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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 8: The Three Stooges Meet The Wizard

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 47m·analyzed·Oct 27, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

District 82 Super Series recap and Legends of Valhalla reveal with pricing and FOMO concerns.

Summary

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 8 features hosts Joel, Travis, and Tom Graff with special guest Carl D'Angelo (IE Pinball), discussing the District 82 Super Series tournament—six tournaments over four days featuring classics-heavy play due to time constraints—and the reveal of American Pinball's Legends of Valhalla homebrew-turned-commercial game. Key topics include tournament experiences, modern vs. classic game balancing, Carl's wizard mode challenges, and market concerns about Legends of Valhalla's pricing ($8,400+), theme reception, and potential LE production increase from 300 to 500 units.

Key Claims

  • District 82 Super Series was six tournaments over four days with the four-strike tournament ending at 2:30 AM

    high confidence · Tom Graff, tournament organizer, describing the event structure

  • Carl D'Angelo won the four-strike tournament (Event 5) with one strike remaining

    high confidence · Carl and Tom directly discussing Carl's tournament result

  • The Super Series became primarily classics-focused after 10 PM due to time constraints and modern games taking 45 minutes to 1 hour per round vs. 30 minutes for classics

    high confidence · Tom explaining tournament scheduling decisions

  • American Pinball increased Legends of Valhalla LE production from 300 to 500 units following strong initial sales

    medium confidence · Travis citing a distributor (Kingpin Games) post on Pinside; not officially confirmed by American Pinball at time of recording

  • Legends of Valhalla MSRP is approximately $8,400-$8,600

    medium confidence · Joel and Travis discussing pricing; exact figure uncertain due to unconfirmed standard vs. deluxe edition breakdown

  • Carl D'Angelo is pursuing wizard mode challenges on difficult legacy games including World Poker Tour and Indiana Jones

    high confidence · Carl discussing his content strategy and borrowing machines from Jim Belsito

  • Raymond Davidson won the overall Super Series competition

    high confidence · Tom Graff confirming result

  • Hot Wheels is currently the cheapest commercial pinball game available, cheaper than Godzilla

    high confidence · Joel stating current market pricing

Notable Quotes

  • “It was six tournaments over four days. Carl actually won one of the tournaments. That was the four strike, right, Carl? That's right. But the four strike ended at 2:30 in the morning, which was very, very tiring for everybody who was there.”

    Tom Graff @ ~3:00-4:00 min — Key factual anchor for Super Series structure and winning outcome

  • “I was too busy struggle busing for the first five events. I don't think I'd even played Carl one time. I don't think I played Tom one time.”

    Travis @ ~18:30 min — Self-deprecating commentary on his performance at the multi-tournament event

  • “Overall, it's funny. When I look at this whole package, for me personally, it almost feels like the theme is the weakest part of the whole pen, which I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing or a bad thing.”

    Travis @ ~24:00 min — Critical assessment of Legends of Valhalla's theme as potential market weakness despite strong gameplay and build quality

  • “If they announce 300, they should stick to 300. So we'll see if it's official or not. I just don't like the practice of upping a limited edition just because you sold them all. Stern did it, right, with Munsters? Yeah, I didn't like it then either.”

    Carl D'Angelo @ ~31:00 min — Industry commentary on FOMO-damaging LE expansion practices and comparison to Stern precedent

  • “You're just taking the screws to your initial adopters and saying, you know what, this isn't as limited as you thought it was. And if I'm a supporter and wanting to pay out eighty four, eighty five hundred dollars, however much it is, then I find out, well, wait a second. There's going to be more than that just because there's great reaction to it.”

    Carl D'Angelo @ ~32:30 min — Articulates core concern about LE scarcity devaluation and buyer regret

  • “I think I would have been a little upset. I mean, you know, you're thinking a certain number is going to be made. And if they increase the number by X, you know, it's, yeah, kind of sucks.”

    Tom Graff @ ~33:15 min — Even a dedicated LE buyer expresses frustration with post-purchase production increases

Entities

Triple Drain Pinball PodcastorganizationCarl D'AngelopersonTom GraffpersonTravispersonDistrict 82 Super SerieseventAmerican PinballcompanyLegends of ValhallagameRiot Pinballorganization

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Significant concern within community about post-announcement LE production increases devaluing scarcity premium and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) positioning for early buyers

    high · Carl D'Angelo strongly opposing the practice ('I just don't like the practice'); Tom Graff as LE buyer admitting he 'would have been a little upset'; discussion of Stern Munsters precedent and negative reception

  • ?

    competitive_signal: District 82 Super Series revealed tournament scheduling constraints forcing shift toward classics-dominant play; modern games take 45 min-1 hour per round vs. 30 min for classics, creating time pressure in multi-day events

    high · Tom explaining 10 PM classics-only clause; four-strike tournament reaching 16 rounds with shift to classics around round 7; hosts discussing desire for future events to include more modern game play

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Legends of Valhalla's Norse mythology theme perceived as weakest component of game package despite strong gameplay layout and build quality

    high · Travis: 'When I look at this whole package, for me personally, it almost feels like the theme is the weakest part'; Joel noting that other games (Halloween, Rick & Morty, Godzilla) sell on theme alone before reveal

  • ?

    event_signal: District 82 Super Series successfully executed six-tournament, four-day competitive event with professional streaming and commentary coverage; positioned as major competitive pinball showcase

    high · Tom Graff organized and streamed; coverage of Raymond Davidson winning overall, top-10 finishes, commentary from Rachel and Greg Pavarelli; 16 total rounds of play in four-strike tournament alone

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.323

0:00
the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast all right tom you ready oh yeah perfect travis you good oh yeah i'm not playing your intro this time but here we go here's our intro we we're three guys who like the talking ball so we came up with the cloud yeah it definitely sounds a lot better without your crap in front of it travis Yeah, why did you not play my intro? Do you want your intro every time? Mark Silk did a great job on that. You are disrespecting Mr. Silk. That's what you're doing right now. Is that what the – okay. It's fine. We'll wait until the end. It's fine. I think we need – yeah, wait until the end. The intro will keep the people involved. They'll all want to wait to hear that. So we'll wait. We'll do the intro at the end. That makes sense. So this is Triple Drain. My name is Joel. We got a special guest tonight. Maybe we'll pick his mind. We'll see what he thinks of your amazing intro there, Travis. We have a guest, Mr. IE Pinball, an amazing streamer, an amazing player. We literally asked him like an hour ago, and he said yes. So Carl D'Angelo. Carl, thank you for the short notice and hopping on. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. So last episode, I don't know if you heard, but Travis, I think, paid an exorbitant amount of money to Mark Silk to get a custom intro done. When you listened to the podcast, did you fast forward through that or did you actually listen to it? I honestly don't remember it. I was probably half asleep on the airplane up to District 82 one way or the other. So forgettable. Got it. OK, that's. Well, Carl, thanks a ton for getting on. Yeah, we're we wanted to knock out a show here before. There's there's been a lot that's happened in the last few weeks and wanted to knock something out before Expo. Give a little content, a little content before Expo. But, you know, I literally just went through this order. But you just mentioned District 82. Let's just put that right at the top. So we're going to jump straight into tournament talk here. The three of you guys played a ridiculous tournament or tournaments, right? I mean, it was six tournaments in a row over the course of three days at District 82. Mr. Tom Graff himself streamed the entire thing. I think anybody that was into competitive pinball was basically glued to it for the entire weekend.
2:44
Yeah, that was the super series. So, I mean, Tom, this was your baby. If you want to lead us off with just a quick introduction or overview of what it was, and then I'd love to dive in on what your overall experiences were. Well, it didn't involve sleep, that's for sure.

  • “I mean, I think we can all agree that they're built well. Like, American Pinball builds a tank of a game. And so that's the only thing I can kind of say with certainty or confidence that I bet Legends of Valhalla will be built well.”

    Joel @ ~36:00 min — Consensus recognition of American Pinball's manufacturing quality as offsetting theme/theme concerns

  • “They centered it offset. Oh, that drove me crazy. They kept saying that you wouldn't notice that you wouldn't notice it. Every time I looked up lies.”

    Travis @ ~39:30 min — References previous LCD centering issue American Pinball faced on prior models

    • IE Pinball
    organization
    Raymond Davidsonperson
    Kaylee Georgeperson
    Neil Graffperson
    Rachelperson
    Levy Naimanperson
    Greg Pavarelliperson
    Jim Belsitoperson
    Chuck Wirtperson
    Kingpin Gamescompany
    Godzilla (Stern)game
    Hot Wheels (American Pinball)game
    Police Forcegame
    Buffalo Pinballorganization

    market_signal: American Pinball pricing Legends of Valhalla at premium tier ($8,400+) while staying below entry-level Stern Pro games ($6,000); Hot Wheels currently identified as cheapest commercial game available

    medium · Joel's analysis of American Pinball's price positioning relative to competitors; Hot Wheels cheaper than Godzilla per Joel's statement

  • ?

    community_signal: Carl D'Angelo's content strategy centered on wizard mode challenge completions on difficult legacy games (World Poker Tour, Indiana Jones, Star Trek); accessing machines through collector network (Jim Belsito lending)

    high · Carl discussing upcoming wizard mode challenges and machine access; hosts noting his streaming focus on 'stupid wizard modes' and achievement-hunting approach to gameplay

  • $

    market_signal: Legends of Valhalla MSRP positioned at ~$8,400-$8,600; positioning relative to Stern Pro games (~$6,000 range) and Godzilla LE ($8,395) indicates premium tier pricing strategy

    medium · Joel noting surprise at pricing given recent discussion of Jurassic Park home pins at $4,600 range and Stern Pros at low-sixes; unconfirmed reports of $1,000 discount for standard edition vs. deluxe

  • ?

    announcement: American Pinball officially revealed Legends of Valhalla through location play-test rollout on Saturday; former homebrew (Riot Pinball) being manufactured commercially

    high · Games shipped to multiple locations under NDA for Saturday reveal; discussed as just-announced product with immediate market reaction

  • ?

    product_strategy: Legends of Valhalla designed with deluxe (LE) and standard/classic editions; unconfirmed ~$1,000 MSRP difference between tiers

    medium · Travis mentioning 'standard edition or I don't know the terminology' with $1,000 discount from LE; official post states 'unlimited classic models' alongside 300 (or 500) limited deluxe models

  • ?

    product_strategy: American Pinball addressed previous LCD centering/offset issue on prior models; Legends of Valhalla displays LCD 'smack dab in the middle' per Travis observation

    medium · Travis: 'They centered it offset. Oh, that drove me crazy. They kept saying that you wouldn't notice it. Every time I looked up lies. [reference to previous models]'; current model improves visibility

  • ?

    product_concern: American Pinball acknowledged across hosts as building high-quality, durable machines ('tank of a game'); Legends of Valhalla expected to maintain brand standard despite initial theme concerns

    high · Joel: 'I mean, I think we can all agree that they're built well. Like, American Pinball builds a tank of a game.'; Tom having owned Houdini; Carl having owned Hot Wheels

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball potentially increasing Legends of Valhalla LE production from announced 300 to 500 units within 24 hours of reveal due to strong initial demand

    medium · Travis citing Kingpin Games distributor post on Pinside; not officially confirmed by American Pinball at recording time; hosts note Stern precedent with Munsters LE expansion

