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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 44: Expo 2023 Recap Fun!

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 19m·analyzed·Oct 28, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Expo 2023 recap covering tournaments, game reviews, and community stories from Triple Drain hosts.

Summary

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast episodes 44 recap Expo 2023 and surrounding competitive events (Super Series, Stern Pro Circuit Final). Hosts discuss their game room updates (Cactus Canyon, Labyrinth), tournament experiences including commentating challenges with Goldeneye code issues, and relay stories from the Stern factory tour and travel mishaps. Primary focus is competitive pinball coverage and community experiences at major 2023 events.

Key Claims

  • Raymond Davidson won the UK Open

    high confidence · Direct statement congratulating Raymond Davidson for winning UK Open approximately 3-4 weeks prior to recording

  • Goldeneye (Bond) experienced recurring code/mechanical issues during Stern Pro Circuit tournament, particularly with ball save and magnet trap-behind mechanics during multiball

    high confidence · Travis detailed multiple instances of ball loss due to Bond on the Wand magnet failure and ball save malfunction in the trough feature

  • Escher won the Stern Pro Circuit Final at Expo

    high confidence · Confirmed after correction that Escher won the finals tournament

  • Cactus Canyon has strong appeal to younger players and casual family audiences

    high confidence · Joel reports nine-year-old girls repeatedly playing Cactus Canyon at his location, wife and family enjoying it, describing it as a 'friends and family' hit

  • Travis Murray placed fourth in Super Series main event and third in Classics (Fair Strikes)

    high confidence · Direct statement from Travis about his placements; he avoided some events due to knee surgery recovery concerns

  • Stern factory tour showed single production line operational with second line being set up; significant expansion capacity available

    high confidence · Joel's detailed description of factory tour observations regarding production setup

  • Labyrinth code improvements have made the game substantially better than earlier versions

    medium confidence · Joel commentary on watching Bond (Goldeneye) during tournament and noting code progression; separate note about streaming Labyrinth and it being 'great'

  • Max Senesac won the Super Series main event

    high confidence · Tom confirmed Max Senesac as the Super Series winner and described him as a strong player

Notable Quotes

  • “There's dozens of us, okay, that like it. I love Cactus Canyon.”

    Joel @ early in episode — Joel defends Cactus Canyon against community criticism, noting grassroots support despite vocal detractors

  • “But screw the premium. I'm telling you right now. That game effed me three times during the tournament.”

    Tom @ mid-episode — Tom expresses frustration with Goldeneye Premium reliability issues that affected his tournament performance

  • “He's okay. Yeah. He does fine. He's all right. Yeah. [Escher's] lucky there's ball saves in games, for sure. And he's lucky that... He's lucky there's flippers on the game, too.”

    Joel @ mid-episode — Sarcastic acknowledgment of Escher's dominance in competitive pinball

  • “Commentating Bond and watching Bond and listening, there was a few different times I commentated, but like Raymond Davidson was sitting next to me one time. Dalton was sitting next to me one time... it felt like the Twilight Zone.”

    Joel @ during tournament recap — Describes excitement of commentating alongside elite players; context for Goldeneye rule complexity

  • “There's a little graphic showing the seats. Every seat on that graphic was red except for mine, which was green because [I did nothing].”

    Joel @ factory tour story conclusion — Humorous anecdote about BMW seat malfunction during ride to Stern facility tour

Entities

Triple Drain Pinball PodcastorganizationExpo 2023eventStern Pro Circuit FinaleventSuper SerieseventCactus CanyongameLabyrinthgameGoldeneye (Bond)gameEscherpersonRaymond Davidsonperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball factory operating at partial capacity with one production line active and second line being set up; significant expansion room available in facility

    high · Joel: 'They only had one line going at the time. The other line is being set up... The amount of wiring that they have going. I mean, it's just really impressive to see how much they're doing and how quickly they're doing it.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Fox Cities Pinball tournament streaming setup includes touchscreen telestrator technology enabling visual shot callouts during commentary; community responding positively to this innovation

    high · Joel: 'Tom with Fox Cities Pinball has an incredible setup for streaming tournament pinball, one of which is a touchscreen. So having the telestrator to be able to visually show the shots we're talking about, I personally found it very useful.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Expo 2023 served as major gathering with tournament play (Stern Pro Circuit Final), factory tours, and community meetups; hosts participated in commentary and venue experiences

    high · All three hosts attended Expo; detailed coverage of tournament finals, Stern factory tour, and multiple tournament-related stories

  • ?

    community_signal: UK Open tournament in England attracting international participation and developing following; hosts expressing interest in returning and recommending to North American players

    medium · Travis: 'I went to England... it was awesome... Highly recommend it. I'm going to try to get out there next year, and I know a bunch of other people are going to try to get out there.'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.417

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. All right, everybody, just buckle up. It's going to be a mess today. Do you realize where you're setting your coffee cup, Travis? In front of me. So Travis is moving. Oh, yes.
0:26
Did it again. Yeah, Travis is in the process of moving. So he is in his new house. He went back to his old house to record, and they already turned off his internet. So Travis is recording on his phone. So if his video goes out, it's either A, his phone died, but he hasn't plugged into a battery pack, or B, it's going to get knocked over by a dog, or we're just going to stare at a coffee cup because I bet he's going to do it at least 10 times. My table is literally this wide. All right. I only have so much real estate to work with right now. Yeah. Need a bigger table. Tell Monica your tables are too small. I'll try. Holy crap. Joel has a cactus canyon. Yeah. Yeah, man. And then Tom. Is that David Bowie behind you? What is that? I do. You know, we have so much to talk about. Tom also put in a new hard drive into his computer right before he started recording. So guaranteed hardware failure coming from there as well. So we're just going to see what's going on. But, hey, with all that aside, Tom, how are you feeling? You ready? You ready for this?
1:26
No. No, perfect. All right. Travis, are you and your dog ready for this? Yeah, we're good. Let's do it. All right, here we go. We're weird.
1:55
I'm a golden retriever. It's a beautiful golden retriever right there. And now everybody's going to watch the YouTube video. We finally have something worth looking at.
Travis Murray
person
Tomperson
Joelperson
District 82organization
UK Openevent
Neil McRaeperson
Stern Pinballcompany
Max Senesacperson
Brian Allenperson
Evil Pinball Westorganization
Brian Eddyperson
Fox Cities Pinballorganization
Craig Bobbyperson
Keith Allenperson
Colin McAlpineperson
Barrels of Funcompany

competitive_signal: Elite younger players dominating competitive circuit; older players (25+ age bracket) occasionally placing but significantly outnumbered by young players at top level

medium · Tom: 'I think Max won it... he played excellent... So score one for the seniors division of 25 and over.' Broader observation about young players 'rising to the top' and 'winning everything'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tom's District 82 arcade operated as classics-heavy venue; Tom expressing interest in expanding modern machine selection to test competitive skill diversity

    medium · Tom: 'I like being able to try to test my skills in terms of making adjustments... But I do look forward to the time when District 82 decides to do more moderns as well'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Cactus Canyon receiving significant post-release customization with Brian Allen alternative artwork and Evil Pinball West custom side armor mods; hosts emphasizing improved aesthetics

    high · Joel: 'I got that from Zach. It's flipping out. Love it... I got the art blades as well. And then Evil Pinball, Evil Pinball West out of Evansville, Indiana, he hooked me up with these side... side armor that look like guns.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Goldeneye Premium model experienced multiple game-stopping technical issues during tournament play; Tom expressing regret about game reliability despite acknowledging code improvements

    high · Tom: 'But screw the premium. I'm telling you right now. That game effed me three times during the tournament.' Issues included ball save malfunction and magnet trap recognition failures.

  • ?

    product_concern: Goldeneye (Bond) Premium experienced recurring code issues during tournament play including ball save malfunction in trough and magnet trap-behind mechanics failing to recognize trapped ball during multiball

    high · Travis detailed multiple instances: (1) ball trapped behind Bond on Wand magnet, game didn't recognize trap, ball save feature failed to fire balls after closing coin door; (2) identical magnet trap issue happened again; (3) Dalton experienced similar car scoop malfunction in multiball; (4) Tom suspects code issue and wondered if feature can be disabled

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive sentiment shift for Cactus Canyon: Joel reports previously critical community members now acknowledging game quality; grassroots support emerging despite earlier dismissal

    high · Joel: 'I had multiple people come up to me at Expo... Joel, why did I give you so much crap on Cactus Canyon? Cactus Canyon is a great game... There's dozens of us, okay, that like it.'

