there. I'm like, perfect. Definitely. And I said, good luck. Yep. And then, boom, all of a sudden, I'm watching. I'm like, that bastard's going to win.
    4:35
    Holy shit, though. This is so freaking cool. The first match was interesting, though. I don't know how to get 20 ghosts on Ghostbusters, do you?
    4:43
    I own the game. I don't know any of the rules. What do you think? Both of you have owned the game. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So maybe we should do some more background here, people. What are you talking about? Let's go over Raymond's whole trip. Well, first, the tournament itself is called the Heads Up Pinball Championship. It was being held at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas, Nevada, in conjunction with the Big Buck Hunter Tournament. The idea is you have goals you have to do on a machine, but there's that same machine next to you with another player, and you literally are head to head. You start at the exact same time, and whoever gets the goals first wins the game. Unique, new format. Yes. Now, I didn't understand one thing. Who was picking the goals?
    5:40
    Me. You couldn't really... Okay, you did. Well, the higher seed got to pick them, and I was numero uno, so I would... Well, you picked a goal, and then for the next game, your opponent picks a goal, and then if you go to a third game, then the higher seed gets to pick again. What I think it should be is just like a flip-up card, like a monitor screen in the middle of the two machines. Yeah. And it just gets chosen. So you both see at the same time. You both have to make the strategy on the fly, and if you hit the start button first, you know, that would be the awesome way to do it. So the benefits of being the top seed are nothing. Nothing. Okay. It's heads up. Well, the benefits of being the top seed is I don't have to play against Trent in the first round, right? That's true. That is true. But, I mean, heads up is truly heads up. It's like flipping a coin. You want to make it for TV or for excitement, that's the best way. It was interesting how it started slow, and then by the end the matches were like 30 seconds long. Yeah.
    6:43
    Which caused a problem in the final game, which I didn't see. Actually, nobody saw. I thought. Yeah.
    6:50
    Johnny Monica should not be allowed near any controls. Josh Sharp was joking how the Monica plague infected the stream. It did. Yeah, the plague is the guy that knows how to run everything is in the final.
    7:04
    Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like the final game, and literally we saw you as you won. Yes. So we saw you hitting the button feverishly, and literally you're hitting the button, and then, yeah, and that was you. I mean. Did you play track and field? What happened?
    7:23
    You didn't miss much of that game, to be honest. So you almost didn't make it, though, Raymond. Oh, yeah. I was probably not going to go until, like, Friday at lunchtime. Then I was like, huh. I kind of talked myself into going. I was like, that's pretty good odds. There's only, like, maybe six, eight people, you know, that I have to worry about. But, you know, one in six chance with, like, you know, $50 entry fee to win $5,000 worth of value. You know, that's pretty good Vegas odds, right? It was. You almost missed your flight. Yeah, I got, I will do something I'll never do again, which was I thought it'd be fun to just opt out of the little microwave scanner thing because I wanted to just walk through the little metal detector. I thought it'd be faster. No, don't opt out. They will pat you down, and it took like 15 minutes of them touching every part of me that I could think of. And, yeah, don't do that. Oh, my. Jeff Teolis requests that every single time going to the border. Really? He does. He loves it.
    8:34
    Jesus. Moving on. But, yeah, I got out of that line. Well, first of all, the line was ridiculous, like, to begin with. And then on top of that, you know, I had that extra thing. And then I got to the gate and it was like, you know, normally you're waiting for your group to get called and all that. There was no one at the gate. I thought the plane had taken off. But luckily I just walked up and walked on and then sat down and took off. So walk us through the wonderful Heads Up Tournament. uh well it was uh it was very stressful because you're um you don't have time to like fix your mistakes like if you you know miss something it's not like oh that's okay i'll get it next time it's like no i need i i'm behind now because i missed that i need to go twice as good right like i it's the stress compounds very quickly um it's almost a relief when your opponent is like, I did it. You're like, oh, okay. Oh, thank God. I'm done. Next game. Like, you know, it's very intense.
    9:39
    All right, so let's go over. We had three games. We had Aerosmith, Ghostbusters, and Star Wars. Most fun I've ever had playing Star Wars, by the way. Oh, hear that, Bruce? No, no, no, because it wasn't the right way to play it. It was challenges. Thank you, Raymond. Raymond actually supported my fight. Okay, so how many challenges were there per game? Four, and then a two-minute challenge, so I guess five. All right, so let's see if you can remember. What were the challenges for Ghostbusters?
    10:15
    Ghostbusters was get 20 ghosts, start a storage facility multiball, get a super jackpot. What was the last one? Oh, start complete two modes. That was, that was the, yeah. All right, so that's Ghostbusters. Then we got Aerosmith.
    10:35
    Aerosmith was start Toy Box multiball with, you'd have to specify the number of balls. So, like, start Toy Box with five. And then both players would have to get, you know, five. That was, yeah, start Toy Box. Start Love in an Elevator multiball.
    10:52
    Collect an extra ball. So that's, let's see, that's three. and then the fourth one was choose a shot on the play field and get an X, a multiplier on that shot specifically whatever shot you set so if you say the center ramp and you let your multipliers and it falls into that lovely lock mechanism you get to try again that was the best challenge it was, that was my favorite challenge out of all of them, because if you screw up it's like shit, you gotta start all over again, I don't have time for this crap, come on, get going So then we got, and I saw like people neck and neck, and then they get the axes, and the guy would hit the wrong one, like, oh, shit, and then the other guy's trying to hit it, and he hits the wrong one, and it's going to start all over again. That was by far my favorite challenge. Then we have Star Wars. Yes. Star Wars. Yeah, so Star Wars, TIE Fighter Multiball, which at the beginning of the day was the longest challenge, and at the end of the day was the shortest challenge. just depends on, you know, who knows the tricks and whatnot. Luckily, I lost to Tim Balls the first time. Well, I won the match, but the first time we played Star Wars, he beat me on TIE Fighters because I didn't drain fast enough. I didn't understand that draining equals winning in that scenario. But when he did it, you know, I learned for the finals against Carl, you know, how to do it. So I picked up little things along the way. I guess the TIE Fighters, you get skill shots that gives you plus five, and then you get the hurry up at certain numbers. And so Draining, since it was on five ball, you could get those plus fives just by plunging, and it was way faster than hitting targets or whatever.
    12:33
    Nobody wins when playing Star Wars. Nobody. Okay, enough Bruce. The next one was start a mode multiball. So you had to say which one. And so, you know, Death Star, Tatooine, or Hoth, or Endor, whatever the mode multiball is. I always chose Death Star just because, to be honest, it's the only one I really knew how to beat. I know it's like Death Star, or R2-D2, Death Star, and then there's like four shots that you hit, and then you're done. And so I was like, I can hit shots. So that was just a pure, like, who could hit the four shots faster kind of game. and then there was Escape from Boba Fett, which I had never known anything about prior to playing. Somebody chose it against me, and I just kept hitting white shots, and then eventually I kept asking, like, am I done? Am I done? No, no, no. It just kept going and going, and then finally I got it, and I was like, oh, wow, oh, man. So that one's a tough challenge, but so much fun. I would never have played that mode in the game otherwise, right? It's not something you do, really. But playing it head-to-head was so much fun.
    13:47
    So, and they had, like, you could coach people. Yeah. Which was weird. I felt like a Price is Right thing, where people were just shouting out, do this, do this, do this. I think most of that was people who, you know, there was a lot of new players who had just kind of showed up for this thing, and people were, they felt bad because they, you know, literally didn't know there was a skill shot that said plus five tie fighters on the challenge that was get 50 tie fighters. So you can't help yourself, you know, from help. Because they changed the rules. Originally it was like three ball. Yeah. And if you didn't get it, you'd restart. But it became obvious at the beginning, especially since a lot of the players, at least in the earlier rounds, were people that just were there, like, or stopped by for the big buck hunter thing. and said like, oh, pinball tournament, I'll try that. And they had no idea what they were doing. No clue. So they would start and it's like, are they ever going to get the goal? And they just keep playing and playing and playing and playing. Like, oh, I've detected a problem with this format.
    14:52
    Yeah, that was interesting. But then, like I said, by the end of it, that challenge was faster than Modica, faster than the speed of Modica. Yeah. so yeah I'd say the single biggest issue honestly was knowing what goal was selected yeah above everything else I noticed when you were reffing you were actually holding your fingers up to stay under the camera like it's goal this yeah you were the only one doing this tried to try to do that yeah try to help people out that was a frustrating thing to be like what are they going for yeah there was there there should have been like a little screen at least or like the text field. I asked Carl about it. He said he didn't have time, you know, with all the other stuff he had to do. He couldn't fit it in. And even if he did fit it in, someone would have to be constantly updating it. And then, you know, you might get the wrong challenge at the wrong time. And I don't know. We had runners that would keep the broadcasters up to date. But, yeah, that was definitely a little kink issues. Yeah. I feel sorry for Carl having to deal with all that noise. Oh, my gosh. And the DJ around the half for the Big Buck Hunter, that's where some fucking noise.
    16:05
    Fucking fuck, fuck, fuck. It was just every other word. And Carl was like, so am I supposed to bleep that?
    16:13
    I thought it was fucked. I mean, you could hear everything through the mics. It was in the music. Like, oh, God. Oh, I forgot to mention, the last Star Wars challenge was, I think, start hyperspace multiball. But I don't think I saw many people picking that one. I wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't know what to do on any of those. I realized that straight off. Like, man, I would be totally screwed in any of these challenges. I mean, that's what I thought going in. I was like, I'm probably going to get my butt whooped. But, you know, you just have to learn just enough. And then, you know, you go from there. I will admit, when you were playing Tim, I was rooting for Tim Balls because, you know, he's a member of the Slam Crew. So I had to root for Tim Balls.
    16:54
    Well, it was close, man. It was close. You almost got you. I think at the Boba Fett, he had his last shot lit way longer than I had my last shot lit. He had that juicy ramp on Star Wars waiting for him and just couldn't get control. It also happened in Carl's match on Ghostbusters. We both basically had our mode, like, one shot away, and neither of us, whenever I couldn't execute, it seemed like he also couldn't execute. So it was pretty lucky in that sense. And you were in the loser's bracket. Yeah, well, Carl sent me there. Yeah, he did really well on Ghostbusters. And then you came back, and it was the situation you had to beat Carl twice. Yep. I believe you won four straight. It was two out of three. Yeah, it was 4-0, which was nice.