    • 3:01
    Yeah, it was six tournaments over four days. Carl actually won one of the tournaments. That was the four strike, right, Carl? That's right. But the four strike ended at 2.30 in the morning, which was very, very tiring for everybody who was there. Yeah, but that's like 11 o'clock Carl's time, right? He had an advantage. That's where the advantage was, exactly.
    3:29
    The Pacific time advantage. But, no, it was a fun time. Travis, you take it. and this is what we have to deal with right here every time well the tournament that tom was referring to was i think what was it carl event five yeah i think it was right yeah so yeah this was the saturday night tournament it was the four strike tournament i know carl you just basically just ran over everybody that tournament i think you came out of it with what one strike one strike oh wow yeah he uh he was dominating when did that strike come was it round 13 somewhere right around there don't remember the round but it was on sky kings i remember that of course sky kings you see tom this is why we need to get rid of sky kings it's a terrible game well i mean sky kings you can't get extra balls but you have to build up the bonus that's true Well, we did get to see the greatest game of police force in the history of pinball. That is true.
    4:39
    Joel, have you ever played police force before? I haven't, but doesn't it have a, doesn't it have like a, not an exploit, but doesn't it have like one shot that's kind of ridiculous? It's kind of, isn't it, it's not steal your opponent's points or something, but it's something. Oh, they got that too. It has that too, yeah. Yeah. But it's just shoot the center ramp all day long. Yeah. And did you, Carl, were you involved in this greatest game? I was.
    5:04
    What did I have, 17 or 18 ramps in a row? Then Raymond came on top of me just after that, doing 20 or something, some crazy amount.
    5:14
    It was pretty exciting. I thought it would be boring, but it was actually a pretty exciting game. I think Carrie Wing was on that game, too, and she had an insane amount as well.
    5:24
    It was crazy. It came down to skill shots, I think, actually. between Carl and Carrie of all things. It did. Well, if you, if you really look at a police force though, it, to me, it looks like a, like Zootopia before Zootopia was a thing. Have you ever actually looked at it, Joel? Yeah, they are. It's a, wasn't it supposed to be, wasn't it supposed to be Batman and something happened? Like they didn't get the license and that's how it ended up becoming police force. It was like, have you seen the characters on police force though? Yeah. It's just animals. Yeah. It makes absolutely zero sense. I get it. But that's – it is a cool game, but that's one of the reasons I've stayed away from it because they said it's – there's like a – it all comes down to ball three, right? Joel, we can be honest. It's not a cool game. We can be honest here. Okay. But it feels cool when you're ramping, what, 18 in a row. I mean, that's got to be – Oh, yeah. It feels cool if you're Carl D'Angelo, yes. Oh, God. For the rest of us mere mortals, not so much when you're hitting that yellow post and just power draining. Yeah, I don't know. Carl, I mean, not to get on too crazy of a side tangent, but Carl, if anybody listening here, i.e. Pinball, you really dove into over the last year or more these wizard mode challenges where you're just focusing entirely on wizard modes. And it's not wizard modes on easy games. It's like the stupid wizard modes that are like big buck hunters, probably the biggest one that people are like, why? Why would you even put yourself up to that? And yeah, your level of play, I don't know. It's pretty ridiculous.
    7:00
    Well, we don't have to go too far, but do you have another wizard mode coming up that you want to hit? Yeah, there's a couple on the list whenever I get to get into the game. World Poker Tour. Oh, boy. That'd be a fun one. Yeah. That's a long journey that can go very bad near the end of it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
    7:20
    Star Trek is one, but that's not a lot of people have played Star Trek. I don't think that one's particularly difficult. World Poker Tour definitely will be.
    7:28
    I asked... Most of these games come from Jim Balcedo. He lets me borrow them for these challenges. And I asked him for Indiana Jones at one point. The stern Indiana Jones. Because I was curious about that. Speaking of stupid wizard modes. Stupid wizard modes. Yeah. What is the wizard mode for that one? I have no idea. All I know is that it's a long path. You have to do a lot to get there.
    7:52
    Yeah. No, because 24 was another one, right? 24 was another one that you had to do in a very specific way. And, yeah, it's, I don't know. We've talked most about a lot of the more recent games and the more recent wizard modes. And some of those, I don't know, nothing. It just seems like some of these older games are just coded in a way where I don't know if they just code it with this idea of, like, well, nobody's ever going to do it, but we'll throw it in there. Yeah, basically. And the code, the mode is programmed normally like a throwaway mode. It's just this simple thing, you know. it's just getting there is the hard part but now that this is my brain going with another you know here we are we've gone down this this this rabbit hole but you clearly are searching you like that achievement you like that checkbox of like i have achieved that on that game so random thought i know we've talked a lot about the stern insider connected program or even jersey jack i mean jersey jack now has achievements are you like does that excite you as with your type of mindset towards certain pinball games does do achievements excite you yeah absolutely i enjoy achievements yeah um i've run through a lot of the gnr ones i'm looking forward fingers crossed i believe pirates is coming out this week which would be nice to dive back into that game after having not played it for a long time to grab those achievements well i don't know if you knew but raymond davidson i don't know if he said it on facebook discord or where but he was offering money to whoever the first person was that could complete all of the Led Zeppelin achievements. Because what was it? You may remember, Travis. He mentioned that on one of our streams. There was one of the achievements that he listed that was like a double super jackpot. It was something stupid that he thought was going to be like that was the one. I forget exactly what it was, but he was offering, I think it was like $500 for completing the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. Carl's ready. Carl's just rubbing his hands together in the video. I still got the Zeppelin here, so let's hope it sticks around a little bit longer. Yeah, you just need to get that kit so you can – no, one of them was – what was it? It was get to one of the wizard modes without completing something else. Oh, that's what it was. Yeah, it was without using the first wizard mode. Yeah, that's one of my streams was for that. Yeah, exactly. So, Carl, you've already done that, haven't you? Yeah, so Carl's like, okay, easy 500. Here we go. Let's go. Very cool. Well, awesome. So back to Super Series.
    10:20
    Just walk me through that. I mean, I'm not a tournament guy. Real quick, so there's six tournaments. But real quick, what's the difference between each one?
    10:30
    So maybe, Carl, if you want to take the lead there. Did you participate in all six? All six of them. There were variations of strikes and match play, basically. So I think there were two strikes tournaments and four match play tournaments, right? Just varying scoring systems. Or one was a target match play. one had 7531 scoring one had 3210 scoring um yeah it's all blend it's all blending together but it's but it's not all 100 games that are there right i mean it's no it wasn't all 100 games and in fact it became more of a classics tournament than anything because because of time constraints we i felt we didn't play very many modern games maybe a total of seven or eight rounds maybe maybe a bit more because of the last day because i'm not i forget about that last day But the first three days, it just wasn't much modern play. And that's all just because modern games typically are longer playing games. Or, like, it's harder to get through them quicker? Or it's just... Right, and there were time constraints to finish. You know, we didn't want to run until 2 a.m., I'm assuming. Eric didn't want to run that every single day. Correct. So we had a clause after 10 p.m. It would be classics only on the tournaments that had a combination of the two. And that's just because some of these classic games, you can just get a house ball, there's no ball save, and you're on to the next person. Yeah, so you calculate about a half hour per round for classics games. In modern, I'd say 45 minutes to an hour. Interesting. Okay. This was a question that came up before. Do you consider, Carl, I mean, you run tournaments. Do you consider TNA a classics or modern game? Modern. See, Travis here ran his tournament in Oklahoma, And he put TNA as a classics game because he thinks it's a fast-playing game. We had to for time constraints, Joel. There's a difference between the Oklahoma local casual player and world-class pinball players. Sorry, guys that are listening in Oklahoma. I apologize. Joel's fault.
    12:31
    I'm sorry that Travis lives in the same state as you. Well, I think even that four strikes tournament, I think it became all classics really early on to around the seventh round, I think. And you guys ended up going, I think, 16 rounds total. So the whole tournament ended up becoming very classic centric. And that's that's the one thing I'm hoping next year when they have the Super Series. I'm hoping that's kind of allotted in to where they do mix in moderns a little bit more, if not possibly even have a full tournament dedicated to just moderns. Because I'd rather see them make those games play a little bit more difficult. So maybe you can bring the time down a little bit, but at least give us a shot at playing that. Because I feel like it opens up more style of play. It gives you different decisions to make as opposed to just being stuck on just doing one very specific thing that a lot of these classics games force you into. So that's kind of what I would like to see, because there is so many different pinball machines there. I want to be able to play play them all and be in different situations and have to make different decisions that are strategic in nature during the during the tournament. Yeah, I would say as a viewer, a lot of these classic games, I'm not I mean, I'm not familiar with or if I've like I maybe I don't know the best way to approach them from a tournament standpoint. So I've got to give once again props, Tom, to the commentators and the other people involved in the stream because the chat was very active. The chat was you could ask a question of, OK, what's the goal here? What are they trying to do? And knowing that some of these modern games you don't know, like if you guys if the three of you guys were going to step up to, I don't know, Led Zeppelin right now and play a tournament. There's a good chance the three of you may take completely different strategies to that game. But these older games is pretty cut and dry. Like there's there's a thing to do. And I don't as a viewer, that was really cool. That was really cool. It's like the commentators would show it or they draw it on screen like this is what they're going to do. They're going to try to hit this down, for example, like alien poker, right? Alien poker. You want to hit those those cards down in the middle of the play field in a very particular order and then cash out. And it's just like I remember the commentators were explaining that. and the moment they finished explaining it i think his name's uh carrie carrie uh kaylee did it kaylee kaylee that's right kaylee did it oh carrie george the ball player carrie george hey okay i was close it's okay yeah but kaylee kaylee did it literally to the t like exactly what they were saying they're like yep yep and then boom and i remember he looked up at the camera because he knew it like he knew he just did the thing and it was time to do it again And I don't know, as a viewer, I thought that was, I mean, a lot of streams these days are modern games. So it was a fun, it was a fun new stream.
    15:21
    And also the quality of play. There were such high level players that, you know, I just, you never felt like even, oh, ball three and this guy's down by a ton. Eh, he'll come back or he could come back. And I thought it was really cool. So I applaud the three of you guys for the entertainment. It was, it was a lot of fun. travis do you have any well here well let's carl so you saturday was like your day right i mean you that tournament what why like was there something particular that were you just feeling it or just got lucky or what i have no idea to be honest uh the tournament before i tanked in and at the break i was just sitting down like i'm so tired i'm done i can't make it through another tournament and then somehow i got a second wind and just blew through that one yeah was there anything uh Any particular game or moment that stood out to you in that tournament, or it's just kind of a blur? My favorite moment was probably on Flight 2000, pulling ahead of Johnny to give him a strike by my buddy, The Plague. The Plague? Nice. Oh, yeah, that was round 10, I think, because you had Raymond Davidson in your group at the time. I remember seeing that, yeah. That was a good one. Joel, you need to go back and watch that. There's a lot of that I need to watch. That was another thing I did notice is Ray Day, he's a machine. That guy is good.
    16:46
    And just watching him play. I mean, he won the overall, right? He won the overall thing. Tom, your son Neil was like top ten, right, overall? Yeah, he kept telling me all week he was going to win Super Series, and I kept laughing at him.
    17:03
    Yeah, Neil's been playing great. Yeah, that's awesome. Good for him. He wants to go to Germany. That's what it is. He does.
    17:11
    Carl, are you thinking about going to Germany if you qualify for it? I'd love to. I really would. I don't know if I can, but I'd love to. I'm starting a GoFundMe for myself to try to get there. I'm going to get my kids out there selling door-to-door candy bars. I've got to do everything I can to get up there. Don't you have to qualify, Travis? Yeah. Yeah, okay. There is that, too. I need to survive all of that. Step one. Yep. Tom, I'm assuming once again, you were running the show. Is there any was there any moment that stood out positive or negative that I was I was just really happy with all the help I got, especially commentators. I mean, Rachel again. I mean, she was awesome. She did the whole tournament. And then, you know, Levy Naiman came up to me and was like, I'm not going to play the four strike. do you mind if I commentate? I was like, sure. And then Greg Pavarelli did it on Sunday. That was very nice. And I was truly happy that those guys did all that. Yeah, it was as a viewer. It was awesome. They did a really good job.