    • 2:15
    It's a cool looking dog. All right. So what's the goal for today? The goal for today is really Expo. We all went to Expo. We spent, well, there was, now we can go a little bit before that. You had Super Series. You had Super Series, and then there was the Stern Pro Circuit Final, and then there was Expo, not only the show but also the tournament. We've got a bunch of games to talk about. But before we talk about all that good stuff, real quick game room updates. So I'll go first. If you look behind me, Cactus Canyon. Cactus Canyon is finally here. It's finally set up.
    2:47
    I got that from Zach. It's flipping out. Love it. Love the game. If you guys notice, I have the Brian Allen alternative artwork. Worked with him on that. I love it. I think it makes the game feel a little more modern. Not that the old artwork is bad. I just prefer this artwork. And then I got the art blades as well. And then Evil Pinball, Evil Pinball West out of Evansville, Indiana, he hooked me up with these side, not blades, but like side armor that look like guns. They actually look really, really cool. So this is the SE+. I actually prefer the look of the stainless metal on the game over the powder-coated gun metal. So love all that. So I'm already starting to mod that out. Love the game. I already love it. People mock friends and family, but it's already a hit. I mean, my wife was playing it the other day. My sister. Wow. My daughter has made friends with girls down the road. And one of the girls, who's like nine, she keeps coming, like almost daily, is coming down here. And what does she play? She plays Cactus Canyon. That's like she's all in on it just because hitting that guy and seeing his hat pop up. So friends and family, check that box. Boom. Love it. Another game room update. We're going to talk a lot more about that is right there. Crushing the nine-year-old female demographic. The nine-year-old female demographic.
    4:05
    Killing it. I will say, you know. See if I have a Toy Story 4 maybe. I don't know. We'll see. I'll sell it and I'll see how mad she gets, you know, just like your twins. Which game is going to be better for the young girl demographic? The 6 to 10-year-old, you know? I just need to wait for a fist pump. You know, that's what I need. That's what we're waiting on. Uh-oh, Tom's drinking a Mountain Dew. Dude, this is going to be a good episode. I got tea here, too. Oh, doubling up.
    4:33
    David Bowie is here. I have a labyrinth. We're going to talk more about that, but I have one here. I streamed it the other night. It's great. So we will definitely talk about more. You can see that in the background. What I wanted to say is I had multiple people come up to me at Expo, and it was awesome. It was awesome talking to people that are fans of the show. But believe it or not, there are people that are like, Joel, why did I give you so much crap on Cactus Canyon? Cactus Canyon is a great game. I own it, you know? They're like, the supporters out there are like, thank you for being a voice to the people that like Cactus Canyon. Snowpulp fiction. So for the two of you that have your own opinions on Cactus Canyon, there's dozens of us, okay, that like it. I love Cactus Canyon. People keep buying it. I love it. It's my favorite game ever. Any game that sells is awesome. Any game. That's very diplomatic of you. Well, it just comes down to, like, how many times you're going to play it. I've just played it so much. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's saying Z's over and over again. You guys are too good. Well, you can say that about any game that you want. You know? So, that's just how it is. Did you guys hear my phone? Just, like, do a weird thing? He's going to be getting texts. He's going to look at me. If anybody's watching the YouTube, he looks like an idiot. He's like staring. I don't have my glasses on and my dog is attacking me right now. I was going to say, I saw a dog come up there. This is going to be so great. All right. So that's my game room updates. Travis, brand new house. He has a basement now. So your recording studio right now is a couch and a tiny table. I mean that could go one or two ways Joel yeah and but your basement looks very large and I saw pinball machines down there you finally have all your games in one area so I'm excited to see once you get all that set up that was actually that was only half my collection believe it or not I'm here at the con level getting closer until you have another location You have to have the basement with all the games, but then you also have the other location of the games, the backup location. That's true. Tom's got the backup location. That's true. And nobody knows where Tom is except for a select few. Yeah, him owning District 82, that's huge. That's a lot of games. I can't wait until the world ends because I'm just going to stay down here. You'll be good. Tom, do you have any updates at all in your collection or new games in the last few weeks?
    7:05
    I have zero new games, Joel. Zero new games. because you bought a lot of them. But I do have a new game coming next week. Oh, do you want to share what that is? No. Oh, okay. Cool. Good talk. Is it a used game or a new in-box game? It's used. I'm getting a Bon Pro again. Oh, it's coming back. It's coming back. Oh, this is interesting. After everybody destroyed me on it at Expo, I just decided I need more time on it.
    7:34
    I think the code is so much better than it was. I will say I, believe it or not, did a little bit of commentating during the Expo stream of the tournament and loved every bit of it. And I will say commentating Bond and watching Bond and listening, there was a few different times I commentated, but like Raymond Davidson was sitting next to me one time. Dalton was sitting next to me one time. Eric Stone, you know, all guys that know the rules very well. Tom was sitting next to me. Robert Byers. I would just like to say it felt like the Twilight Zone, driving down a highway and listening to that, when you can hear Eric Stone in the booth with Joel and Joel's explaining a rule. I was like, what is happening right now? I knew Venom more than most of the people I was commentating with. You did well. It made me very happy. You did well. I loved it. You were entertaining. We'll talk about this later, Travis, but he was actually talking to Tanya about Elton John rules. I stole the picture. While I was playing the game, I'm just sitting there like, what is going on? What is this? Is this real? This is real. One guy wins one game of Labyrinth, all of a sudden he's just like, you know, just floating and levitating above all the pins and telling everybody, yeah, just hit that shot. Just hit that shot. It's the new me. Okay. Joel gets in the booth, right? Yeah. And all of a sudden, everybody in that room is coming over and drawing on my touch screen. Oh, it's the best. So, like, the whole stream is, like, Joel and Raymond and Byers just, like, all over the place. And the viewers loved it. And nobody can see where the ball is. The viewers loved it. He just walked to the side. Tom, you were just like. I couldn't do anything. No, he kept reaching in and clearing it. Way too far away. He kept clearing. Tom would walk by, and so here's Robert Byers showing the six-way combo and Iron Maiden. So it's like, woo, woo, woo, and he's going, and Tom's like, he's only on combo four, and Tom's like, clear. He just wanted it clear. But, yes, we will talk about it more, but the commentating was awesome. Tom with Fox Cities Pinball has an incredible setup for streaming tournament pinball, one of which is a touchscreen. So having the telestrator to be able to visually show the shots we're talking about, I personally found it very useful. and there are times that I watch streams that I wish, you know, as the commentators are describing, it's like, well, what he needs to do is he needs to do this and this. And I'm thinking like, well, show me, show me where that shot is. Like, show, you got the teleshirt or touch it, you know? But anyways, what I was saying was commentating Bond, watching that game now and seeing how much the code has progressed from when I first got it to stream to now is night and day. Like, it really looks so much more fun. And I learned there's like a mini wizard mode where it's what? If you complete one henchman, one villain, one Q mode, or maybe it's do both multi-balls. It's like you just have to do four things and boom. It's like little stuff like that that can carry you through that game.
    10:40
    And then there's like smart missiles now or smart bombs. What's up, Tom? But screw the premium. I'm telling you right now. That game effed me three times during the tournament. Twice in qualifying, twice, and then once in playoffs. I'm going to guess. Which part? Yeah, without him saying it, I'm going to guess it probably has something to do with Bond on the wand.
    11:06
    Twice on that. The other time was the bond. So on stream, Dalton was in multi-ball playing Escher, and one of the balls came out of the buck and went straight down. What's that? The rocket lock thing? No, no, the car. The car on the right side. Okay. So the ball, you hit it in the scoop, the ball bounces out of the car and it's supposed to return to your right flipper. Well, I'm sitting there playing it, you know, single ball play. I'm like, oh, I'll hit this shot. and then uh yeah the i just see the ball like just come out and just take a nice ramp down the car into the out lane and the exact same thing happened to dalton but he was in multi-ball and he actually like double drained versus but that features on both the pro and premium it is so why do you hate the premium because it happened on the premium oh so it wasn't actually It wasn't a premium feature. It was just a premium game. But twice I was in multi-ball, and the ball fell off the magnet on bond. It might have been induced by me. I might have hit the lockdown bar button. But it got trapped behind him, and then the game doesn't realize the ball is trapped behind him. so the first time uh i the td came over i cheered and um basically was like he did the he did the absolute right thing knew what i what he was going to do so he took both the balls put them in the trough because on sterns they have a feature where you get a coin door ball saver so he's like oh we'll put them in the trough and you know we'll close the coin door it'll shoot the balls out you'll still be a multi ball I go yep okay so he puts them in the trough closes the door I'm ready to go I see the ball save blinking for like five seconds no balls come out and then my game ends I'm like nice what the hell just happened and then the same thing happened to me in my last game except I pleaded with the TDs to put them on my flippers because of the situation I had before. They did. It worked. But anyways, by that time it was 10 minutes later and I was already, like, out of rhythm. So the trough thing, is that like a code issue, you assume, with Bond specifically or just maybe that game? I would think so. I would, you know, unfortunately in multiball, you can't really, the game can't really discern that, like, there's ball trapped when there's two balls on the play field. So I had no idea it was trapped behind the bond on a wand. But my thing is, I thought they should disable that for the tournament.
    14:17
    But I don't know if you can in the code. Like, I don't know if it's a feature that can actually be disabled. I want to say that they tried at the Stern Pro Circuit Championship but I don't know if they were successful in doing that or not because we were having issues with it there also okay so well yeah something for the Stern coders to look at yeah but cool well all right so we've got so much we got so much to cover let's just go chronologically so let's back up all the way to Super Series I wasn't there both of you guys were actually we'll have to back up just one more thing because we forgot to talk about it so we got to say congratulations to Raymond Davidson for winning the UK Open we briefly talked about it like 10 seconds and we're like shit we totally forgot to talk about it but yeah so I went to England this is like 3 weeks ago now maybe 4 weeks ago it was awesome a lot of fun Neil McRae puts on an excellent event so if anybody else is thinking from the US or Canada, thinking about going out there. Highly recommend it. I'm going to try to get out there next year, and I know a bunch of other people are going to try to get out there. So, games played a lot of fun. The location was fun. It was fun just being around London, getting to see the different sights and sounds, and plus they get to play against European players as well. There's a lot of outstanding players over there, of course, and to get to meet a lot of people over in England that actually listen to the show and absolutely hate Joel, which is just awesome. Maybe love England even more. So, yeah, it's a cool place. I'm sure they didn't hate you. They're Team Travis and Tom. So, you know, people in Chicago are Team Joel for whatever reason. But, you know, so it's fine. It's all good. I have a team. Yeah, oh, yeah. Big fan. Tom, everybody loves Tom. I don't know what it is. I've not heard somebody say one bad word about you. Me? Bad shit all the time. Joel, I absolutely hate. Tom? Yeah, you're like the freaking, what would it be? What would Tom's equivalent be for the Beatles? Like, would he be our Ringo or our Paul? I don't know. Which one would he be? What's the more popular one?
    16:32
    Taylor Swift. Yep, that's Tom. He'd be our Taylor Swift. Okay, that's good. I love the Tom's out there.
    16:40
    Okay, so UK Open, yes, congrats, Ray Day. Way to crush that. Sorry we forgot it last time. But, yeah, so then we get to Super Series. Because Super Series was a multiple-day event. It was, yes, I know we watched or I tried to watch some of it from afar.
    17:01
    I don't know. I'm going to let you guys recap that if there's anything that stands out to you. It was tiring.
    17:08
    Okay. Solid. Try to let it play. Super Series. Memorable. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I took fourth in the main. I'm trying to think of all the other ones. I honestly don't remember. I took third in the classics fair strike. Yeah. Tom did do that. I think I know I didn't place top eight in anything else because I would have got money then. But I think I dropped one or two events, too, to save my legs. You dropped one event for sure. Yeah. Because I want to stay off my legs because for those that don't know, I've had multiple knee surgeries. So standing up all day long, my knees will just absolutely blow up. So I had to kind of hold back. But it's fun. I enjoy going to different venues and different events in which I can play a lot of tournaments at once. But it's one of those things that I can only do that every so often. If I try to do that once a quarter, my legs are just completely gone. But it's fun to do, to get in four to six tournaments and try to play as much pinball as possible. And plus, I enjoy being able to play a modern game than a classic game and kind of go back and forth. I know some people, it kind of gets old a little bit for some people to do. And I know District 82 is kind of known to be classics heavy. But at the same time, I like being able to try to test my skills in terms of making adjustments and everything. Because some games there, I just get absolutely destroyed. Other games, I feel like I got a decent chance at. So, I mean, it makes for a good competitive area with how I like to play pinball, if that makes sense. But I do look forward to the time when District 82 decides to do more moderns as well. I think that'll be fun. But at the same time, though, these 20-year-olds are winning everything anyways. They don't have to keep winning up there, you know? Yeah. I think Max won it. I can't pronounce his last name, Tom. Max Senesac. Okay, yeah. And he played excellent. And I know he's not 21. He's a little bit older than 21. So score one for the seniors division of 25 and over. Seniors division 25. Yeah, I've lowered it to 25. Max is a great player. He doesn't come to District 82 a lot, but when he does, you know. Watch out. Yeah. Nice. The real question that I'm assuming all the listeners are wondering is, how did the world-renowned, world-famous volley go? So it was Carlos, Andy Bagwell, and I in the booth for that, and we had a little bit of a good time commentating that. Yeah. What was it? Andy had strong opinions on the plunge. If you plunged in one particular way where the ball would, he would go bounce, bounce, out. He knew immediately that person has no chance. So he was, like, striking people out on the monitor. As soon as they plunged, he's like, nope. like, just like gave up on him. Like, nope. It was, it was very entertaining. But yeah, Volley Hype, Volley Hype is real. For people that don't know, it's a $5 buy-in tournament where it's one ball highest score wins the pot, but you can buy back in for 20 bucks if you want another go at it. So any idea what the, what the winner ended up winning? Like roughly how much? I want to say it was probably close to $200, maybe even more than that. It was a lot. For one ball, one game of volley. An oldie. I can't remember who won off the top of my head, but I remember they came in. They were like the very last person. And boom. And they blew it up. It was like 60,000. I want to say it was Cody Webb, but I could be wrong. but then like four people threw in 20 bucks. I'm like, that's insane. To try again. Too rich for my blood. $20, yep. $20 to try to get 60,000 on volley with one ball. It's not happening. No. Well, that's awesome. Well, yeah, I mean, I know Super Series was like almost a week-long event. Is there anything else to say about that? Well, we started it, I guess, technically on a Tuesday, right, Tom? Is when it started. I mean, not the Super Series itself, but playing. Technically, yeah. So there was Tilton Tuesday. And then there was a Classics kickoff on Wednesday night, which was an all Classics tournament. Yeah. Which had a finals, which was fun. It was fun. I forgot about that. I barely made the – I didn't make the cutoff. I was like two points away. I think you made it, right? You had a tiebreaker. That's where I had that awesome tiebreaker on Paragon. It was fantastic. One ball tiebreaker, Joel. I think there was eight of us. And what did you put up on that, Travis? I put up a pretty strong 8,500, I think, on one ball. It was really strong, and somehow it held. I don't know. Nice.
    22:13
    Joel, it's not supposed to hold. It's pretty bad, Joel. Yeah, no, I'm getting that. I can read into the sarcasm. But it's Paragon. It's Paragon. It is Paragon. It's no bad girls, but it's Paragon.
    22:26
    Double zero. Somebody recently had a double zero ball. They're trying to step in on your territory. I don't know if it was like Carlos or Raymond or somebody who was. I had one. Yeah, there you go. We had somebody at one of our games at District 82 on one of the solid states. I think they legitimately scored 20 points.
    22:49