    17:44
    Winner. And you got to shake Gary Stern's hand. That was so cool seeing him there. I almost took a picture of him. He was playing Star Wars. It was so great to see. It was really something. It would be funny if he was playing Dialed In or something and got a picture.
    18:03
    I saw him walking in in one of the, I think, the audience shots. Like, oh, there's Gary. He was there the whole time. What's the deal with the Aerosmith? So you work through a distributor. You actually get it directly from Stern. They're just going to deliver it to you. Do you have to pay shipping? I was always curious about that kind of stuff. Well, I don't really know because I haven't heard anything. But if it's anything like the Denmark IFPA one, basically I poked Josh Sharp, and then he told me he would work his side of things with Stern, and then they'd send me an email, and then I'd email them back, and then eventually the machine just shows up at my door. Don't forget, send that to my bar. Send it to the bar.
    18:48
    And we'll put a plaque right on it, you know. Donate it from Raymond. Or you can get the actual Star Wars, because you love Star Wars so much, and you can do one of the pop-up things like, this Star Wars was the one in the Raymond Davidson won the championship on in the inaugural Head Start Championship. That would have been even better. By spamming the TIE Fighter button slightly faster than his opponent. Yep. Yeah. Yep. I'm sure Bruce loves that, doesn't he? Jeff Teolitz loves that. Yeah. You and Jeff should hook up, man. We have. We talk about it all the time. It's just fucking parts. I actually kind of like the challenge of having to, like, one flipper and one hand on the button. It's kind of like Terminator 2's super jackpot. I actually kind of like that aspect of it. I don't like the physicalness of it and, like, how speed matters so much. Yeah. It is interesting. Like, I don't mind it even in Star Trek. I like it in Star Trek. I like it in other games. Hit it once in a while. or if you, even in Star Trek, you've got to hit it like four or five times, you have your torpedoes and you want to get to, you know, fast multivolve. But I don't want to go mashing a freaking button like, and as you said, speed doesn't matter in this. I want to have control. And that's the problem. It's not a controllable thing. Wait a minute, you control? Yes. You never play in control.
    20:09
    And you see how good I do? Yes, exactly. So this should be perfect for you. The more out of control, the better. No. All right, I tried. So what are you going to do? I wonder what it's going to be on Guardians of the Galaxy. What is the button going to do there?
    20:24
    Maybe it'll change their song. Yeah, you get to choose between all those, you know, whatever mix. Yeah, mixtape. Yeah, mixtape one or two. Yeah. That's what I was wondering. Are they going to get any of those songs? I hope so. I hope so, because that's a big part of the... I mean, they got songs for Mustang. Yeah. I mean, they're either going to get the songs, or they're going to have just a generic, you know, space-founding, like... Oh, no. Yeah. It'd be like NASCAR. I can't drive 55. Oh. Then a Mustang, they actually have the song. Like, well, why couldn't you guys get it before?
    21:05
    I don't get it. Yes, but it will have ELO. If we get songs, we'll probably have ELO on it. What, is ELO in the movie? It's in the second one, first song. I haven't seen the second one. You need to. It's not as good as the first one, but the second one. I actually like the second one maybe even better. Wow. Yeah. I'm looking forward to Thor, though, this weekend. Thor. So when's the Thor pinball game? It's called Avengers, and it sucks. Oh.
    21:33
    That's right. He's in that, isn't he? He's in it. That game is so sad. It's just sad. It's not, like, bad. I mean, it's bad, but it's just sad. is the only word that comes to mind when I think of that game. Because it's such good potential. Actually, the last code drop made it interesting. Yeah, but it's just so linear and grindy and just not exciting, and the shots aren't good. It's tight in some parts and not tight in other parts, and that's the really weird thing about it. It does feel good to nail that Black Widow ramp like five times in a row. You're like, wow, how did I do that? Love that feeling. I will agree. That is the best feeling in that game. Anything else? You got to play, and you got to do it like Papa does. You got to take the arms off a Hulk so it doesn't get stuck. Yep. And you got to just batterize it just to make it work right. That's the great, we have to take away features of the game so it works right. Yes. That's true.
    22:34
    Before we move on, just congratulations again for the win and the inaugural. So you can always say you were the first champion, see? Yeah, that's true. I always, that's Mike, I always say, I'm the first Pinberg winner in the pop-up. I never heard that from you. I say that all the time. Because you won B or C division and they finished first. Yeah, they finished first. And I won the first Pintastic tournament. See, I got that. I can say that, too. Is that the Allentown one? It's the New England, Massachusetts.
    23:08
    Lyman won it the second year, and I think Eric Stone won it. The third year, I think? Yes. Yeah, this year. I was surprised not to see, like, Eric Stone. I guess only, him was the only East Coaster that really flew out, right, for the Vegas thing? I think so. And wasn't Trent there? Yeah. Trent's not really East Coast. That's Ohio. He's Ohio. Yeah. It's a pinball tournament. Of course Trent's going to be there. Yes, you know. Wolverine! No, he retired that. He wasn't in Wolverine mode. He'll come back. He'll come back? Okay. Voice comes back.
    23:45
    So, I think Stern dropped a 30-second video today. Yes, they did. Oh, in the AV Club? Yes, the AV Club. I kind of liked it. I liked it. Just like the play field, the guys drilling it. We'll show you the bottom of it. You see the magnets. It was a good tease. Good tease. Very good tease. See Groot. Hopefully Stern markets it right. with Zack behind it a little bit. Maybe they'll actually bring it to more Comic-Con shows. Do we know who the designer is? It's Borg. Borg, okay. Just looking at the play, it looks like Metallica, too, from the show. Oh, do they actually show, like, the play feel? A little bit. They showed the raw play feel. Yeah, enough where you can see the double in lane and a lot of the same features, yeah. Okay, so Borg either does the whole, like, pop bumpers on the left thing, or he does the, like, just the open, like, Metallica Iron Man kind of thing. Those are two. Yeah, the consensus is it's Metallica, too, so. Well, I like Metallica 1. Yeah, but, like, Aerosmith is a much better version of Kiss.
    24:57
    Metallica is awesome. How are you going to improve on that? That's true. Like, who's farting now? Maggots. Yeah. It's got magnets in the middle. So Pinside is happy. There's magnets. No, I thought they were done with magnets in the middle, but they seem to be making a comeback. No, no, no. Here's the funny thing. Let's make Star Wars with Force with no magnets. No magnets. Let's make magnets. No lightsaber.
    25:23
    Yeah, I don't get that. If there was ever a game that needed magnets, it would be Star Wars. You have the Force. Well, there is a magnet. You just have to get the premium model. The supercharger does not count. Yeah. The supercharger. It'd be like saying a flipper solenoid is a magnet. Yeah, pretty much. Like, all the games have magnets. It's called an electromagnetic field. They all have it. Otherwise, the flippers wouldn't work. It's funny. I'm reading Pinside right now, and there's like, it's got three rims. It's got two rims. People can't even decide. What was it, the AD Club, or, no, This Week in Pinball or something? It was like, it allegedly has this, and allegedly has this, and rumored to have this, and this, and this. And there were, like, a whole bunch of oddly specific things. It was like, huh. I wonder. Yeah, it's rumored to have three flippers. Rumored to have two ramps. Rumored to have a large Groot head. Yeah. And then rumored to have a Groot head that eats balls, you know. And then I liked Stern's new logo. Didn't you like Stern's new logo? They had a new logo? It wasn't a, well, no, it's their normal logo, but the background looked like it was something from the 80s. Oh, I think I've seen that somewhere before, actually. Yeah, it's been stolen.
    26:40
    No, well, I saw it in an IFPA thing. I know, but did you look at that, and did you look at what the Flippin' Podcast posted?
    26:48
    No, what did they post? And then you look right below it, they have the Stern pinball logo, the one that they showed on that video it looks like they stole it from TNA that's what it is no I've seen that I have seen that checker background before and it was in one of the IFPA videos they did it's like an intro it's like from the 80's or like early 90's and I'm wondering if that's exact thing I know I have seen that background before in one of the IFPA videos I am positive.
    27:26
    I just saw when Flippin' Podcast posted that, and they posted the certain, and you get to see the coloring and all that. I was like, man. So, Josh, if you, Josh Sharp, if you actually listen, and sorry about that intro. We were only kidding. If that is something that you actually used and my memory is correct, please send us an email or something, because I am almost positive I've seen that as an intro to one of the IFPA videos now. I could, of course, just go to YouTube and look at the IFPA videos, but that's too much work. That takes too long. Yeah. We're in the middle of a podcast here. Speaking of magnets, have you been liking Dialed In? Oh, yes. It is so good Now is this your Dialed In or are you playing it somewhere Yeah actually I bought one from Tommy Floyd Nitro Amusements at the Vancouver show He got it to me within, like, a couple weeks, and it's amazing. I mean, the one I have has a little issue with the right flipper, but even with that, it plays really well. And you have to turn up the flipper strength out of the box, which was weird. It was lower than the default. Yep. Yeah. Even weirder, when you factory default it, you look at the settings. A lot of the settings aren't at factory default. What? What I mean is when you get it, like when I got mine, if you go into the menu, they use like a color coding system. So if it's whatever. Yeah, the green, right? Yeah, the green. It's not actually the default, just green? Yeah, I think green is the default and red is not default. I had items that were in red. Yes, yeah, the flip restraint specifically was like, yeah. How is that possible? It's from the factory.
    29:07
    They must have been testing it. Because when I bought the game, there was a score of 500 on it, which was kind of funny. So they must have used some testing, you know, before they call it good. Although they obviously didn't even look at the flipper alignment. They looked at the flipper alignment, yeah. Yeah, I saw the picture. For those wondering what we're talking about, Raymond's flippers are not exactly aligned properly. Yeah, very weird. I don't think they use alignment posts either. No, I looked the mechanism and I measured it. The coil assembly, the metal plate that it shoots into and the plate stops it,
    29:46
    the length was just shorter on one flipper than the other. So I don't know. They're sending me a new max. At least I got a free flipper assembly out of the deal. That's called a coil stop, by the way. Well, no, the coil stop's the other side. Oh, the other side. Oh. He's talking about the link in the hole. The thing the link shoots into, it's the stopping short.
    30:08
    Huh. Yeah. That is so weird. It is weird. That is weird. Maybe I'll check the coil stop, too. Maybe the coil stop is too close, which is pushing it, you know? Yeah. And if you have any trapdoor issues, just watch our video. Ah, yes. I haven't, luckily. I had to up all the flipper strengths, and I had to up the kicker, the actual launcher.