    18:22
    And, you know, Travis, was there anything I know here, Travis, for the listeners here, Travis is usually pretty active in our Facebook messenger chat. I mean, almost daily. he was real quiet, real quiet during Super Series. And I think he was spending a lot of time focusing. I was too busy struggle busing for the first five events. I don't think I'd even played Carl one time. I don't think I played Tom one time. Yeah, it was bad. I was losing games that I shouldn't be losing, but I wasn't just losing them because I was playing bad. Everybody else was playing good. But it was just, I mean, it was just one of those things that in these types of tournaments, you can, like Ray likes to call it, buy the dip. So you can do bad, theoretically, in the first two rounds or even the third round, but then you've got to really get it going late. And that's kind of, I guess that's kind of the benefit to not having a finals, is you can kind of sneak up at the last second without actually playing any of the top players. But then again, it's kind of a curse at the same time. But yeah, I just found myself just kind of spinning my wheels most of the time. And, yeah, finally dusted it off on event six. And I think I got fourth. Yeah, fourth because nil got me by the tiebreaker. So, yeah, there's just bad play on my part. But I'll take it. At least I got one. There you go. That's good enough for me. So what was the on I think Fox Cities had posted or I don't. Tom, you posted the picture. But there's one of the pictures where I think Mr. Travis here was eighth or ninth. And you strategically cropped that picture. so it was like showing the top 10 and it is cropped perfectly so travis is not in the picture i took two pictures and i noticed travis wasn't in the one and i took another one but that was the one i posted oh it's so perfect yeah that's so great what an a-hole travis the key here is you just got to place higher so he can't crop too much you know if you're right there in the middle then then you're all good i learned my lesson yeah there we go well uh once again that was super serious i know super incredible really entertaining to watch it's on twitch i have you uploaded the video to anything on youtube besides that i'm in the process of editing it so um it's only like 80 hours yeah yeah something like that it seems like but uh yeah after expo i'll start releasing them on YouTube. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Uh, everybody feel free to check it out. Super entertaining. And I know, um, yeah, I mean, there hasn't, there just hasn't been a ton of tournament, uh, like tournament streams, tournaments to watch. So, I mean, it was, uh, it came out and it was, it was awesome. So well done pat yourself on the back there, Tom and, uh, Carl, nice job winning one and Travis, you know, thanks for participating. So it was, uh, yeah, it was great. that's great thank you joel hey i'm here for you man um so yeah we'll roll into the next thing which was uh yeah reveals reveals right so just what was it today is sunday we're recording this on a sunday night so saturday yesterday they american pinball did something pretty cool they went ahead and shipped out games to multiple locations um and basically told the you know under NDA like, hey, you can open the game on Saturday, let people play, have a good time. And yeah, Legends of Valhalla. Legends of Valhalla is the next game from American Pinball.
    21:51
    This game has been, this was a homebrew and it was, they made a handful of them. Was it like Riot Pinball or something? Does that sound right? Riot Pinball. So they've had this out for a year or more and it's gone to a few shows. Have any of you played it in any? No. Okay.
    22:09
    But, yeah, so it looks like American Pinball is picking this up, and they're going to manufacture it.
    22:14
    Yeah, just all-around first impressions. We started with Tom last time. Carl, first impressions of what you've seen from the reveal? I mean, I like their method of, you know, shipping out the location. That's fantastic. I haven't seen much of this version since, you know, I watched the streams that Buffalo Pinball did, the original of the homebrew. And it looked like a fun game. It certainly piqued my interest. But just waiting to play it, to be honest. Yeah. I know there's two going out to the two Ace Gogees out here. So later this week, I'll get to check it out. But I don't have much more besides that at the moment.
    22:53
    All right. Travis, you did a whole reaction video, right? Or like a first response video? Not yet. I have not. Okay. This is my first response to it, just to you, Joel. Here we go. Let's hear it. What's your initial reaction? Well, like, gameplay-wise, I actually like the layout. The side ramp kind of reminds me of Doctor Who, like that big, giant side ramp. That's what it reminds me of looking at it. But overall, it's funny. When I look at this whole package, for me personally, it almost feels like the theme is the weakest part of the whole pen, which I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. Last I heard, right before we got onto this podcast, apparently American Pinball is looking at upping the amount of pins that are out from 300 to 500. And that's what I think a distributor mentioned on Pinside. So obviously they're selling more than what they thought they would maybe. I don't know. That's up for people to decide business practice-wise whether that's good or bad to go up in the amount. But I mean, overall, I don't know. I would have liked to see a different theme on this. I do kind of like the Norse theme in general, but I don't know if I like that with pinball. I don't know if I'm really connecting with that, if that makes sense. Sure. So rules wise, I have no idea where the rules are at on this. Obviously, just based off the inserts, there's probably going to be multiple modes in this. Art wise, I mean, it is what it is. I don't know if I'm not really the picky one when it comes to art, but I know the animations, though, looking at that, I was I don't know. It was kind of different in the animations. And I don't know if that's going to be the final product or if they're going to kind of help that along a little bit more. But I mean, overall, if it shoots well and it's fun, I guess that's a good thing. But I know the theme for me is kind of a letdown overall. Yeah. I mean, we've discussed this before at the end of the day. I mean, so many there's so many examples of games that sell out even sight unseen. And it's based on theme alone. Right. I mean, Halloween, Rick and Morty, Godzilla, Led Zeppelin. You know, these L.E.'s are sold before the games revealed, streamed anything. And it's and it's obvious like theme helps theme sell. And and you're right. I mean, you said that that the weakest part of this pen right now is the theme. And obviously that's not going to change. And it does surprise me. I was not expecting, you know, when I heard they were going to make 300 LEs, I was like, well, I hope they sell them all. And here we are 24 hours later and they're upping that. That is surprising. My biggest reaction was the price, was the price. And I think maybe it's because we've been discussing Jurassic Park's home pins so much recently that it's like, okay, that's $4,600 or somewhere in the mid-fours. You know, now Stern Pros are going to be low sixes. And currently, as of right now, the cheapest game, commercial game you can buy is a Hot Wheels because a Hot Wheels is cheaper than Godzilla. So it was like, is American Pinball going to stay there? Is American Pinball going to stay below a Stern Pro? And what I'm seeing, they haven't announced this is there's an LE, but they're making like a standard edition or I don't know the terminology. Which I think is a thousand less on the MSRP from what I heard. But I don't that's not confirmed, but that's what I heard. it's going to be right around there nothing official yet on that exactly yeah but what i mean the currently what is it's 8600 is the is the what what's the it's either 84 86 i thought it's somewhere in that 84 so that i mean and a godzilla is what yeah it's 80 83 95 uh msrp It does say it says a deluxe edition limited to 300, which, like Travis said, I saw the same post. It sounds like they upping that to 500 Yeah And that was according to I think it was Kingpin Games Correct So until they come out with further confirmation because I don think any other distributors have acknowledged this as of the recording of this podcast So somebody could come out and refute that. But, I mean, that's what we have to go on right now. So I'm curious to see if they end up doing something like that. Because even on their promo post, it says 300 limited deluxe models and then unlimited classic models. Carl, you're shaking your head. What's your – Well, yeah, I'm shaking my head because if they announce 300, they should stick to 300. So we'll see if it's – like we said, like Travis said, if it's official or not. I just don't like the practice of upping a limited edition just because you sold them all. So Stern did it, right, with Munsters?
    27:42
    Yeah, I didn't like it then either. They got a lot of hate when they did that. Yeah, I don't think it's a good practice to do. I mean, if any company out there announces a certain number of models or units are going out, I mean, if it's a hit, it's a hit. Stick to it. To me, you're just taking the screws to your initial adopters and saying, you know what, this isn't as limited as you thought it was. And if I'm a supporter and wanting to pay out eighty four, eighty five hundred dollars, however much it is, then I find out, well, wait a second. There's going to be more than that just because there's great reaction to it. It suddenly doesn't feel like the FOMO is there as much or that I should have rushed out to adopt this product. So, I mean, I don't know. I'm not a fan of that business practice at all. Well, luckily, in our midst here, we have an elitist, an elitist, Mr. Tom Graham. Tom, so if you, as an LE buyer, if, I mean, you just bought an LE Godzilla, if you would have heard within 24 hours that they would have upped that, would that have offended you personally? Or you don't really care how many LEs there are? What's your thought there? I think I would have been a little upset. I mean, you know, you're thinking a certain number is going to be made. And if they increase the number by X, you know, it's, yeah, kind of sucks. Okay. Yeah. Well, so, I mean, it's out. I think it'll be – I hope it'll be at Expo. I would assume it'll be at Expo. I'm willing to give it a shot. I know I've had a Hot Wheels. Actually, I think everybody has had a – I know, Carl, you've had a Hot Wheels. Tom's shaking his head. Tom, have you had any American Pinball game in your collection? Yeah, I had a Houdini. Gotcha. For a little bit. I mean, I think we can all agree that they're built well. Like, American Pinball builds a tank of a game. And so that's the only thing I can kind of say with certainty or confidence that I bet Legends of Valhalla will be built well. It'll be, you know, I don't know, a tank, a beast of a game kind of thing. But it's been out a while. I think there's been people that have put hands on it. Chuck Wirt with TPN, he's he's played one extensively and he's a big fan of it, a big fan of it.
    29:54
    So, you know, I wish him the best of luck. I hope it's one of those kind of a sleeper hit kind of thing where people want to get their hands on it. That's great. But in this type of market, I just think there's so many examples of games that sell instantaneously because you have a theme.
    30:11
    I mean, you never know because every other pinball manufacturer right now isn't able to put out games very quickly. So, I mean, there could be 300 people out there that are just dying for the next new game that they know they could get fairly quickly. So and plus American Pinball, it seems like they fixed their LCD issue to that thing. Looks like it's smack dab in the middle. Oh, they centered it off set. Oh, that drove me crazy. They kept saying that you wouldn't notice that you wouldn't notice it. Every time I looked up lies, I noticed it every single time in my OCD. Just off the charts. It did not bother me. Carl, did it bother you? No, it didn't bother me. No, the heart supported it. Yeah, well, I don't have the focus. you two do that that's all i can stare at yeah well that's cool um i don't know besides that i mean it's we're kind of at a uh i don't know kind of a wait and see situation uh i did see i went back and watched some of the old streams you buffalo pinball streamed it in the past and yeah the animations at the time were stills they weren't i at least the little bit that i saw so i I'm curious what all they've added or if they've added anything there. I do think Jack is going to stream it. Jack Danger is going to stream it sometime soon. A little surprising. That's an interesting strategy by American Convos, isn't it? Yeah, and officially a Stern employee.
    31:36
    But yet, or maybe he's not an employee. Maybe he's a contractor. Contractor, yeah. That is interesting. I know, well, Travis doesn't stream. But, hey, if AP called me up, Tom, you'd take it. I'm assuming Carl, if they called you up and said, hey, you want to do our reveal stream, I think we'd all jump on it. But Jack is in the area. He does a good job. And, yeah, we'll wait and see on that.
    31:59
    Well, that leads to a good question, though. Since you're going to be at Expo, Joel, which game are you going to play first, Legends of Valhalla or JP the Pin?
    32:09
