Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 34 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 9m·analyzed·Apr 11, 2026
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Electric Bat Cast discusses Pokemon Pinball's impact on new players and addresses operator best practices.

Summary

Rachel and Kale from Electric Bat Arcade in Tempe, Arizona discuss arcade operations, upcoming events (Pokemon and Beetlejuice launch parties), new player influx driven by Pokemon Pinball, and answer community questions via mailbag covering first machine selection, operator income sources, spreadsheet tracking methods, Arizona pinball community growth, and payment system options.

Key Claims

  • Pokemon Pinball is bringing more new people into pinball than D&D Pinball by Stern did, with both Pro and Premium machines occupied nearly 20 hours per day

    high confidence · Rachel and Kale discussing their arcade observations; they attribute this to Pokemon's easy-to-understand ruleset

  • Electric Bat expands whenever more space is available, and growth is constrained by venue capacity

    high confidence · Kale discussing Arizona community growth with Matt Jackson's question about tournament participation

  • Arizona has approximately 450 tournament players, with 250-300 playing regularly, of which about 33% or fewer play at Electric Bat's Tuesday events

    medium confidence · Matt Jackson's Discord question, cited by Kale and Rachel; based on external estimate, not verified by hosts

  • 75% of new pinball machines require some setup or fixes out of the box

    high confidence · Rachel stating this based on Electric Bat arcade experience; supported by anecdotes of customers having problems

  • Stern started shipping pinball balls coated in oil to reduce corrosion, requiring thorough cleaning by end users

    high confidence · Rachel and Kale discussing maintenance; they've seen this cause problems for new machine owners

  • Electric Bat's income is more than 50% from games, with the rest from drinks and a small amount from merch

    high confidence · Rachel answering Bonnie Bear's financial breakdown question about arcade revenue sources

  • Electric Bat submits approximately 110-125 unique players per 6-week series to IFPA, out of roughly 200 unique players who play during that period

    high confidence · Rachel answering Matt Jackson's question about Arizona tournament player participation

  • Electric Bat's social media and podcasting efforts created viral content that drove explosive community growth in Arizona

    medium confidence · Rachel's self-assessment of impact; anecdotal but credible from venue operator perspective

Notable Quotes

  • “Pokemon, you find the little dudes, you identify the little dudes, and then you catch the little dudes. It's easy to digest. Yeah. Like baby food.”

    Rachel @ ~10:00 — Explains why Pokemon Pinball is successful at attracting casual/new players compared to complex theme games

  • “You are buying a very expensive toy... you are expect to work on this thing on day one. Don't get frustrated... you're buying a gigantic science project that is really fun.”

    Kale @ ~18:00 — Sets realistic expectations for new pinball machine owners about maintenance and troubleshooting

  • “I'm not too modest to toot my own horn. You didn't see explosive growth of pinball until the electric bat started its marketing campaign, social media, podcasting.”

    Rachel @ ~42:00 — Rachel claims Electric Bat's content strategy drove community growth; reflects confidence in their community role

  • “We work more than 60 hours every week... We would not have time to sleep if we had any extra work on top of the work that owning an arcade is.”

    Rachel @ ~22:00 — Illustrates the operational burden of owning vs. operating an arcade venue

  • “Clean them more than you think... The balls are just going all over the place. Clean them more than you think.”

    Rachel @ ~16:00 — Practical advice repeated for emphasis; addresses common new-owner complaint about ball control

Entities

Rachel BesspersonKale HernandezpersonElectric Bat ArcadecompanyZach ManeypersonFlip N Out PinballcompanyMarco PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Pokemon Pinball (Stern Pro/Premium) is attracting unprecedented numbers of new players to Electric Bat arcade; both versions occupied ~20 hours per day; impact exceeds D&D Pinball launch

    high · Rachel: 'This eclipses that. Yeah. We are seeing way more new people, groups of new people.' Kale: 'Everybody knew that this is what would happen. This was the goal for it and it worked.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Arizona pinball community showing sustained growth with multiple venues and tournament series expanding; Matt Jackson estimates 450 total tournament players, 250-300 regular, with Electric Bat capturing ~100-125 per series

    high · Rachel discussing venue expansion correlation with player growth; mentions Starfighters (70-80 players monthly), BRI (30-35), Atomic Age Modern (Friday tournaments); history of growth from APPL (~30) → Tilt League → current multi-venue scene

  • ?

    operational_signal: 75% of new pinball machines require setup/repair out of box; common issues include dirty pinballs (shipped with oil coating), manufacturing defects, and switch wiring problems; operators should expect day-one troubleshooting

    high · Rachel: '75 percent chance that you're going to have to do something to the machine straight out of the box'; ball cleaning issues; Bond 60th example of switches wired backwards in $20,000 machine

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern shipping pinballs with oil coating to reduce corrosion; new owners often under-clean balls, causing poor playfield control and frustration; requires multiple passes with rags

    high · Rachel: 'I take two rags, clean them once, and then go to another rag and clean them again. And then like a paper towel...Clean them more than you think.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.209

0:00
All right, you ready to go live? I sure am. I've got these earnings report you don't know the answers to.
0:07
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh my God. Hello. Oh no, the standing desk is. What the fuck? Hey, do something. Jesus Christ.
0:26
Well, lie. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Okay, okay, okay. All right, we've almost got this under control. Oh, my gosh. Okay, now it's going down too far.
0:44
That's too far? Oh, it'll be all right. This is good. It'll be fine. All right, I got to lock this. Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, today's show is brought to you by IKEA, the fantastic standing desk. No, this is Costco. Costco, ladies and gentlemen, Costco and IKEA.
1:00
We were raised by catalogs. All right. So I think we got everything under control here. We'll see.
1:09
Hey, we are the Electric Bats out of Tempe, Arizona. We're from all over Arizona, to tell you the truth. From the low desert of the great American Southwest, undefeated heavyweight Twippy champs. Perhaps the last winners, the last and only winners of a Twippy, a podcast Twippy.
Pokemon Pinball
product
Beetlejuiceproduct
Godzillaproduct
Data East Star Trekproduct
Addams Familyproduct
D&D Pinballproduct
Bond 60thproduct
Arizona Pinball Players League (APPL)organization
Tilt Leagueorganization
IFPAorganization
Scorebitcompany
Matt Jacksonperson
Project Pinballorganization
Captainperson
?

venue_signal: Electric Bat's growth is limited by physical venue capacity; every expansion has attracted more players; operators see untapped demand if larger spaces available in Arizona market

high · Rachel: 'I think if we had more room, we would have more players. I agree. I think there's just like we saw with the expansion of the bat and how we've kind of like reached our limit. Like every time we expanded, more people came out.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Electric Bat scheduling Pokemon Pinball launch (Target Match Play format, April 12) and Beetlejuice launch (May 30) with giveaways; Beetlejuice includes Spooky Playfield random winner draw to encourage casual participation

    high · Kale/Rachel announcing events; Beetlejuice giveaway strategy designed to make non-expert players feel included

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Pokemon Pinball succeeds with new players because rule set is intuitive and theme-driven: 'find the little dudes, identify the little dudes, and then catch the little dudes'; simpler than license-heavy games like John Wick or X-Men

    high · Rachel: 'Pokemon, you find the little dudes, you identify the little dudes, and then you catch the little dudes. It's easy to digest. Yeah. Like baby food. Like Joker poker.'