    30:35
    Oh. Because I have it jacked all the way up because, well, just because. So what was happening is when it would fire, it's supposed to fire it, and it's supposed to come all the way around like the orbit and come up the ramp and go to you. Mine wasn't, didn't have, it was making it, but barely. Oh, yeah. Well, I, the, what is the actual answer to the theater? Is it supposed to shadow Phantom backwards, or is that just a setting that you can? Yes. It is. Okay, so I got mine to do that, and I love it. It's great. I just don't want to feel like I'm cheating or anything. No, it depends on the mode. When you collect one of the drone awards, I noticed it sends it back, which is really helpful because before I never ever wanted to light drones because it would make the center shot just hose you. But now it's like, oh, I can actually get my mystery award, and then it sends it up to your upper flipper. Yeah. Some of the modes, like the one with all the magnets. Corruption, yeah, EMP. With the, yeah, EMP. That just, it just lets it go because it wants it to come down the middle. Screw with you, yes. Yeah, the classic drain is you hit the feeder, and then it comes down and hits off the moving dude to the right, and he just kind of pushes it right into the right out lane for you. It just kind of delivers it to you. We're just letting you know all these things, Bruce, but when you get yours. I'm not getting mine. Oh, no. Come on, someday. Yeah, maybe. So, you know, did yours come with – mine came with Clippies already installed, but I remember you saying you had to buy Clippies. Is that like an LE versus standard thing? No, it's not. They don't come – like, they're putting protectors on from the factory now. Right. So, mine came with the SIM protector. Uh-huh. So, does yours have the foam protector, too? Yes. Yeah. So, they're coming – because they designed the SIM one first, so then they were shipping them out with the SIM protector. Now, newer ones, they got the SIM protector and the phone protector. The issue is those aren't Clippies. They're the ones that Jersey Jack makes. The problem is they seem to be a little bit thicker.
    32:38
    So I got the Clippies because they're a little bit thinner. Right, to make the shot less... Yeah, and if you install it right, like, I don't have bounce outs on my phone. I don't have SIM bounce outs, even though it's still hard as hell to hit that stupid SIM shot. I noticed mine was easier to hit once I turned up the flipper strength on the upper flipper, which is completely counterintuitive to what I thought it would be. But I think just providing that consistency of the upper flipper helped. But, yeah, definitely. So you're digging the Dalton? I'm digging the Dalton. It's my favorite game in the last ten years. Like, I don't think I'd ever say that about a game. Like, it's so good. I'll say, you know, and I'm trying to tell my father this. It's like, because he complains the games are too complicated and all this stuff, and I'll never get it. It's like if there was a game in the last 10 years that tells you explicitly what to do at every point, it is this game. Yeah. This game literally tells you, you hit the phone, it's not charged. You need to hit this guy. Oh, okay. You charge the phone. You hit the phone. The modes each have a character that tells you what to do, and it tells you what to shoot on the phone. Yeah. And the inserts flash a certain way for the modes so you know which one you're supposed to hit.
    33:56
    And what I like is the mode shots are the same. So as you start playing the modes, you start learning, like, in advance. I don't like games that have modes where it seems like random, you know, shots or, like, everything's lit or it moves around kind of sporadically. Like, I'm dialed in. It's like, when I start Whirlwind, I know I want to do that sweet four-way combo, and it's so satisfying. And I love it. I mean, it's so Lawler, it really, with the, each mode has a goofy character. I love the alien guy, the redneck, because, of course, it's going to be a redneck who, you know, is kidnapped by aliens, and, you know. I love the general, too. Oh, he loves the general. He loves the general. You got the general. You got the pizza delivery guy. You got the soccer mom. You got the, I guess, the stoner, which, of course, is the acid rain. The dating girl. Oh, yeah, you got the trailer park girl with the, of course, the, you know, I think it's the tornado. Yeah, because, of course, it's the trailer park. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's goofy, it's funny.
    35:05
    I am a big fan. And it shoots so well. Yes, it does. And I finally figured out, after I upped the flipper strength, I had posted on Tilt Forums, I was very confused that when you light lock, it makes the left ramp divert, and it stops making the left ramp actually go to your left flipper. It, like, stops with the engineer person, right? And I guess it's because if the flipper is strong enough, most of the time you shoot that, and it actually diverts, and it bounces off of the rubber on the upper playfield and exits up top where the kicker is by the feeder. Yep. And so then it kicks it to your upper flipper. So the idea is it's actually supposed to be helping you. Like, oh, I shoot the left ramp, and now it's at my upper flipper, and I can lock the ball. It only works maybe like 50% of the time, but it's kind of neat. I never thought about that. I would say the only thing that is not intuitive in the entire game is the canceling the multiball.
    36:00
    Oh, yeah, it's kind of secret. It's like an e-trade. Yeah, it's a secret, yeah. Like, I didn't know that existed until Tim's telling me, you know, hit ball flipper is crazy. What's also secret is how mode scoring works in general, because you get most of your mode points when it's done. Like, whether you finish it or not, even if you drain, you'll get a ton of points. Like, you're getting more than just what the shots are saying. You're getting that, and then it's also kind of working towards when the mode's over, it gives you, like, a summary, which is then multiplied by your SIM card. Yeah, the SIM card. Freaking SIM card. Oh, my God. Why is the default setting to reset them? Yeah. Oh, okay. So, okay, we have the IFPA World Champion saying that that's a little unfair. Okay, I don't feel so bad now. I mean, I like the challenge, but it is so frustrating. It makes it so if you don't collect the SIM cards, you don't score shit.
    36:57
    Yeah. Basically, because the whole – and Tim was right, and go to Tim Ball's YouTube channel and watch his dialed-in tutorial. He says, in priority, it's SIM cards first, mode second, like multi-ball, like a distant third. Well, if you have a SIM card lit, I'll oftentimes start multi-ball if it's lit. Oh, yeah, and hope it falls in. Hope I see the animation while I'm in multi-ball, like, oh, thank God it fell in the hole. When I'm in multi-ball, all I'm doing is just shooting, like, centered, hoping to get a ricochet. A ricochet, yeah.
    37:30
    So did you change your setting for the SIM card? No, no, I can't. I don't like changing things off of factory. I respect it. It just, it has issues in match play settings when you can get beat by a random person flailing who gets the lucky bounce in or a big bang hit, and you're, like, you know, deliberately making all these shots, and then you can't get the sim card because it's impossible to hit, and then you drain, and now you lose. Like, it's a great, like, unlimited qualifying game or a great home game. I don't know. I'd probably be frustrated if I had to play it in Pinberg or something, where, you know, they're going to have it set up super hard, and it's going to be super, you know, unforgiving. See, for me, I'd like that. Really? It's like, now I have more of a chance to beat Raymond.
    38:19
    I could just play out and have it bounce in the hole like, yes! It's like, you missed, like, every shot, and it just fell in the hole. This isn't fair. Like, yep. But, okay, enough with the dialed-in love society here. I know. The dial-in is great. That actually was part of the reason I wanted to be on the podcast, was just to say how good dialed-in is, because I know you guys like it, and I just, it's so good. The only thing is, where is everyone getting 146 from? Everyone has the new code but me. What's going on? Oh, I don't have, I don't have. Everyone but me and Raymond has the new code.
    38:58
    I'm scared to upgrade to new code because the game's so good already, I don't want to... It doesn't look like they screw up anything, and they add more animations, I've noticed. Oh, okay. Either that or I just wasn't noticing them, like Volcano, a whole volcano blows up. I don't remember seeing that, but that might be on the display, but I don't usually look up that far. I mean, I look at the phone. I don't really look at the screen, which is kind of sad if you're actually... if you're playing someone else and you look at the screen, you can see all the cool stuff they did. You really don't get to see when you're playing. It's kind of a shame in a way. It's like, man, there's a lot of cool stuff I'm not seeing. Well, yeah, I mean, they could have rectified that by having some modes like the final shot being a shot that can stop the ball, like maybe lock the ball on the side ramp or pause in the theater or have the phone end some modes and then you could look up and see a thing. That's another thing that the game could improve on is it only shows your, like, mode totals briefly, and it's kind of, you know, the display. Like you said, you can't look at it very much. Yeah, at least they could do, like, for the, what are the wizard modes again? Armageddon and Showdown do something where you hit the shot, and then the game goes dark, and then the display just does whatever, like, prepare for Armageddon or something. Yeah. So, anyway, Bruce is probably falling asleep over there. No, I'm actually looking at a picture. Somebody for Halloween dressed up like the QED guy.
    40:32
    So I'm going with the Jersey Jack, you know, dialed in thing. So if we do, like, our photo contest, I would be the woman? Yeah, you'd be the woman next to the QED guy. Of course, because I am the woman. I know. Batman 66 code .80 has anyone played .80 Ben Crane did because he owns the game he said it expands a little bit on the villains do the modes do anything the modes do more now you actually want to build up your multipliers even more and not just go for finishing them there's like a mode where you could select something and it just... No, not yet. Not the little guys yet. Not the mini-villains yet, but the... The mini-villains? Yes, the side villains like King Tut and Shane and a couple of the other guys. All right. Mr. Freeze probably is a mini-villain. Yes, he is. It's definitely a little better. People are seeing, like, you can see we're headed towards 1.0 and they said that they're going to have another drop before Thanksgiving and another drop before Christmas. At least they're honest. You know, they don't have 1.0 when they know it's not done. At least they're, you know, they got that going for them. Well, as they said in the past, they said they tried so many different things, and they just threw it out. They said it didn't work. Yep. Well, that's been the main delay because George Gomez and Lyman are working on it, and they said right during the, at Expo during their seminar that they tried, they've had a couple of different things they tried that just didn't work, and they had to scrap entirely and start again. Well, that's good. I mean, that they, you know, they didn't just chip with something that wasn't very fun. Yeah, I agree. And that's not Lyman, you know that. So Lyman would never let that happen. Yeah, so that gives me hope, then, that they're actually, you know, better to have a non-rushed quality product, I suppose. Even if it's been over a year and we're still on beta code. Just saying, if I was an owner who paid $15,000 for the super duper LE, I'd be kind of annoyed. Yeah, I mean, ideally they should have just waited to even release the game, but I guess, what are you going to do? I didn't know. It takes so long. Yep, and they got their money.
    43:07
    Yeah. People paid for the game, so hopefully Cern will make it good eventually. Yeah, it could be, you know, a big collectible, you know. It could be the next Walking Dead or whatever where everyone's like, oh, my God, the game's so good. It could also next be the next Magic Girl.