    JP the Pin? I mean, if they're standing right next to each other, I'm going to pick the shorter line. there's no line oh my gosh yeah he does this all the time call just a consider on everything yeah you're the first one up you've been sleeping outside of the hall nobody's watching nobody's listening it's just you you will only know the answer to this carl you want to know the answers that's going to tweak them the most the answer is going to be i'm going to play the p3 that's standing next to him that's the that's what i'm gonna play first yeah no uh i don't to be honest i i would probably go legends of ala first and the only reason is just because i know it's more there's more lights there's more i mean it's more of a like there's more there and i'm really curious to see how it flows and i've seen way less of a stream so did you hear that travis he's a three flipper snob yeah wow he's gonna play a game because it has more lights um carl have you played um a stern the pin have you played a the yeah i played i played star wars uh back in the day i played the transformers when they had that one so yeah i i'm familiar with the model okay and do you have any i know we talked a little bit about this last week but any quick takes on what you saw with jp the pin it looks fun to me it it really does i mean i think jack did a really good job on the design uh question is the software i mean it's a home pin So it's not going to be that deep. Yeah. It's going to be a very basic, simple game. And watching the stream, yeah, you can see it's shoot this shot four times, shoot this shot, shoot the Raptor pin 100 times. It's that kind of a thing. True.
    33:45
    But it's going to be a fun game. The assets are all there. I was surprised at the music that they still were able to get the license or maintain their license for the music and the art and everything else. So I'm impressed. Cool. I mean, you're decent at hitting wizard mode, So I think you could probably get to the JP wizard mode, the home pin wizard. I think, you know, I don't want to put too much pressure on you. No, that would be the video for Carl to get it and unbox it live on stream, set it up, and then get wizard mode on game one. Game one. That was almost Mando. Almost Mando. Except I wasn't streaming, of course. Yeah. Travis has said that. He said if he was to stream, that would be his goal, was to try to do an unbox straight to wizard mode kind of challenge. I think that would be hilarious, but we talked about that before, and I think, Carl, you're probably one of the only ones in the entire world that could do something like that. I think there's only a handful of players that would actually have a chance to do something like that. That would probably be the most impressive YouTube pinball video in the history of pinball videos. And then the third is so he hits a wizard mode, and then it shows him screen capturing posting it for sale on Pinside. Like all in one.
    34:55
    One start to finish. Yeah, that's a, there you go, Carl. That's how you need to up your wizard mode challenge game from unbox to sell to resell. Get a game in here and do it once. And then, yeah.
    35:10
    Well, very cool. Um, I don't know any other last thoughts. I mean, we can, we can wrap on, I don't know, uh, legends of Valhalla. We talked, we talked to, I mean, we had a conversation going in, in our chat. Um, but yeah, a lot of our conversation was basically just on like price. So, like, I am really surprised. I really think I was really hoping American Pinball would, like, adapt that of, like, we want to be the affordable consumer grade model. And we want to stay below a Stern Pro. I mean, low sixes even. If they're limited edition. So you don't know what the regular edition is going to be. Correct. Okay. So maybe. It could be $1,500 less. $2,000 less. You may be right. And if that. So let's play that game. Let's say it is. Do you think, fast forward six months, they're going to. I mean, do you think that would really help them sales-wise? I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's a question for Zach or other distributors. How often do people ask, what's your cheapest game?
    36:05
    Let's put it this way, Joel. Is this the cheapest LE that's out there? Because it's at, what, $8,400? Yeah. And Stern's at about $10,500 now. Jersey Jack Collector's Edition is like $12,500. so I mean that's a big discrepancy between the three right there Spooky was about $9 for the LE it was under $10 didn't they say you could add the butter cabinet and still be under $10 yeah but all things considered basically out of all the big manufacturers this is probably the cheapest like high tier pen so the question is how is it going to play, how is it built how does it feel once you actually have your hands on it. I mean, looking at all the Playfield features, it has, objectively, it has a lot of stuff in it. I mean, they talk about hand-painted and sculpted figurines. They talk about having a bunch of call-outs, which I think Jeff Teolis did. They're saying like over 500 call-outs, which is a lot, all things considered. And now looking at, they say 22 modes, multiple wizard modes. I mean, what a soundtrack featuring 23 songs from a group called Two Steps from Hell, which I know Carl has hanging on his radio all the time. They actually are good. Yeah, they did Hobbit, right? Yeah, exactly. Yes, they did. And then Shaker Motor, Knocker, Anti-Reflective Glass. So, I mean, all things considered, they do have some stuff associated with this package. It's not they haven't cheapened out on anything in particular. So I'm curious to see how that actually is in person, because it's one thing to see it on a stream. It's a whole nother thing to be standing over the pen and actually experiencing it yourself. Yeah. And that you may be totally right. I mean, I know like Hot Wheels, there are probably people that bought Hot Wheels because it was Hot Wheels. They're huge Hot Wheels collectors. But the reality is, I think most people that are buying Hot Wheels now, it's from people hearing or playing the game or hearing like this is a good game. And and that's why I think fast forward it great. It could be an awesome game. The four of us could love it. We don't know. We don't know until we play it. But the reality is none of us pulled out our wallet and placed an order because there is the unknown. There's the uncertainty. I mean, Tom, I think you said in our chat, if they would announce that this was whatever, I think you named some band. I don't know. I forget what you said. That would be Rush. Yeah. So like Rush, you're probably already, I guarantee you're probably already on a list. And it's like if there's a Rush band, boom, I'm in. And that's the thing. there's no um you can't have those types of buyers right or those pre-sales on unlicensed themes um i don't know it's we've the three of us are talking i mean carl do you have any do you have an opinion on one license team that that hasn't been like that uh it's unique or um what are your thoughts that's you don't really well not unique but i like seeing them come out everyone everyone wants these unlicensed themes right everyone wants to see these games but yeah the fact is they don't sell as well if american has in fact sold 300 of them and you know are considering upping the numbers to 500 i mean i to me that's a tremendous success at this point in the game without question the thing that concerns me is they've said it's a six month lead time for those 300 games so when you know at this point even if i was interested in the game it's six months down the line for a regular edition i i don't really want to wait that long stern's going to come out with three more games before then probably or who knows what jjp announces their next and there's so much coming out yeah yeah yeah you know what what's scary is at some point the market is gonna implode with all these companies coming in and games being made and yeah but realistically though the only people that that's gonna hurt because we talked about this before i don't think it'll hurt stern's bottom line because they're able to get the themes out they already have stuff planned out for years at a time i think the ones that's going to hurt. It's going to hurt spooky. It's going to hurt American pinball. I think those are the two that are just smack dab in the crosshairs of it. So just like Carl alluded to, just having taking a six month lead time for 300 games, that is a long time. That is a long, long time this day and age. And if they are going up to 500, then we can safely assume that might be eight to 10 months then. Right. So, you know, I mean, it's just one of those things that when you're dealing with companies that only have enough to do one line and only X number of games, I mean, it's going to be an uphill battle regardless. And especially it's still going to be six or 12 months. They said earlier today on the news about the supply chain issues. So, I mean, it could it could be what would that put us through that would put us somewhere summer of 2022 by the time they get done with this run. yeah and they've i think dave fix has already said i mean they have other games in the works so they you know they have a time frame well american pinball is unique because they still technically make kudinis and they still like they have never stopped making any of their games so but i still assume they they have a lot of time of you know we want to devote the majority of our attention to legends of ahala for whatever a year so if maybe if they saw they had enough sales in 24 hours that, hey, if we can spend that entire year making LEs, we make a lot more money making LEs than we do LEs and then some classic or standard editions. I mean, I doubt assembling an LE takes that much more time than it would assembling, you know, a standard edition. So I don't know. But I think, Carl, you had a good point, though. I mean, if they're doing that, if they're increasing, this is a success. This is something we should, you know, like we may have our thoughts against license versus unlicensed. But, hey, look at these guys. I mean, this is they're selling apparently.
    42:09
    So, cool. We're going to talk about this a little more. But Expo, I hope they're at Expo. I hope people play them at Expo. I hope they get a bunch more sales after Expo. I mean, why not? I mean, I'm all for having better. I mean, I'm all for more pinball, but I'm definitely for good. Like, if you give us good games, like, let's go. We don't just need boxes of lights or anything, you know.
    42:33
    This would be a bad transition, but it is the next thing on our list here. And Halloween, Halloween.
    42:44
    I still have yet to play it. Travis, you've played it. You've voiced your opinion many times. Tom, you have not played it, correct? Correct. But Carl, as of, I mean, you own one. You bought one, and you streamed it yesterday. So feel free to share whatever you want, your initial thoughts on Halloween. Yeah, I, you know, tossed my hat in the ring. I thought if I could get a low number and get the game early enough, I would take a shot at it because it looked interesting to me. I like the theme over Ultraman, you know, for sure for me. Just the dark, spooky. And I think they've got the atmosphere right on the game. it does you know you turn the lights off in the room the sound is actually pretty good the uh just the the overall feel of the game is nice um after my two days of play yeah so i i streamed it to yesterday um and you know encountered the usual i guess i could say usual uh spooky issues with early games although i don't consider this an early game at this point this has been three months since the release since the announcement since the release in my opinion it should be a lot further along than what it is um so yeah there's issues uh there's bugs all over the place there's balls unlocking that shouldn't unlock there are i encountered two major crashes when i got further in the game than what they've programmed is my assumption so like my first crash was i played through all six pumpkin modes i went the drop targets came up i hit them again to start what would be a seventh and the game crashed later on i i changed the order that i did things in so i did the pumpkin mode last and it lit the wizard mode and i was shocked to see the wizard mode was actually in the game so it's it's what bug had described in all the promotional stuff where you lock you know seven balls and one each scoop i started shooting them going through and I'm up at the top play field.
    44:41
    And the right flipper won't go. It just won't flip. So I don't know if that's a bug, a recent bug, but I could make that last shot or two to complete that mode. So that was the end of that game. It's just stuff like this. But I do like the look of the game, the feel of it. The shots are nice. They're not great. I'm not a fan of the upper play field geometry. there's a ball trap there with the post on the pretzel the butt pretzel I was waiting for that so I mean it has potential but it's not there now I am concerned based on the programmers history about how long it's going to take to get there interesting yeah I well so we've talked i mean we've talked a lot about halloween um so the elevators what's your thought on the the you hit a scoop so instead of that scoop and that ball firing right back at you it disappears i have no problem with that i okay okay so i before getting my halloween i played ultra man on location okay and so yes first time someone steps into a game the ball goes right by him all goes right down the middle you know no way to save it and that's in my opinion that's something easily fixed just do what do what stern did do what keifer did on like simpsons pinball party flip that flipper a couple times you know let someone know the very first time the ball is going to come out on that side okay ball's coming out here that's all they need to do i actually like the idea of them i do prefer a scoop firing the ball back at me but they're novel they're unique i like them okay so let's say if uh you know tomorrow that spooky puts out an update and every bug that you ran into is fixed what do you think uh i mean where your thoughts there when it comes to just overall gameplay or modes or layout you know what's your experience there i'm i i think things need to be fleshed out more just beyond bugs okay so there needs to be more depth to it it's it's uh and maybe spooky doesn't want more depth in it maybe this is where they're going with the game um it's like like back when i had rick and morty you know the reason i had a pre-order for rick and morty and i had borrowed at the beginning of the pandemic i borrowed one from ace gogi and i learned that there the game as it was was basically their plan just a bunch of modes and then a final you know final mode for the you know your 10th adventure and it wasn't really going to go beyond that much and i that's fine there's no problem with that um but i feel halloween may be similar in that regard for me it may be a bit too shallow to stay in my collection for long it's um considering i went through everything already in the second day concerns me or everything i'll say it for i'll say it for carl they need to revamp the rule set make it worth your while to hit certain shots yeah it's more balancing all that stuff yeah they have a lot of work to do without question well did it not drive you crazy to have the first upper play field basically be bricked out during certain modes to where even if you drain down to the upper play field you didn't need to flip it all you just had to let it go back through the motion or let the ball come all the way back down to the main play field i I mean, for me, I didn't really like that because if I'm going through different parts of a multi-tiered game, I want a reason to be at each place. And if I accidentally end up in a spot, I still want to have something to do to give me reason to flip the flipper in that spot. So I feel like a lot of this rule set prematurely locks you out of certain parts of this game when it shouldn't. At least to me, it shouldn't. Yeah, absolutely. When you get up to the house and you're trying to finish that final shot, you know, up that side ramp and drains out, you're waiting seven, eight seconds for the ball to drain all the way down.