  • $

    market_signal: Spike in first-time pinball machine buyers asking foundational questions on Reddit/Facebook/Discord; Electric Bat identifying opportunity to create guidance content for new owner segment

    high · Rachel: 'I've seen so many questions, comments on socials about new people getting in...what do I what can I expect? What's going on? Where do I get it? Where do I find the machine? How do I not get ripped off?'

  • ?

    business_signal: Electric Bat derives >50% of revenue from pinball/arcade games, remainder from bar drinks and minimal merch; gaming revenue is primary income source; venue ownership requires 60+ hour weeks with limited time for secondary income

    high · Rachel: 'More than 50 percent is games. So the rest is drinks and a little bit of merch.'; 'we work more than 60 hours every week...We would not have time to sleep if we had any extra work'

  • ?

    content_signal: Electric Bat podcast generating audience engagement with listeners binge-watching at 1.4x speed while traveling; community asking venue operators to share operational templates and best practices

    medium · Metaaxis (Discord): 'I binge at 1.4 times while driving around to pick up new machines'; multiple listeners requesting spreadsheet templates and operational guidance

  • ?

    technology_signal: Scorebit introducing tap-to-pay system for modern Stern machines; Electric Bat interested but lacks direct experience; seeking community feedback from operators already using system

    medium · Jojo/Dojo question about Scorebit; Kale: 'We don't have enough experience with the new system to recommend it or not...if some of you guys out there are using it, send us some info'