    43:24
    No, no, at least the Magnet's all working. You're right, you're right. I'm sorry. It'd be the next Wheel of Fortune. Hey, Wheel of Fortune's playable, too. Come on. But no, because only a couple people have 6.0, not 5.0. Did you hear about that this past week? No. Ah. Kiefer actually said that probably six or seven people in the world have 6.0 out there. Ooh. But he doesn't. That's the funny thing. So there's five or six machines out there that actually have 6.0 code. Huh. And now people are going, oh, my God, I want to have this coded. Which means what? What does it give you? It's like a bigger, you can't remember all the rules. We said there were some major tweaks to it that actually made it a lot better.
    44:15
    Well, I know I've played ones that have, like, mode finishing bonuses and, like, you can add a ball during multi-ball and the, you know, trip puzzle is always two in competition mode. I don't know if those are the five variants, but. Maybe. You might have played from five to six. You might have been playing six, because I said it was for a tournament at one time. And it wasn't released yet to the public, and then he got let go. Is it at Papa? No. Oh, really? They're the ones that usually have all that stuff. It was a tournament on the West Coast. Maybe it was Todd McCulloch's Wheel of Fortune, because they had IFPA 9 at his house. Maybe.
    44:57
    That would actually make sense. That would make sense. People are, like, jonesing for this, and no one said that they found anything, so. Huh.
    45:07
    Although that would have been, that tournament would have been long after Keith Johnson was gone from Stern. Six years, but yeah. Long after. Yeah, that was long after.
    45:19
    So, yeah. We'll see, but the Australian guys, the head-to-head pinball guys, they actually. Ryan Say? Ryan Say. Ryan Say and Martin. They actually stream, and when they stream, they usually stream either Sunday nights, which for us is Sunday morning, or Wednesday nights, which is Wednesday morning for me, at 4 o'clock in the morning. So I'm usually up at 4 o'clock in the morning, so I'm watching streaming of the Australians. Yes, it is sick. I am a sick bastard. You are sick. But they had Star Wars colored DMD, Star Trek colored DMD. Star Wars stuff. But a Star Trek color DMD, and I actually got to see a lot of it, and I really would like to get the color DMD for this. Yeah, I bet that would be a good one to have. My favorite color DMD I think of all time is still Metallica. Yeah, it's the best.
    46:17
    And Lord of the Rings is really good, too. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. I guess yeah, that one, definitely. So, Bruce, you're saying whoever buys my Star Trek should put a color DMD in? Well, that's where I was headed for. Yeah. I was headed towards that. Eddie, did you put up for sale yet? Not yet, but it'll be soon. Okay.
    46:37
    Buy Ron's Star Trek. And everyone out there, find me a cheetah so I can buy it. I'm the one who wants the cheetah. Are cheetahs that hard to come by? Yes. Oh, yeah. Holy crap, they are. I mean, and then the people who have them will not let them go at all, which should tell you something about the game. They just do not want to let it go. Well, Raymond knows about the game. He had to beat my score on it.
    47:04
    I did? Yeah. It's classics. Oh. You've got the... Yeah, that's right. I was, like, already qualified pretty high, and, like, I had extra tickets, and I was like, oh, she was fun. And, like, apparently, like, Elwin even gave me props. He's like, how did you do anything on that cheetah? And, like, I don't know. I just had one of those games where everything was bouncing right, and it felt super easy to me. But then, of course, I played it later, like in finals or something, and I was like, oh, okay. This is what it's supposed to do. Yeah, well, the thing is, it had the unlimited collect on the side. Right, right. That's the problem, yeah. I'm used to playing it that way because that's how it was on location when we had it. That's the incorrect ROM. You need the correct ROM. You need the Scott ROM to fix that issue. Yes. The tournament ROM, it makes it just a single collect. But it's so much fun. You build up your 5X and then your 100K and you just get supers all day. No. Even the rewards. No, you collect it once.
    48:07
    I'm never going to find Cheetah. Although, I didn't think I'd ever get a dragon fist, though. And there's one sitting downstairs. You got the fist. I got the fist. Yeah, we got the fist.
    48:19
    Oh, man, did I overpay for that thing? You loved it. Oh, cabinet floor. There's only two people that know how much you paid. Three people. That was the mystery game you talked about like a month ago, right? Yes, it was. That was the mystery game. Check out the stream. The slam stream. You can see it in action. Some of my streams out there? What's your stream? You said the slam stream. Yeah, the slam tilt stream. As opposed to the tilt stream. Exactly.
    48:49
    You keep on doing that, I'm going to bust your balls about every time. The Slam Tilt stream, yes. There you go. See? Which I've made some adjustments to our YouTube channel. Uh-oh. Well, on our podcast, I have the maturity warning.
    49:05
    Yes, which we are not. Yeah, I said that wrong. The mature warning, and I have it on the Twitch stream. Yeah. But YouTube, it's per video. Okay. So I didn't have it on any of our podcast videos.
    49:21
    Okay. So I added that. What's the numbers up to on that? I didn't look. Usually we get like 20 hits. I'm going to look right now. I need to go after it. We get like 20 hits to our podcast on YouTube.
    49:33
    It is way, the work to results ratio on that is very poor. Well, YouTube, you have to pay for the subscription if you want to watch a YouTube video in the background on your phone. So, yeah, I kind of expect that, right? Because you can't listen to it in the car or whatever. Exactly. Bias one is 51 views on Tim's balls. So that's what you're gunning for, Raymond. You've got to beat 51 on Tim's balls. Oh, you mean, okay, the podcast itself. Yes. How much did the bunghole crane, Ida one? That wasn't up there. I remember our numbers on that one. We did very well on that one. That was pre-YouTube. Okay. We did very well. Yes, it's hard to match the bunghole crane.
    50:20
    It's very hard. Let's see, Dragon Fist, the actual stream got a whopping 54 views. Come on, people. It's the best video of Dragon Fist in existence as far as gameplay. Yep. The Stargazer, though, has 121 views. Must be all pinsiders.
    50:38
    God, they love that game. Everyone loves Stargazer. Got a cool spinner rule where you can lock in a value and then you can hose yourself by accidentally. Oh, yes. We got to bring that back. Yeah. You don't want a complete it rule. Yeah. Well, there was a couple of games that had that where you'd want, like, to, like, I think Fathom, or not Fathom, Sea Witch had a similar thing. It's like, wait a second. Before you complete the targets. Yep. See a pattern here? Stern. Yes. Old Stern. Innovation. Back when they were innovative. What was that Sternorama thing? Did you end up going to that? Yeah, I went to that. But you're a podcast listener, so you know the whole story. uh of course yeah yeah uh it was yeah i don't know have you ever been to the expo no last year they had the whole like super duper 30 anniversary thing or three years of stern which was like in this other location with loud music and everyone was drunk and and ed robertson played at the end which i didn't make it to because it was getting too too many drunk people at that point. You wouldn't have liked the Big Buck Hunter crowd. Oh, yeah.
    51:53
    So then you had the year before that, it would just be called, like, An Evening with Stern Pinball. Uh-huh. But they would just take up the one, it's actually the seminar room, and they would just bring a bunch of games in there, have free beer, music, like a DJ.
    52:08
    They'd have, like, designers there, you can get autographs, and that was it. And Jack Danger would host it. And that's what they did this year, the exact same thing. They just called it something different. Oh, okay. And a couple more games than they usually have. Other than that, it was the same thing. Josh Sharp usually runs a tournament. So instead of the usual tournament, they ran a heads-up tournament,
    52:31
    kind of testing out the format. Oh. And I believe, like, Escher won everything. Oh, yeah. That kid's really good. Yeah. So that was – it's funny. We had them on the podcast, and I never talked to either of them while I was there. They were always in the tournament area, and Adam always had his headphones on and was, like, in some kind of zone. I didn't want to, like, disturb him. Oh, yeah, the Adam zone. Yeah, the Adam zone. Which, according to him, he's actually not listening to anything half the time. Yeah, half the time he's not. Yeah, he just has his white noise going just to try to silence whatever.
    53:08
    I don't see you don't do that. No, man, I like the sound of the games and the atmosphere. I actually like distractions. and it keeps me, you know, alive and, like, going. I don't know. I'm in total agreement. I like when I'm at Rock Fantasy and the metal music is playing and playing some old game in a competitive match and match play. I love it. Nothing better.
    53:33
    Yeah. Like, I think it's fun when you can hear people say something and you're like, oh, hey, they're talking about me. Like when I was doing the ISPA championships, I was on the Tron right next to Levy's commentating booth. And, you know, you're just like smiling the whole time because you can hear him. Yes, you can always hear Levy. I got to experience that during Stomp.
    53:56
    During my ACDC like triple jackpot I had, I just hear, I can hear him. He's on the other end of the basement and I can hear him.
    54:06
    He's close to my loudness, isn't he? No. No one is close to your loudness. Damn. Bruce is the king. If you want everyone to have attention, like at Pinberg, they wouldn't need the microphone. I had a lot of fun at Pinberg. Said hi to Bruce. Oh, yeah. We had a great time. Yeah. I loved it. Loved it.
    54:29
    So, cheetah. Don, we need a cheetah. Please, guys. Ron needs a cheetah. No, Bruce needs a cheetah. No, Ron needs a cheetah. We found out two weeks ago that Ryan C. is coming to America. With Eddie Murphy? With Eddie Murphy. He's going to go to McDowell's and get some burgers down in New York City. But he's going to fly in Toronto, and he wants to see Niagara Falls. He's going to go from Niagara Falls to New York City. Guess what's on the way there? Two podcasters are on the way. You got it. so we are putting out the open invitation to Ryan Slay.
    55:12
    He has a place to stay. You can go to Slam, and then you can go to Tilt, and you can decide whose collection is better. Well, mine's going to be worse than yours. Well, yours is in a bar, right? Half will be in a bar. Oh, yeah. Fail. Plus, you've got a lot of old games. He doesn't like those. I know, but I have some new games there, too.
    55:35
    Wait, he doesn't like old games? Brian C. only has one. Yeah. You've got Sea Witch. Oh, that's a pretty good one. Martin's trying to get him into the older games, but, you know. I like them in competition. I understand why you probably wouldn't need one at home, but in competition they're really fun. You always need one. You need more than one to start at home. You need lots of old games at home. You need something to kick your ass and bring you down a path.
    56:05
    Yeah, you need a spark. You might be the IPA world champion, but play some Stars. Yeah. And you will get knocked down over and over, and you'll love it. You'll want more.