    48:51
    Drain down to that mid play field, wait for the lift to bring it up and shoot again. And then you're doing that over and over a lot of time because you missed that final shot. That final shot is on the very tip of the flipper, which is not a simple shot. So you're using, you know, you're losing a minute and a half, two minutes trying to get back up there just to get that single shot. Yeah. So I agree with you completely. There needs to be something to do. at all times.
    49:14
    Well, so Simpsons pinball party, right? There are points in the game where you have to get that ball on the couch. So you have to hit the garage. You got to get up there. You got to load the shot behind the TV. Then you got to rip. I mean, there's, and if you miss the shot, you're waiting. Well, I mean, I'm just trying to compare it to something that does it right. Is that the right, is that fair to say? Like, do you, if Simpsons, because I don't know, I don't hear people complain about Simpsons pinball party and the ball taking too long when you drain off the upper play field right because the ball comes right back to your right flipper and you pop it back into the garage go right back to three seconds yeah okay so is there physics i don't know enough about the mechanical aspects of how the game is there anything that spooky could do to speed up that process they've talked about staging balls in the scoops or at least one of the scoops i don't know if it's the left or the right so one of them has multiple optos the other one has a single opto so i don't know which side is i haven't looked at it yet um yeah if they can stage a ball just like they did with rick and morty they always have a ball staged in the house so when it goes in there it kicks it out right away okay yeah i don't know i mean we're we've talked a lot about halloween and i know some of our streams of um i stream for flipping out and then just another pinball stream and travis has been on those and travis kind of let it all out on one of them and uh one of the comments was like i respect i respect Travis more now that I know that he's honest about, you know, this or that. And the reality is we're not trying to be mean or brutal or it's just honest. And we're rooting for Spooky here. We want him to. I mean, I have no doubt if if Bug called Carl, if they called you, Tom, Travis, anything and they're like, hey, Traps, we've we've heard that you don't really like our game. Do you have a list of suggestions that we could work on? I I have no doubt that, Travis, you would happily help them. Well, yeah, it's just here's the reality. making pinball and doing rule sets and doing design work is difficult. It's not easy at all. And you're anytime you have a body of work, you're putting it out there for potential criticism and for people to also celebrate. So I fully acknowledge it's not the easiest thing in the world because it's all very public. Like people know you're the one that designed this. People know that you're the one that's coming up with the rule set, you know, but it's just, it's one of those things too that I think at the same time, to me, Spooky isn't the little engine that could anymore because that little engine can at this point. They sell out games that they're putting out. And so the amount that they're charging, I think it's fair game to hold them accountable to say, hey, you know, for this price, we expect this type of product. And I think whenever you have other pinball players out there that aren't just casual, that are given their critiques or giving suggestions, I think that's something that's worth at least listening towards for some of these companies just to get a general idea of what this type of player thinks. Now, that doesn't mean that they have to actually implement it, but you still want to find that balance to where you have something that appeals to casuals and you have something that appeals to your hardcore people. Because if somebody buys a game and it's in their house and they're wanting to play it every day, you're no longer a casual. You don't have to be the greatest pinball player ever, but you're still, you're hardcore into it because you're trying to learn the shots. You're trying to learn the rules and you're trying to enjoy it. And if you have a code like it is now, that's going to take the longevity and throw it out the window. Cause just like Carl alluded to the great players are going to get through the game very quick. And then it becomes highly repetitive from there. And that's the thing that you don't want to do. It's almost like anti Elwin esque. You know, people say Elwynn's rule sets are way too deep, but they're really just wide more than anything because it gives you several different options on how to attack a game. And I think that's where your modern day pinball player that is at a house. I think the vast majority of them want something like that. That doesn't have to be a super deep experience, but you want to be able to attack a pin from different ways and you want to be able to utilize all parts of that pin. And I think that's where the rule set is lacking at this point. So once they can address that and maybe make some of the modes a little bit more interesting, I mean, a great example of this, they on the newest code, right? They have it to where your modes go from. I think it's like easiest and most difficult, or at least they have them shown that way. So even the most difficult mode, you can pretty much finish it in two shots if you time it right. Yeah, that should not be happening That should not be happening at all If you have a highly difficult mode the points should reflect that but also the skill that you need to show should reflect the difficulty out of that mode I think that's just a large part of it as well, of having some things that aren't quite balanced and not quite there. And hopefully they tweak it a little bit. I don't know if they will or not.
    54:10
    So what I wonder is how much of this has to do with the fact that they only have one programmer. Cosmo is the only person working on the game as far as I know. and Spooky has ramped up the production line they've hired a bunch of people have they tried to search for programmers to assist out we know Eric worked on Rick and Morty that was his game with Scott but apart from that he's not working on Halloween as far as I know so what are they doing in that regard especially at this level with 1250 games or whatever it was sold they need to step it up in that regard and he's doing Ultraman 2 exactly yeah so he's doing two and i so i went on their site today because i was curious i thought okay you know maybe i can load the ultraman code in my game just to you know just have some fun you know compare it the ultraman code has been pulled from the site so the latest update so i assume there's but there's game breaking bugs in there so again yeah phosmas you know they're having to jump back and forth he's having to jump back and forth between the two versions which has got to stretch them even thinner yeah or do you focus on do you focus on halloween and once you yeah it's like you focus entirely on halloween because there's more of them right and so it's like make that your priority and then once you hear that that release is good then you spend the time to swap out all the clips and everything for to get into ultraman i mean but the problem is there's already ultramans out there so since you're doing both at the same time you got two different customer bases that want their game to be fully fleshed out so yeah if they don't have other people helping out on this, I think that that's, I mean, lack of a better term, I think it's batshit crazy at this point if you have that many games out there, because that is a lot of stress on somebody. And obviously, if you're the only one or at least one of the only ones working on a project and you're on constant deadlines, that's where mistakes will start to creep in. And yeah, we're seeing it with the amount of bugs that are happening right now.
    56:08
    So if any listener is a pinball programmer or wants to be a pinball programmer and wants to move to Benton, Wisconsin, I would send your resume to somebody because they could use you, that's for sure. It's a really small town, Joel. Yeah, I think we on stream the other day pulled it up on Google Maps and we're joking about how – Oh, Tom didn't see that, yeah. Yeah, it was like where was – was it you, Travis, that said you Googled it and you wanted to see where the closest food eatery was and it was like three bars or something? We found it, yeah. They have three bars and a restaurant, and I think they got a couple stoplights too. It's like a town in Oklahoma nearly. Yeah, but the beauty of programming is you don't need to be physically there. True. Exactly. I mean, Eric programmed Rick and Morty from his house. It's not like he was on location at Spooky. Good point.
    56:56
    I mean, I don't – Steve Bowden, right? He's free right now. He's a rules guy. He doesn't program, right? Yeah, I don't think he does programming. I know – I mean, we brought this up because we saw that Bowen, And Bowen's name wasn't on any of this. So when the original reveal came out, we're like, well, Bowen's not on rules. He's not being he's not here right now. So it's I don't know. That was the first red flag. Right. I mean, it's just I don't know. I hope I hope maybe maybe they do have some some applicants or they're trying to expand or they I don't know. I'm rooting for him. I really I really am. But I do know a few people that they haven't got their games yet, but they're still in. I don't know anybody personally that's dropped a Halloween order. But, Carl, I mean, you have it. And, yeah, I mean, I'm hoping the code evolves and becomes more fleshed out in a way that you'll enjoy.
    57:57
    But, yeah, I will. Go ahead. I was going to say, to Spooky's credit, the build quality is great on my machine. I know Travis was talking about some issues with the one he plays on location, but mine has been solid. I had one rubber ring I had to stretch a little just because the ball path wasn't wide enough for the ball to get through. And that's been it. Apart from the ball trap on the topmost play field. Game has been completely solid. No other tweaks out of box. Just a great experience from, you know, setup. That's awesome. And what is it, the pinheck board? I mean, and the light, like, apparently the wiring, it's a lot less hot glue, right? I mean, you had a TNA and old Rick and Morty had the hot glue too. So it's, uh, yeah, well, the good for them. I, I mean, I do think they are moving forward, but, and that's awesome to hear that their build quality is great. And, uh, I don't know. It's just code. Code is the thing that we've been talking about really for weeks now and, and we're rooting for them. That's, that's for sure. So, um, all right. Well, I know I am looking, I'm looking forward to playing a Halloween. I want to experience it. I want that ball to fly right by my flipper my first time. But I want to experience it. And luckily, I think I'm going to have a chance. I know I'm personally going to Pinball Expo. Unfortunately, Travis, we just heard that you will not be going.
    59:13
    Yeah, which sucks, but I get it. And Tom, you're going to be there, yes? Oh, yeah. So Tom will be there. He will have a Sharpie in pocket for all the autographs. He's ready. You know, bring him whatever, any square of skin, he's ready to sign, whatever you need. I got a question, Joel. Yeah, Travis. Halloween or Legends of Valhalla? Which one am I going to play first? Yep. Probably Halloween just because we've talked a lot about it, and I want to experience the elevators. I want to experience the butt pretzel. I think I want to experience that more. Somebody please clip that. I want to experience the elevators and the butt pretzels. Clip that. We're not streaming.
    59:54
    Okay, somebody will clip it. It's fine. Carl, are you going to Expo? I am not. My trip was the Super Series. Okay, that's cool. That's cool. You got enough, Tom, so that's fine. Yeah, that's great. Well, I know we're going to be there. This is it. This is my first pinball expo of any kind. I've yet to be to any pinball convention. I know this is a big one. Obviously, we haven't had it in a year.
    60:23
    I don't know, guys. Do you have any recommendations? Do you have any what to expect? To the listeners, this may be their first expo, or maybe there's things.
    60:32
    For example, Pinball Olympics. Pinball Life is hosting this Pinball Olympics, which is apparently you get to play some crazy games. They set the games up really odd.
    60:43
    There's videos out there, like an Addams Family, where instead of them using normal glass, they put in this glass that's really hard to look through. It's this really strange pinball tournament. So guess what, guys? I'm actually playing in a pinball tournament. But it's a really unique games. I was I've just heard from multiple people like you got to do it. So I'm doing that. But besides that, I don't know. The three of you guys, you guys have all been there before. Where what am I walking into? What are my expectations here or what should my expectations be? It's hard to say because it's a new location. OK, but are you asking as a casual or as a tournament player? Well, I am not two different things. I am not going to play as a tournament. Maybe then I'm asking the wrong three people. Right. Because I think Tom is streaming the whole thing. So I think I know where you're going to be. So if I need I need some some Tom time, I will I'll just wander over there and I maybe I can announce something for you or not announce but commentate something for you. I don't know. Absolutely. But sure. I mean, tournament. Go go ahead. So people that are coming and they're playing their first tournament. What do you have any words of advice for people coming to Expo playing in tournaments? Make sure you come on Thursday because that's when qualifying is.