    And it was funny after they did it because I was in a group with them. And this happened twice, but one time somebody actually said something. They said something like, well, at least it's no zeros. I was like, yeah, that is true. The class is half full. Well, cool. Well, awesome. Well, Super Series happened, and then I know, Travis, you drove all the way home. You bought a new house and then turned around and drove back. To Chicago. Yeah, you're in the Stern Pro Circuit tournament. So this is for last year. What was it, top 24 or how many? I think it was the top 32. Top 32 people. That's how they do it now, yeah. They changed the format around this year, but they've been changing the format around continuously. So if you watched it on, I guess it would be Stern's YouTube channel is what they live stream. But for last year's event, they pre-taped it. So they taped it before Expo, and they've been releasing it in, I guess, episode at content or in episodes to where it was a ladder format. So this year they didn't do it like that. Instead, it was the top 32. The top six, I believe, got double buys, and then the next group down got single buys, and then everybody else played in the first round. It was just best of three, all sterns, of course, all modern sterns. And, yeah, you just play from there. He's playing like any other heads up. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I know, well, a shot like Keith Allen, he wore a triple green shirt. I saw that on stream, so that was pretty cool.
    24:20
    I think I talked to him at Expo. I think he said it's his bad luck shirt now because he lost it. It might be. But a lot of people don't realize he had a gnarly injury. Something with his toe. Yeah. Yeah, he, like, fell and he had a hurt foot, a hurt toe or something. A lot of people don't realize that. Yeah, he could barely stand on it or put pressure on it while he was playing. Yep. Yeah, he went from being a goat to being a little human there, thankfully. So far, I guess for everybody. Brought him back down to the field. Well, it was tough because the pod I was in was just insane. It was him versus Colin McAlpine in round one, and then the winner would play Andre Massinkoff, and then the winner would play me, and then the winner of that would probably have to play Escher. So it's just like, where do you go? Yeah, and there was killers everywhere, though. Like, everybody was an excellent player to have to qualify to get to that. Now, obviously, if you travel enough and you place high enough, you're going to get there. But that being said, everybody there earned their way. Everybody played well. And there was, yeah. I mean, if you watch it, of course, young kids rise to the top. And I think we had, like, I want to say it was Escher and Zoller in one round. And then there was, I guess, a Bowen and Eric Stone matchup. And, of course, Collin and Elwin in the first round. So you got to see some cool matchups throughout. I wish a lot of it would have been able to be on the stream or at least record it. But, you know, overall, though, there was some excellent play being done. So I drove up to Expo on Wednesday, and so I was actually listening to the stream while driving. So I couldn't watch it, but it was interesting, like, listening to pinball, almost kind of a play-by-play. And, you know, when you hear the commentators like, oh, yeah, you know, it's like, yep, that ball's gone. You know, it's like you can listen to the reactions and whatnot. But I think the final two were too young. It was Escher and Jarrett, right? And Jarrett ended up winning it. Yeah. No. Escher. Who won that? Did you not see our picture on Facebook? Oh, I saw it. Yeah, yeah. I saw it.
    26:26
    You're a competitive commentator now, and you've got to get your players right. You've got to get the names right. Who won the Expo tournament? That was... Who do you think? Let's just go with... Escher won it again?
    26:38
    I mean, he is the number one player in the world. He needs to be outlawed from now on. I thought Jared owned something. Or, never mind. I'm remembering the video of... Yeah, he had his last ball and turned and, like, hugged Escher or something. It was... Escher's, like, really freaking good. Anyways, okay. So, Skirm Pro Circuit... He's okay. Yeah. He does fine. He's all right. Yeah. Skirm Pro Circuit happens... He's lucky there's ball saves in games, for sure. And he's lucky that... He's lucky there's flippers on the game, too, if not Bagatelle, or he'd be, like, shit out of luck. He'd get in trouble then. He'd still beat us. So that tournament happened.
    27:15
    Yes, and I remember, yeah, it was cool listening to that. That was pretty cool. And all this happened before Expo.
    27:21
    And then, yeah, all three of us were at Expo. Travis was only there until Thursday. He left Friday morning early, but Tom and I were there through the whole thing. He was my roommate. Yeah. You had Travis and Monica somehow ended up bunking with Tom. Thanks for the invite, guys. You know, you're having a slumber party, and I got. Dude, we heard what you did to Neil's car. So we are not going to let you get around any of our stuff. Let's address a few. I got in the car with Neil, and, like, he hates you, Joel. Can you believe, Tom, that Scott Denise let him play on that TNA? I wouldn't let Joel around anything anymore. Scott might do a good mouse. I actually played his games at his house. I'm very happy his house is still upright. We will clarify this. Okay. So we'll get the shenanigans out of the way. I went to the Stern Pro Tour. Or not tour. The tour of the new facility. Tour. And random side comment. Brian Eddy was our instructor, and he says tour like Travis. He says tour. Welcome to the Stern Tour. And as soon as we heard it, I was standing next to Craig Bobby. Craig leans over. He goes, he says tour like Travis. And I was like, yeah, he does. So I don't know how to react to that. But did the factory tour. It was great. It was really cool. The building's huge. They have a ton of room for expansion from, like, on the business side where all the kind of cubicles are, designer area, but then the actual factory. They only had one line going at the time. The other line is being set up. And then it's, like, down the middle is where they have all their subassemblies, and they have a whole topper division. The amount of wiring that they have going. I mean, it's just really impressive to see how much they're doing and how quickly they're doing it. So if you ever have the opportunity to do the tour, you should definitely do it. Tur. Anyways, to get to the tour, we could have ridden a bus, or we were eating breakfast, and Neil McRae was there, and Neil's like, hey, I got a big old car. Like, let's all – we can all just drive. Like, all right. So he – Neil does something with BMW, so he says he, like, just waves a card, and boom, He's given a BMW to drive at like an airport. Before you go on. Well, before you go on, I just want the listener to realize and Tom to realize because it's freaking hilarious. Neil is going to listen to us. He's probably listening to us right now. Yeah. And he's going to lose his mind right now. He's just talking about this story. So just picture that. Oh, Neil's great. As we listen to this story. Yeah, we love it. So we go out there. I say we. It was me, Neil. It was Davey, the guy that does all the Stumbler mods. uh, Craig Bobby. And then, um, Julie, there was a, it was a new person we had met. Super nice. Um, we all go out there. So there's only five of us. Well, this BMW has a third row. So they were like, okay, somebody needs to sit in the third row. Well, this BMW was like to pop down a seat in the back. You know, normally you like pull a little, pull a little latch and the thing just like flips out of the way and you get in the back, not this car, this car has buttons. so this is a high tech bmw this is suv so me has buttons being the tallest person all i did was i got in and i sat in the passenger seat i didn't touch nothing the front the front right seat did nothing craig's back there meals on the other side touching a button to move it and then all of a sudden things stop moving Like, even the front seat was moving to, like, make room for the middle seat to move out of the way. So things stopped moving. So what does Craig do? On the back of one of the seats is a red loop of, like, oh, you probably just pull this, and it moves out of the way. He pulls it. Then everything starts freaking out. Like, nothing.
    31:09
    So Neil is kind of, like, frantically going back and forth. He's like, no, no, no, don't touch that. I just have to hit this button. Like, there's four buttons. Everybody's pushing the same four buttons. Things are going up, down. There was one point where Julie was actually sitting in the third row, and she's being moved by the seats.
    31:23
    I'm just sitting in the front. I'm doing nothing. I'm sitting in the front. I look at the instrument panel, and there's, like, warnings going off, like, limit switch here, limit switch there. There's a little graphic showing the seats. Every seat on that graphic was red except for mine, which was green because I did nothing. I just sat there. And then I finally got out of the car, and I was like, there's got to be something. We gave up. We gave up on riding in his car. That's how screwed up, like, everything stopped moving. So we went from being able to fit five to seven people to only being able to fit two. None of the seats in the back were in a position where you could even sit in them anymore. Hold up. How did you guys get to the factory? I drove. You drove? I ended up getting my car. I got my car. Julie and Craig rode with me, and then Neil and Davey rode with him. Yeah. So we had to take two cars. You guys just bricked Neil's car completely. Yeah, and then they left. And then left. I was surprised with all the red and all the warnings going off. I was like, I bet he won't even be able to drive his car. I literally went to dinner with Neil, and, like, the front of his console was, like, still had an ear for, like, the back seat. And then, like, the 10-minute ride to Portillo's was Neil just telling me the story of how Joel just effed up his car. I get it. I became the butt of the joke because I was the one person who sat. I mean, my seat, I just sat there. I just sat there with a smile on my face. Yeah, I noticed how your seat didn't mess up at all, but everybody else was dead. Green, yep. So, like Neil, like I said, he does something with BMW. So somehow he, like, got in contact with probably the engineer that designed it and ripped him a new one. And there was some sort of button combination he had to do on his dash to, like, reset the car. And that was the only thing. Because pulling that red strap apparently is some, like, emergency something. Yeah. Why? So who pulled the red strap? Craig? It wasn't me. Who did it? I'm guessing Craig. Now I will say at some point I probably did get backed out. pulling the red strap. I think it's Craig Bobby.
    33:38
    I think, did he admit? It sounds like a Craig Bobby thing. I just wish everybody could picture Neil McRae frantically going back and forth like, no, no, no, don't touch. I just got to hold this button. I just got to hit this button. It was great. For listeners, if any of you guys are a BMW owner that has seats that... A red strap. Yeah, don't pull the red strap. Don't pull the red strap. And do not let Fred Bobby or Joel DeBoer ever let go of a crazy car. I was in the front of this car and like the temperature controls were like... It was like you were at NASA trying to figure... It's insane.
    34:20
    If you're in the other crazy car though... I'm not touching anything, Neil. Threaten to pull the strap. That's all I'm saying. I hope this carries through. I was good. I didn't touch anything, Joel. Don't touch anything. I didn't touch anything. I know. Tom, was it one of those vehicles where you feel like if you touch the wrong thing, you're going to go back to the future or something like that? Pretty much. I mean it was nothing I was used to I mean this is German technology Yes So that was fun Stern Tour was fun What else Yeah Well, let's just dive into playing games. Playing games. Okay. They had games at Expo, didn't they? There was a lot of good games there. I wonder why Joel wants to talk about this. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll just work through it. So first off, Stern. No, just get it out of the way. Get it out of the way. No, I'm going to start. Let's get your humble brag out of the way. labyrinth labyrinth is here okay labyrinth is here um honestly the lines for labyrinth were incredibly long the entire show so there were some people that just kept playing it and other people that probably never played it because the line was that long they had four games up and running the whole time the line was very long for it luckily on thursday when the show opened i went straight to it and i didn't have very long of a wait um initial impressions of the game were, to me, when a new company comes out, it's all about the build quality or the initial feel of the game. You know, you want to make sure the game doesn't feel cheap, or it looks like they cut corners, or did the company try to redesign something, you know, like, oh, we have our own flipper mechs. No, they're using Ballywilliam stuff. Like, does the game feel like a normal game? That was my initial thought. So I walk up to the game, art looks great, flip the flippers, Flippers feel snappy. Everything about the game feels the weight. Everything, it feels like a real game. If you told me Stern made this game or if American Pinball made this game, I'd believe you. Like, it feels like a normal game. So, initial impressions, good. I start playing the game, and I was talking to Travis. The guy's name was Travis. Very nice guy. He's one of the mechanical engineers at Barrels of Fun. He was standing there next to me. Yeah, the better Travis. Yep. Yeah, I don't talk to him while he plays. No. I don't subject myself to that anymore. I can't do it. So while I'm waiting in line, I'm asking him some of the rules and whatnot and what to do. And what is cool, you can kind of see it in the bottom of my screen. There is a screen in the bottom part of the game in the back, kind of the back panel of the play field. And it'll tell you what to do. Like when you're in a mode, that screen tells you exactly what to do. To start a mode, you have to spell labyrinth. You hit white shots. Boom, you're in a mode. And then look at the screen. It's great. So I kind of know what to do. So it's like Guns and Roses? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. Always having that little monitor to hold your hand. It's great. I like that. Oh, it's awesome. Yeah, I wish more people would do that. A hundred percent. Like, I love that Guns N' Roses had it. I love that Toy Story had it. And then they took it out of Godfather, and I remember asking Eric why, and his view was like, we couldn't think of a reason to visually have it in the game. So, like, initially we thought, like, maybe like a billboard, but we thought that would stand out because not – so they just thematically couldn't – felt they couldn't put it in the game. The billboard would have been a great idea. I would have liked the billboard in Godfather. Although, were billboards a big deal in the movie Godfather? No, no. There's billboards everywhere. Yeah, that'd be fun. I think they were not digital, though. But, you know, in Elton John, though, they have a little display on the piano that actually communicates and stuff. But anyway, so Labyrinth, I played the game, and I actually felt good. I actually completed a mode, and as soon as I completed a mode, Travis leans over to me and goes, hey, you have an orb lit. Hit under the flipper. That's a 10 million point shot. I don't care about points, but I hit it. First try. Lift the flipper up. Boom. Felt great. I was like, that was fun. Put up a high score, but it was the beginning of the show. I didn't think it was a big deal.
    38:19
    Fast forward. He did the fist pump after he did it. It was 37 million points is what I put up. Lie. It was 27 million points. Fast forward. This Labyrinth is actually the game I played. This is the one I brought home. It is still there. It is still my 27 million point score is number two on the high score table. So you haven't beat it?
    38:41
    No, I did. It was number two. Now I beat it. It's now number three. I think what he's trying to say, Tom, is nobody else beat it. One person beat it.
    38:51
    There's a 37 million point. So initially, apparently, I just had a really good game. Well, the reason I'm bringing this up and the reason Travis wants me to bring this up is because Travis and Monica were waiting in line, and I told them a few, you know, a little bit of what I played. Travis played the game. He did not beat my score. So apparently Travis hates Labyrinth. He hates it. He thinks, you know, the game is not, you know, a mechanical issue.
    39:15
    Yeah, yeah. A blip issue and a ramp return issue. Even though. Game issue. Game issue, all of it. They should probably start over. It's not me. They should probably start over. They should scrap it right now. So even though it wasn't a head-to-head game, just to make it clear, I did beat Travis. I did beat Travis in Labyrinth. Fast forward to the very last night, Tom and I actually played Labyrinth head-to-head. 1 a.m. still. 1 a.m. And at the end of the game, my score was higher than Tom's. So at the end, you know, not only do I have a Labyrinth here in the house, I have absolutely crushed Thomas and Trav in Labyrinth. Destroyed them. Okay. I had to drive back to Wisconsin.
    40:09
    Come back. Yep. Had my mom in my room. With your mom, yep. With my mom, who's, like, pretty much deaf. anyway your deaf mom is the reason you lost in labyrinth that's what i was tired i had a long day then joel's like joel teased me he's like hey tom tom you gotta let's let's stand in line for a half hour and play elton john so i'm like okay yeah yeah and then i'm like i want to check out labyrinth not knowing this was going to be a competition oh no yeah yeah had to have Tom was player one. Joel's sitting there, like, reading the rule book on Labyrinth and Elton John. I'm playing Elton John, and Tanya Klyce comes over, and he's, like, checking out the game. He's, you know, semi-interested. He played it, yeah. And Joel's like, hey, Tanya, do you know the rules? And he's like, no, like, I don't work for J.J. Keeley. And Joel's like, well, I know the rules. I'll tell you everything about it. Perfect impression. Solid. I mean, that is me to a T. But we're going to talk about the Labyrinth. It's all based off our last episode, Tom. Ever since we talked about understanding rules and how you just look on the play field and just take a few minutes, now it's on Joel. He's done that. He's really taken it to heart.
    41:36