    56:16
    I play anyone on Stars I play anyone on Paragon That the funny thing When people come over like we have like League Night Two of our league members have Paragon Eric and I And if I picking the game I picking Paragon
    56:31
    Man, now you guys are making me want to get a solid state, like a future spa or something. Oh, you need a future spa, too, definitely. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, you do. Get a Stars. It's cheaper, and it takes up less room.
    56:44
    And you get the chimes. but with the ease of fixing of an electronic game. So it's like the best of both worlds. You can feel like you have an EM without having to fix an EM. I don't know where I'd find a decent condition. All the ones around here are just blown out like sandpaper belted play fields. Well, on the bright side, it's the third highest production game. Oh, that's fair. Meteor was first, Flight 2000, and then Scars was third. So they made like, I don't know, 6,000. They made a lot of them. Now, are you in the unlimited special 50K camp, unlimited special zero-point camp, limited special 50K camp? What's your take on that? I'm on the you hit it, you get a special. Yes, that's it. Which nobody likes, man. Everyone hates it. Do you want to keep hitting spinner over and over again? Oh, yeah. Spinner and drop targets. I don't know. I like roving one target big reward. Like, I don't know. It makes the game unbalanced. It gives it two levels, right? If you need an average score, you rip spinners. But if somebody does the thing, now you have to do the thing, right? It's like Fitch Tales. If I was going to implement that, it would definitely be the one collect. Okay. Yes. But the Unlimited would just be, damn. I mean, it would be, no. I mean, I got, what's my, 460k? Yeah. with no extra balls and with no, you know, bonus. Yeah. Three-ball play? Three-ball play. Three-ball. Yeah. That was a ridiculous score. I will never do that again.
    58:25
    Bruce had the high before that, which was like 330. 339. Yeah. And I have like 474. That was when all three balls were awesome. That never happens. That's why I say I'll never do that again. I couldn't believe that score that's never going to be beaten unless I change that rule so you can collect 100k then I can see possibly someone beating it yeah I'm getting a gift tomorrow guys I'm getting a gift tomorrow I'm getting a Sea Witch back glass from Mr. Grenwich yep I ordered it and he shipped it and it is in the US from Canada and this is going to lead into our next topic. When I dropped off Stephanie's game about a month ago, we dropped the game off at Howard's. Howard's living right north of Middletown, and he's got a lot of games there at his house. He's got about, what, 30 maybe runs? Yeah, he's got a ton of bowling-themed games. Well, he's got a cool thing. He's got 3D glasses.
    59:35
    And so they play games with 3D glasses on. And on the older Solid State games like Countdown and Sea Witch even, you can actually, in Sinbad too, you can actually look at the back glass. It's like, because it's painted, it looks 3D when you're playing it, and even the play field. Yep. So I'm going to recommend people to go buy some 3D glasses and try playing pinball with the 3D glasses. Tell me what you think. Email me. Hmm. That just sounds like it would give you a headache. Oh, yeah, it does. Oh, yeah. But still, it's like, whoa, it's in 3D. It's in 3D. I wonder if the ball goes airborne if it looks like it's going to hit you in the face. That'd be cool. So I should play Star Trek with the amount of air balls in that thing.
    60:26
    Or Ghostbusters. Yeah, you're right. Ghostbusters. Between the LEDs, I think between the LEDs, the air balls, and 3D glasses, you probably have an immediate seizure and die. It would not be a very safe endeavor.
    60:41
    That should be in the pinball Olympics. You have to play Ghostbusters with 3D glasses on. And no glasses. No glasses. And put your, yeah, you have to put your face down to the play field so you never know what might happen. Yeah. Yo, Adrian, I got an air ball. What are you going to do with that? Yeah. hairball in your face.
    61:03
    So, repairs, Ron. Any repairs this week? I made some adjustments to dial them. And one beef I have with you, Jersey Jack, your wire forms for your switches sit up way too high.
    61:15
    Way too high. If they get, like, bent to one side, the ball would get stuck. And I kept having the ball get stuck in my left in lane.
    61:24
    Yeah. Take a look, Raymond. You see, they're like, look at a Williams game at the kind of, like, wire forms they used for the switches, the rollovers, and look what Jersey Jack's using.
    61:35
    It's not just them. I think Stern uses something similar. But it's, like, it's just very, very tall? Yes, tall and round. Like, what happens, if it gets a little off to the side, my ball would actually come down and get stuck because it was pushing the wire form to the side instead of pushing it down. So all I did was just, I just bent the wire form so less of it is up now and totally fixed it. But if you look at like a Williams game, they used like probably a thicker wire form and it was like straight. It wasn't curved. Right. It was like straight and it would have a hard curve, like down. Thick, hard curve. Oh my God. You make everything dirty, Bruce. It didn't get stuck. You're able to pull it out. It's a hard curve that doesn't get stuck. and that's the change I made and I did the same thing on the skill shot wire form that sits up too high also the ball will sometimes kind of just lean on it and not go in so I'd say my dialed in is now about as dialed in as dialed in as it could be for me it's just the theater on dialed in got that going and I haven't got the parts yet but this week I'll probably be rebuilding or replacing that flipper. And we'll find out if either I'm just a noob and it was fine and I could have fixed it or if I needed the new part. We'll stay tuned on that. Did you have to change the hell out of your magnet setting? Oh, I had to set it to, like, negative 130 or something. Yeah, same thing here. It's weird that it doesn't come that way. It's bizarre. Yeah. It's bizarre. Okay, my repairs this week. Well, first I started packing up games and bringing them over to the bar. so a buddy of mine in Syracuse gave me two games to put at the bar, a Swords of Fury he's like, ah you don't have to work on the Swords of Fury, it works great and then like another hour later he goes oh wait a sec, I forgot the GI lights in the back box don't work so I'm like okay, let me go look at that, and I look at the interconnect board and guess what I have on the interconnect board uh, severely burnt connectors? You got it baby so I took out the interconnect board put all new headers on it also put all new connectors on it and those were the fun ones where they loop between two pins oh yeah okay I gotcha yeah so the wire goes through one connector and loops back to the second connector right next to it so I had to cut back some wire refresh and redo it but it's all working there so then I have to I got his demo man set up tonight downstairs in the basement before I bring it over to the bar
    64:18
    He's like, oh, it doesn't give you a secret jackpot. I'm like, what do you mean it doesn't give you a secret jackpot? He goes, it will not give you a secret jackpot. The top triggers don't work. They do work. Well, the left one works. The left one shows it as left upper trigger working. The right one shows it as shooter lane.
    64:40
    So I don't know what they did there. I have to dig into that. So he's right. You don't ever get a super secret jackpot. So wait a minute. So if you hit the left trigger and the shooter button at the same time, would you get it? No. I don't know.
    64:55
    But if I hit the upper buttons, you know, the top buttons, the triggers work fine, the finger buttons, but the upper thumb ones, the left one says left, the right one says shooter lane. Someone told me that there's a way to get that secret jackpot without those trigger buttons. Like, I don't remember what the secret was. Is there a buy-in button on that game? there might be I think there is yeah I'll have to google it again but someone was telling me if those are broken you can get them a certain way or maybe I'm imagining something great now I'm going to have to play mine to see what happens let's see I'm looking right now and I did have one more item I forgot about you already used it my dad's going to yell at me sea witch is currently not at 100% What'd you do? Oh, I didn't do anything. I don't play it. It's his game. I told him, what did you do? You broke the game? The upper right flipper shatters.
    65:56
    Like, you hit it, and it goes like machine guns. Like a slingshot. And what's happening is the hold winding has to be bad. Bad. Because it fires fine, and then when it switches to the hold, there is no hold. So it comes back down, and the EOS switch engages again, and it fires it back up, and it just does that like a machine gun.
    66:23
    So I need a new coil, which I don't have that particular coil, so I'm going to wait for my next parts order.
    66:31
    In the meantime, I just put electrical tape around the switch so it won't fire. Yeah. So it's a three-flipper game now. Excellent. Not really. you realize how much you use that when you want to sweep those targets on the oh yes yes i agree so i have to work on the demo man now and the diverter is not moving freely and a couple switches and that kind of stuff but other than that i think i'll get that the weird thing is i said the upper right flipper button the thumb button show shooter so i don't know if maybe one of the connectors is screwed up on this cpu like they put it all i don't know Really weird.
    67:13
    So we have to work on that. Bar is coming along. I spent my work end, 22 hours there at the work end for this last weekend.
    67:22
    Oh, work end instead of weekend. I just got that. Okay. Yes. Yeah, I didn't get that at all. Yeah, I work my weekends now. I have no weekends anymore. I just work them.
    67:34
    I was doing PVC pipe downstairs in the basement. Kathy found more places to paint. Actually, a couple of people found more places to paint, so we're painting that. I had to put a ceiling fan in one of the bathrooms.
    67:47
    Are the toilets working? The toilets are working for you, butthead. Don't plug them up. Are they as cool as the ones in the movie where you wave your hand and they flush? No. No? Damn. Power flushes. They are power flushes, though.
    68:04
    You know, you hit them and they're like. So they are power flushes. That's a good thing for you. I do have the cards packed up for our winners. I just haven't sent them out yet because I've been so busy. The critical hit cards. Yes. I will get them out this week, I promise.
    68:23
    I only have one more thing on our list. I wanted to mention this. It's an unfortunate thing. I hate bad news.
    68:31
    We mentioned this many podcasts ago. A company called Pinball PCB. Yes. And they made replacement boards for early Solid State Williams games. Yes, they did. Specifically, they made power boards, splay boards. They made the driver board and the CPU board. We mentioned many episodes ago that they stopped doing the driver board and the CPU board. Yes. And they were just doing, like, power boards now. Well, they stopped all boards altogether, and they are no more. I thought they actually put on their – did you – when was the last time you looked at the website? This week. Okay, because he actually said on the website a couple days ago that he was taking orders possibly for more for December builds. What's the name of the website?
    69:21
    PinballPCB. He goes, here's the thing. At this time, we're no longer taking orders or producing new boards. We do have a few boards available. If anybody's interested in a board, please contact us at the email below. Boards include main board available December 2017. Driver board available December 2017. Yeah. And then system. It sounds like they're just getting rid of the Spock. And the last update was October 10th. Yeah. So if you need one, this is the place to get it. These guys were great boards. Yep. If you are doing custom software and you, because you can't with the other replacement boards, they're just using, like, I think you just pick the game. Yes. They're not using, like, the ROMs. So that was the advantages of these boards. Hmm. So there you go. Don't like being the bearer of bad news, but... If you get a chance to do it, go to pcb.com, email them, and... Get them before they're all gone. Yes, because you will regret it.