    • 1:33
    Your favorite ambassadors for location pinball all across the world, Rachel Best and Kale Hernandez. What's up, Rachel? Hey. What have you been doing? What's up with your hat? You have a cool hat. I have a cool trucker hat. We carry these now. You can get them on the website. Does it glow in the dark? It glows in the dark. Let me show you. I brought this scorpion blacklight, blacklight for finding scorpions. You can kind of see, but yes, glows in the dark. You can definitely see it glows in the dark. That checks out.
    2:02
    We run an arcade. In Tempe, Arizona. Mm-hmm. And we have events at the arcade. And we have some new stuff going on. Yeah. Pokemon launch party. That's tomorrow at noon. Tomorrow's Sunday. Sunday, April 12th. April 12th at noon. The format is Max Match Play? No, it's Target Match Play. Oh. I like that. Yeah, Target Match Play. I don't do well at heads up. Yeah, you need a bigger crowd. I do better. The less people I'm competing against, the better I do. You're the opposite.
    2:44
    What a fantastic morning. Um, also Lauren and Serge, our friends, our brothers from another mother and Project Pinball are sponsoring a pin golf tournament at the bat. That's Sunday, April the 19th. Tea times are at, you can either start at noon or at 4 p.m. Right. So you have to come with another friend. You don't have to. You can be assigned to some other people, but you'll be doing pin golf and groups. It's groups of either somewhere two, three or four people. And your tee times are either noon or four. So it's not come any time between those. We would prefer that you come roughly noon, roughly four. And that'll be cool because Serge is doing like a brief little 15, 20 second video. This is objective based pin golf, not score based. So there'll be an objective. And then if you don't quite understand that or just want to see Serge's pretty face. Raise your hand. You can click on the QR code and there'll be a little 15 second video explaining your objective for that hole and the proceeds benefit Project Pinball.
    3:53
    Beetlejuice by Spooky Pinball. We have a launch party. That's Saturday, May 30th at noon. We have some great giveaways. Including a Spooky Playfield, a Beetlejuice Playfield. A Beetlejuice Playfield. Wow. And you don't have to be good at pinball to win it because we're going to give that to a random person. Well, no, it's not just a random person. You have to be in the tournament. So you have to play in the tournament, but it's going to go to a random tournament player. Come off the street. We like doing that kind of thing so that way everybody has a chance to win the cool stuff, not just like the core group of the most excellent players. What else do we have going on here? We got Pokemon Pinball. Two. Pokemon. Pokezmon. We have a pro and a premium. Zach over at Flippin' Out Pinball sent them to us. He hooked us up. Man, we got them quick. We got them easy. Friction. I like to call it friction-free pinball from Zach at Flippin' Out Pinball. Thank you so much, Zach. You're amazing. You did a great job. That's where we're getting our games now. Yeah, and we always have great experience. We've known Zach for a very long time. We knew Zach before he was flipping out. We knew Zach when I used to sell him games. Well, he may have been flipping out, but he wasn't a flipping out business. Right. Right? Yeah. Yeah, so we love him. We trust him. He's taking care of us, and he'll do the same thing for you. We're not special.
    5:33
    Right. And then we get all of our parts at Marco Pinball. If you want to order some parts from Marco Pinball, EBA150 is the free shipping code. All you have to do is spend more than 150 bucks, and that's not hard with pinball parts, especially if you're an operator. EBA150 for free shipping. It's going to save you some money. Also, do you know what they sell? The Papa Shot. Oh, that's right. They started carrying Papa Shot. So now you freak out about that. I do. And I play that game still every day. More than pinball at the arcade. Well, I make sure to play. I just always look forward to playing Papa Shot. I don't know why. This doesn't taste like Starbucks. It's not Starbucks. I just put it in that sippy cup for you so it didn't spill. So I wouldn't spill. This is some gasoline. That is right. Diesel fuel. Local Beal Beans gasoline. Top fuel. Woo. Sales at MarcoPinball.com, if you want to get a pop a shot, they can make arrangements for delivery and setup, which is very important because you have to put this thing entirely together. It's an advanced Ikea. It's not hard. It just takes some time. And Rachel and I did it, so you can do it. Yeah. Two people is more helpful than one, but I think one person could probably do it. Yeah, if you follow the Electric Backcast, we haven't been around for a while. We've been so busy. We've been doing all kinds of great stuff, and we're glad to join you today. We have two months of earnings reports. We have February and March. We like to hold it and then release it all at one time. Edging earnings reports.
    7:18
    But before that, we're going to get into the mailbag. You know how we preface the earnings with some questions. Yeah. One thing I want to get into, and I thought about we might need to do a whole. We always say that we might do this is so this so much material. We might need to do a whole show. But there, especially with Pokemon, there are a lot of there are more new people getting in the pinball now than ever before. We see it at the arcade every day. I'm seeing groups of people I've never seen before. And we have the pro and the premium on the floor and they're still both occupied almost 20 hours a day. Do you remember how we talked about when D&D Pinball by Stern came out? Yes. We talked about that. We're seeing new faces in the arcade. This eclipses that. Yeah. We are seeing way more new people, groups of new people. Everybody knew that this is what would happen. This was the goal for it and it worked. So, wow, it really is getting lots of new people into pinball. And it's fun to watch people get it right away because, you know, if you're really if you're a John Wick super fan or an X-Men super fan, those games are fun for new players. But you're not understanding the rules. Pokemon, you find the little dudes, you identify the little dudes, and then you catch the little dudes. It's easy to digest. Yeah. Like baby food. Like Joker poker.
    8:54
    So I just I've seen so many questions, comments on socials about new people getting in. They're coming in going, what what what do I what can I expect? What's going on? Where do I get it? Where do I find the machine? How do I not get ripped off? Man, welcome to this amazing adventure called owning a pinball machine. It's much easier just to go to an arcade. Yes. But this was a question. Before anything, before you get into maintenance, you know, how do I set up a machine? This is the question, and I found this on Reddit.
    9:39
    First pinball machine, how do you decide without playing a ton of games? It's, man, it's hard, especially if you don't have, like, venues around you where you can just go play games or, you know, you could easily say, hey, get a ticket to Girard, Ohio and go to pastimes. But you know what? You say that in jest, but that may not be a terrible idea. Get a ticket, come to Electric Bat. Get a ticket, go to pastimes. Because, you know, if you can go during the off season, the amount of money you might and trouble that you might end up saving by finding a big venue with a lot of machines or a pinball show, anything where there's a lot of machines to choose from. Oh, a pinball show is great. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. How did you got your first machine by the one that showed up that someone gave you, right? Your very first pinball machine? The Knight Rider? No, no, no. The first pinball machine that you had in South, it was like an EM of some sort. Oh, that was in my friend's garage. Oh, okay. Yeah, he was like, hey, take this. Right.
    10:44
    What was that? I can't remember. It's like a dealer's choice. Dealer's choice. Dealer's choice. Yeah, heavy. Oh, my God. Me and my friend almost killed each other.
    10:54
    Anyway. So how do you choose? Well, let's get to this person's like, I'm looking to buy a first pin, but there's there's not much pinball around me, so I can't really go test a bunch of machines for those who were in the same boat. What actually helped you decide? Was it videos, pin side, just picking a theme you liked or something else?
    11:15
    You know, you can say, go to pin side, see what other people's opinions are, go to Facebook, see what, you know, look at the top 10 on pin side. But that's not a bad idea. But man, there's just so they're so unique. It's kind of like what which board game do I choose first, which is much cheaper because you're going to be spending like 20. You know, it's much easier because you could be spending like 20 bucks, 20, 30. Actually, some of them are like eight. We've bought some purchase some board games are like 80 bucks. But anyway, that's a whole nother topic. But you no matter what, I mean, if you're deciding on one game to have at home, there's a point when you're going to be like, I want another one. Yeah, that just happens.
    11:59