    Within a week, he's given out advice unsolicited to everybody at Expo. Like, you can do this. Let me teach. No. The baller on McMahon. My God. I'm waiting for the Labyrinth tutorials online it's coming it's the beginning of my stream earlier this week I just spelled it all out you know I was just spilling knowledge I know what to do that means doesn't mean I can do it but I know what to do but hey okay so Labyrinth initial impressions between the two of you guys Travis you played it first you were in line with Monica I know you hate it because you lost but go ahead and tell me your initial impressions of the game shots of the outcode all that stuff Okay, so theme, I don't care about the theme at all, just to be honest. I watched the movie once when I was 10. It was terrifying then. I tried to watch it last week or a week and a half ago, and I made it about 30 minutes into it. And I just couldn't do it anymore. Like, if people love the theme, cool. Like, no issue with that. I just can't get into it. But in terms of how the flippers felt, flippers felt fine. I played on, I guess, what's their top version? It's not called LV, is it? There's only one version. The only difference was all the four games, one of them had the topper. That was the only difference. Right, right. So whatever version that is. Right, right. There's nothing different on the play field or anything like that. It's all external. That one had a different shooter rod, a different display, not display, back glass, and a topper. Yeah. Otherwise, it's literally the exact same. Right. So that's the one that I played. And the flippers felt fine. I mean, somewhat mushy a little bit, but that happens at shows from time to time. I could backhand the left ramp, which was nice. But just, I don't know. So I didn't really pay attention to the rules too much. I did some things, but since I only got a chance to play it once, I just wanted to see how the shots felt. That was my main goal. and you know the my concern is is the horseshoe shot so a few times when i hit it from right to left it did one of two things to me it either went right back down the middle or it actually somehow ricocheted off the guide rail to where the loop is supposed to go it did that a couple of times and so i wasn't quite sure you know if that was the intention or maybe it was just how i was sitting shot. I don't know. But that shot, it was a little awkward for me.
    44:06
    Like I said, left ramp wasn't bad. Left orbit wasn't bad. I'm just not sure on the geometry. Real quick about the horseshoe. I've actually been talking to Phil. It's Phil Grimaldi. Is that right? He's the lead rules guy on the game. I made the same comment. I've had that same issue with the horseshoe from the right. It can be straight down the middle. And apparently they are discussing potentially adding a ball save where if you hit the right orbit or hit the right side of the horseshoe and then no other switch, if it drains, it knows. Yeah, I would recommend that for sure because I had some issues with that, and that's totally why Joel beat me on that game.
    44:47
    But then the other thing that kind of surprised me a little bit, the left ramp return was different, cool, but a little bit different, how it would just shoot the ball at you. It would lift up real quick. I think and shoot at you. There was a couple of times that I hit a shot and there was something happening on the display and I was looking at the display and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, the ball's like shooting back at me. And I was not prepared for it at all. And then it was just so, so that right there was, you know, I, I hope that they code in something that kind of gives you time to prep for it or a little bit more notice or something that would let you know that's coming. I'm sure there probably is something there already that lets you know, it's just a little bit jarring when you're trying to look at the screen and trying to figure out, okay, what's happening next. And all of a sudden it's kind of like, it reminded me of Halloween, except instead of it showing up in your in lanes, it was like just like, F you, the ball's coming right back at you. So the large ramp flap raising in the air is not enough visual for you to know the ball's coming? No, well, because you're looking at the screen. Because something's happening on the screen. Okay, so the screen is distracting is what you're saying. Yeah. If there's something on the screen, if there's some sort of animation, you know, and you realize people are watching it. Right. I hit the ball somewhere. It was holding my ball. You know, obviously at this point I didn't know where it was coming, so I was looking at the screen waiting for notice or something like that. And then all of a sudden the ball was there. So now I know next time, just whenever I hit, don't pay attention to the screen at all. Just watch down there and wait for it. What is really neat about the layout is there's a ton of diverters in it. So there are times where if you hit the right orbit instead of it going all the way around, it'll actually pop up and then lock under the ramp and then spit it out. So that's probably what you did. You probably hit the right orbit. The ball disappeared, essentially. And then it surprised you. Right, because a few times it was more delayed than other times. So there was something happening on the LCD screen because it was indicating, I guess, an adjustment. I don't know, another phase in a mode or maybe I'd started something. I forget what happened. I just remember looking up at it and watching it. And then out of nowhere, all of a sudden, there's like a ball. I felt it hit off my flipper. And I look back down like, oh, there that is now. Yeah, there it is. So don't take your eyes off it. Yeah. But, I mean, there's some interesting spots. I think my favorite part to the game overall, I mean, obviously, I got some issues with the geometry. but if I have to pick out something that's really cool, I liked how you were able to stage the left ball on the left orbit. Yeah. I guess it's like an up post that kind of comes up. It was there in one of the more balls. Yeah. That. And so then it just held the ball there. Then you hit the ball for a super jackpot or something like that. So I like that. I like mechs that enable you to stop the ball somewhere and then use the second ball to do something with it for a super jackpot or a double super jackpot. So I think that's a nice touch as well. To explain that, there's a fork on the left orbit, and then there's actually, you know, a few inches behind it, there's a stand-up target that'll pop up, and then behind that, there's a spinner. So both in the fiery multiball mode and in the brick maker multiball or brick whatever multiball, you get to a point where, yes, you hit the left orbit, that drop comes up, so it'll stop the ball. the fork comes up and it holds it. And then what you get for your super jackpot is you want to hit that captive ball now, and the super jackpot is based on spins. So depending on how hard you hit that, you will get more points. So it's cool that you are now – there's now a captive ball that's not normally there. You have one clean shot at it, and then it's a spinner rip. So it's a very interesting combination. And talking to Phil, apparently that was Phil's idea, and it's a brilliant idea. It's a really unique scoring way. It's got some good ideas. there for sure from what I've read about and kind of looked around about. I think if you like Labyrinth, you're going to be happy with this pin if you're a fan of the theme. You're going to be happy with this. It's not going to be one of those situations where you're like, I wish somebody else would have did it. Right. If you're a fan of something that just shoots fantastic and shoots great, I don't know. You might hit some bumps with this, but that's in the eye of the beholder. Whoever's playing it, you might love it. You might prefer something different. I don't know. There's just some of the shot geometry. I don't know if it's necessarily something that I would be a fan of, but the flippers did feel okay with, with what we were playing. And it, the build quality overall felt fine. Like you said, it felt like for somebody that's putting out their first pinball machine, I think this is about the best possible way you could do it. Everything being said, there are all 100%. So, so I think if, If I'm on the Barrels of Fun team, I'm happy with this product that's going out. So I would just put it that way. Regardless of how I feel about the theme or the shots or anything like that, it's still a viable product on the market, and I'm actually excited to see what they do next. I'm curious if once they do get the ball rolling and they do get manufacturing going, I'm curious to see if they can become a very viable player because I feel like this particular pen, seeing what the theme is, seeing the excitement behind it, seeing it come out, I almost feel like they're leapfrogging Spooky and American Pinball at this point. It really feels like that just from the vibe, from what people are saying about it, from the general excitement of it. And I know that they brought over a lot of people from those days. Yeah. So, you know, these aren't just people new to pinball. These are people that have been in the industry for a long time. They have experience, and I think it shows in the overall product with that. So I'm interested to see where they go with it from here. 100%. Yeah, they absolutely have a solid team, and I've been able to have really cool conversations with a bunch of them. And, yeah, there's no doubt they've built – for this to be their first game, they crushed it. And, I mean, there's no questions. You know, production, like designing a pinball machine is the easy part, right? It's producing them at a mass level that's a challenge. I have nothing I can say about that. I have no idea. They've only made 10 that I know of. I mean, well, I say 10, but this is serial number 15. But it'll be very interesting over the next few weeks. Hopefully they're actually putting out the 10 games they're shooting for a week and see that production come out. Well, the telling thing will be, and, Joel, you're probably just one of, like, five people that can actually talk about this, is how do you feel about the overall build quality now that you have it there? Does it feel like, well, you're going to have a ton of issues up front, or does it feel like, oh, this is a legit pinball machine. This makes sense next to a Stern pinball machine. This makes sense next to a CGC pinball machine. A hundred percent. Yeah, it just seems legit. Like everything about it. My one thing is there's no shaker motor. I thought that was surprising. There is no shaker motor in the game. Good. But the cabinet, the build quality of the cabinet, everything. It's like it is top quality everything. And that's what I'm saying. It feels like just like they're competing with the big boys just right off the bat on how they're building it. But even the back box, it's not like it seems very well thought out, well engineered. You know, they're using the FAST system, which is a, you know, it's not like it's a proprietary system. So I'm not worried about, well, it's proprietary to FAST, but it's not like Barrels of Fun made their own system that you're worried about. What is a FAST system? Fast is a – it's kind of like how, like, P-Rock is a system that Spooky did a bunch of their games off that was made by P3. Fast is another system of, like, driver boards and other boards. So everything I see in there, I mean, I don't have any complaints with the build. Well, you mentioned, too, because you had to update code, and you felt like it was a super simple process as well, right? The code, they sent me a zip file. I unzipped it. The extension was, I think, like .fun or something. I don't remember exactly what the extension was, but they just said, take that file, put it on a flash drive, USB flash drive, with the game on, insert the USB flash drive in the game. As soon as I plugged it in, boom, code update popped up on the screen. It did it, and then it says remove flash drive, and as soon as I removed it, it rebooted and it was done. Like there was nothing. I didn't have to format anything. I didn't have to do anything. It was painless. So really impressed by that. Even the UI and, like, the system to, you know, go through the game to change settings seems very legit and professional. You know, there's little things. Like, there's no way to reset a game right now. So when I was testing stuff, like, if I want to clear it out, there's no way to – there's no, like, combination that I know of to, like, reset the game.
    53:50
    And then, like, you know, a little setting. Like, when I stream, I don't want the back box light on because of glare, you know. So, like, you know, it's, like, little settings like that. that I have trust that they will put. Or track mode sounds. Like I can't turn the track mode sounds off, so I just turn the volume down. So it's like little things like that that I have faith they're going to add because they're a brand-new company. But really impressed by it. Tom, you've played it. Yeah. And you lost at it. But how did you – what are your thoughts on the game, your overall impressions? I was able to start a multi-ball. There we go. I thought it shot really well. You know, and for somebody like I don't I don't know what was going on because I still haven't watched the movie.
    54:33
    So I I had no. Like relation to it, but I I really liked how it shot. I mean, it had some cool shots. It had some cool features. I liked how the multi-ball, like kind of Travis was talking about, you lock a ball and it kind of shoots out under the ramp. I saw when you were playing, you shot the left orbit and it grabbed the ball with force, and then you had to hit that ball through the spinner to get that started. I thought that was really neat. Oh, yeah. There's some cool shots on the game. I heard some people that played it thought, like, the flippers felt mushy. But when I played it, I didn't get that experience. I thought it shot fine. Yeah. Like, it shot good. So I pulled this game straight from Expo, and what I found was I thought the flippers felt too strong when they were here, to the point where on the right ramp I was getting the ball would kind of – it's a really cool wire form on the right ramp, but it was coming off of it, and I asked them about it, and they came back. They were like, oh, we still have the flippers turned up. So they actually had the flippers turned way up for the show because of, you know, long-term usage and power usage. So they said reset the flippers. Yeah, that might have been it too because since you played the far left pin and I played the far right pin. Yeah. Because there was four pins there. Power and everything. Everything. So, you know, they were probably all plugged in in, like, series, so the left pin probably got the most power, and then you probably got the least. and you know i mean you know the good thing is all we have something to say hold on trevor so we were we were waiting in line well we went over to where they had the four games and then joel's like we we looked at the kingpin booth yeah and we're like oh there's two games set up over there and there's like two people playing well we get over there and there's Oh, yeah. Oh, whatever. There's this guy and his girlfriend playing four-player games on it, and they're, like, hugging and kissing. They were all over each other. You know, Joel and I are, like, throwing up behind them. They were, like, playing. They were, like, doing the ghost pottery scene, but on the pinball machine. Really? Okay. I think he, like, I think she was playing, and he, like, out of nowhere left to go to the bathroom and then came back and, like, slipped right between us to make sure it was obvious. And then we realized, oh, it's a four-player game. It was – I'm pretty sure they conceived a child in that game. I mean, it was – they better call him David for Bowie. I mean, it's just – it was something, man. It was – It was something. We got behind a group that was actually playing – it was, like, two people and then one person. And they were done before the – I mean, it was – I just never saw all that. I've never seen pinball, you know, really rile up the endorphins like what was happening in that system. It is such a dick move to go to a show and put four players in and play by yourself over somebody else. I'm sorry.
    57:45
    I thought you were about to say it's such a dick move to bring your girlfriend to the show. No, no, you know, more power to you. More power to you. Maybe they met there. But you're right. Maybe they met there. Four player games. but four player we don't know what was going on we've talked about that before it's tough when you're at a show because you want to experience a game but at the same time you don't want to be on it for half an hour when you know the line behind you is huge yeah well you know it should be a two player game right pretty basic so overall I will say let me end Labyrinth I did stream it I had an opportunity to stream it which was awesome there was a ton of people from Barrels of Fun in chat that were answering questions. It was just really cool to see that. Like Eric Primke, the guy who's actually coding the game, was there. Scott Denise, he showed up. He's tweaked the audio. Mark Silk showed up, who did some of the voice call-outs in the game. Like just they've really assembled a very cool team. And a huge shout-out to David Van Ness, the CEO of the company. He's the guy that actually helped me at 1.30 in the morning walk the game out and load it into my car. Like Gary Stern hasn't helped me load a pinball machine in a car. Nothing against Gary, but it's pretty cool. What about Jack Guarneri? No, no. Still hasn't helped me. You know, I think that's that. Charlie and Bug? No, Bug would. I've just gotten into this situation. I probably would too, honestly. So everybody listening out there, what we're getting out of this is your value to Joel goes as far as what you're going to do for him. It was impressive.
    59:18
    I think they're doing it. And, you know, if we fast forward a year and the company fell apart, and I would feel bad, but as of right now, I'm saying they've built a really good team. The product they have made is really, really good. So the big question mark now is the production. Are they going to be like CGC and they're going to take four years to make this, or is it going to be they're going to start pumping them out? Tom has his hand up. Oh, go ahead. He had his hand up. I just wanted to say that Charlie helped me load my Rick and Morty. Oh, okay. Screw you, Joel. Yeah. No. What were you saying, Travis? Well, no, I was going to say, you know, the only thing I hope that Barrels of Fun can do better in the future is just their overall initial release of a game. Like in terms of how the videos went, in terms of how the marketing went, because that that hit some bumps right there. But I'm glad that they were able to get the game to a show quickly, get in front of people quickly, because at least by doing that, You get good word of mouth out there. You get positive word of mouth. And now that you have a game out there, you're going to at least see – shit, I'm giving Joel a compliment here. You're going to at least see a high-quality stream, you know, of the game, which is going to help. High-quality stream, not high-quality gameplay. That's fair. A high-quality stream. High-quality stream. That goes a long ways to being able to hear video correctly, to be able to see games correctly. You know, and I mean, things aren't ever going to be perfect, right? I mean, all of us as content creators, we've been there before to where something messes up on us or it's just not exactly. It just has to be good enough. But when you're rolling out a product that's a multimillion-dollar product and you're trying to launch a company, that's where you want to make sure everything is as close to perfect as you can get it because you've already put in so much hard work already for a year plus with multiple members of the team. So that's something that you don't necessarily want to mess up. So hopefully on the next round that they get it done a little bit better, and I'm sure that they will. I mean, like you said, Joel, they all seem receptive to feedback, which is good. That's an excellent sign when a company is that. And I know we've been talking about the company name and all that, but I get the hint. And I think it was either you guys confirmed this or somebody else confirmed this to me that when I saw that name, I was thinking they're not going to be just a pinball company. They're not just selling just pinball machines, right? They're going to be doing something else. I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know anything about that. Right. I heard in the interview they were, like, brainstorming things. And they were brainstorming names, and they were struggling to think of a name. They were throwing out all these names. And apparently somebody was like, well, this is a barrel of fun. You know, like, said it as a frustrated comment to try to find the name. And somebody was like, let's go with that. That's it. But it just strikes me when I see the name Barrels of Fun, that strikes me as an arcade slash pinball company. That doesn't strike me as we're just making pinball machines only. Could be, yeah. I don't know. Like, I haven't heard. That's why I thought somebody told me that because I'd mentioned that to somebody else. I couldn't remember if it was you guys or somebody else because I don't know anything about it. I know, Travis, you really like very clear, descriptive company names like a pinball podcast. Yep. And you work for the pinball company. Yeah. You like eliminating all doubt on what it is.