    61:52
    Um, it's, uh, I believe it's, uh, uh, limited. It's kind of like a limited entry. I think you get 12 entries and you have to qualify on six games. So it's like your best, best six scores. So you can play whatever you want or there's a, um, well, there's, well, they'll have a tournament bank. So you got to play the games in that tournament bank. so you're basically trying to get the highest score you can and based on all the other players and then they'll rank you based on all your highest six scores on six games this is the everybody qualifies tournament unless you're restricted to a if you're restricted to a you must qualify in a this year that's the first time they've done that i believe no they've done We did that last year. Okay. Yeah. All right. Otherwise, if you're not an A player, you just register, play your games, and you'll qualify somewhere on the massive bracket. Correct. There you go. So just have a pulse. You're good to go. Have a pulse. Yeah. Joel, you can do this. I could qualify is what it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, why are you wasting your time on pinball Olympics? Come over and play the real tournament. Yeah. They'll basically split the field in half, and the top half goes into A division, and the bottom half goes into B division. Gotcha. We're using Carl's software.
    63:19
    For the qualifying, yeah. Yeah, which is pretty awesome. Nice. So you got all that, Joel? You know what to do now? Show up, have a pulse. There you go. Play a bunch of games. As a casual, if you're going to a big event as a casual, I would say always know where the liquor or the beer is. So you want to get to that early because the lines will get long. If you're into that type of thing, if you're into seminars and stuff like that, be sure and check out whatever the schedule is. So you can make sure you get to that early because you don't want to be one of those. It's way back at the end or anything like that. And yeah, other than that, I would also say the people that you know that you're going with get a group messenger together because you will get split up. That'll just make life a lot easier and planning out where to eat, where to meet. Because you don't want to be like Tom and show up 30 minutes late to where we're supposed to be and eating and make your whole group just sit there and wait. So you don't want to do that. When did I do that?
    64:20
    All the time, Tom. I don't want to bring up InDesk again. I don't want to do you dirty. or no, it's pen masters, nevermind. But yeah, so I mean, you'll have fun, Joel. Overall, I mean, there's a ton of people that go to these things. And so you'll see everybody. So I mean, you know, it's like anything else. You say your highs at the very beginning and then you have the awkward passing by over and over again where you see them five or six more times and you don't know whether to keep saying hello over and over again. I mean, like any other event. I'm telling you right now, I will say hi to Dennis Creasel every time I see him. Every time.
    64:54
    Every time. I've heard wear comfortable shoes. I know that was another thing, right? Wear comfortable shoes and wear deodorant. That's, I think. Yes, please. Please, everybody that's going, please shower. Please put on deodorant.
    65:09
    And, yeah, wash your hair. Sounds good. Yeah. There is going to be a TPN booth, right? So you can maybe go over and hug Dennis there. There is, yes. Yes, I've heard the Flippin' Out. There's a Flippin' Out booth, and then right next to it, There's going to be a TPM booth. And I think Zach's planning on having at least one or two games there. So he's hoping some people will come by and play those. And, yeah, to be honest, the reason I'm going is I'm excited to meet people. That's really what it comes down to. Excited to meet people, see them face-to-face.
    65:44
    You know, Carl, you're an active streamer. You know, you have people that show up to every one of your streams. And if you have a chance to meet them, you know, face-to-face, I'm all for it. so that's all I care about maybe there'll be some show specials on certain pinball things that I would pick up but otherwise yeah that's all I care about I want to get a piece of I would love it if they had a sheet of one of the Invisiglass or something if there was any special on that type of thing being any bit cheaper I would consider picking up a sheet for streaming. I know, Carl, you're a fan. Yeah. And that's like my number one. My number one is if they had something like that because the shipping on that stuff is just stupid.
    66:37
    But I don't know. I just want to meet people. That's all I care. That's my expectations. The tournament, though, if you're saying you registered for the tournament on Thursday, how much of a commitment is it? Is that your whole expo? You're going to be involved in that tournament? Just depends on how well you do.
    66:56
    It's a double elimination tournament. So you try to stay in the winner's bracket, and then if you get knocked down in the loser's bracket, that's where it takes longer, where you'll be playing more matches.
    67:12
    But it's based on where you finish in qualifying. So if you're up there in qualifying, you're not going to play as many games because you're going to have a bunch of buys.
    67:26
    But basically it's head-to-head matches. You play against one person, and it's the best two out of three. So it can take a while. But they have assigned times for the matches, so you at least know when your matches are around, give or take. Give or take. As long as there's no Power 100. The good news is, that's what I was going to say, no Power 100 this year.
    67:55
    I'm missing this. What is a Power 100? What are we? So Josh runs a tournament every year, usually during Expo, where he invites the top players over to his house, and they have a tournament there. The problem is it happens at the same time as the Expo tournament, so it really slows things down. So I played a match and Jim Balsito had a match before mine.
    68:26
    I was waiting for his match, but he was over at Josh's. So I had to wait like five hours. And the problem was you don't know when they're going to finish. So, and if you're not around, they're like, sorry, you could potentially disqualify yourself if you're not around. But you're waiting on them. Correct. So that was kind of a problem. That was my bitter thing about that. But, you know, it is what it is, I guess. And at the end of the day, I mean, it was fine, but I got a lot of practice, I guess. All right. That's fair. There you go. That's the first one. Apparently, Carl, I don't know if you heard, but apparently I used I'm trying harder now. But one episode, I apparently I responded with that's fair to like everything Tom or Travis said. So somebody said that should be a drinking game. And I think Travis is taking it to heart. again the biggest fence sitter in the world carl on any subject at all but i love you joel i just i but that's the thing is i the idea of playing in that tournament sounds really fun but i also what intimidates me is like i don't want to be locked into that if there's a chance that i could you know like well yeah if you play like carl you'll be locked into it if you play like tom and maybe not so much you know i haven't played in the tournament so uh four hours you know if if your first match is you know midway through the bracket and you lose that you're waiting for the losers bracket to catch up to you four or five hours is not uncommon even without the power 100 tournament if you last into saturday you won't be going to pinball olympics either yeah and i know i'd rather go to that at this point pinball olympics oh yeah oh yeah yeah pinball olympics pretty slick. Well, how much is Pinball Olympics compared to the main tournament? Because isn't the main tournament $140, I think? I think it's like $80. $80 for Olympics. I don't know what the main tournament is this year at Expo. Main tournament is $140, but that includes your Expo passes, too. Oh, okay. So it's like TPF.
    70:49
    That's cool. Does Pinball Olympics include your pass there, Joel? no why are you you've just decided you know to you don't even know what pinball olympics is but you've already learned that you just hate it i mean no i'm actually intrigued pinball i'm more intrigued i i will fully admit the format of expo of their main tournament i hate the format okay i mean i don't mind limited herb but i hate i don't like heads up at all i'm not a fan of it at all so knowing that you have to do that for multiple matches that are just best out of three It's not something that really interests me, but pinball Olympics though, so the way that you're describing it. Yeah. The video they've shown, like there's like one game where they took the tilt Bob and you, you have to put on a hard hat and the tilt Bob's hanging in front of you. So you have to keep your head steady while playing the game to not tilt out, which is clearly the best way to play pinball. I know Travis, you probably won't like that at all, but that sounds super fun to me because there's a chance that I could beat you in that game and clearly you're a better player no i would i would still go hard in the paint carl have you seen the videos that i'm talking about oh yeah they're great you know he's got what he's got a black hole this year with the uh with the spinning tunnel you know like a fun house so you're playing you know the whole world's going to be spinning around while you play it the uh you know there's games where you lay down you've got a mirror you're looking up at to play the game uh through a periscope uh another one like lottery balls are constantly coming down Yeah, it's all great stuff. It's got to be fun. Yeah, it's got to be a good time because, I mean, you've never played a game like that. So I hope – I don't know if it's sold out at this time. I mean, this podcast will either come out probably Tuesday or Wednesday. So feel free, if you're hearing this and going, that sounds great, Pinball Life, check it out. You can buy your ticket there.
    72:40
    But it should be a great time. Travis, I will report back to you and tell you how great it was, and you will be jealous. Can you tell Tom to livestream that? I want to see that. One of them is you have to wear a pair of binoculars or something and backwards or something so it makes the play field look really... I mean, how would you stream almost any of these games? But it sounds pretty cool.
    73:02
    I think it'll be fun. I'll defer to Carl on that one. I'd buy my plane ticket. I think between the two of you guys, I think you probably are the two top pinball tournament streamers out there. I mean, it's pretty impressive what you guys have done. And, yeah, Carl, I mean, your Wizard Mode challenges, the streaming quality there is top notch. Well, not to mention freaking Pin Clash. I mean, holy cow.
    73:31
    That is – I know – so, George, don't panic flip. I know you know him, but, like, he's been trying to do these battles just one-on-one, you know, try to pull in one other person and the technology involved there to do, you know, trying to capture their video and pull all these in and sound and all that. I mean, it's like I've been involved in those and it's we've we've spent 30 to 45 minutes setting it up and that's it. Just it. And you're setting that up for multiple streamers all over the globe. Yeah, but I cheat. I just capture their Twitch stream. It's super easy that way. I don't use RTMP or any of the fancy stuff. That would take longer for sure. Well, so I applaud you. I know you you won. What is the Pinball Industry Award for for streaming? So that's – what did you do with that award? Did you put it on the front of your car like a hood ornament or what? I dropped it, and it didn't break, which was fantastic. Yeah. It hit my floor, but I was like, no, the floor is okay. The award didn't break. It's somewhere around here. That's awesome. I couldn't see it drop, yeah. I was setting it up for a picture, and it just tipped over. I was like, oh, gosh. That's awesome. What did you do with it? I dropped it. Sweet.
    74:38
    Did you talk about your setup for Pin Class? Didn't you have like a bunch of monitors and like a couple of computers? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I had three computers for this last one. Just, yeah, my whole room. I mean, you can't see my room much. But, yeah, the whole wall lined with monitors for it. It's insane. Running back and forth between them, between the games, trying to change the streams. It'd be great if I had more people local to do it. It'd be better. Explain to me, though, because there were so – okay, well, we actually talked about you the other day with Insider Connected. And, you know, you had multiple during pin clash there. You're all about it's like you have to achieve a task. That's your whole tournament. So it's you establish what the task is. So whatever. First, Thor multiball. And you you have defined rules on. Well, how does that start? Is it when that ball plunges or you have to see it pop up on screen or, you know, all these things. Insider Connected should make your life easier in terms of pin clash. Right. Because then it's just like, see the notifications. right like that's yeah but you have to wonder if they're how much lag is between the reporting it depends on how certain has their system set up yeah if they can time from the moment the plunge hits you know the ball leaves the uh the switch in the plunger lane all the way to when the goal is made yeah and they have a specific time it'd be great yeah don't know if they will i don't know what they're looking in the future for you know what what api access they're going to have or anything like that the same thing with my software if i if i can get scores reported to my software to make tournaments easier like i did with scorebit yeah that's really i don't know that's just fascinating to me because your current method is you're saying you're capturing their streams so there's that little bit of lag and and it was amazing at least in the last one how many of these head-to-head battles ended almost simultaneously and it then required what you had to re-watch their entire that entire task and time it like and try to how did you yeah so we had a judge go back and watch the the vod of the individual streamer just the last minute just just the time from beginning to end again just to make sure that the time and that's why that's why we have the individual timers because you know first on the right could be five seconds delayed compared the person on the left well well not to put you on the spot but maybe this is what was the biggest lesson you learned between pin clash one and two what did you what was the biggest like i have got to change x or what was the biggest improvement from your end between one and two that you made it was really just behind the scenes stuff it wasn't it wasn't anything major okay um the the timing and having a bit more you know changing the rules so that uh if they're slightly over you know that's okay as long as we had three three judges that were close to each other we weren't going to re-review, just keep the tournament moving was a lot of it.