    And I the way that I chose my first machine, I knew that I wanted Adam's family. Adam's family wasn't like the first machine. That was the first machine that I anyway, that was the goal. But Adam's family was more expensive back then. I had to save up the $3,000 it cost me to buy Adam's Family. So the game that I got first was based on theme, and it was Data East Star Trek, which is not a highly ranked game. But it was a lot of fun, especially if you love old Star Trek. Star Trek, yep. And that was a fine choice for me. If I would have looked on Pinside, Facebook, those types of things, I would have never gotten that game. But that was a great first game, and it lasted for many years before I traded it in for some new stuff. Yeah. I say this might be controversial, but I say if you have the money and you don't know what pinball machine to get, just get a Godzilla.
    13:05
    Yeah. Come on. Yeah. I mean, come on. And then work from there. Because if you want something else, you can sell that thing and get something else. That's a fantastic game. You can't go wrong. I actually agree with that. I think if you have new pinball machine money, I would say Godzilla. Or if you're a Pokemon fan, get a Pokemon.
    13:25
    That's going to be harder to get right now. Not necessarily, but let the code mature. Yes. Good call. Godzilla. That's why I'm saying get Godzilla. That code is mature. The game is fabulous. You and I still play it. We have it at home. We have it at work.
    13:45
    But another important thing is, you know, I've been seeing people who are actually getting their first machine and they're like, what the hell? What's going on with this machine? Why is it not playing like the one I played on location? That's because every single one of these games are unique. They are they don't expect the game to play exactly like the game you have on location.
    14:13
    A lot of problems. I'm seeing a lot of people come to Reddit, come to Facebook. Why the hell are my balls going all over the place? The pinballs?
    14:25
    People are not cleaning their balls enough because I don't know if it was I don't know if it was with D&D or something. But at some point, and I don't think this is a bad idea, you know, it cuts down on corrosion. Stern started, and we've talked about this before, Stern started sending out their balls covered in oil.
    14:46
    Clean the hell out of those things. I take two rags, clean them once, and then go to another rag and clean them again. And then like a paper towel to get that. You remember, you... I cleaned it. I thought I cleaned it. And then you're like, Rachel, what is this? Yeah. The balls are just going all over the place. Clean them more than you think. So I think a lot of new players are putting them in there thinking they got all the oil off and they're like, why is my game playing like this? It's because you have oil all over your play field. And if you do do that on accident, don't fret. Just take a rag with maybe some alcohol and just like clean your play field, wipe down your balls and put them back in the machine. Right. Great segment.
    15:30
    Yes. There is a with any brand new machine, there is a 75 percent chance that you're going to have to do something to the machine straight out of the box to make it play how you want or to make it play at all. Correct. I mean, there's no rhyme or reason. Even you remember like Bond 60th, there were there was there were switches wired backwards. So even if you're buying a $20,000 game, you may have to pull out your soldering iron before ball number one. Well, you'd actually – Well, you'd figure it out. You'd play and figure out this target's not working. So you are buying a very expensive toy. This is with the history, a long lineage of commercial machinery. You know, you are expect to work on this thing on day one. Don't get frustrated. Don't be like, man, fuck Stern, you know, fucking piece of shit. You know, like like you you're this is an adventure and you're buying a gigantic science project that is really fun. If you have a great attitude about it, 100 percent, that's the fun of it. You know, don't be scared. You know, if you have any problems, there's always Stern customer service.
    17:02
    The Internet also. Yeah, also the Internet. Also the Internet. Yeah. So and we'll probably as I see more questions from people first getting into pinball, we'll tackle those. Yeah. Awesome.
    17:16
    All right. Let's get into the mailbag. Yeah And if you have any more questions about your first pinball machine please let us know We answer Yeah but don be afraid to unscrew a screw move something over a little bit tighten a screw I mean like it not that precious Yep. Beat it up.
    17:34
    This is from Bonnie Bear via Discord. Question for the Batcast. Do you have other forms of income outside of operating, e.g. tech work, buy selling games, buy slash selling games? Times, Restoring Machines for Individuals, TED Talks, etc. You know what I like? Bonnie Bear is a smart bear. This person used EG properly. You know, people usually use IE. IE, EG, yeah. They have different meanings. This person is educated. I have a couple of locations that do well, but do tech work on the side and it often does as well as on locations gain. Plus, it keeps income more consistent coming from different sources. I was wondering if you have the same approach. Question mark.
    18:22
    Well, they break down some more questions here, but I think go with it. I was going to say a couple of things. Number one, I'm still a professional artist, so I do cram some of that in. But this is the difference between owning a location and operating in one or more locations.
    18:45
    When you're operating, you don't have as much time that you have to dedicate. You're just keeping those machines running. But if you are owning a location, you and I work more than 60 hours every week.
    19:04
    Correct. We would not have time to sleep if we had any extra work on top of the work that owning an arcade is. Yeah. So, yeah, if we were just operating, then we would probably do tech work on the side. But if you know how to do tech work, do that. People need you. There's certainly not enough techs out there doing that work, especially if you're competent. Yeah, if you know what you're doing. Don't do it if you're not competent. Don't blow people's stuff up. Correct.
    19:42
    What Bonnie Bear may not be thinking about with us, we're running a bar. We're handling staff. We're handling purchasing everything for the bar. That's a full-time job on its own. So it's more than just pinball for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's just everything that comes with running any business plus pinball on top of that and running events and running. I mean, just all of the things that people can think of. Marketing, all that stuff. Bonnie's asking percentage of income. That's the games.
    20:29
    Versus the bar versus drinks, merch streaming. More than 50 percent is games. More than 50 percent is games. So the rest is drinks and a little bit of merch. I mean, a little bit of merch. Merch is mostly like a – I mean it helps a little bit, but it's mostly like paying for itself and promotion type stuff. And streaming, I mean we make like maybe like 50 bucks a stream, which is great. With the amount of money that you've spent on gear, we're not at parity. Right, and we really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Really? Percentage of our monthly budget on rent, insurance, payroll, electricity, parts, supplies, air filters. Air filters are expensive. In Arizona, you replace nine air filters twice a month.
    21:29
    And it's not the bullshit air filters. We get the good shit. Yeah. I mean, again, it's Arizona. We're land of the dust. We spend almost 100% of our income on our expenses, but broken down into rent and things, I don't know, exactly off the top of my head. But it's we probably just on insurance and rent, that is a third of our income.
    22:00
    Payroll is probably another third and miscellaneous is, you know, slightly less than a third. Keep us in the black. Very good. Hope we answered all of your questions. Bonnie, that's a great topic. Congratulations on a fantastic topic. That might win topic of the day. From Metaaxis or is that Metaxes or Metazis? Metaxes. Metazis. Anyway, Metaaxis via Discord. Let us know how we pronounce your name. Question for the Batcast. Love, love, love the cast. I binge at 1.4 times while driving around to pick up new machines. How much fun is that? He's going to have a good time. He or she is going to have a good time with this one. I'm working to open the Clever Unicorn Pinball Arcade in Santa Cruz, California. Hopefully we'll be able to visit you someday.
    22:57
    It will be super helpful to have empty templates of the spreadsheets Rachel has made to do audits, keep track of maintenance, and whatever else you folks daily drive to keep track of the bat-tivities. Ladies, I'm sure there's a ton of experience buried in those columns and rows. Thank you so much. What do you use? How is it set up? Is it something special? Is it something we could put in a Dropbox to offer other people? Of course, not with all the data.
    23:26
    Let us know, Rachel. That's the real earnings report. Let's just send it all out there. You can use Excel numbers or Google Sheets, the spreadsheet thing, numbers. What is the one called that's Excel for Google?
    23:43
    Well, whatever. You know what I'm doing. The spreadsheet thing. Sheets, right? Okay. Isn't it called Sheets? I thought so, but I don't know.
    23:50