    62:41
    You be direct with people. You have to make a barrier of entry, or you have to take all those barriers and go down as quickly as possible, because that's the easiest way to go about it, right? I mean, especially if you have a business that's a niche business, right? Sure. None of us are ever going to be Nike or something like that. It's just when you look at pinball in general, there's really only one company out there that can really use a name that doesn't have anything to do with pinball, but has everything to do with pinball. And that's Stern, right? Yeah. Like, everybody knows what that is now. but nowadays it's, it's almost like when you do come out with a new company, you got to be very visual or very, very focused on what you're trying to put out. That's why I love the American pinball name. You know, something like that, that makes a lot of sense. Spooky pinball. That makes a lot of sense because they know what type of games they're trying to put out, you know, Jersey Jack pinball. You know, it kind of makes sense a little bit because of the owner. But when you're looking at the tiers of different things, you know, that's, that's just the way it goes. So that's why when I see the Barrels of Fun name, I think to myself, when I first heard that, it's just it seems like a company that's going to be doing other things besides pinball. True, and maybe they will. I knew for a long time it was Mystery, Mystery Pinball Company. That would actually be a pretty cool name. I think we all got used to it. I think we all got used to Mystery Pinball.
    64:09
    But, yeah, just so to wrap up Labyrinth, just so we're not talking about the whole time, the stream was awesome. You can check it out on YouTube on the Flippin' Out YouTube stream. And it was talking about my fear as a streamer, though, was I know there's a lot of people that have put a ton of work into this game. And I want to show it off. I want to show off the modes. I want to show off the call outs. I want to show off the multiball. The beginning of that stream, Jared and I were struggling. I don't know if it was the people watching or if it's just us. Jared had never played the game. But just in my what I was fear was like, I don't want people to think this game's hard. It's you, Joel. It's me. It was a me problem.
    64:45
    But that was what he did. He beat us. He did. We have people watching, and I don't, you know, we kept losing shots in the outlanes. Two things about that. One, the outlanes, you can't adjust them. I was surprised about that. There's no extra holes. There's nothing you can do to adjust them. But I was worried that I'm like, I don't want to portray this game in a light that it's going to be really difficult.
    65:06
    But as the stream went on, we started to find the shots. We started to actually get through some of the modes. And when you compare that to the Bowen tutorial videos, the two videos he had out of the game, Bowen's a world-class player, so he's just doing exactly what he says you're going to do. Oh, to start this, you hit this, and then you hit this, and boom, boom, boom. So I get it. That's got to be hard for a company because if you have somebody like Bowen doing all your gameplay videos, the game may look shallow or the game may look too easy. Then you have me on the other end. It looks too hard. So I hope people realize, and I did have people that came up to me at the show that says, the reason I like your streams is because my skill level relates to their skill level. So I do think for the majority of buyers for Labyrinth, their gameplay is going to be a lot closer to mine than they will Bowen's. Well, that's what I was going to say, that what a lot of listeners need to realize out there, and I think a lot of listeners and viewers do realize this, that I think that you're actually the perfect type of player to show off games, to show off new games. The reason being is because the vast majority of players out there are either going to be around your skill level or below it. That's just the reality of it. It takes a lot to be a world-class player, a lot. It's just you don't just roll out of bed and all of a sudden just become a great pinball player. It takes years and years of dedicated experience. And even then, it may never happen for people. It may never click. But that doesn't mean that the game can't be fun. And I think seeing different games and seeing people be able to see somebody of a similar skill set of them and they can get an idea for how the game will play, I think that's great. You know, there's two ends to the spectrum. You can see a Carl just absolutely demolish a game, and it's fun to watch. And you can see Joel just go out the right out lane over and over again on Deadpool, and it's still fun to watch. There we go. So, yeah, that's the mediums, you know, or the equilibrium. That's fine. Yeah, and we even saw that with Venom. You know, my streams versus your tutorial videos, I mean, night and day. You know, you had an hour-plus long video on Venom where you're, like, looping the game, and here I am streaming it for two hours and I'm just grinding through XP. But we can both have fun. You can both appreciate the game in different ways. Yeah, it's pinball. And people got to realize you don't have to get the wizard modes the whole entire time. That's fine. And we were talking about that before because there's still people that get in their heads about rules. And we're not talking about just Venom. Like we see it all the time on Facebook, on Inside, or just people that we talk to. It's like, you know, at the end of the day, you don't have to worry about it being a super deep rule set. Just know how to start a mode, figure it out from there. Know how to start a multiball, figure it out from there and have fun. That's what it's supposed to be. Playing pinball, it should be exploring the game. That's the fun part. If you're playing a video game, right, it's exploring the game and learning how to do it. So it's just kind of if you just expect to get into a game immediately and you're just going to play Escher level all of a sudden or you're going to play Bowen level all of a sudden, it's like you're going to set yourself up for failure because it takes years and years to get to that level and to take that mental representation from game to game immediately. So that's why I think it's so much better if people just temper their expectations, just have fun finding shots, have fun discovering the game, because you only get to do that for a little while. Because once you discover everything in the game, then what is it? It's just doing it over and over again. But to me, that's the great part. The most fun I have with pinball isn't blowing it up. The most fun I have with pinball is getting a brand-new machine and figuring out where are the shots and figuring out what happens when I do this, what happens when I do that. It's like the same way I was telling you about that left ramp on Labyrinth, that it was a little frustrating. The ball came out. I didn't realize it. But you know what? There's fun in that, too, because now I know. Now I'm like, okay, if I hit this shot, this could potentially happen. You know, you take it as a learning experience, and you apply it to the next game. And I think that's what pinball should be. It should be hitting those tiers and trying to get better and better and eventually trying to beat the game in the way that you can beat the game. And that may not be beating a wizard mode. It may simply be just hitting super jackpots in multiball. It may be scoring 50 million points on a certain mode. I think that's the thing to do. Enjoy the games you want to enjoy it, and that why I think the streams that you put out Joel are excellent And I think the stuff that Tom does when he plays his games at home that gives a cool vibe as well Like that shows like where you can be with games too Oh, yeah. I think everybody needs to know that. Pinball needs to be fun. Like it doesn't have to be super serious all the time. Have fun with your games. Set up your games the way that you want. Play the way that you want. Well said.
    69:52
    To end Labyrinth, what I'll say, this is my brother. So my brother played it. I would say he's a little above novice in his skill level. he's getting better, but it's really fun having him on stream because even the skill level difference between the two of us, I think, shows very different approaches to the game. But he is a Labyrinth fan. He's a huge Jim Henson fan. We grew up on the Muppets, but Labyrinth was a movie that he's like, oh, I've seen it so many times, and he was all in on the theme. So he texted me the next morning. He said, man, Labyrinth is a great pinball machine. Been thinking about it all morning. This is the first time he's texted me about a game after we've stream. Venom really, it's really hit him in a way that he's really enjoyed because of the XP system. And I will say that people were talking about progression. What's neat is watching on the pin side, people are like, I finally beat Noel. My speed run time was five hours, 45 minutes, and I was at level 99. And it's like, perfect. That's exactly what it was for, right? But they're motivated to do it again and do it again. So anyways, that's pretty neat. So I said, haha, you're hooked. He said, I think I'm specifically hooked on Labyrinth. I said, so why this game over others? And here's Jared's concise review. Theme and music is big. The rule set is not impossible but very interesting and uses the whole field. The shots feel really good when you hit them. You need to be accurate and slow the ball down, but they all feel hittable. You have to earn the multi-balls. There's a lot on the play field, but it's not overwhelming like some games. I don't know. It's just fun.
    71:21
    I said, well, look at you. Great review. He said, I may hate pinball, but I do love Labyrinth. So I actually think that review is good. The fact that he can find the shots, but he feels like when he gets multi-ball, he has to earn it. At the show, they did have a consolidation multi-ball on. So if you hadn't done multi-ball by ball three, it was automatically lit. You only had to hit one shot. I've turned that off. That's not part of the main code. But, yeah, the modes themselves actually fit the game really well, like story-wise, what you're doing or what you're trying to accomplish in the mode. So I agree. My overall review on Labyrinth, well built. They got a good team going. If Labyrinth is your theme, you will really enjoy this game. And I'm just excited. I'm excited to play it more, and I'm excited to see what else Farrells of Fun is going to do. So, boom, check. Let's go to the next big game, Elton John. Elton John was revealed. They did some teaser. This was hinted for a long time. People saw it coming. But we're still – it's a theme that people are surprised happened. But it's here.
    72:25
    We'll start with Tom. Initial impressions of seeing the game of X-Bone playing games. The bitch is back.
    72:33
    But, Elton John, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not a huge Elton John fan. The bitch is back, like he said. Drop mic. I'm not a huge Elton John fan. I like his music, but it's not like my go-to, like when I'm playing a pinball tournament. It's not Rush.
    73:03
    But, you know, if I'm in my dental office, you know, working on a patient, yeah, sure. I like Elton John.
    73:12
    But, you know, I played the game, and I thought it was okay. I mean, it shot good. I know there's been a lot of comparisons like oh this is Star Trek or you know Spider-Man or whatever yeah there's similar shots but I didn't I wasn't I wasn't getting that vibe I thought it was its own thing but do I want to purchase one probably not at the cost of what what they go for So when we were at Pinball Expo, we had talked about Godfather because it was revealed before we went. At the time, you basically said very similar things. And then you played a Godfather at TPF, and you walked away ready to buy one. Yeah.
    74:03
    Godfather is different, though. I mean, it has a very unique layout to me to it, whereas, you know, okay, yeah, you can draw comparisons to other games. But I don't know. I just can't get into the theme, I guess. Okay. Well, Godfather and Elton John are very different themes. They're very different. Yes.
    74:25
    Very different. Okay. But, you know, dude, if I was a huge Elton John fan, I would probably buy the game. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, the light show was spectacular on it. The actual, like, cabinet and artwork was phenomenal.
    74:48
    But, yeah, it's just something with the theme. I'm just like, eh. Yeah. And, you know, if it was maybe a $7,000 or $8,000 game, I'd probably buy one just to have at home and play it. But, you know, $12,000, $15,000 for that game, I'm just like. That's hard. It's a hard sell. Okay. For me. Not being an Elton John fan. I totally respect it.
    75:19
    Travis, what are your thoughts walking up to the game or seeing the game? So I never got to play the game. I was gone. The lines were too long. They were. Well, no. I was only there for one day. Because they hadn't rolled them out yet. Right, right. So when I left, they brought it out. So all I've gotten to see is just the trailer. So I'll just say there's a lot of shoes and there's guys floating. You know, I actually, I like the trailer, you know. Yeah, it's over the top, but it's great. It was super over the top, but that's what Elton John is when you see him on stage and everything. So I was fine thematically with everything. I thought it was just the right amount of corny, goofy, fantastical elements, I guess, with it. I mean, one thing I'll say about J.J.P., they do not skimp on trailers at all. Like, I always look forward. If I was still doing my reaction to those, like, I have the same reactions even if the camera's not on. I just, I was laughing. I was like, what is going on right now? This dude's floating. This is awesome. Oh, my God, there's lights there. Yeah, I mean, so that's my basic impressions of it. I haven't really got a chance to just look at the play field and see how the shots are. So I can't make any comment on that at all. I just know the theme, once again, similar to Labyrinth, I don't care about the theme at all. I know some Elton John songs, but I only listen to it when it happens to show up on the radio, and I don't have any control over it at all. But other than that, I don't really listen to his music. But, you know, I think as long as they are – it's clear that Jersey Jack is trying to really diversify their themes dramatically. I mean, we're going from, gosh, Toy Story 4 to Godfather to Elton John. So I'm expecting Scarface or Heat to come out or something like that. We're just going to zip around everywhere. But, yeah, I think I'm excited that there's still music pins that are coming out that aren't necessarily like the old classic rock, per se. I mean, Elton John obviously goes a little bit everywhere with his music and everything. Yeah, piano and stuff like that. So I'm happy to see something that's a little bit different, though. Even if I'm not a fan of the theme, I am glad that there's at least something slightly different in that way. So I'm curious to see how the pinball industry responds to that, how people respond to it when they finally get the game. My only worry for it is, like Tom alluded to earlier, just set outright, it's just the price points of it. You know, just where the prices are getting to some of these games, we're not going to see them on location as often. So, you know, I think that we're not going to necessarily see opinions that could be as unbiased as possible, because it's a lot easier to just put in five dollars into a game coin drop and be like, OK, I didn't like this about it. I did like it about it compared to spending 12 or 15 grand to bring the game in. and then you're having to be honest with yourself about what you don't like about it, what you do like about it. You know what I mean? Your opinion is always going to try to go towards the positive as much as possible. But I think that I would say, just like Tom did, that if it was a theme I was into, I wouldn't mind what this is in terms of knowing that Steve Ritchie is behind it and the shots are going to flow a little bit in terms of, I guess, the lights overall and everything. It's got really cool toys. I mean, the old John piano, you know, with his hands moving. And that is really neat. It really is. And the display on the piano. Yeah, the display on the piano. I mean, that's phenomenal stuff. Apparently my dog is. Travis is getting worked up. He's quite a lot of heavy breathing and he's licking his lips. Can't wait to play Elton John. Is this all going through on the mic? A little bit, but no, we're good. We heard some slurps. Down boy. Yeah. So, I mean, that's Elton John in a nutshell, right? It's going to be that type of thing. So, here's the big question, right, that I have since you guys both got to play it. How does a Steve Ritchie design game play with Jersey Jack mechs on it? Because that was the biggest deal that we were all kind of worried about. Everybody was focused in on. Because we all know how Jersey Jack flippers feel. Well, they've changed them. They've changed the mechs. At least what I've heard is apparently the power. These are stronger powered flippers than their previous game. I've heard this. I don't know if this is confirmed. I heard the same thing with Godfather. Well, so I feel like all the mechs in the earlier games were the same, like, physical-powered mechs, but they were tweaking code and tweaking settings to make it shoot better. But apparently in this game they're saying they went from, like, 40-watt coils to 50-watt coils or whatever. It's something. I don't know. I'm not an electrical engineer. But, I mean, the game, I thought the flippers felt really good. So my initial impression, my initial impression of the game, I was fortunate that there was, the day before they wheeled them out on floor, they had a distributor. Travis was getting attacked, by the way. They had a distributor meeting, and they kind of had their own separate little room to reveal the games. Somehow, I got invited to that meeting. So it was me and Josh from Loser Kid. Travis isn't going to make it through this. What's the name of the dog? Me, Josh from Loser Kid, and it was Colin from the Kineticist, and then Will from This Week in Pinball. We were invited to this little room unveiling kind of thing. So Josh and I went and we kind of, yeah, we had time to play it in a better controlled environment than the showroom. My initial impression of the game is loud. Like visually it looks incredible. Elton John was loud, or is loud. I think thematically they nailed it. If you're an Elton John fan, they nailed it. Absolutely.