    77:30
    Because it can run long so easily if you have to go back and review so many different VODs. Yeah. And I'm assuming, I mean, Tom, when Super Series ended, you slept for what, like four days straight. So I know when Pin Clash ended for you, Carl, I'm assuming you slept safe and sound that night. Yeah.
    77:51
    Well, Travis, I mean, you, Travis and Tom, you both were you experienced pin clash tom both times right both person but travis just last time i mean uh i don't know overall thoughts on working with carl behind the scenes on getting that set up no it was all a lot of fun i mean it was it was well ran in the discord everybody made it easy to know what we're supposed to do where we were supposed to be and when we needed to be there and that's the biggest thing is that it was highly organized behind the scenes that nobody else could see and that's what made it so much easier to do now that being said i didn't appreciate being on escher's side of the bracket because that just imploded on me but you know i had fun overall but did it travis you said you we talked so many theories with your thing because you were like carl you blew his mind when when he's like we can do whatever we want on our on our outlanes and whether or not oh yeah you know yeah i had my game set up a special way yeah yeah travis is thinking I should move this out lane so I can drain easier there. And that, I mean, just the level that these guys were at. It came into play too. Yeah, it came into play. So what it was, the feedback from the Hawkeye loop, if it didn't go all the way and it fed back to the left in lane, I removed the rubber out of there because I found that the way the geometry was, it fed much cleaner through that in lane. There was no chance of it rattling or anything like that. And I wanted it to feed clean because I knew I could ski jump over to the right side at a much quicker pace. But I left the rubber on on the right side because I knew I needed to make more shakes that way.
    79:27
    That's crazy. Well, it obviously didn't help me at all. It's crazy. I tried it at least. So, Carl, for Last Pin Clash, to qualify, it was all about, what is it? It's Black Order or something? What's it called? Battle Royale. Battle Royale, yeah.
    79:44
    But it's Battle Royale. Did you personally ever attempt it? Like, do you have a time? After I saw everyone doing the hold the right flipper up and ski jump it, I tried it for a half hour before my wrist hurt, and I was done at that point. I didn't want to do it anymore. I felt bad for everybody in the tournament. That was doing that. It was funny how we discovered that, too, behind the scenes, because I remember texting Tom that I'd figured this out because nobody else had figured it out yet, at least publicly. And we were kind of like, when are people going to realize that they should leave their flippers up and that they can micro flip? because we got it all the way down to, I think, 14 or 13 on our best runs. I think Neil and I were streaming like almost every night, which was fun. I mean, it was fun. It was a good time. I will say that the Avengers one was much more enjoyable than the Jurassic Park. Yeah, for me anyways. I don't know why. Maybe because the Jurassic Park was more timed and this was more you know a little different scenario with the flips What was what was the Jurassic park one That was the uh yeah Okay But it was all time So it so that's one of those where you could get a minute and a half into it and then the wheels could fall off. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, that was the problem. I mean, you know, you'd get through a couple of them and then it was like, Oh great. I'm, I'm really on, on track here. and then all of a sudden you couldn't make a shot. And then it's like, oh, got to start over.
    81:21
    Yeah, that's – you know, props to Keith, right, because, Tom, right behind you, you still own your Avengers, and, Travis, you still own yours. I mean, the amount of hours that you guys put on that game for Pen Clash and the fact that you didn't hate it, I mean, that's pretty impressive.
    81:39
    Yeah, so I – Well, there was a lot of hours on it, But I got lucky, too, on my one qualifying run. I think I took 30 minutes to stream. So I didn't have to pull a Tom and stream all month. But I actually lucked into mine because I just kind of flipped around and shots just fell where they fell. But no, I mean, overall, it's funny with Pin Clash. So, again, kind of going back to this, I don't really enjoy heads up matches too much. but if it's timed base, I like those better than just playing just for straight score. Cause I feel like, I feel like it gives an opportunity for even the, the players that might not be as skillful to have an upset. Now, I think the most skillful player overall in the tournament will win out when it's all said and done, but I like the idea of potential upsets being there. And I like the idea of filling that initial pressure that if you miss a shot, You have to hurry up and get back under control and then hit your shot. You don't really have any time to breathe. So I like that aspect of it. And actually tell you the truth, if it does take off, I would like to see this be able to be in sanctioned events as well a lot more often, something like this. Especially before like Stern Pro Circuit tournaments, I would love to see something like this between maybe like 8 to 16 people like the day before, if possible. I mean, I just think just the format itself, it's a lot of fun in general. So Ace Kogi runs heads up for every launch tournament with Stern. So we've done all of them from Iron Maiden all the way to, you know, we're playing the Godzilla one now.
    83:17
    That format. And, yeah, it's just a blast to play in. Yeah. More than anything else. It's the, you know, the response is great. And the only downside is, yeah, for the sanctioned tournament, it's one third TGP once you hit that section. Because it's technically a one ball game. yeah i've watched a few of your streams carl where you've done that and it's i think it's crazy because yeah it's like stranger things first to telekinesis multiball ready go and it's just they're so quick and i these are the launch tournaments so some of these people that are showing up these tournaments really haven't put much of any time on these games but yet it's quick enough where it's like oh this is this all you have to do to complete the task let's go you know like i i can learn that um i think it's unique i think it's really cool and that's the stuff once again with the achievements out of JJP or even just with Insider Connected, with Stern. I hope being able to do more of these things, whether or not individual games next to each other or remotely, you know, being able to compete, or even if it's not at the same time, but if keeping track of how quickly you achieve some of these things, I don't know. It's fun. More ways to play pinball, I'm all for it. So that's awesome. um so we totally got diverted there with expo but my my one question with expo is kind of a what do i need to make sure i play and i know in my mind i already have a list of like i have to play a p3 i've got to play a 3p3 i want to experience what that feels like um obviously legends of alhalla i want to play that i want to play jj uh the jurassic park the pin i've yet to play a godzilla i want to play that so for most people it's going to be the new stuff they want to play the new stuff but i am no dave fix i have not been in this hobby for five years so there's a lot of older games there that are unique right or like just fun games that i i mean that's a question for you all right is there do you have an older game maybe that you like whether it's an em or whatever that it's like try make sure you if you see this game give it a flip because it's got some cool whatever um i don't i could just kind of drop that i did not prepare you guys for that at all but maybe that's it do you have a game that if you're walking by at a show like orbiter one right i mean that's a game that it's so awful right so rob rob burke who runs the expo he usually brings a lot of his games and one of the games that he brings that i really enjoy if he still has it of course is spirit because there's okay there's not a lot of them made and uh you know it's just cool to see some rarer games there and i i mean i'd recommend checking that out if it's in the in the free play area okay all right so some of the rare stuff but even not the maybe the competitive stuff so what was it carl your one strike was on what game sky kings sky king so i know and you guys all said sky king sucks so if i what is the thing to do in sky kings don't turn it off turn it off but no for real what's the like if so if i see a sky kings and i walk up to it i want to know like can i do this like you're just shooting the light the captain balls and shoot them so you yeah so no it's not lanes or the saucer at the top and then hit the captain balls that's the whole game okay because i know like somebody brings the sky kings to an expo they're just getting their free ticket that's all they're doing but like alien poker I know now, okay, I want to see, can I knock these cards down in order? You know, and like, that's what normally I would walk right by an alien poker. So are you just asking for like game recommendations? Maybe, maybe that's it. So like, these are, I don't know. Yeah. Like if I was telling somebody that's newer to the hobby and they're wanting to try out stuff that might be a little bit older for me, it would be if I see a Viking, I always have to play Viking if I walk by it just because it's, I mean, it's got the spinner right up the middle. It's got the inline targets. It has a unique way that you could save the ball from an out lane to where you got to bump it back up to the end lane. And I mean, it allows you to tap pass, too. So, I mean, it has a little bit of unique uniqueness to it in that way. And the rule set is fairly simple for people to understand as well. So, I mean, if you're wanting to try different stuff, that might be something.
    87:41
    Maybe, I don't know, maybe like a world win or an earth shaker or something like that, possibly. I mean, those are the games that you see those a lot. at shows though. So, well, I know I'm going to like, if I see a Harlem Globetrotters, I'm going to play that. Cause I haven't played a game with two flippers, like the split. So the idea of like, how is it really that hard to, or are you going to forget and what it's like, scissor yourself, right? Where you drain that way, like the little things like that. So you'll do that on ball one, Joel. Don't worry about it. Guaranteed. If you've never done it before, it's going to happen. Yeah. A random question for you guys. Would you, would you want to see that type of layout in a modern pen? like a harlem globetrotters sure what just the two flippers on one side like that would you like so rick and morty right i mean carl rick and morty you have the the the pop bumper as the sling like that is that is totally but that excites me yeah that's fantastic you know i was gonna say the games did not miss uh i like andromeda a lot which has the same kind of thing okay pop bumper down there at the flipper yeah yeah i i like oddball layouts so anything that's different besides the standard you know italian bottom i gravitate towards you're in it you're in okay yeah i would like i would like to see it personally the three flippers on the bottom i i think that that's something that needs to come back but it's obvious why companies like jersey jack and stern won't necessarily go down that road because i don't see too many people taking a tier theme and doing something like that but there is one there is one modern game i can think of that has a what's that starship troopers oh yeah when was that little mini flipper 90 something yeah 90 it's been a while yeah and so i mean that that goes back to a good example though i mean starship troopers isn't exactly a tier theme so i feel like i don't know i feel like if american pinball or spooky did something similar to this it would still be really popular and i could see spooky maybe doing something like that in the future but then again i mean i don't know i just feel like a lot of these a lot of these designs once you get outside of elwynn a lot of them start feeling close to being the same in that regard just the way that the flipper layouts are going to be so i would like to see something like that in the future okay i i mean me too but i also understand if if stern is supposed to be focusing on they are all about bringing people in the hobby if if a casual person saw a game with two flippers like that are they going to be excited to play that game or more scared of it like i don't i don't know um i don't know i know i'd like to see it i'd like i'd like to mix things up don't know until you try yeah true very true have you played a uh taxi before joel oh yeah yes i'm a fan of taxi okay what so why don't miss that what why i'm a fan of taxi but to the listeners why why would why do you think of taxi what stood out to you there i don't know i mean it's just it's a faster paced game i i like the shots in general i mean it's a simplified layout but it very much has a do the thing type rule set in it and i don't know i just i like playing it i'm not great at it but it's a fun game all right well i will say so here's my last expo question i just i literally just finished the loser kid pinball podcast before this started and um they have a bet they have a bet on whether or not toy story will be revealed at expo travis is saying no he's shaking his head carl's a no tom is a no i would assume No, but their points were what? I mean, technically, Guns N' Roses was revealed right around this time remotely.
    91:36
    And before then, Pirates was revealed at Expo, right? So like Expo is kind of their thing. But I know from a manufacturing standpoint, I don't know. I have no, unless that whole point of the second line was get this ready to start producing the next game. And we're going to, it's ready. so let's make a few wonkas while we wait.
    91:59