    70:25
    Okay, now one last thing, Ron. And what's that? Face off. You're on the beach this time again, too. It should be so easy. No, you're not. Oh, the bees. The bees. And didn't we get that one at all? No. The Nicholas Cage? The one where the bees are attacking him? They're like CGI bees. It's really, really bad. I get the better of that one.
    70:55
    So, Ron and I have a challenge. Yes, we have a challenge. Last episode, Jeff from the Pinball Players podcast picked a date of 1989.
    71:10
    The first match he picked was Gottlieb. I passed it to my buddy Ron. That seems like some dirty pool there, because if it was a good one, you would have just taken it. I would have taken it, of course. But now you get the choice. Wait a second. When you get to do the date this time,
    71:25
    you're going to be able to pick the date, Raymond, and then you'll be able to go to the manufacturer. Yes. It's like the showcase showdown and the price is right. Yes. Bruce was the top showcase winner, so he got to pass it off, which everyone always passes it off because the better one's always second. Well, if it was William's first, I would have never passed it off. That's true.
    71:48
    So, Ron gets to defend Gottlieb, 1989. Do you have a list of the Gottlieb games from 1989? I'm bringing it up right now, Bruce. Okay. All righty then.
    72:03
    They were Premier then. Yes, they were. And Hoops was 1991, not 1988. Oh, of course. It was a street-level game.
    72:12
    Okay. It was one of the wonderful street-level games. So I wonder if I get any of those. All right, so this is what I have to choose from. You ever heard of street-level games? No. Back in 91, 92, Godley Premier said, we're going to make games that have no ramps. Oh. So they're all street level, easy for the operators to fix, cheaper.
    72:40
    Hmm. Good idea. But unfortunately, when you're going against Williams, who's putting out. Whirlwind. One House, Whirlwind. You'll get to hear some of them right now. Yes, we will. Okay. This is what I get to choose from. Big House,
    72:56
    Bone Busters, Hot Shots, Lights, Camera, Action. I got the list pulled up here on IPTV. Yeah, me too, because I have no idea what Hot Shots is.
    73:09
    I played most of the goblins. You played it. They made the most of those. You played it. You played against Steph and me and Zach. No, that was Car Hop. And we also played Hot Shots later on. Really? I don't remember that. What is that back glass? It's a carnival. Is that... Is this a real game? Yes. It's a real game. I'm going to be... Come on. Oh, this ain't looking good. Okay, what do you got to choose from, Bruce? Clearly an inferior list. I got my inferior list here of bad cats. Okay, that sucks. Meow, meow, meow.
    73:46
    A little game called Black Knight 2000. Overrated. Earth Shaker. O'Vira and the Party Monsters.
    73:57
    Let's boogie. Bouncing around. And I became perennial winner. Police Force, which has just hit the ramp over and over and over. Well, that's Batman.
    74:12
    Transporter, the rest of you. Okay, so they're not all the greatest games ever. No, they're not. No, no, no. So, alright, who's going first. I will go first since I stuck you with Gottlieb.
    74:26
    Alright. So who are you picking? Earth Shaker. Going right for the home run. Alright. Tell it to me, man. Why is Earth Shaker great? First game ever with a shaker motor. Right off the bat.
    74:41
    A cool diverter that opens when you're locking balls between California and Nevada. The show default. Oh, you're at default. excellent designer Pat Lawler I think it was his second or third game I think it was his second game yep second game Odds I Run would be number one yep the sample games actually had the Earthshake Institute actually going up and down and they still make those kits which is a really cool kit to get with a lot of samples good shooting game not very deep but great sounds great backlash the backlash from the artwork from John Yossi rocks. Actually, the art wasn't from John Yossi this time. Tim Elliott did the artwork.
    75:25
    John, what did he do besides that? Oh, he did a lot of turds. But this one he did well. The mirror back glass on this game rocks.
    75:33
    Sound rock. Game rocks. Very good. It's the dual... It's one of the two natural disaster games. Well, three now. Yeah, it's three, but we'll go with the two original Williams ones. you have a captive ball on the right hand side also got a spinner you got a kick out hole two vertical up kickers I like this game a lot I own one actually I sold mine to Chris Bucci and Chris Bucci still has it I yield the floor to go against Earthshaker I will select Bruce Nightingale's favorite Gottlieb Lights, camera, action.
    76:21
    Ooh. Just take a look at this game. Look at the incredible artwork package. Look at the innovative design. Look at the mechanical back glass.
    76:34
    Look at the incredible topper, which is actually part of the head, with these just blinding. It comes off. With blinding spotlights. It does. It was ahead of its time when it came to just blinding light. And heat. Oh, yeah, and heat. If you're standing there, you can feel the thing beating down on you. It's like, wow, this probably is not the safest thing in the world.
    77:01
    But golly, it didn't care. They were about coolness and features, and that's a cool feature. And it has the cool rotating thing in the upper left that has like – Upper play field. Yeah, it has like three – it's not an upper play field, but it's – Is it like the Gilligan's Island thing? No, not like that turd. It actually rotates. It rotates. Don't think of spinning around. Think of rotate like the other way. It rotates.
    77:28
    Imagine the play field spins from clips over 180 degrees. Vertically instead of horizontally, however you want to say that. Oh, okay. Just pretend like if the Gilligan's Island thing was tilted up and spun around that way. And it has like, was it three different? It's two or three different shots. It's got multiple shots on that side. Very innovative feature.
    77:53
    It's cool sounds, cool lighting, great artwork. It is probably one of Gottlieb's best games they did.
    78:03
    I mean, it's System 3, so it's very reliable, except for the ground. But other than that, it's very reliable.
    78:11
    And, man, I'm looking at the artwork. Your artwork is very, very good, and it's very busy artwork. Just lots of stuff to do. Drop targets. Reliable Gottlieb drop targets that will not brick on you ever.
    78:27
    Well, he was in either. Just a top-notch game. Has a display in the center. A digital display with a number display.
    78:37
    Very fun. Excellent game. Definitely one of Gottlieb's best. I yield the floor. This is a tough one because of all the Williams games, Earthshaker is just, it never really did a whole lot for me just because it's, you know, there's whirlwind that's better and you shoot the ramp all day and competitions. But I understand the history behind it and how it's, you know, the first good Lawler game that, you know, kind of set the stage. But, oh, man, I'm looking at lights, camera, action. It's got, like, a lot of things Earthshaker has. It has, like, a million shots from an upper flipper, it looks like. Good luck. I'm winning that one. I've owned two, and it's harder now. You actually have to loop it in that shot. Wow. Yeah. What a great shot. Great shot. Great idea. Didn't work.
    79:31
    I owned two, so I'll be the first to admit it. Oh, man. I don't know. Are we in our first draw? I think I have to give this one to Delight's Camera Action. Wow, with an upset.
    79:47
    Beaten by his own favorite Gottlieb. I love it. It just looks cool. It does, doesn't it? Okay, Ron. Except the artwork on the woman. It looks like her head isn't really attached to the body. It's weird.
    80:03
    Looks like she was, like, doing steroids or something. Very weird artwork there. Okay, now your turn again, Ron. Oh, man, that was an unexpected victory.
    80:15
    Let's get back to the master list because I don't have much left, unfortunately. All right, I'll take this one. Big House.
    80:26
    Played this at a – just played this recently. An expo. Yeah, that's right. I played this in the expo brawl pin golf tournament. It's actually, it's, I think it's a fun game. It's got a really cool little corkscrew feature where when you lock a ball, it has an actual corkscrew that spins and the ball will rise up. And you lock balls and then you hit the shot to start multiball and it's like a prison break. And like this spotlight will come on and it actually moves back and forth like you're escaping.
    81:03
    That's like the whole game. It's a very simple game. But I found it very tolerable for a Gottlieb. It has some bizarre backlash artwork, like the prisoners or dogs.
    81:17
    I don't know why. Does it have outlanes? I can't tell. It's got regular outlanes. Okay. Yeah, the plastic extends over it. Yeah. It's more fun than I thought it would be. Let's put it that way. And the play-filled artwork was good. The cabinet artwork, I'll admit, is not very... It's kind of plain. And I don't get the dog thing.
    81:44
    I yield a four. So now I'm going to go to the judges' warmth and personality in this game. This game is going to show the goodness of Williams.
    81:58
    Mousing around. Yeah, now I knew it. Damn. All right. A IFPA benchmark game for any division. You get the pop-up cheese pop-ups on the side. Great sounds. Hard shots, actually. Really hard shots. You got to spill your cheese. You got to spill, you know, artwork is great. Upper play field, that big long ramp with the swoosh and the million letters in the back for that back box area. Forget the cheese hole. I like what Papa does with disabling the ramp, but the ramp is actually fun if you have it at the home level.
    82:40
    Great game. The way the ball comes out of the back, you know, when you go up the upper ramp, the ball goes all the way back behind the back box. It comes slithering down the right-hand side. Great valley flippers with the ribs. A little extra so it's harder to drain on this game. By the way, Bruce, how does the ball go through the back box? Does it actually break through the play field? It goes through the back behind the play field. What was it called? It goes through the house hole. Yeah, what is that called? The back board? There's a back board. Is that it? Back board? Yeah. All right. Well, this one is an easier one to choose. It is.
    83:24
    I just don't even see Big House being in the same era. like, it's like in a different generation or something when I compare those two games. I go with Bouncing Around. I love that game. I blew it up in a circuit finals one year, so it kind of has that special place in my heart.
    83:41
    Yeah, it's just really fun, and it has good music, and it's a really good tournament game, and a good game just to play for fun.
    83:50
    Sorry, Ron. Hey, I agree. Woo-hoo! The only thing Bouncing Around is missing, here would be a good code enhancement. Multi-ball restart.
    84:00
    Yes. Give me a restart because you... Oh, come on. It's a three-ball multi-ball, though, so you have to blow two balls, right? Still. Especially when you got into it. And later, when you spell cheese and you go through all that and you lock the two balls and you get the three balls in play, if you drain out, guess what? You can spell it all over again. Yeah, so you get nothing. You get totally... You get nothing. The only thing it gives you is if you actually lock two balls to activate the jackpot, you You can drain out into one ball and the timer will keep counting down So at least you have a chance at hitting the jackpot But I always like the Lawler slash Larry DeMar technique where you get a multi if you drain out, you get a restart, but the restart's like a two-ball. Right. That's the way they always did it. They have, like, when a banzai run, it's restart. Right, big multi-ball or a hidden hallway multi-ball. Yep, and a whirlwind, it's stellar multi-ball is called a restart. in Adam Sandley's thing, multi-ball. I think they should have done that. They could put that little tweak in there.