    81:34
    My initial impression of the shots were it shot really well. I mean, Steve Ritchie is the king of flow, right?
    81:41
    They're calling it the piano ramp, but it's the freaking, what is it, the warp ramp on Star Trek. Everything feels familiar. Everything feels good. There's a rocket shot at the far right. It's almost like the catapult in Medieval Madness, but it's on the far right, and the way it loops the ball around is a very unique path. Very good light show. So just initial impressions were really good. The CE model has this topper with two displays and then this laser projector on the ceiling. Really cool atmospheric stuff, plus the expression light, not the expression, the hot rails on the bottom of the game and the back of the game. I mean, it's a lot of money, but what you're getting is an experience. If you want a John pin, this is a great pin. So rules. Rules, I actually talked to Eric Minier was there, and he kind of walked me through some of the rules, and then Bill Grupp is the lead rule guy on the game. I'm just telling you, people's complaints with J.J.P. games are that it's multi-ball city, right? Or you just fall into multi-balls and you don't know why. This is not that game.
    82:48
    The Piano Man multi-ball, or like the Superstar multi-ball, one of the main multi-balls in the game, you have to spell Elton John. And every shot on the play field is the letter. It's nine letters. I'll help you out there. It's not International Rescue, but it's nine letters. There are ways to spot a letter, but it's work. You have to work to get that, and that's to light the lock on the piano ramp. Then you hit the warp ramp, and it'll lock the vault on the piano. Where do you get the letters at? If you said that, I'm sorry. Every shot of the game. I was playing a plan. I think it's like the furthest left scoop is the E, and then the left orbit is the L, and then T. You're screwed. Yeah. Oh, okay. So it's spelling it out from left to right. You don't have to do it in order. You get more points if you do it in order. have to. Yeah, and I think Eric said... Can you spot a letter? Yes. So on the plunge, there's one of the options if you plunge at the right time, it'll spot you a letter. Or if you spell star with the N-link and L-blase. Why didn't you tell me that when I was playing? You didn't ask. But you know who did ask? Tanya Kleiss. So Tanya, when we're waiting in line, the two people in front of us, Tanya Kleiss, he's the lead programmer for Foo... or the lead rules programmer for Foo Fighter and Deadpool. And then he was standing with Mark. I don't know the guy's name, but it was the guy that did the rules for Bond 60th, all the coding for Bond 60th. So those two guys were there. So, oh, nice. So they played and they stepped over and Tonya was just standing there watching them play. So I just walked over. I was like, hey, Tonya, what'd you think? He's like, oh, it was good. I was like, do you know the rules at all? He said, no. I said, do you want to know the rules? He said, yes. Yeah. Joel the fucking expert. This guy. This guy right here. So I explained it to him. I explained what's going on and he was asking good questions. and my job's done here. Good night. Nailed it. So, yes, that happened. It happened.
    84:36
    So I explained the rules to Eric Stone. I explained the rules to Tanya. You know, it's just who I am now. I know. I love that Tom and I, and we're going to take credit for this, I love that we have been able finally through, what is this, our 44th episode? 44th episode, yeah. It took us 43 episodes to mold Joel into just this little baby pinball player, this little Padawan, and now all of a sudden he's out there like a peacock with his web sticks everywhere. I now know if I'm playing in a tournament that I just call Joel now. That's not the case. I know. I would have been, if I'm playing somebody and I see Joel explain the rules, I would have been like, huh, they're screwed. But now all of a sudden, he's, like, giving advice to Stone. He's talking to Tanya. I've never played Force 2. I need to call Joel. No, I know. That's crazy. Next thing you know, Joel is going to be telling Raymond how to play Rush. Yeah, right. He's probably giving Elwin some tips on how to code his next game. Raymond, did you know that if you do this. And, like, there's airport modes. Do you know about that? Yeah, airplane modes. as opposed to you explaining rules to people at Expo. So that's actually – it actually is fun. We're giving you shit about it. We're proud of you, Joel. Thank you. That does mean you're thinking of pinball on a higher level. And what happens when you think about it on a higher level? Are you having more fun today than you were two years ago? I'm loving it. It is more fun. When you're playing a pinball game, it is more fun if you actually know what you're supposed to do or want to do. But Elton John, so, yes, that's one of the main – so what's interesting about that is you spell Elton John, you lock the ball three times. That's how you get into that multi-ball. Apparently, though, the way the final wizard mode works in this game is you have to score. It's progressive, and it carries over game to game to game. So you're trying to spell superstar with an exclamation point, ten letters, and that means ten super jackpots while you're in one of the superstar of the piano ball multi-balls. I can hear Carl D'Angelo cringing somewhere in California. Theoretically, you could spell Elton John, lock two balls, get into that multi-ball, and if you have a killer multi-ball where you get 10 super jackpots, you could have qualified the final wizard mode in the game. Or you're stepping up to the game, nine letters are already there, you only need one super jackpot, you've qualified the final wizard mode of the game. Does that not – okay, so that was happening at Expo, right? It did happen at Expo. Did that create issues with the code? It did because I don't think it's in there yet. But my only view here is, so it's like, so Venom has the XP system where it allows you to finally see the, you know, for a home collector, they're not going to, they won't get those 10 super jackpots in one game. But if they do it over time, they're like, sweet. Or if you're on location and you look at the letters, you're like, oh, this is only one away from, let me step up and see if I can grind it out to get to that. I can see some of the advantages, but for the people like Carl D'Angelo that can blow up a game and probably score 3 trillion points in one shot, he doesn't want that. He doesn't want that. So, you know, I don't know. I guess I would assume that there's just different options on how to set up the game as well. Maybe. But you're saying that's just the default, like no matter what. That's how it's set up. It's not a competition mode or anything like that. That's just the default. That's what Bill, it's Bill Grupp, that's what he said is that's how it's set. To see the final wizard mode in the game, that's what you have to do. I'm curious if there is another wizard mode where it's like if you collect all these outfits and you do all this and you do all this album stuff and boom, boom, boom, there might be something else. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's all about accessibility, though, too. I don't mind that, you know, just as long as there's different options to get people. So I guess it makes sense in a way that maybe you have something that's easier as a default and then the better players, if you're a better player anyways, you're going to know how to get into the menu system more than anything and then just make the adjustments to set the game up as you want compared to somebody that's a total novice getting into the menu system, then it just becomes a shit show because they don't know where to go anyway. So I don't know. Maybe they're on to something there. I don't know if I'm a big fan of that, but I can see the value and the utility for it, though. It makes sense. Would you like that, Joel? I'm fine with it. Yeah, if you could step up to a game and you're like, okay, within five games, maybe I can build up. Well, I'm looking at it like a stream. If I'm going to stream for two hours, there's a chance that I may be able to actually show off that Final Wizard mode. Yeah. And maybe it takes me three streams of the game to finally spell it. But at least I can do that when I realize some of the things that are locked behind having that really perfect game for me. Yeah. You know? I mean, there's something to that, that if you could put into the code that you.
    89:34
    Hey, Travis Kidd. Hi. He looks like he just. Dude, it's Friday. Is he like, that school is going? No. No, he's homeschooled, but he's being lazy right now. Oh, I know that. I'm on a podcast. Yeah. What's up, dude? Sure. Okay. Sure.
    89:50
    Man, the respect you get in your house is the best. But, no, I think it would be interesting, though, if there was something in code for pinball machines to where you do a certain something for so long that you do start unlocking various things in the game that maybe it's not necessarily locked within or unlocked within the actual game, but maybe like another option to play as, you know, because you kind of see that in console games, right, to where you get so far you might unlock like a new game plus or something like that. So I'd be curious to see if Pinball could actually do something similar to that in the future. Well, Stern with their Insider Connect, right, they're tracking progress on Venom, so it shouldn't be too hard to track progress in other games. Maybe they could do something with that. I don't know. It makes sense. I mean, especially if you're trying to make it easier and more accessible for that. Because you look at it, basically, when you're putting out pinball anyways, you're never putting out pinball for just the top 1%. You want to put out pinball for the 99%, for your average casual player that's going to collect games, that's going to bring it in, and going to play a few games here and there. So you want to create that accessibility as much as possible. And that seems like the best way to do it. Joel, your game behind you. I just saw that. That's amazing. Track mode animation. I know. We've got everything going. So, yes, I agree. And so with Elton John, that's the main structure. And what Bill said, because I said something I was like, oh, are you guys going to kind of do like with GNR, where if you haven't collected all seven band members by ball three, you know, if you can't spell superstar or Elton John, if you can't spell Elton John by ball three, would you like give letters or whatever? And he was kind of, he just looked at me. He goes, no. He goes, everything you get in Elton John you have to earn. And I think that's actually very different from a lot of the other code, the JJP code. Like, this is going to be a, like, you're not going to mistakenly do anything. You have to know what you're doing. You have to shoot your shots. You're going to work through the game. The two other multiballs that I knew were there's Croc-Croc multiball, very easy to do. You hit a target that says light lock. You hit the scoop. You do that two or three times, and you're in that multiball. And then the Rocketman multiball, it's all about switch hits. You have to gather fuel. There are certain shots that you can get more fuel than others, but it's just something you're going to do progressively, fill up the rocket. Once the rocket's full, if you hit the rocket shot, it will start a multiball. If you stack the Rocketman multiball and the Croc-Croc multiball, you get Crockett multiball. So that is the Crockett multiball, which is instead of having alligator animations and rocket animations, the alligators riding the rocket. It's awesome. That's what everybody should do. I don't know if it's viable for points or whatever, but you want to see the crocodile on the rocket. It's so great. I mean, it's JJP games, though. It's not really about the points necessarily. It always seems like it's about the experience. It's about the fist bumps. Exactly. About the fist bump, about the music, about the lights. You know, but I don't know. Maybe this game, maybe with Steve Ritchie, it might turn into something that's more tournament-centric. I don't know. I mean, games don't have to be that at all, you know. But I'm curious to see what would happen if that was kind of added in, where you understood risk-reward a little bit more with it. I mean, was some of that in Godfather, though? I haven't played that too often, but I know that there was risk-reward in terms of – You can leave a job, or you can keep grinding away at the job and then collect. So that's built in there. But I will say, so my impression is I only played Elton John three times, two at the distributor thing and then one actually waiting in line where I beat Tom. But playing that, playing the game, and I know I'm in a unique situation, being able to borrow games from Zach to stream. Must be nice. It is. I love it. Must be real nice. Honestly, this is a game that I'm pumped. Like, I'm excited to stream this game because, one, the music, realizing, like, I've never sought out an Elton John song just to play. But flipping through, it's like I know a lot of these songs, and it fits the game really well. So I know the energy will be there. I like the way it's shot. I'm excited about the rules. It's a beautiful experience. Like, I'm very excited to stream this game. So if you're an Elton John fan, buy one. Like, you're going to like the game. and I think this could be a unique experience for JJP with the way the rules are laid out. It feels very different than a Kiefer rule set that we've had now, or Joe Katz rule set even. So that's my thoughts. That's my thoughts.
    94:36
    Okay, so what other games are at Expo then? Because we've already played Venom. Like, we all know how Venom goes, and that was a new game that Stern had. The only other Stern game that happened was the Elvira Blood Red. Right. But it was an edition. Right. It wasn't at Expo. I think Tom bought four. No. No? I already have an Elvira, and it's colored. So you have the premium? I have the premium, yes. Yeah. So as an Elvira owner, wasn't there a super limited edition when it came out? There was an LE and a super LE, I believe. Yep. And then the 40th. The 40th. The 40th was $25,000. Yeah, the 40th was pretty sexy. Yeah. But for the cost, it was like, no. Yeah. And then Travis's dog is back. This is how Monica is when she's around, too. Yeah. She bugs me with that. She just breathes on. And now we have the Blood Red Edition, where it's just all red. The Blood Red Edition, I saw in person. They had one sitting out at the Stern Factory Tour. The game looks incredible. Like, it looks beautiful, and it would absolutely stand out in your game room because it is black and white with that shiny red.
    95:53
    So I don't know. I don't know how I feel for the, for one, for the people that forked over $25,000 for what they thought was the top-end model. This thing now looks really, really cool, and you can get it for $13,000. That would be hard. That would be hard to kind of deal with. Do I blame distributors? No. They're just selling games. Do I blame Stern? You know, if you have the license and it's a chance to make money, I don't blame them for making money. But at the same time, it could piss off people. There's no denying that.
    96:23
    There's no could. It is pissing off people. I will tell you, as somebody that works for a distributor slash dealer, it absolutely is. Yes, it is. But that's going to happen. You know, if you put out a product that you already have an anniversary edition. So we all saw the reaction to Jurassic Park, right? 30th. And that was an anniversary edition. So when they came out with the 40th anniversary edition, I mean, people had the same reaction back then, too. It's just people forget that because it's already happened a few years ago. And different editions have come out, though, for the past decade of various games, whether you're dealing with, like, a Lucy ACDC edition, whether you're dealing with a Catwoman edition for the Batman 66. You had those little trading cards with the signatures on it for there. You know, there's always been, I think even like Munsters, when they initially had the black and white premium, then a little while later they released it in color. Right. So, you know, historically speaking, this isn't something that's new, but I definitely get why people are frustrated if they believe that they have the top end edition already. and they quote unquote invested that money or at least paid that money into that machine and then they see other things coming out. Like imagine if, yeah, go ahead, Todd. It's just I understand why people get frustrated. I thought it was strange when they came out with the 40th and like people were still waiting for premiums. Oh, yeah. So like, and then now it's like, we're going to do this other edition. So it's like, what's next? When's the next Bond game going to come out? That's a different version. The Goldfinger edition. The Goldfinger edition, right? Yeah, Dolby and Godzilla 70th edition. It is going to happen. Yeah.
    98:14
    It's clear that's the strategy is to dip back into the same pond again and use a theme that you still have the right to and use it any way that you can to try to generate more revenue. But at the same time, you do have to be careful of doing that you don't alienate your current base. And it's not just your base that's buying one-off games. When you look at LE collectors, the vast majority of them keep buying. You get one person here and there that will try to find one because they're just the ultimate fan of a certain theme. Like we saw that with Rush. We've seen that with other games as well. But by and large, somebody that's willing to spend the money for a limited edition pen is not going to be just a one-off customer. There's a lot of long-term value for that potential customer to various companies.
    99:06
    And if you upset them, that's not a good thing. Now, your industry has to be large enough to be able to replace them. The problem that we're seeing with pinball right now, the past three years, it did grow tremendously. And you could replace them. But we're currently at that ceiling that we're kind of seeing at this point. We've reached the apex of that growth. we know that these LEs are going to have 500 to 1,000 each.
    99:33