    It's super basic what I'm doing. I just have a row for every game that we have and then a column for the audits. And then I've got an equation that does, you know, that subtracts the audits from the month before to tell you the dollar amount that each game makes. So smart. And then I have one at the end of the year so I can see how much each game has made so far this year. And then I keep tabs for every single year so we can see over time we know when the game was introduced. And then for our basic accounting stuff, it's just a regular P&L statement, profit and loss. So you've got all of our income up at the top and I have that all color coded in green. And then all of the negatives are outgo below that. So these are just very, very basic spreadsheets. There's nothing crazy about it. Cool. Yeah. That's what I figured. If somebody has questions about specifics about the spreadsheets, I'd be happy to help answer that. But I think this is just a lot of addition and subtraction and very simple.
    25:04
    Some stuff that's built into every spreadsheet program. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Rachel. We've got a question from Matt Jackson via Discord.
    25:17
    Here's a topic for discussion. By my estimate, there are somewhere around 450 tournament players in Arizona. Probably 250 to 300 that play regularly. Of those regular AZ players somewhere about a third or less play at the bat on Tuesdays. The remainder made up of new players coming to check it out for the first time. I feel like we are really just barely scratching the surface of growth potential for the hobby. What insights can you share on the growth rate of the local pinball community?
    26:00
    Well, first off, we have about 200 and something people that play every season, unique players. And that's every six weeks. That's a series. Yes. A season is 12 weeks. Did I say? Sorry, I meant series. So every six weeks we have around 200 unique players, but you only get submitted to the IFPA if you play three out of those six or more. And so I think we usually end up submitting about 110 to 125 players per series. For six weeks, yeah. So I think we probably have probably, man, I would say like 150 consistent players at the bat plus some new folks. How is it growing over time? Is that the question? What insights can you share on the growth rate of the local pinball community?
    27:11
    What have you seen? Um, I think if we had more room, we would have more players. I agree. I think, uh, there's just like we saw with the, um, the expansion of the bat and how we've kind of like reached our limit. Like every time we expanded, more people came out. Um, and I have a feeling some people kind of like, you know, I think it's kind of drop off because it's – 125 people is a lot. Yeah, every week in an arcade is a lot. I agree. Yeah, I think if we had some more big venues, then you would see more big tournaments like at the bat. Starfighters has their monthly, but – They get about like 70, 80. Something like that. But I think just the community in general is growing because people – there are some really great places to play all over. So there's a lot of consistent tournaments available to players so it keeps people engaged and they keep playing. So maybe if there's just too many people for you on Tuesday nights, you might go over to BRI on a Wednesday night and play. And they're crushing it. And they're doing some fun tournaments. They have like 30, 35 people. Yeah, they're growing pretty quickly too. Atomic Age Modern. Yep, same. They're Friday nights, right? Friday nights people go out there. And I really think it's all just like the excitement because when I first moved here, you had – the biggest league was Tilt League. And Tracy ran that and she ran an awesome, awesome league, fun league, and also a serious league, a competitive league. But then before that, you had Apple? Yes, Arizona Pinball Players League, APPL. Which was very limited because it was just people playing. You were playing in people's homes on home collections. So it had to be limited to like 30 people. Yeah. Because, you know, you're just in a residence, a single family dwelling. And how do you even find out about that, right? It's not like a public location where you can go and play and then you find out, oh, there's leaks. You had to know somebody to even find out. It was very underground. And for a while, there wasn't even a waiting list. It was just 27, 28 people. And they're like, you know what? We're going to have to cap it at 30 because so-and-so's house, they've only got the one bathroom and there's not enough room. Yeah, so I think just as more locations became available, more public play, Tracy did a great job starting that tilt league, getting that more popular. And it's really built up a community where people, wherever you go to play pinball, you're going to see people you know. Certainly. And people you like. I mean, it's just it's such a cool thing. And I don't see that with many other hobbies where you can just know that any time you go to some business, you're going to see some friends. Right, right. And I'm not too modest to toot my own horn. You didn't see explosive growth of pinball until the electric bat started its marketing campaign, social media, podcasting, which is creating viral clips that people are finding and then going, what is this all about? I need to go check out and see what's going on here. Yeah, see what this arcade is. People that aren't like already diehards. You want to get those people that are just curious looking for something fun to do. And then all of a sudden they're hooked. Yep. That's a great point. You did. Whenever you moved out here, you took over my very pitiful attempts at social media and showed how it's done. And there you have it made a big difference. Fantastic. Thank you. That's a good discussion. Thank you, Matt Jackson. We love Matt Jackson. Fantastic player, local, fantastic player, farmer and engineer. Yes. New question from Greg P. via email. He's doing it old school. He's doing email. Just wanted to say I love your podcast and I hope to visit you sometime in Tempe or at least meet you at the Chicago Expo. We're always at Expo. Yes. We already made our reservations for this year. We have our hotel, not our airplane tickets. Yeah. We might need to lock in those airplane tickets. I don't know how much fuel is going to cost by the time we can purchase it. A million dollars. You both seem like fun, kind people that the world needs more of. Thank you, man. I love that. Thank you so much, Greg P. I wish I lived close by to be part of your arcade. You can always move. People have. Mm hmm. My question for your podcast. Let's get into it. I was wondering how as operators you deal with playing your own machines in terms of accounting for the play slash earnings. In other words, I know you two play your own games. So do you spend your own money or do you open up the coin door and give yourself a credit? I was just curious because if I owned an arcade, I would play my own game so much that it would skew my own numbers.
    32:32
    Kind of like if I owned my own bar, huh? Maybe your number of plays are insignificant, but just curious. Cheers from Washington, Illinois. Hope to meet you guys someday. We don't play that much pinball. That's really what it comes down to. I think whenever you own an arcade, we're the cobblers, right? We're fixing everybody else's shoes. We're making sure that the arcade is a great experience for everybody else. So we don't play enough pinball that it would even make a dent. So sometimes like during tournaments, I like to use tokens just to keep everything moving along. If me and you are playing just after hours by ourselves, we'll usually open up the coin door and give ourselves some credits. But either way, it is not making any difference at all in the earnings. Correct. A rounding error. And that's it. Thank you so much, Greg P.
    33:24
    What's next? This is from a boy. You remember Jojo? Oh, yeah. He was great. We spent a good amount of time with him at Expo. Jojo. What a nice guy. Dojo via Discord backcast questions. Could you explain at what stage of operating would it be smart to switch from bill acceptors to quarter slash token machine? Or is it just wiser to have both? Let's do that one first. He's got another one after that. Okay. At what point do you switch from bill acceptors? If you already have bill acceptors, keep them on there. Bill acceptor costs like 300 bucks. Token mech costs, if you're just taking quarters, they're probably already on there. If you're taking tokens and quarters or quarters, that's like 20 bucks. But he's talking about a quarter token machine as opposed to the bill acceptors. He still doesn't – like leave the bill acceptors on there. If they're already on there, no reason to ever take them off. Yep. Those are the most expensive way to take money.
    34:30