    85:05
    And it's hard to believe this is the same guy that did Fathom. Yep. But he also did Gilligan's Island. And BMX. Gilligan's Island was his last game. He really went out on a bad note.
    85:18
    He was pushing him out the door when he was freaking getting fired. Fathom, BMX is a good game. Mousin' Around is awesome. and then Killigan's Island. Ugh.
    85:31
    Okay, so what do you got for number three, Bruce? Now, do I go with the greatest sound game in the world?
    85:38
    Please, because it's a shallow player. I'd love to go for that. Nope. I'm going for Elvira and the Party Monsters.
    85:47
    Okay. Dennis Norman's... Actually, one of Dennis Norman's better games. I like this game a lot. I've owned it for about eight years. Really fun game. Good comedy, good sounds, good player, actually. You've got two nice ramps. You've got the left orbit, the right lock for the pieces. The boogeymen are still in it, the original version of it. You get the coffin in the middle and a nice center shot for the boogeymen to pop up and everything and the barbecue. Good comedy throughout the whole back glass. a lot of innuendos with, you know, comedy. Just think about it. This game made the second game even better with Elvira, from Elvira to Scared Stiff. So without a great game like this, you would have never got Elvira.
    86:39
    Scared Stiff, you mean. Sorry, Scared Stiff. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for... And she's got beautiful, beautiful... She's very pretty in the back. Okay, okay, yeah. So you know, being PC, and you get all the designers, too. You get Jim Patella. What do you say it? Patla. You get Steve Ritchie in the back last also. He's on there? Where? Yes, so he's the werewolf. No, he's not. That's Dennis Nordman. I thought Dennis Nordman was the muscle guy in the background, the ghouls. No.
    87:14
    Dennis Nordman is the werewolf. Trust me, it looks like him. If you've ever seen Dennis Nordman. He's also Bigfoot in Whitewater. Okay, so, sorry, I'm reading it right now. Greg Farrow sells it. Wolfman is Dennis Norman. Dracula is Patla. Also, Tim Elliott is the Frankenstein pizza delivery guy. So that's kind of cool. Great game. Actually, it's becoming more popular in tournaments, too, I've seen also. Fun game. I yield the floor.
    87:45
    I select another System 3 classic, Bonebusters. just look at you talk about comedy you talk about goofiness look look at the artwork on this very busy artwork got a cool looking skull in the middle you got like a car on the left side you got three flippers cool drop targets two spinners two spinners you got a fourth flipper that you got to hit up in a certain location to get it and it hits it through the habit trail
    88:20
    Nice, fun shots. Very unique layout. No run-of-the-mill layouts here. It's very unique. Great scoring, too. Great scoring, as Bruce says. I'm glad he agrees. Not. Great scoring, as Bruce says. Great Gottlieb rules that we all love. Oh, we all hate. Great mystery wars and stuff. It's just stuff that makes tournament players so happy.
    88:47
    Great trans light. It's got skeletons on it. It's got, I mean, the speakers are up on the top, pointing right at you for the optimal sound effect. Golly, that is very System 3 best.
    89:02
    How do you feel before? Oh, um, well, I definitely like Scared Stiff more than the Party Monsters, but the Party Monsters actually has, like, shots that you can hit, and, like, I don't know, it feels like a normal pinball machine. This one, I think, you're saying a very unique and innovative layout. I just see it just, like, reminds me of, like, was it Strange Science? Like, that sort of feel where it's just, like, what the hell is going on and what am I supposed to do? If it secretly had, like, really good gameplay, maybe I would like it, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything good about it, so I don't really know. I haven't played it much. It doesn't... You've only heard one person talk about it. That's me. I just said it plays great. No, no, it does not play great. Oh, man. I'm a little bitter because Elvira was not nice to me at the Vancouver tournament. Make her pay.
    90:03
    But I... Oh, man. I think Party Monsters is the better game. I go with Party Monsters. Williams pulls it out. Being down one, nothing, comes back and crushes it. Yeah. It was like a heads-up challenge. It was down one and then one the next two. Damn it.
    90:24
    So, Raymond, can you go to random.org? Okay. Yeah, new rules. Just do from, like, to 96. Okay, I will. Because once you get to a certain era, there are no other manufacturers. I know. We'll go 98. Yeah, you can go to 98 because you might get some Stegas in there. Yeah.
    90:44
    So you want to put from, if you go to random.org, make a list from 74 to 98. Okay. Ooh, 97. 97, so let's see what's available. Oh, God, I probably got, like. Just Williams, right? No. Yeah, Capcom's gone at that point, so. Capcom's gone. All right. So now. Does Ron get, like, Baywatch, that sort of thing? Well, he gets first pick. So whatever, he's going to push off, I guarantee. So, Ron, you're going to get two, Williams or Sega. So I've got to figure out, let's see. That was like Junkyard, though, wasn't it? No. Circus Voltaire, Medieval Madness, NBA Fastbreak, and No Good Gophers.
    91:30
    That seems like something I'd want to pick over whatever Sega did. Over random games. Yeah. If it was me, it would be Star Wars Trilogy, Starship Troopers. Okay. The Lost World, and X-Files.
    91:49
    I'm picking Williams. You're picking Williams. Okay. This is a great game. Depends on how you guys match up your games, you know. Exactly. There is strategy to this. Yeah, it also needs to know the judge, because I'm sure some judges love Medieval Madness, and I'm sure some would just be like, eh.
    92:09
    And Raymond, with your third visit here to the Slamtail Podcast, you are now the second highest guest return. Oh. You've been here three times now. You're only behind ten balls. He's been four? No, he's eight. Eight times? Damn. Eight times. But Raymond's now, you've now beaten Steve Bowden. Okay. Jeff Teolis.
    92:39
    What's his name? Our code guy. Scott Charles. Scott. Jesus. Speaking of Scott Charles, we did have one email. Yes, we did. And it was from Scott.
    92:53
    Speaking about Dragon Fist, because he has one, he said, you can roll the spinner, because there's two digits, and the amount of spins this play. He said he got 126 or so once. I don't believe it. And, of course, Scott being Scott, Joker Poker has chimes, you fools.
    93:11
    Yes. Because I think I mentioned, like, Gottlieb System 1 sounds. It has chimes, you idiot. That's a Solar Ride sound there. Oh, Solar Ride. Don't mention that game. I had to play this paper. God. You can replace the plastic spinners, Bruce. Black Hole Metal One works well Phoenix is a better game World Cup is better because you can use the parts in other better Williams games that's it both those games are horrible and I was going to bring something up but his last part of this email remember last week we had an email asking us about the firepower code. Yes. And I said how I usually always play four games, a four player game, to see if I can get it to crash. And I haven't been able to as yet. So, of course, guess what happened this weekend? You got the lockup. Yep, I played a four player game and as it was counting down the bonus of like player three and I think it was in ball three, as it's counting down the bonus, it just stops. Dead. All the lights stop, dead. And I'm with Steve. Yeah, everything stopped dead. The only thing that worked were the flippers. Huh. So I took footage of it. I was going to send it to Scott to show it the state, like all the balls and where they were locked and all that stuff. But his very last part of his email says that there's new, new code for firepower. It's now in native system 7, almost ready to send it to you for beating on. So I will hold off and wait for the new code. There you go.
    94:55
    We'll see how that goes. Last episode, we talked about no one likes Viper. You named the title very well, Ron.
    95:03
    Jim from the Sanctum came back to us. Yes. He said, glad I can piss everyone off so much by having that game at the Sanctum. So much so you'll even dedicate an episode name to it. I think you cemented my decision to never sell this game or take it out of the Sanctum. With a smiley face after. I agree. It is an ultra-rare game.
    95:26
    It is. It is, but it's a turd. An ultra-rare turd? An ultra-rare turd. Have you ever played it, Raymond? No, I've never even heard of it. Oh, it's bad. And for those at home, Raymond is in the Northwest, which is the largest pinball community in the universe, and he has not seen it by far. It's pretty bad. If you ever do the 24 Hours at the Sanctum, You get to play it. Yep. Just imagine a game where it has this one kind of cool feature that's overused. Think of the crane thing. Not the bunghole crane, but the crane thing. The helicopter thing in Rescue 911. Yep. It's like the first time you see it, like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then you realize every time you hit the shot, it does the same thing. It's like, okay, okay, enough. What is that upper left flipper for? It just shoots into a post. Oh, and Viper? Yeah. What is the... It's the hit... You want to hit X's. Is that the thing, the multiplier thingies? Yes, the multiplier X. You want to punch the center lane up top and get it to go into the turret. The turret, you can rotate either way. It has multiple buttons on the side, and you can make it go in reverse. Heaven help me if the motor ever goes on that, because you're not getting that anymore. The X's don't point to anything, though. They just point to rubber posts. No, they point to... targets or holes that go through. And if you hit them, they're your multiplier. There is a multiball, right? Yes. Yeah, there's a multiball. What happens if it gets in the turret during multiball?
    97:04
    You fire it. Whenever a ball enters the turret, it will immediately start turning. How do you get the ball in the turret? You just throw it up top? Yeah, throw it up top. It goes through the center lane. Yep.
    97:19
    It has possibly one of the greatest backglasses ever. It does. Where it's just full, all-out, topless nudity. But it's metal, so it's acceptable. As the silver ball proves, you can have nudity as long as it's metal. Then it's not nudity. But as cool as the backglass is, the playfield art is quite pedestrian. In the cabin, it's terrible because it's just, when Stern was saving money, there's no custom artwork. It just says Stern on the side. Yeah. So, it's kind of like Bally Midway did back in the mid-80s when they were cutting costs. The beat the clock era? Yep. Just science era. We're just Bally Midway.
    97:59
    The funny thing is if you have a German import that gets shipped out, it doesn't say Bally Williams on it. Or Bally Midway. It says Bally and then the German company. Like the W-H-U-M-P-A Yeah.
    98:13
    Wumpf. So that actually is a different cabinet. So they put money in that instead of making real artwork. Killing me. Hey, Heavy Metal Meltdown is real artwork, though.
    98:29
    Heavy Metal Meltdown. I was so disappointed at Expo when that was broken. These things happen. So disappointed. I love that game.