    So, you know, at some point, you can only have so many out there in circulation to where you're presenting it in front of the same customer base that's willing to buy those games. So I think it's one of those things where I hope everybody kind of treads lightly with that because you have a lot of fans of certain things. You have fans that are loyal to a brand. But if you do something to damage that loyalty, you have to be careful about that so my question is Tom's a Rush superfan clear, Rush superfan he was going to buy the highest model he could buy for Rush, even if it had one pop-upper he's shaking his head, he knows he's ready, I'm assuming there are people out there that are Elvira superfans they probably have a Rush, or no, they probably have a HEP restored Scared Stiff HEP restored Elvira and the Party Monsters So my question is, what does that buyer own? Did they go with the Super LE? And then it's like, oh, crap, the 40th edition. Should I trade that in by the 40th? Or now the Blood Red edition, it's like, crap, do I need to – should I trade in my 40th and get the – you know, like, those guys that I know are girls. Those people are the rare – it's this very small group, obviously, that are probably having these internal struggles. But it is weird. It is a weird spot to be in where you feel like you have the best version, and then all of a sudden you now have doubt, and should I upgrade or change to get a different version? Our market dictates the best version. Yeah. Well, Tom, how would you feel, though, if there was a Rush Super LE that comes out within, like, two years from now? How would you personally feel about that as somebody that has the Rush LE? I probably wouldn't be happy. Okay. I would just be like, why are they putting this out now? Right. Then there's a decision like, okay, I'm pretty happy with what I have. Do I upgrade? But do I really need to upgrade because it's probably just going to be some, you know, change in artwork and some powder coating. I wonder if there will be buyers that instead of buying the LE when a game is revealed, they buy the premium, and then if they love the game, they tell their distributor, put me on the list for whatever the next model, you know, the next limited edition is of this game. It's possible, but, you know, what Tom just said there is something that if you look at any positives out of doing this type of strategy, the potential positive of that is you already have a built-in audience base or a built-in consumer base for that particular product, for the people that want to keep buying upwards and keep escalating what they're going to get. But you've got to be careful of that, too, because just like we talked about, you're going to have the same buyers that are just going to be pissed that they don't want to go any higher than they thought that they already had the highest one. And, you know, somebody like me, I can tell you personally that I honestly, I wouldn't really care that much if a super version of whatever game, like Avengers, comes out, right? I would probably just stick with what I have and just be like, okay, you know, they're two separate things. It just is what it is. But like I said, opinions are going to be all over the place here on that. But you don't want the opinions to go negative. You don't want people to say, well, if there's a chance that my limited edition pen won't be the top tier version a few years from now, why do I want to pay this amount of money for it now? Right? You know, like you might as well wait. If you're going to do that, you might as well buy a premium and then just wait and see and then buy a used LE. Yeah. I mean, and that's a good point. Yeah, you run the risk of that happening. And I can promise you, I can promise you because I've heard from these people directly, that is going to happen and will happen. That's a dangerous spot to be in because you have to replace those consumers up front because the LEs are still going to go out, right? at the very beginning of a cornerstone, it's still going to go out. The question is, is many going to be adopted? You know, it's just like we saw with Venom. Not all the LEs got sold. Well, it's not like pinball is this mainstream thing, let's be honest. Yeah, it's an odd thing because it is big in terms of the amount of people that know about it, that want to buy it. but it's not big in the sense of people that trying to bring people in to become aware of it. Cause it it awfully difficult to go to a an arcade and just play a couple of games and be like yeah I willing to spend for one at home You know what I mean Your average family is not going to do that in all reality. There's got to be something else that hits them to want to do that. It's always a process. for the vast majority of people out there that buy pinball, it is a process that lasts well over a year to go from discovery to thinking about buying to becoming a high intent person to actually purchase a machine. So it's awfully hard to get to that point. And there's just a lot of factors coming in right now in terms of more pinball showing up, more companies showing up, like the one that's right behind you, Joel, with Labyrinth. More manufacturing happening, like CERN expanding, more dealers coming in, the game becoming even more worldwide, more people watching on Twitch and YouTube than ever before. So it's an interesting spot to see that I think things have to be careful in terms of pricing these types of people out. Because it is obviously, I mean, let's face facts. You have to have money behind you to get these games. I wouldn't encourage somebody to go in debt for pinball or anything like that. Like, spend what your budget is. But you just have to be careful about that, about putting stuff out and pissing off your base now that's willing to support. You know, if you think about it, I don't know the percentages, but let's just say it's even just 10%, right? Let's say it's 100 LE buyers that decide that they're out. You have to replace those people if you're going to sell to the consumers.
    106:01
    Yeah, this is a new thing, right? Kind of a new strategy that Stern's doing, and we're just going to kind of have to see how it's... They've been doing it for the better part of a decade. A lot of people don't realize it. They've been doing it for the reasons that we said earlier, like the ACDC Lucy edition. Oh, you're right. It's been happening. So people that think that this is the brand new thing, it's not. It's just more highlighted right now because we see where the prices are at, right? And it's happening at a much faster clip, it feels like, at this point. Because Jurassic Park, it came out, what, in 2019, I think, sometime around there, 2018 maybe? or maybe Iron Man was 2008. Anyways, it came out around there just about four years ago or so. So now we're at the point that anything that – any theme that comes out or any theme that is currently in production, it's almost like everybody's just going to look and see, okay, what's the anniversary coming up for this game? Is there potential that that's going to show up? Because that's obviously what the strategy is going to be. You know, Stern's not hiding that because they've done it several times already. Now that the production's getting bigger, they can make more games. So let's throw out some new versions, spice things up. Yep. Yeah, well, okay, so we are rapidly approaching two hours. We still have a little bit more to cover here. So let's rapid-fire these things. So American Pinball was there. Galactic Tank Force was pretty much all they brought. There was a ton of them. They had the actors. The actors were there. I played it again. I didn't have the issues with the tank that we had at Texas Pinball Festival or the ball was hopping or anything like that. But I was still having issues with the left ramp. On one of the games, you could hit the left ramp all day long. The other games, it wouldn't even make it up there. So there's one ramp in the game. And if you can't hit the ramp to light locks to do certain things, I don't know. I know there are some GTF owners out there that love this game. And if I'm still – my view is if I stream it, maybe I'd love it. But I just – unfortunately, my initial impressions of playing it a handful of times now have not been positive. The game looks great. I like the theme. I think it's a fun, kooky game. But the layout really isn't drawing me in. And when you have, you know, mechanical issues where you can't really progress through the game, it's unfortunate. So, I don't know, thoughts, any other? You go to that? I mean, this CTF, I didn't go over there to play it. I had very little time in the hall, so. Yeah, you were crushing that stream. I did go to the custom area, though. Did you guys go to the home break? Yeah. It was some cool home breaks. It was fun. I played the 8-Ball Beyond. I thought that was really neat. That one had a line. I wish I would have played it because I didn't realize it. Yeah, people loved it. People loved it. Yeah. There was a battle station. It was like a head-to-head thing, which was really a lot of fun to play. I don't know how well that would necessarily sell, but it was really fun. Like head-to-head, you're standing across from each other shooting against each other game.
    109:10
    That could become something really cool. But if the cost was right, it was. I was thrilled with that game. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I got to play Monica. Just absolutely annihilated her. I felt great about that. That a boy. Poor Monica. That was fun. Over in that section, and we can keep this short, was Pinball Adventures. They had a punny factory and they had an Elements. I played one game on elements the glass was off the entire game the entire day when I looked over the glass was off not the guy was working on it no he was having people play it with the glass off so clearly I think the game was in a state where it was just easier to have the glass off so that he could do X, Y, or Z starting the game you go to hit the start button you know and you're hitting the start button the place where the start button is and there's a button there, but that's not how you start the game. You have to start the game by hitting the action button. So, I mean, it was just like that was my, I mean, that was literally the initial impression. Like, how do we even start this thing?
    110:16
    It was interesting that it was over in the homebrew section because I think you could have wheeled the game over and put it in the homebrew lineup and it would have fit. And that's not an insult to the homebrew. It just, that's where it was at. It does not feel like a production game. It feels like this is the beginning of what could become a game. It just has a long way to go. Elements. Elements, yeah. Elements. I did not play Pony Factory. I had enough with elements. I just, you know, there was an upper play field, and honestly, I shot it. The ball shot up, and it fell off. So I just grabbed the ball, and I set it back up on the upper play field because I wanted to see what the shots were up there. Right, right. I don't know. I'm not here to just bash, but it was really disappointing. It was really disappointing. Did you get to play that game, Tom? Element? I did not. Oh, you missed out. Oh, knock off the – there's a ramp. The sounds of it, yeah. And there's a right wire – it's a metal kind of habit trail. You would normally expect that habit trail to feed the inline, but instead the habit trail takes a hard turn to the left, like a 90-degree turn, and it spits the ball out into the middle of the play field. Yep, across the play field horizontally. Across the play field. I think the goal is to hit a target. I believe so. It was not doing that. No. It was just dunking the ball to the left out lane, and you were just dunked. Nice. That was it? So you hit the right ramp? That's a great ball. Right ramp to left out lane. That's a great ball. Yeah. No such thing as house balls. Yeah. It could have been named. We tried it. I played the game, I think, twice just to give it a whirl. And, yeah, I would highly recommend that they go back to the drawing board in terms of design overall. I mean, it's cool that people are trying to produce pinball, but, yeah.
    112:15
    I don't understand, like, you know, it would be like Stern or Jersey Jack or another company just bringing a whitewood in unfinished stage and being like, hey, what do you guys think of this? You know? Yeah. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to bring it to a show and have the glass off and it be a disaster. It was just almost like they were wanting to get real-world testing, right? But they weren't really advertising it. Did they have a sign?
    112:47
    That's what I mean. They weren't advertising it. So if you're just extreme casual, you would have no idea what's going on. Like all of us that are like firmly into the pinball culture, like we understood what was happening there. But at the same time, it's like if we were going to give honest feedback about it, the honest feedback I would give is that you need to go back to the design phase. Start over. Yeah. The design's not going to work. I mean, it had a left orbit that was so impossible to hit. Like it would make even Josh Sharp blush. like it had a rubber that was just so fat that I told everybody around me, I'll give you guys 10 bucks if you can hit that shot. Cause it was like, it was almost like you're playing a carnival game. It was so like tight and somebody finally did. I think Monica did out of all people, but yeah,
    113:39
    it was, yeah, we were probably legitimately like one for 20 something, one for like, it was a lot. I never hit it once and it was just, and I was aiming for it consistently. And it was the way that they had the design with, I guess there was some other left shot that kind of like did a little half candy cane real quick turnaround and would just come back out. I'm not really sure what was going on there. And then, yeah, the, the upper play field with the horseshoe below, it's kind of like swords of fury in a way they just combined everything up together. And then, yeah, the right ramp return though, that, I mean, I'll be honest, that was the worst return I've ever seen. It was insane. On any machine. Yeah, it was almost like, and I told you guys this, that if somebody came out with a camera crew and said, you're being punked right now, I would believe them. I'd be like, okay, yeah, this makes so much sense. Because it just fed the left outline and just dunked it, and there was no kickback. There was no adjustments, no nothing. That's the problem. I mean, first impressions are pretty much everything. Yeah. You go and, I mean, even if you play a production game and the ball's getting stuck, you know, that's not a good thing in pinball. Yep. I mentioned to you when I walked up to Labyrinth, my initial thing was I wanted, how did it feel, right? How did it feel? And you walk up to that and it felt like it was going to fall apart. Like, they brag about on their website, you know, they're using this Canadian birch or something, super high in wood. Like, it's just the cabinet didn't feel good. You look at it, it's just like the overall, it's just the build quality just was not great. Flipper, everything. Everything that I said felt good on Labyrinth was the opposite with this. I will say I did play Punny Factory, and I will say the flippers there felt a lot better. They were strong. I'm not really going to comment on the game too much other than I played it once, and that was good enough for me. It's just not something I'm interested in playing anymore. But, you know, their flippers over there did feel better, and you could hit the shots over there. It was just very much elements was a glorified white wood is what it was. And we were all doing a beta test, you know, active happening there. It was happening. It definitely, after playing some of the homebrew games, it wasn't even on the level of some of those over there. I mean, it just wasn't, just to be honest. And so hopefully they can take the feedback that they got. They can course adjust or whatever you call it. They can do something a little bit better. and they can get something decent out of it, I guess, if they're going to keep putting pinball out there. It's tough overall.
    116:21
    So here's the hardest part, guys. If you're going to put out pinball and you know you can't manufacture at a massive scale and you know you're not going to make thousands of them, your game has to be extremely accessible. And we keep saying that over and over again. this. It has to be. The shots have to be doable for people. It has to make sense for people. Because if your game is a brickfest, you're done. It's just not. The game has to be designed for the casual. There's nothing... If the shots aren't going to draw you in, and it's unthemed, there's no theme drawing you in, there's nothing about that game that's pulling you in to play another game. But that's probably more than enough time that we've probably He said, I mean, yeah, that's just where that company's at. Joel's saying let's move on. Well, I'm just.
    117:13
    Zach, please send the game to Joel. Make Joel stream it. So I'm going to rapid fire here through a list because there's really one more game I want to talk about in detail. But it's other stuff with their CGC. There was a bunch of guys scanning his Pulp Fiction is still great. Had good lines there. Pinball Brothers was there with Alien. There's the new Ripley code. I've seen her. She is in the code that was there. Dutch Pinball was there with Big Lebowski. Big Lebowski is still a very cool game.
    117:42
    Big Lebowski played very, very well. I think that's it besides Turner Pinball. Turner Pinball, for all the manufacturers, I don't think I'm forgetting anything or any other new games, but Turner Pinball was there. Ninja Eclipse, right? Ninja Eclipse. Is that what it is? Okay. Oh, Spooky was there. They had some Scooby-Doos. Those all sold. Those played well. It was good seeing a bug in that crew. Is that your Ninja look, Tom? So, Ninja Eclipse, a few things. So, first off, Turner Pinball, they're the people that bought a ton of the assets from Deep Root. I think they were initially, like, the design team with some of the code with Deep Root. So, there's kind of a weird thing there, but now they're their own thing.
    118:20