    If you want to add a token machine, you can get one for not too – you can usually find some on the used market for like a grand. You know who selling a shit ton of them right now I just saw he did it He didn add it for him I don know Captain Oh yeah You can always find him at Captain Captain auction If you don know In Anaheim Yep So if you anywhere close to that and can go and you know drive him home you can get him very inexpensively there Bring a trailer. Yeah. Bring a trailer. I always think the more ways you have to accept money. The better. So if you have our friends who just put a couple of machines in Jobot, I think they've got a coffee shop in Phoenix. They have three machines over there right now. Yep. They put in a quarter machine. Yeah. To make sure. Yeah. A quarter dispenser. Yeah. Change machine. Change machine. Thank you. Yep. In common parlance, a change machine. There you go. You always you want to least barrier to putting money in the machine. However you want to take it. And I would quarters in dollars is fine. Absolutely. Question number two. Not sure you are using Scorebit's new tap to pay system. But if you have experience with it, would you recommend that system to new operators with modern sterns only? And we we love the guys at Scorebit. We love what they're doing. We don't have enough experience with the new system to recommend it or not. We just don't know enough about it. But Scorebit, if you're listening, get in touch. Let's do something. Let's try. Let's try something. Yeah. And if some of you guys out there are using it, send us some info because we're curious, too. If I was starting out and just putting a couple of games on location, I would get in touch with Scorebit. But for right now, there was a great interview on the Dirty Pool podcast, and they scored a bit. They talked about all the details of this new movement they're doing where they're having pay. There's even some like – can I say gambling involved? Because in some states it's totally legal. That's what intrigues me the most. Me too. But from what I understand, they're not going to send you like, for example, we have like 70 something machines that I don't think they're going to right now. They're going to send us to 70 something score bit hardware devices.
    37:07
    But maybe we could try it on a couple. Yeah, we don't we just don't have enough experience with the system to to know. But it's intriguing because from what I understand, Scorbit's not taking a cut of the payment. They're still processing fees, though. Correct. So Scorbit's not taking the cut, but the processing company will be taking a cut. Right, right. And you know how I just like actual, physical, tangible money. That's right. Yep.
    37:37
    Cool. That was from JoJo Dojo. Go follow him on Instagram and Twitch. I think he streams a lot. I don't know if it's YouTube or Twitch. Just look him up.
    37:47
    Question for the Batcast from Baba Hafez via Discord. Whatever happened to the extra ball buy-in feature in Pinball? I realize it's partly a function of more ownership versus locations slash arcades, but man, is that leaving some money on the table or what? I agree. Plus, it gives the casual players an option to make more progress in the game. Of course, these should not count toward legitimate high scores.
    38:18
    Oh, but also one regret in life is not taking a lift to the bat when I was in Phoenix for work, but instead went to the local Ziggy's Pizza.
    38:28
    You went to a cool place. We love Ziggy's. We've been friends with those guys since before they were Ziggy's. And you still went to a good place. It was cool. Right. That's an experience. Once you had a cool experience, you got to walk through a freezer door and get to a... And hopefully you got a slice. Yeah. You can grab a slice and enjoy some pizza. If you come to Phoenix, go to Ziggy's.
    38:50
    I do not know what happened to the extra ball buy-in. These were on Williams, Bally Williams machines. Yeah, like Twilight Zone has it. I think Judge Dredd has it. Adams may have it. So my guess is that was like a patented thing because, you know, a lot of stuff. Remember, there's like you couldn't sometimes you couldn't even call if you got multiple balls, you couldn't call them multi balls. Yeah. So back then there was a lot of we came up with this first and we're patented in this. That's my guess, because, man, these would that would be a great option on on Stern machines. I don't think it's ever going to happen. But yeah, because like you get, oh, I didn't get, oh, I was almost at the wizard mode. If I just had an extra ball, you know, 50 cents, whatever. We don't have it turned on on any of ours that have it available, though. Maybe we should turn it on and see what? Can you do it? Yeah. You can, you get extra ball buy-in on Sterns? Oh, no, no, no. On Twilight Zone, like the games that have it. Correct. Yeah. That's my guess. It was some kind of license thing. That's my guess. Yeah, I think that's a great guess. Your guess is my guess. Well, the fact that we have it and don't use it also maybe tells you you got to put a whole extra button. Yeah. I don't know. The button's there. Yeah, well.
    40:20
    Question. Oh, and thank you so much, Baba Hafez. That's actually a good question. I should ask Gomez. Yeah, let's ask. Gomez would know. He probably has some insight on that. I'll get back to you. From Evolving Scott via Discord. Is Evolving Scott in the UK? Because he has a UK question.
    40:38
    I think so. The launch of Pokemon in England, UK, also came with a price correction on new pinball machines. I think it's down to a new European structure Stern have, but I haven't dived into it yet. That would make sense because I think they sent John Biscaglia to take care of the European market. And I heard he's doing a great job there. Basically, it means a pro is now $74.95 down from $85.95. The lowering prices is great. That's huge. And a premium is $9.995 down from $11.799. Wow. Right. That's how you get into the European market. Well, and that's just because like the euro versus the dollar.
    41:29
    Who knows? Oh, UK. Well, that's more about exchange rates than, right? Like American, I'm guessing, that's still the same amount of dollars American as what it was when they set those prices. Like the ratio? Yeah, like the dollar against, I don't know. That's my guess. Other than this obviously being great for newcomers and collectors of NIB, Nib, aka Nib Games, how do you think the market will respond in general?
    42:07
    Prices of secondhand pins have already dropped on our main forums and things aren't selling in other marketplaces. Do you think it's as simple as all secondhand Stern machines have just had value wiped off them? Are vaulted items likely to maintain their price better? Just thought it was something that was interesting as a market trend and might not be something you guys were aware of. Well, it was something that we were not aware of. So thank you. And my guess is also by doing that correction, Stern has much more people like there's going to be a lot more people buying new in box than secondhand. So, of course, it's going to hurt the secondhand market for a period of time. And then Stern's going to make more European sales, which they need for their books.
    42:59
    Yeah. Right. That's I think it's great. I think you're going to see, man, there are so many great machines coming out right now.
    43:11
    But, I mean, how long has it been since Stern, like, sold out of their run for a year? Like the Pokemon. COVID, probably. Yeah. I mean, this is a huge thing. And with Stern putting out four machines a year, you're getting one from Spooky a year, one or maybe two from Barrels, depending on if they keep doing like a short run, you know, 500 run type thing.
    43:39
    Whatever American's about to do. American's about to pump out a bunch of games. They put together a great team over there.
    43:47
    The market, this trend you're seeing, this isn't going to stop anytime soon. You're going to be able to find used games at great prices for many years now. The market's going to be flooded with fantastic machines.
    44:04
    This industry is pumping out more machines. People's houses aren't getting that much bigger. Right, right.
    44:11
    Yeah, so I think it's a great trend because it makes it a buyer's market. I like it. It's not good for collectors or people who think pinball's an investment. Well, right. And people should be playing them. That's right. Great question. Thank you for messaging us from the UK, it looks like. Yeah. This is from Pinball MC via Discord.
    44:39
    Hey, guys. I'm based in Las Vegas. I have run several tournaments in the past, but I am now looking to start a league inspired by the amazing work you have done with the Electric Bat League. I was wondering if you could share some insight on how the Electric Bat League first started. I would be very grateful for any tips you might have on how to launch, run, and promote a new league.
    45:07
    I have already created a website, though I am waiting for location approval before submitting it to the IFPA. Thank you for your time and for your inspiration. That's a great question. That is a great question. You have some insight? Yeah, we covered a little bit of it earlier when we were talking about Matt's question about the growth of pinball. One thing I noticed because he sent us the link to his league, so I looked over his rule sheet, info sheet. On the website he was talking about? Yeah, he has all the information there. One thing that I noticed was that when Arizona moved from a monthly-based league system to a weekly, specifically when Tracy did this at Tilt, that's when we started to see the numbers really climb. It's called explosive growth. Hockey stick, yeah.
    46:05