    98:41
    It's so stupidly simple. You just hit the same damn ramp over and over. But, come on, you can hit the buttons on the side and get the guy to say, Heavy, heavy, metal, metal. Hit me. Wait, the flippers say heavy or metal when you hit the flipper button? When you hit them, yeah. I think, doesn't it have like four buttons? Yes. Like two where to move the lanes? If you hit the lane buttons, it'll say like, heavy, heavy, metal, metal. So you can do heavy, metal, heavy, heavy, metal, metal, metal. Wow. Love it. What a great game. It's bad. It's so bad, it's awesome. Papa, never sell that. Never sell that game. But sell me Cheetah. Sell us the Cheetah, please. Sell me the Cheetah. No, me. I'll trade you. My, you need, they need. They need a Stargazer, so you should trade them your Stargazer. No, they need, they need my skiing game. Oh, they need, you're right. See? They got all the other, do they have a Space Invaders? Does anyone remember if they have Space Invaders as Papa? I don't know if they do. Oh, they do. What am I saying? I beat Keith Elwin on it. How would I forget that? I beat the one. Wow.
    99:50
    Dang. Yeah, on Space Invaders. And then Bruce beat him on Nineball. Yes. And then I think we got slaughtered on, what was it, Attack of Mars? Yeah, we kind of got slaughtered. I think we pissed them off. But that was... I love it when you poke the bear. Yeah, exactly. We did poke the bear. Well, that's when they were making the games too hard. that little stage they had at Popover, they were doing ridiculous physical things with some of the games. Like the alleged Wheel of Fortune with no center post. I don't know if that was ever an actual thing, but I had heard stuff like that. Nine ball. No outlane posts. No center posts.
    100:29
    Yep. Keith Ellin was saying that that was ridiculous. Stars was like that, too. Yep. Yeah. Oh, Stars without a center post. Yeah. That's stupid. I put up the high score on it that year, not knowing what the hell I was doing.
    100:43
    Why would you ever? The game is designed for the center post because of the ridiculous gap. Just, ah, do not bastardize games like that.
    100:54
    All right. Anything else you want to talk about, Raymond? Any upcoming tournaments? Any upcoming? I got the Shorty's Annual next Sunday in Seattle. I probably will be missing that one, unfortunately. Yes But Ron will not be missing the The Rock Fantasy Fall Yes I will You're really missing it? I'll be in Florida Oh I'm upset They need to reschedule that immediately I'll be in Freeplay Florida Which is the same It's the same week as IAPA Which is where Guardians of the Galaxy is probably going to be Maybe they'll grab one and pick it up Well last time that happened One well, I can't remember which game it was. It might have been Star Trek.
    101:41
    Yeah, I think it was. And it just happened to show up at 3Play Florida after IAAPA was over. Because IAAPA's during the week. So I'm hoping maybe a Guardians of the Galaxy will appear.
    101:55
    That would be very nice. So you got Shorty coming up. What else do you have, Raymond? The Seattle Pinball League Finals are in December. Where we do the crazy it's like the Papa Circuit finals where you're seeded from your finals from your league events throughout the year and they're four player groups but instead of at Papa Circuit the lowest person gets eliminated we thought one game was not really fair because it's like if you have a bad game and you're out you're working all year so what we do is you do a four player game and the winner gets immunity and then the other three people play a game and the winner of that gets immunity and then two people play and then whoever wins that is safe and the person who basically never won any of those games is out. And then you go to the next round. That's kind of cool. Yeah. It takes from like 10 a.m. to like 10 p.m., but it's the only way to really give people their shot and still respect the seating of the league. Oh, I like that. And after you win, where are you putting the trophy?
    102:59
    Well, it's at my desk at work right now, So probably still there. Nice. After that is City Champ. Or maybe City Champ's before that. I don't actually remember. I think City Champ is after San Francisco. I'll have to see if I can defend my title.
    103:19
    Yeah, that's it for the year. That's at the, what is it called, pre-gold watch? Pre-gold watch, yeah. I got that right? Wow. Okay.
    103:28
    I'm fourth on the wait list, guys. No way. Really? You're still fourth? Still fourth. I got four people in front of me. Okay. You'll probably make that. I don't know. One's Eric Stone. Wait a minute. If you're fourth, then you have three people in front of you. Well, no. Oh, yeah. Sorry.
    103:46
    Drew, Eric, and then Monica, and then me. So, yeah. Bummer. I hope I can make it. If not, I'll be working at the bar again. If not, well, let's take some people out. Yeah. Just crack some legs. Crack some eggs, sweep the leg. Sweep the leg.
    104:05
    So, I don't really have anything. I looked at the blackout dates again for next year. Uh-oh. And I will probably be missing at least Friday of Allentown. Ooh. Might be able to get there Saturday to keep my streak alive.
    104:24
    And if everything holds, I will be missing Pembroke. Oh, God, I hope not. Well. No. That'd be your first one you ever missed. Yeah. Yep. That would suck, but need a job and all.
    104:39
    Texas should be a go then. For some reason, I thought there was some blackout in the March area. There is not. And did you see Bruce? The It Never Drains in Southern California? No. It's not just a tournament. It's actually, it's a show. Oh, that's cool. Like the whole. It's going to be. No. It's going to be at the. Yeah. Oh, is it Arcade Expo is happening at the same time again? No. That's what confused me. Arcade Expo is happening the exact same weekend as Texas. Yes. But if you look, it never drains in Southern California. It says, like, tournament and festival or something now, and it says right on there, all 500 games available for free play. Oh, wow. Yeah, they'd probably make no promises on, you know, how many are working out of the 500. Well, yeah. Yeah. But still. That's cool. Yeah, I like that. Just because I know I'm not going to be able to make. Yeah, because I'm going to Texas. Oh, yeah. I'm going to Texas, too. That's probably the only one I'm going to go to. I'll be at Indisc. Maybe Texas. I haven't been there. Got to go there. It's a fun, fun time. Go there. And the tournament is the limited entry deal. And every year I do the same thing. I'm like, I'll have two, maybe two entries left, and I have a chance if I just have a good game on one of them, I'm in. And I fail both years. I give up. Oh, fail. Unfortunately, yep. And both times, like, one was playing Star Trek. It's like, really? I can't play Star Trek? That's, you know, my own one? That game can go wrong. Wait, which Star Trek? The new one. The Stern one. Oh. Oh, well.
    106:16
    But, yeah, that's Texas. Come down. Texas. Play some high-end, quality collector games. Hopefully, they'll have the Stern row play old Stern games that are awesome. Yes. It's like Dragon Pistols, Stargazer, and Quicksilver. Gammatron.
    106:33
    Bruce is saying, for Gammatron. Yes. He loves Gammatron. I do, I need that. Flight 2000 in a conventional size, that's Gammatron. Huh. That actually sounds fun, because the only thing I don't like about Flight 2000 is the fact that it's so damn wide.
    106:49
    And the fact that a good portion of the play field is not playable. It's just used to show you cool kickers and bounce the ball around. Yeah.
    106:59
    Which, early in my pinball career, I liked, because I thought that was the coolest thing. And then later I found, like, Big Game and Cheetah and realized there are better wide bodies out there. Mm-hmm. Especially Cheetah. Okay, enough about Cheetah.
    107:12
    All right, time to pay the bills. www.pinballlifter.com Check out my website for lifting your pinball machines cheap, tilting them cheap, helping them cheap. Use your brain, not your back.
    107:27
    Cheep, cheep, cheep. I didn't get it either. He's in his own dimension. I am. Also, come check out my Facebook page for Pinball Lifter, and also check out our Facebook page for the Silver Ball Saloon, and also check out our website, thesilverballsaloon.com. The opening date is? I don't know. We're still dealing with the liquor. We still haven't gotten our liquor license, so that's the first thing that's worrying me. I thought you said you already got one. We got a temporary. We got the temporary one. All right. I want the full-time one because then I can actually... When you get a temporary liquor license in the state of New York, you have to pay cash your liquor. If you have a permanent liquor license, you can actually go on credit for your liquor. Buying a bar and starting a bar from scratch, you know how much liquor you have to buy?
    108:21
    It's an ouchie. So that's the thing. I'm putting games in. Games are going inside the building. I got two already in there. I got to get ten more in. And then the bowl bowler. And then again, Ron's Galaga.
    108:35
    Yay. Right? Right. Did you fix it yet? Did it even lock up on you? It never locked up on me yet, but I'm going to adjust the power supply.
    108:46
    Mike Pupo, Flip Fidelity, best sound system for your pinball machines. Also, you can buy new in-box sterns and new in-box stern accessories. Pinball Star, Joe Newhart. He sells everything else. He sells JJP, American Pinball, Spooky, and Chicago Gaming.
    109:07
    Everyone that we like all of our pinball podcasts from. All our other pinball podcasts like the Swipping Podcast, and the Pinball Players Podcast, and Pinball Profile, and Head-to-Head Pinball, Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, Canadian Pinball Podcast we also have our own Tim Sexton Tim Balls, look for his Twitch channel Tim Balls Steve Bowden, fun with bonus and Hi Zach he's going to come over this week and we're going to play with that demo man I think on Thursday or Friday well don't forget that's why we go into Rocky because you're a good man.
    109:56
    Have you ever seen Rocky, Raymond? No, actually. Oh, my God. I feel so old. I've seen Rocky 10, though.
    110:06
    I feel so old. You are. Oh, my God. You are. I am old. Well, thanks again, Raymond. Raymond, congratulations. No problem, guys. Thank you for coming on. As I said, you're always welcome. That's the good thing about the past or any guest. If anyone wants to be a guest on the show, email us. Message us. Say, hey, I want to be on. We'll take you. Raymond messaged me Friday and boom, look, on, no problem, boom, like that. Don't tell him about the part where we said he'd only be on if he won. Oh, shit.
    110:39
    Shit. And I'm sure we'll have Raymond on when he wins his next, whatever next major he wins. Yes. He'll be defending his title in San Francisco for that one. and he'll come on after that. All right. That's true. You're going to get to the point where you're going to be in defending title mode. Yeah. You'll feel obligated to play certain events because you won it before. Yeah.
    111:02
    IFPA in Canada is pretty far away. Yeah, it's by us. It's only three hours from us. Oh, wow. Actually, three hours from me. It's probably six for Ron. But, yeah, three hours from me. Where is this? IFPA 15 at Becker's house. Oh, okay. You mean the building?
    111:21
    The building. The building constructed just to house a tournament. Pretty much. He built that thing just to house all those games. And he will have Stargazer there.
    111:34
    For petering out here again. I got to get to Monday Night Pinball League, so I'll talk to you later. Okay, thank you. See you later, Raymond. All right, see you guys. And say goodbye, Bruce.
    111:47
    Goodbye. David Taylor. Oh my.