    So, this game, they redesigned the cabinet. There's no coin door. The idea here is if this game was on location, you pay for the game through an app, and somehow the app would work with the bar that it was at for something. So they've kind of redesigned trying to bring it into the digital world. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing there. I mean, that's – no, Travis is saying no. Well, it goes squarely against what I just said five minutes ago. It's not accessible. I mean, it's not accessible. If somebody walks up to the quarter and they're just like, where do I put – how do I put money in-game? How do I – they're just – I'm just going to start hitting buttons. I didn't realize that's what they were doing. Yeah, so. Because I didn't go over there. I had no idea. The game is, the depth of the cabinet is a lot shorter. There's no coin door. So the depth of the game is a lot shorter. So the legs look long. The depth of the game looks shorter. And because the way they built the game, the game feels way lighter. I went to nudge, and I, like, threw the game across the room. I mean, it moved. So, you know, you think you're used to whatever. you're thinking like, oh, I'm going to move this half a inch. This thing moved literally a foot. And so it felt like a zizzle. It felt like, okay, this is a higher up version of a zizzle. So I'm thinking like if this is in the $5,000 range, they may have a market here to like four or five. And I was playing with Zach, and Zach laughs. He's like, this is a $10,000 game. Like this game costs as much as a Stern Premium. What? Yeah. 10,000? That alone, yeah. It's just like, nope. For Ninja Eclipse. The layout was the same layout that we played at TPF when it was a Whitewood. They've tweaked some little things. There's a side ramp. It's the widest side ramp I've ever seen. But just hitting it was rough because of the way the layout works. Yeah. So it's just one of those things, exactly what you're talking about with Pinball Adventures, pinball adventures where the theme isn't going to draw you in. Yeah. The, the code isn't going to draw you in, in the layout. There wasn't anything in that layout that was like, Ooh, I want to shoot that shot again. I want to experience this again. So it just, it's a similar thing. If they sat me down and they're like, what do you think? The only thing they crushed was the art. They hired Matt Andrews, the guy that did weird Al's art and total TNA's art. They had him do the art. The art looks great. The animations even look good, but it's just, it was a similar like I don't know what I'm doing the game isn't explaining what I'm doing and these shots aren't particularly fun the flippers feel odd and the cat feels like a toy and it just so with the coin thing or with the bar or whatever it's obvious that they're trying to do something innovative right but what problem are they trying to solve you know because to me it's like if you're going to innovate you're doing it for a reason to further something and to solve a problem, right, to make ease of access or something like that. But I don't, like, what problem exactly are they solving with that? I don't know. Or is it just innovating just to innovate? I just know, you know, like in Japan, you can pay for everything with your phone. Right. Vending machines, everything. So I don't know if it's this idea of how do we get more people to use their phone for, you know. Well, that part makes sense in terms of tapping and everything. But the problem is you just have one game, right? Yeah. So it's like people aren't going to adopt it. So it's almost like, do you just make that because you're hoping Stern or Jersey Jack decides to adopt it? To use your back-end system. But the problem is that system is only relevant to locations. And we all know Stern is the one that rules everything when it comes to location pinball.
    122:14
    I feel impressed. There you go. So I don't see any other reason to be using something like that. Like, I don't understand that innovation, how that makes it any easier for people. It's not a good idea. It's just, it's not, you know, people are upset that, like, American Pinball had, like, squiggly back boxes. I'm just like, this game will not look good in a lineup in any way. Like, this game, if you have that weird spot in the corner of your basement that nothing fits in, maybe put it there. But it's just, I don't get it. You know, props on them trying something new. But it just, to me, what I thought was insane was that Barrels of Fun, Turner Pinball, and Pinball Adventures are kind of all in the same spot or the all same position of trying to get into this industry and establish themselves as a reputable manufacturer. And you have Pinball Adventures that feels like a low-end homebrew. You have this, Turner Pinball, that it just doesn't, it feels like a high-end zizzle. and then you have this, which actually feels like a legit game. Right. But the key there is Turner Pinball, it's just a bunch of guys that are new to pinball and they fell in love with it because D Group hired them. I don't know what's going on with Pinball Adventures, but Barrels of Fun, that's a team of people that have been working in pinball that all left their other positions, all left previously what they were doing, came together and decided to start their own thing. And that experience shows. so I don't know I played one game and I'm good that was it the market will talk it'll speak it'll accept whatever these companies are bringing and they'll either accept it or they'll decline it and we'll see pretty quick within the next year to two years how that plays out now the biggest part is though like we talked about manufacturing your game could look great but you have to be able to produce the game but if your game looks not great and you have a hard time producing it, you don't have a company then. You just don't. I don't know. Hopefully, everybody figures it out. We obviously all want everybody to succeed. It absolutely sucks starting a business and it doesn't go the way that you want it and you hear the negativity and all that. That does absolutely suck. But we still, I think pinball in general, it does good to at least be honest about what these situations are. And hopefully they all take it to heart. Hopefully people are giving them the right feedback.
    124:47
    But yeah, I just, I don't, that's a head scratcher to me in terms of what Turner's doing with trying to do something innovative in that way. I would just rather see a game play well. I don't even care about World Under Glass or all this and that. I just want to see the shots do something cool. I want to feel like a boss. shots. Let's say that. I mean, Labyrinth, the only innovation they put in this game is that display in the bottom. So they didn't try to revolutionize pinball. And even then, that doesn't look like that was their first idea with it because it's partially blocked by some other stuff. I feel like that that was put in due to them not being able to do something else. When I look at it. It works well, but I don't know. I would just say, looking ahead, the only thing that's going to slow down the hype train of Labyrinth is if they have manufacturing issues. So that's definitely something to watch over the next few months. And then all the other manufacturers. I just don't – American Pinball, I don't know what's going on with GTF. I know they went big at Expo, but I just – there were no lines. They had a ton of them there, but it's just to see this huge line for Labyrinth, to see huge lines for Elton John, And you could just overall, it just seemed like people were just, okay, it's still here. There's no such thing as a relaunch of a game. Yeah. When the game's out, it's out. People have already gone. The train loves the station. Yeah. They're already there. That's the only time. There were lines for Pulp Fiction, you know. There were six games and there was always a line. Yeah, but that game's not out to consumers yet. Yeah. We're all still waiting for it, you know. Yeah, where is it? Yeah. Josh Sharp. Where is it? Yeah, Josh Sharp. He's working on the Cactus Canyon code. That's a whole other issue. That's a whole other manufacturing issue as well. So it just, you know, and what Polk does very well, though, like, okay, if we're going to directly compare GTF and Polk, right, which seems better? Like, yeah, the GTF theme is hilarious. Yeah. Polk fiction. You look at the way the shots are, which feels better shooting? Yeah. You know what I mean? when you look at what draws you in without having to really do anything that's super innovative, like what just draws you in, it's going to be Pulp Fiction. You know, I think what Pulp does really well and what I'm a big fan of, of pinball in general, is when it can take assets directly related to the theme in terms of call-outs to where you don't have to have a voice actor come in from the show or from the movie to do any type of custom pinball call-outs to where you just do You pull call-outs directly from the source, and you're able to apply it to a particular shot or to a particular scenario. Because everybody that loves a theme, you already recognize that. You already have an emotional investment in that scene, in that saying, in that dialogue, in that actor. So if you can do something like that, I think that that's a winning combination when it comes to really creating just an atmosphere for somebody to enjoy with the pinball scene.
    128:04
    I agree. No, there's some good stuff there, and that's what I'm saying. Looking at the horizon here between now and the end of the year, it'll be with Stern. It'll be at the end of the year. I'm assuming the next game will be announced probably end of December, early January. That's kind of their thing. So we're going to kind of be waiting there. American Pinball, I don't know if anything's going to happen there. Elton John, I don't think they're on the line yet, so it's probably going to be November. I mean, we're almost done with October, so maybe late November before those start getting out.
    128:37
    Labyrinths, hopefully these are trickling out. Spooky, I think they're nearing the end of Scooby-Doo production, so I would assume sometime soon their next game will be discussed.
    128:52
    So, yeah, there's a lot of good stuff that just happened that was just announced. It was a fun expo, a lot of fun things to play, and more to come is really all I can say there. The last thing we do need to discuss is the tournament. The tournament that was at Expo. Tom, you streamed it. You streamed the whole thing.
    129:13
    What was it? Who won that? Did Escher win that, too? Yeah. We kind of touched on that before, but, yeah. Escher won. He won the tournament and the Stern Pro. So, Escher had a great week is what. Escher won two new in-box games in, like, five days. Plus some money. Plus a lot of money. He's doing well. NFL. He's got a belt, too. He's got a big old belt. And you let Travis and I take a picture with him holding this check. From the anything else you want to say about the stream? Anything?
    129:44
    Well, you did it all from a hot spot. So congrats on that. We were worried about that. For the most part, it worked. It did have some hiccups. But I was surprised at how well it worked, honestly.
    130:04
    And, you know, we'll see what happens next year. Sure. Well, it was fun. It was fun to watch and it was fun to – I loved it. I loved commentating. I hope the viewers, while I was commentating, enjoyed it because my view was, you know, I was basically interviewing the people next to me like, okay, Raymond, they're playing Iron Maiden. What's your goal? How are you attacking this when you step up to it? And then hearing what he said. And there was one point where it was Jurassic Park, and I was sitting between Eric Stone and I think it was either Dalton or Rob Byers. But I said the same thing. Okay, what are you guys doing? And whoever was Dalton or Rob Byers said, oh, it was Rob. I'm getting into my mode. I'm getting through that. That way I can lock out, you know, immediately get into a control room and try to work on that. And Eric's like, no. Like, that's not. He goes, on this game, you go Raptor pin the whole time. That Raptor multi-ball, the points that you can get in that are just silly. And, like, hearing them discuss their mentality and then watching the person, what they're doing, it was really neat. It was really a lot of fun. So I really enjoyed it. You know what's funny about that?
    131:15
    I think it was the last game was on Jurassic Park, and Escher, I think Escher was down quite a bit to Dalton. and he, Asher literally went to the Raptor pin the entire time. And I was just like, wow. And, uh, I, I was, I, I wasn't in the booth at the time. So I was kind of in and out and I was talking to Josh Sharp and Adam Lefkoff. And, uh, Josh was like, he's on his third Raptor. And I was like, what? Oh, wow. Like, I didn't even know you could do that. I see. Well, yeah. So it was a cool way to learn. That's the one thing. If anybody wants to learn more about pinball, watch tournament streams. And especially with good commentating, you can learn a ton about the games. You can learn a ton about the games and what's going on or what to do. Well, Expo is probably one of the best ones to watch, too. Yeah. In terms of understanding a game. Some of the best players. Right. Yeah, there's several reasons. One, you do have some of the best players in the world. Two, you see that player come back up more often since it's not a four-player game. And you know what I mean? You're going to see a heads-up base, so that's good. And then on top of that, the games are set up pretty favorable. So you're going to see players get deep into the game. You're going to see the correct openings. You're going to see the correct mid-game decisions happen. So if you're ever trying to figure out what you're supposed to do on a game, those streams by far are the most valuable that you're going to find just in a second because you just watch what they do. And then you just try to copy it just at the beginning, just do that and you'll be fine. Just like we're talking about Jurassic Park right there. You watch that. You're going to see two, you're going to hear two different opinions on how to do it. And I imagine if you watch Dalton and Escher play it, you're going to see two different versions of how to play it. Because Raptor pin all day is a very viable strategy when you're, especially if you're playing heads up and you can handle the return to it whenever you're trying to knock down the Raptor fin or trying just to boost it up. Yeah, I think that that's interesting, too, just to be able to see the different strategies and see that there's different ways to skin that cat. So I encourage everybody out there, if you want to learn fin ball, those would be the best streams to watch. Yeah. Which sounds like a perfect transition to plugs. Plugs. So unless there was anything else you guys felt we needed to cover. No? We definitely didn't. $10 and 15 minutes was enough. I mean, we said Randy won UK Open, so we're good. Like, that's the only thing we had to make sure. If we missed it, you know, comment it on Facebook. We'll hit it next time. There's always more to talk about. But, yeah, let's plug it up. Tom, you go for it.
    134:01
    When I'm not here on Triple Drain Podcast, you can find me on Fox Cities Pinball on Twitch and YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Perfect.
    134:13
    Travis? Yeah, you guys can find me on this podcast. Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, and hopefully next time I will actually have my studio all set up, and then you guys can also find me on the pinball company's YouTube channel. Yeah, this is excellent right here. I mean, quality backpacks. The beanbag, yeah. Crushes your cactus cane. Where's the dog? Where's CJ? That's what I was going to say. Yeah, get the dog back. He wandered off. We need more CJ in this. Definitely check out Fox City's YouTube. Tom has a lot of really good videos there, and then Travis is putting out more and more content on the pinball company with tutorial videos. And I know you had a really good video on, like, how to win your Venom. Which we have to update because there's a new video. Which is completely nerfed. Completely nerfed now. So, new video coming out soon. How to win your Venom launch party, which is really good. But, no, it's really cool stuff.
    135:00
    And then, yeah, I'm jolly to do the Flippin' Out stream every Wednesday from 10 to midnight. Check that out. Obviously, check out this podcast. But we're trying to do more stuff on the Flippin' Out YouTube channel as well with content, which is fun. And I have to say a huge thank you to everybody that came up to us at the show. I know all three of us had different people saying they were fans of the show. Kind of an unreal moment for me, which was hilarious, was Dwight did this seminar, and it was this, it was let's make a deal. And I went in there, and I actually was talking to Keith Elwin beforehand. I sit down. Keith Elwin sits down next to me. We're talking. And this guy walks up and he looks at both of us and he goes, I just want to say I'm a huge fan of both of what you guys do. I love your content. Keith, Jurassic Park is a forever pen for me. Thank you. Thanks for what you guys do. And, like, walked away. And I'm like, how in the world did I just get involved in that? You know, like, you can absolutely in that situation skip over me and go to Keith and thank him for what he's done. So it's just stuff like that, which is really neat. I'm glad that the content that we're making is enjoyed and appreciated. It's nowhere near on the level of designing, you know, one of the best pinball machines ever made, like Keith Owen. But I'm happy. I'm happy that people like it. So thank you. Thank you for everybody that, yeah. You hear that, listeners? Boost Joel's ego every chance you get.
    136:24
    No, I just feel like that was a situation where you can ignore me entirely. Like that is. What you're trying to say is it is very humbling when people come up to us. It's incredibly humbling. And we definitely appreciate it, and we're all willing to talk pinball with everybody here. We don't take anybody out there for granted at all. Yeah. Or people like families. Like, you know, I talked to – there was a woman there that was wearing a Triple Drain shirt. And, you know, she's like, I love the podcast. You're my favorite podcast. My son watches your streams, you know. And it's just like – it's crazy. It's crazy what that is. And my brother came on the Saturday, and this was his first, like, pinball experience outside of my basement pretty much, and he loved it. I mean, everybody was kind to him and wanted, you know, the fact that he could have these conversations with fans or with people in the industry. Like, he really walked away with a big old smile on his face, which was really neat. So thank you for everybody. It made a really fun experience, a really fun pinball experience. You did just remind me, Joel, and hopefully they're still listening out here. I didn't catch their name, but, you know, I was wearing my Elgato No Signal hoodie. Yeah, hoodie. Somebody overheard me talking, and they said, you sound just like that guy from that podcast. And I'm like, do I? Yeah, that's cool. Well, yeah. I didn't even say it. You didn't say you were.
    137:47
    That's great. Because they never watched the YouTube at all. That's awesome. There you go. Well, to that guy, he tricked you. You were talking to him. Yeah. It was me the whole time. Travis is a douche. That's what he should have said. He's like, man, I really like that tall guy. I just wish Travis would shut up a little bit. He probably said something good about you, Joel, and I was just like, okay, yeah, we're done with this interaction. You're done with that? Yeah.
    138:14
    No, that's cool. Well, I think that's that. Episode 44, we can check that box. We've been checking boxes left and right. But, hey, obviously leave a comment if you're watching the YouTube video, if we missed anything, or hit us up on Facebook. Even if you just want to leave an emote in the comments, you know. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah, just put that's fair in the comments. Put that's fair. Put a dog emote because CJ's probably the best thing that's ever been on camera on this stream. Hey, my camera stayed up this whole entire time. Your camera, you did it. You did it. So for Chad W. out there that said take a shot every time the camera goes off, all of our listeners are sober right now. That works. All right. Well, like always, Tom, you get the last words. Thanks, everybody. Bye.