    And this person, Pinball MC, is trying to do a monthly league. A monthly league. So right now what he's setting up is six monthly tournaments to make up a season. So you're going to have two seasons a year, six nights spread out over six months. You're saying this is a mistake. I can feel it. So right now Pinball MC still has time, needs to back up and punt. I think if you're looking for growth, you need people know every single Tuesday night, whether it's Christmas, New Year's, Easter, Halloween or a regular Tuesday at 630 p.m. There is a tournament at Electric Bat. You never have to think about it. Is it this week or, you know, it creeps up on you. Oh, crap. I made plans with my best friend. There's a lot of psychology. There is a ton folded into this. Yes. So people need to always know. And I know it seems like that because you're like, well, it's the third Thursday or the second Friday that that does not. It's not the same thing if it's every single. Whatever day of the week, that's what's going to get people in the habit of coming, right? Because if you give people a four week break or three weeks, I guess they're going to find something else to do. Yeah, people's attention spans are short.
    47:32
    So do it six weeks in a row. And even if you have to take a break in between those six weeks. Don't do it. I would say don't do it. But if you have a choice between doing six weeks in a row, taking a week off six weeks in a row, do that. If you're just doing one night a month, it's going like what we were talking about before. Those monthlies, they just take forever to grow if they do it all. Weeklies, that consistency is so, so, so important. Yeah. And because people, they notice themselves getting better. They're playing every week competitively. If you do anything once a month and go, why am I not getting better? And it's not just like going to play. Go to the gym once a month. Right. It's not like just going to play. You could say, well, you know, in between my monthly tournaments, people can go and play by themselves. That is playing by yourself and playing competitively are two different sports. You know, you want to you want to keep people playing like every week playing. And I can tell you from talking to other tournament directors, tournament directors that have been doing this for far longer than we have. They're surprised that we never take a break. So you're telling me people keep coming.
    48:55
    Like you have a six-week series, you have a finals, and then you do the same thing the very next week and 120 people show up again? Every single week. Yeah, they do. Yeah. Because other tournaments, they'll do six weeks and then take a long break.
    49:15
    Just psychologically, you don't want to give people that break. And it's not like a mean thing. Like we're trying to trick people's brains, but like we like doing it. We find like show up. This this is this is church. You know, this is like every Tuesday you show up. It's repetition. This is something that's in our DNA. That's a really good analogy, because imagine if churches were like, just come one Sunday a month or whatever the day their special day is. That leaves you a big window of time to do evil, nefarious things like pinball. But it is. It is that both because it's the psychology of remembrance. You're remembering because today is Tuesday. I'm going to the bat at 630 like I do every Tuesday.
    50:00
    And it's also the psychology of seeing that improvement. People are excited about their growth and giving them something to look forward to. If you're looking forward to something that's a month off, that's not the same chemistry in your body that's activating as something that is in the short-term future. And you're going to find something else to fill that void, and that something else might take the place of your pinball tournament. Yes.
    50:30
    There you go. Done. The psychology of pinball tournaments, ladies and gentlemen. There is a lot of stuff. We nailed it. People don't realize that we think about things more than we think. We're just goofballing around all the time. And we are. They're not wrong, but there's there's things we're doing behind the scenes. There's some stuff we haven't even talked about yet, but we'll get into that in the future podcast. OK, we are what's going on is I'm done with my part.
    50:59
    What's happening here is I see there's a transition to my part, which is the earnings report. All right. And again, we got super busy last month, so we have two months of earnings. I'm going to start with February earnings. So this is February 1st through 28th.
    51:19
    So at this point, we did not have Beetlejuice. We did not have Beetlejuice and we did not have any Pokies Mon. Okay. So this is still regular old earnings report. In the 10th spot, we have Big Buck Hunter Reloaded. Video game. Shooter. Nine, Metallica. Remastered. Eight, Dungeons and Dragons. Seven, Stranger Things. Six, Evil Dead.
    52:00
    Number five Jaws Number four Pulp Fiction Number three Godzilla Would you want to guess what number two might be Is it Papa Shot It is not. It is Star Wars. Star Wars has been crushing it. Star Wars is paying a lot of bills for us right now. And Ray Day is kicking ass on the code. Yes. He's getting those. I don't know how he's getting the approvals, but he's getting it done. And he is firing off some like massive dope, dope updates. Yes. Yes. He's he is doing a fantastic job because what we're seeing with these updates is it's not just like bug fixes and the standard stuff included in updates. You're seeing very cool additions to gameplay, very thoughtful things. Yeah. Ray Day must have, you know, Disney on speed dial getting those through. Congratulations to them. That game earns it earns very well. And in the number one spot, this is Papa Shot. This is Papa Shot with exactly down to the penny, double the earnings of Star Wars. So Star Wars paying bills, Papa Shot. I mean, that's just now stratospheric. Was this because of the competition that Papa Shot set up? Papa Shot, we talked about it I think before. They had a virtual league going and we saw a big boost in earnings from that virtual league. So it's the very same, again, psychology that Stern's got with Insider Connected with seeing those leaderboards. Competition. Competition really gets people into playing these games. So Papa Shot has a monthly leaderboard or we set it up to be monthly. You can have it however you want. And that gets that certainly ups the play. But having knowing that you're on a team that's playing against another team somewhere in the country. Very cool. That got them even more bucks. So thank you, Papa Shot. Please do another league.
    54:16
    Fascinating. And they've got one coming up. And there were people like searching for these Papa Shop machines when they were on vacation. Yeah, we saw a guy come in with his family the other day. And this guy looked like maybe he was a basketball player in his youth. He was about our age, but like six foot seven. And he just spent the entire time on Papa Shop. He was there with his family. So a lady and like three kids. And he just gave him money and said, like, go do something else. And he was just doing this. He was crushing it. It was unbelievable watching him get – he was one of those people. I think if we looked on YouTube or something, he was one of those guys. Right. This guy was a pro. Yeah. He was getting 150. It was – Like no big – he's warming up and getting 150. But you know what? I'm looking at him and I'm seeing like where the end of his hand is whenever he's letting go of the ball versus where mine is. I'm feeling pretty good about my score because he's like twice as close to the basket. You do a great job.
    55:17
    But that's not always advantageous. Remember, Shaq had trouble hitting the baskets. He did? Yeah. He couldn't hit free throws. Oh. But he could just jump right up. Yeah, you got to get right up on the rim. But Shaq is also being compared against other people that are his size, right? Not necessarily. Manute Bowl versus Shaq. Oh, yeah. If you look at the stats, the taller you are, the harder it is to hit free throws. I had no idea. Well, then this guy was exceptional. Yeah. You want to be like Spud Web Size. Oh, maybe that's who I'm thinking of. I don't know who any of these people. Basketball. I don't know anything about this stuff. All I know is I like playing Papa Shot.
    56:04
    Are you ready to move on to March earnings? This is the most recent one. This is the most recent one. And so I should preface this with we had Beetlejuice for less than 24 hours.
    56:17
    In March, we got in the tail end of the last day of March and we had Pokemon Premium for, I think, five days and Pokemon Pro a little over two weeks. Pokemon. Pokemon. Pokemon Pro. Pokemon Pro. So those are that's the amount of time.
    56:42
    Number 10, King Kong. Number nine, Evil Dead. And what I've started doing is noting the one year mark. So when a game has been in the bat for one year, is it still on the top 10? So this is Evil Dead's one-year anniversary, still in the top ten. So what we're seeing is, you know, it's got those high earnings, and it's plateaued at a fantastic spot. This is the mark of a game with longevity, a great earner over time. So I think that's notable, so I'm going to start including it. In eighth place, Dungeons & Dragons, and it's actually in its 13th month. So the February earnings, which it was also in the top 10 for. Right. And it just got a massive code update. It's at 1.0 now. They're just going to go in with some final polishing and bug fixes. Yeah. So we're there. And so it's been over a year in the top 10. Mark of a fantastic earner worth having on location. Number seven, Big Buck Hunter reloaded seventh spot. Spot, you know. Get one of those things. My favorite thing about Big Buck Hunter Reloaded, zero maintenance. Zero.
    58:04