    I don't know. But the three of you guys pretty quickly said no. I'm just thinking they're behind on Guns N' Roses. Yeah. I could be wrong there. They're still selling October games, aren't they? The games people pre-ordered back in October are still good. Yeah, but so is Stern, right? A year ago. But Stern is, I mean, there's people that still have their Mandos.
    92:23
    Yeah, but Mando just came out a few months ago, though. not a year ago. Yeah. Okay. And that's Stern also Stern as a very, you know, they've set up their licenses. They, you know, two to three games per year. Okay. Joel, do you think that there's a, a pro to announcing that at expo? Um, no. What would be the benefit for Jersey Jack to announce their game? Well, I mean, they, if Jersey Jack announced, if Jersey Jack announced toy story right now, all the collectors additions are gone. I mean, it's just, they just sold, you know, hundreds of games and, and there would be a whole bunch more sales come flooding in. Now, I understand that's going to happen whenever they announce it, whether it's today, tomorrow, or a year from now, that's going to happen. But we've talked about this with Stern. Like why, why do they keep doing things? And the excuse is always, well, if they have the parts or if it's a license requirement, like we have timeline, like we've, we only have so many years to make this game. We got to get it out. That's the only thing I could think of. If Toy Story has been rumored for a long time, maybe they have all the parts there and they're behind on GNR. Or maybe it's a licensing thing of, you know what, we promised it would come out in 2020. Maybe we're able to push it back. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up here. But financially, do they need the money right now? No. But if they did it, they're going to sell a bunch of them.
    93:49
    So you're saying get that pre-order money in? No, I mean, you know Zach and other distributors already have lists for Toy Story, right? Oh, yeah. So it's funny. I won't name them on the podcast, but there's one particular distributor I heard about today. As a matter of fact, they're trying to get a hold of 20 to 30 CEs for the next one.
    94:13
    So, I mean, obviously people are predicting it's going to be a pretty big seller, and you have to assume it will sell out pretty quick. The question is, though, if you announce a pin that early and even if you get a sellout day one, you're still not being able to sell any of your secondary products for your secondary units for that run. So the next tier and the tier below that, it's still going to be just hanging around. So that's still money that would be lost. You see what I'm talking about? Yeah. Where if you're going to sell your CEs regardless, but then you're not going to capture those other cells because your line is so far behind. I don't know if that'd be the good way to go. I don't know. I just know that right now, any, every pinball machine is selling every new used, everything's selling. And I don't know if any of the manufacturers are worried that at some point in time, the money's going to be out. You know, people just bought a whole bunch of legends of Valhalla. And if toy story was announced next week, there's probably somebody that's going to change the order. Right. I mean, they're still saying there's another pen that's supposed to be revealed there too, by an unknown manufacturer. because they announced that on Loser Kids podcast a couple of months ago, and then nothing's been said about it since then.
    95:23
    Well, I mean, if we go through, obviously Stern's going to be all about Godzilla and Insider Connected. They've said, Dwight has said in the stream, that they are going to have the Insider Connected boards on some of the other games. And they want, like, that's the whole goal. They want people to be like, oh, here's a Turtles premium. Let me try to get these awards while I can. And they all have toppers so I can try to get to Goat Mania or whatever. Like, they want people. that's that's what stern is going to be trying to do ap is going to have hot wheels for some people this will be the first chance they've touched hot wheels but they're also going to have legends of valhalla cactus canyon is is it supposed are there supposed to be with with chicago gaming is there i've heard that it's not going to be there but if it's not there they're unconfirmed so yeah there'll be a cactus canyon there somewhere on the floor regardless so i mean if you really want to experience it just go play that and have tom just shine his phone in your eye just acting like the topper and it'll be fine that'll be the same thing okay yeah yeah you're good um i have not heard anything and i'm pretty sure we would have heard something if haggis was gonna have any i don't know i don't know if there's any kilts that have made it stateside and i also don't the chances of them if there was a fathom it would be a surprise at this point i would guess i would I think they've been in lockdown so long. They would have had to ship a pin here months ago, right? Yeah, I think you'd have to give them a break on that stuff. Well, what's the Canadian company that Zach was trying to get? Pinball Adventures. Punny Factory. Punny Factory, yeah. When are we going to see a Carl D'Angelo stream of Punny Factory games? Send me one. Come on. You're ready. Give me Thunderbirds. I don't care. You know, just throw them down. Oh, that's right. Is there going to be a spinal tap there from a home pin? Oh, wow. Yeah, I doubt the queen pin's not going to be there. So really, is that it? Am I missing? I don't think I'm missing anything, but is that really your main focus of the reveals? I mean, maybe food truck from Deep Root might show up. Wow. You know? Yeah. Well, at least one Raza will be there. I guarantee you one Raza will show up. But not the new Raza. Well, no, not the new Raza. Let's not get crazy. Wow. Yeah. There has to be somebody out there that just wants to flex and wants to bring it to Expo. Bring the old one, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay.
    97:41
    All right. Well, that's Pinball Expo. I know it's coming up this week. I'm excited. I will be there Thursday through Sunday. Tom will be there as well. Like I said, bring your merch. Bring whatever you need. Tom's ready to sign. I mean, he's great with pictures. He's got a modeling career. He might have you sign off a waiver of something for you to use his likeness and whatever. But he's available. If he's mid-tournament, interrupt him. He's fine. This is what he does. Yeah. So if he is moving his dolly around, watch out. The cameras do fall off. So that's about it, right? Hey, Carl, as a streamer and a guy, has a camera ever fallen off your mount? No, no, no. First of all, it wasn't a camera. It was one of the battery packs. Okay. Here's the difference. Carl is a professional at this. Tom is Tom. Yeah, it is what it is. Tom works hard, though. I go with him all the time. Anytime I go up to District 82, I go with him the night before, and I supervise him. I make sure everything's coming together nicely. That's what I do. That's my job. Yep. Travis just sits on the couch and watches me.
    98:51
    I tell you you're doing a good job, too, at times. I'm complimentary. I do appreciate that. well Carl to all the streamers out there I mean many of us have copied your rig exactly now I cheaped out and instead of making it out of the extruded aluminum mine is made out of wood Jordan at Fliptronic reminds me all the time that mine would burn and his won't but thank you for that design all good well I think that leads us to our last segment there's no triple combo tonight we actually totally forgot about it until right before we recorded and said we'll save it for the next time so I'm sorry if anybody listening looks forward to that. Boo! Send your boos to Tom. Oh, speaking of emails, we did, thank you for some of the feedback. We got some feedback last episode. We did get one email. I think the guy's name was, I think his name was Dr. Dude, which is pretty great. And I don't have it pulled up, but his email essentially said,
    99:49
    your podcast is like looking into the face of God and him telling you, you are my wonderful creation. That's all it said.
    100:00
    That's all it said. Did you just make that up, Joel? No, that's actually what, you know, I sent you guys the text. You are my wonderful creation. And it made me laugh a lot. So thank you for that. If anybody else has similar feedback, you know, feel free to send it to tripledrain at gmail.com. What was the feedback you got about David Dennis? What was that one? Oh, I said that last time where the guy basically says, as a fellow Canadian, I feel like you're not portraying David Dennis accurately. Here's a list of his top ten features. And it was numbers one to ten, and they were all blank. It was so great. It was, yeah, it was great. But, all right, so we're skipping Triple Combo. We're getting to, I mean, we're getting to the meat and potatoes. This is why people listen to Triple Combo, and that is Tom Talks. This is why people fast forward. This is why people listen to Triple Drain, Joe. It's nice getting to watch the pain on Tom's face. Oh, it's so great. So Carl's got the prompt. We're going to play the intro here, and then this is when me and Travis shut up. So when the prompt ends, Carl, feed him whatever you want. Tom's ready. He's ready to go. Any question, Carl. Anything. All right, here we go.
    101:15
    Tom Talks. He's got something to say. Tom Talks. He's got nothing to say. Tom Talks. Tom, your rig scared me at District 82. It was so wobbly and had extra pieces on it. What was with all the extra pieces and stuff?
    101:38
    I don't know. What do you mean by the extra pieces? The batteries? or you had the extra vertical sections it looked like that i was looking at it just going oh you had something else on there like some extra handles with screws and stuff i was just curious what it was oh that's actually to uh to move the uh the rig in and out so if i'm going through doorways or I want to switch it between a standard and a wide body I can if the if the games are close together but that's why how many doors did you go through during Super Series Tom zero but if he had one he could have done it it was meant for my house All right.
    102:37
    Well, there we go. I'm off this podcast.
    102:50
    I got nothing. Yeah, I just complimented his rack. The originator, the design, everybody's perfect. His rig, okay. It's perfect. And here we go. Tom's, he's messing with it. I just love the look on Tom's face as soon as he realized Carl was asking a streaming question about his rig. I'm like, oh, no. No. It's like Gordon Ramsay coming up to you and just saying, hey. Yeah. Listen here, you donkey. Hey, I see you have the Gordon Ramsay cookbook open. You're cooking my recipe, but yet you added stuff to it. Why is that?
    103:28
    Why is that? Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, this was fun. This was a good time. We'll do some quick plugs. Carl, can't thank you enough for hopping on last minute. I know we were talking super serious. We're like, who else was there that would potentially like to talk about these things? And then we knew you streamed Halloween, so obviously you had some experience there. So, Carl, feel free to plug away whatever you want. What do I got? Just my stream, my pinball. Indisc, actually. Indisc. Come to Indisc February 3rd through the 6th in Riverside, California. Indisc.com. Tickets go on sale November 4th? Or is it November 6th? Let me look at the calendar real quick. It's a Saturday. Saturday, November 6th at 12 Pacific. That's when the four-day tickets, along with the Classics match play, which is limited to 120 people. So that will sell out most likely instantly. Links are on our website.
    104:24
    And everyone does need to be fully vaxxed in order to attend Indisc. fully vaxxed not uh not we're not taking negative tests it's all everyone is fully vaxxed so please get your vaccinations yeah um i got my booster today so i'm waiting for uh waiting for that to kick in uh hopefully later tonight but yeah that's great um carl real quick technical question how do you prepare technically for that where you're going to sell out instantaneously from like a like how do you how do you hand because everybody's just sitting there hitting f5 right like how do you keep it from crashing spookies game like when when when halloween's went on sale everything crashed how do you prepare i know you prepare for things i mean there's only so much you can prepare it's the it's whatever platform you're using so this year we're actually using a new platform because um we partnered with the riverside game lab um which is an arcade right down the road from the convention center they're running the festival of fights and they use a site called smash gg which is used for um fighting game tournaments and stuff like that so all our tickets are running through that site and we've been assured that it should be able to handle the uh the load we throw at it with no issues so that's the case yeah how many tickets because i'm assuming i mean this is a huge tournament but also some of these competitive fighting tournaments are exponentially larger than right you're right and what i was told was this site was built because the people in those those communities they were tired of dealing with the ticketing websites that were crashing and having issues and charging fees. So the community built this site.
    106:01
    Very cool. Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Carl. Travis, go ahead, man. Yeah, you guys can find me over at YouTube at Marv Loco, but I'm actually about to rebrand it, so it'll be under my actual name here pretty soon. What? I know. Crazy. I know. Moving on up. What's your middle name, Travis? You throwing that in there?
    106:26
    No, Joel. Aloysius. Travis Aloysius Murray. Yeah. Okay. You can't even say my last name right, Joel. Joel, what's my last name? Murry. We've gone over this before. There you go. Murry. Good job, Engel.
    106:42
    Perfect. Those flawless. You had it. There you go. Good deal. Tom, plug away, man. Fox Cities Pinball. You can find me on Twitch and YouTube. Also on Facebook and Instagram. and I will be streaming the Expo tournament October 28th through the 31st. Awesome. And that's on Fox City's Pinball then? Correct. Perfect, yeah. And then I'm Joel. I do Just Another Pinball podcast, Just Another Pinball stream. Also stream on Flippin' Out every other week. And, yeah, feel free to see. If you see Tom and I at Expo, please come and say hi. And if there's anything we can do, positive, negative feedback, feel free to email us at a triple drain at gmail.com and our sign off. I think what we're, we're picking out is next time you triple drain, leave a credit on the machine for the next guy. Um, Tom, it's always your goodbye that we wait to hear. So go for it. Goodbye.