    Not on Coin Jam every once in a while. Yeah. Number six, John Wick. Great earner. People complain. That's a great game. I can't wait. It is. Transformers. It is such a good game. Stop complaining. Put one on location. It does well for us. Number five, Jaws. Number four, Godzilla. Look at that. Elwin, Elwin, back to back goat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number three, Star Wars. Still earning. Same amount as it did the month before. Number two. What do you think? Papa shot. Number two is Papa shot. Something beat Papa Shot. After?
    59:00
    Four months, I think. Four or five months. Four or five months of the number one spot. And so you said that the month before this, Papa Shot made twice as much as Star Wars. So something really brought in some cash. Yes. And what do you think that could be?
    59:17
    Rachel, let us know. It is Pokemon Pro. Just the Pro. Pokemon Pro. I'm only including the pro, which was a little over two weeks. So just over half the month made significantly more than anything else. And then if you also include the five days of premium, if you put those two together, it far surpasses the record set by Elton John years ago for the first month's earnings. And that's with only that's with about three weeks worth of earnings. Fantastic. So there's a new king. There's a new king and it is Pokemon. I mean, it's it's it's not even in the same ballpark is in terms of earnings. We thought we would get like the pro and leave it on the floor for a little bit while the premium was, you know, I think those both versions of that game could be on the floor for a while with the amount of earnings that we're seeing from both. Just the excitement, how fun it is for people. First of all, if someone's in there playing the game like, oh, there's another one here for me. I can play that. Right.
    60:26
    Seeing all the new people, watching people get excited and bringing their packs in, they're ripping packs while they're waiting for their turn.
    60:35
    It's like a whole thing. This is phenomenal. Phenomenon. That's the word I was trying to think of. Because the code is really half-baked and that's just the way it happens on release. They are waiting for approvals and they've been waiting for weeks. They have – The code is done. The code where they would like to see it next, we know from talking to folks over there, it's not that they're slow in writing the code. It's that the people returning the phone calls that say you can push the code are slow. Yes. We know that's extremely frustrating for them. Imagine that you've got a project. Everybody's waiting. They're talking about, you know, we need achievements. We need a Pokedex. It's all coming. No AI is not going to help this process. You know, I see online people are talking about what's wrong with the coders. Why don't they get to work? It's not the coders. Yeah, they're. They just need the Pokemon company to pick up the phone and get shit done. But anyway, it's all coming. I mean, you're probably going to get, you know, it's just the way it is. It takes about a year for the code to mature.
    61:49
    Yeah. I love catching those little dudes. People are still freaking out. This game is beautiful. Gomez and Jack, you guys did a fantastic job. Antonio. Yes. And there's all kind of people involved. Everybody at Stern did a fantastic job, and they are really excited. Sales of this game alone have lifted the spirits of everybody at Stern Pinball. Let's fingers cross that it lasts. Yes. And one of the things that's one of my favorite feelings about playing this game is you and I never played or watched Pokemon really. You played a little bit on a Game Boy or something.
    62:26
    But the way that the sound, like all of the music and the sound makes me feel like Saturday morning cartoons, even though it wasn't my Saturday morning cartoon, it just brings back that feeling, which it's a great feeling. Yeah. And speaking of sound, side note, Beetlejuice Pinball. We haven't even talked about Beetlejuice, really, because, you know, it's part of next month's. People are freaking out. You saw you saw the crowd of people watching Rachel play Beetlejuice Pinball. Well, as far as sound and sound design goes, the one genius thing they did. Maybe many, but this is the zenith. Zenith of the apex of the peak of pinball sound performance. They brought back something that you haven't seen in a long, long time. Something that it feels good. It feels classic. And it's something you used to see on on classic games, a bonus count. They brought it back in Beetlejuice. And it is amazing because like when those killer players, when those shooters show up to play Beetlejuice and their ball ends and you hear the brrrr and it just lasts for freaking ever. And it gets louder and the pitch is changing. So it's like this really like crescendo of excitement. Right. The better you do, the bigger it gets. Like it's it's it is. I told you that I thought that this overtook Showtime from Adam's family as the best sound ever made. 100 percent. And anybody who's played classic machines knows, you know, you're in a tournament, you're playing a classic machine. You have a great ball and you walk away. People have to wait.
    64:25
    Hey, just keep it running, keep it running, hold on. It's not your turn. Like the slot machines in Vegas when you hit it.
    64:33
    Spooky brought this back, this feeling of the bonus count. They took it to a whole new level with just the way that the crescendo, the excitement, the effect of it was just so good, so good. So whoever over at Spooky did that, you get an award. Yep. You get the Rachel Best Award for best sound in pinball of all time. First, and that's the first award of world exclusive. Yes.
    65:02
    So good. And the game is phenomenal, too. We are hearing people are coming to play the machine because this is the only machine in.
    65:14
    On location in Arizona. Arizona, yeah. Yeah, and Mark Pearson always puts his spooky machines at the bat and people freak out about it. And we're hearing people are like, I'm going to sell every pinball machine I have at the house to try to find one of these. This is the most beautiful machine I've ever seen.
    65:36
    There is so much excitement. There are lines to play it. There's so much in it. It's crazy. It really looks like you're moving around Beetlejuice land. And so far, you know, we always keep it honest, have been zero issues. So far, zero. I have not seen the underside of this play field. Yep. I don't think I've taken the glass off. If I did, it was to test something, not to. I haven't done it at all. Yeah.
    66:07
    Now you have it. Yeah. Great job, Spooky. What an A-plus game. Not only that, I don't remember a time in the arcade where we had two games backed by so much excitement. Yeah, this was... That'd be Pokemon. Yeah. And Beetlejuice. So to have three machines that are always occupied, and it gives people a wonderful... Like, come to the bat. You can play all the cool stuff you've been waiting for. That's right. It's so good. So good. Thank you. Yeah. I think that was fantastic. Is that it? I think so. Unless you have something to add. No, I don't think. Go buy a hat. Go buy a trucker hat. Rachel designed these things for everybody. And, you know, the drill Tuesday, every Tuesday night, 630 tournaments at Electric Bat Arcade. Everybody is welcome just because it's a league. It doesn't mean you can't just walk in and play. Of course. We had Matthew Talley and Emoto dropped in. What a great surprise. We had no idea they were coming and Matthew beat everybody. He won. He won the whole darn thing. He kicked everybody's ass and now he's part of the league. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Linz Arcade subdivision electric bat. Yeah. Thank you all for joining us. Remember, send us some questions. Let's talk pinball. Any question, no question is a dumb question. Go to our Discord. That's where we like to have discussions there. If you want to join the Discord, go to electricbatarcade.com. I think it's slash podcast or just click the podcast link and then you can click the Discord link and join in the conversation. You can also email me at electricbatarcade at gmail.com. That is correct.
    67:58
    These are all fantastic ways. Yeah, we're going to take off. We're going to do some. We just got back from the farmer's market. Yeah, you know what I'm going to do right now?
    68:06
    You're going to make an award. I'm going to make the Grand Champion Pokemon Launch Party plaque by hand. Yeah. Wiggle my little paintbrush. So somebody that wins our Pokemon Launch Party is going to get a painting. A handmade Pokemon. By a world famous artist that has work hung in galleries across the world, museums, some museums. Yeah.
    68:40
    This will be Pokemon. I can't wait to see what you do. Me too. I have no idea. All right. So we're going to head to Michael's and get some supplies. Is that where we go? We got to get some kind of blackface. We got to go to Walmart or whatever. Okay. But we're going to make something that's going to be cool. We'll come play in the Pokemon launch party tomorrow at noon. See you there. Fantastic. We love you guys. We love the state of the pinball industry. Thank you all for all of your support.
    69:09
    And don't forget, if you want any of these cool games we're talking about, get in touch with Zach at Flipping Out Pinball. Yeah, do it. All right. We are taking off. Peace. The Bats are out. Thank you for doing this with me. Thank you. The pleasure's all mine. Table malfunctions and everything. That was wild.
    69:29
    We'll see you guys next time.