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Episode 171 – That’s Amore

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 12m·analyzed·Jul 29, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Museum of Pinball closing; Allentown Pinfest coming; Zach wins co-op tournament.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast episode covering Allentown Pinfest preparations, the closure of Museum of Pinball in California and auction of its collection, and a recent tournament at Rochester Pinball Co-op where Zach dominated the finals. The hosts discuss the feasibility of maintaining large public pinball collections and upcoming tournaments including the Stomp event in Rochester on Ron's birthday.

Key Claims

  • Museum of Pinball is closing and all games will be auctioned off; the building has been leased to a pot-making facility

    high confidence · Ron and Bruce discuss Museum of Pinball closure in detail, citing giantfreakingrobot.com article and discussing tax forms of the non-profit

  • Spooky Pinball's Ultraman sold over 1,000 units in one day, generating $14 million in gross sales, and is the first game running the new Ben Heck board system (Pinotar)

    high confidence · Bruce describes Spooky's deliberate decision not to show video before sale, and discusses risks of first-run hardware

  • The Stomp tournament in Rochester on September 25th (Ron's birthday) already has 19 of 50 maximum spots sold after one day of announcement

    high confidence · Ron states 'After it was announced. One day. Yesterday' and current capacity status

  • Zach won the first tournament at Rochester Pinball Co-op, winning 2 of 3 games in finals on Attack from Mars, Super Straight, and Cheetah against Raymond Davidson, James, and Stephanie

    high confidence · Bruce and Ron discuss tournament results in detail

  • Stu (a notable player) played against Raymond Davidson (#1 ranked player) on Attack from Mars, scored 8 billion but lost to Raymond's 10 billion, then was eliminated in B Division finals and left the tournament

    high confidence · Bruce and Ron discuss Stu's match on stream and subsequent elimination

  • Museum of Pinball's non-profit structure owned no game assets according to tax forms; the building and games are still owned by John Weeks personally

    medium confidence · Ron analyzes tax forms: 'The building is not on there the games are not on there they had almost no assets'

  • Pinball Hall of Fame (Tim Arnold) maintains over 1,000 games but only displays 90 in the museum, and Arnold has struggled to recruit full-time technicians

    medium confidence · Bruce discusses Tim Arnold's difficulty finding full-time techs and living situation offered to recruits

Notable Quotes

  • “They made $14 million in gross sales. Yeah. Done. Congratulations. But nobody saw the game except for the trailer.”

    Bruce @ ~30:00 — Highlights tension between Spooky's sales success and lack of pre-release transparency

  • “If you were at the beginning of Rick and Morty, you got an extremely clunky game with lots of hot glue and the loudest power supply fan in all of pinball.”

    Ron @ ~32:00 — Critical commentary on Spooky's manufacturing quality improvements over production runs

  • “In Southern California, you're better off trying to open a pot farm next to a strip club across the street from an elementary school than trying to open a pinball arcade with any more than five games.”

    Bruce (citing comment) @ ~44:00 — Commentary on regulatory challenges for pinball arcades in California

  • “It's not feasible to have a place like that open on a regular basis, like a business. Like once a year you might be able to do it.”

    Ron @ ~65:00 — Core takeaway about sustainability of large public pinball collections

  • “So to everyone from Museum of Pinball, thank you. Thank you for what you did. Yep. We enjoyed it.”

    Ron @ ~72:00 — Respectful eulogy for the closure of a historic pinball venue

  • “He walked right by me in the hallway as i was coming in... he sucks”

    Ron @ ~88:00 — Humorous jab at Stu's elimination and immediate exit from tournament

  • “Zach destroyed in the finals. Yes. It wasn't. He destroyed. It wasn't pretty. No.”

    Ron and Bruce @ ~95:00 — Emphasizes Zach's dominant tournament win

Entities

Museum of PinballorganizationRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonZachpersonRaymond DavidsonpersonStupersonSpooky PinballcompanyAllentown Pinfestevent

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Museum of Pinball officially closed; collection being auctioned off; building now leased to cannabis facility

    high · Museum non-profit had minimal assets on tax forms; John Weeks owns everything personally and leased building to pot facility; auction proceeding from former museum location

  • ?

    event_signal: First tournament at Rochester Pinball Co-op successful; Stomp tournament September 25th nearly half-sold within one day of announcement

    high · Stomp at 19/50 spots after one day announcement; pricing $40-50 before August 31

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Nostalgic sadness about loss of Museum of Pinball; recognition that rare games will be lost to private collections and regional fragmentation of tournament infrastructure

    high · Ron: 'it's a shame that we lost another place' and discussion of how rare machines like 8-Ball Deluxe alphanumeric variant will disappear from public access

  • ?

    product_concern: Large public pinball collections not financially sustainable long-term; requires full-time paid technical staff that's difficult to recruit and prohibitively expensive to maintain

    high · Both hosts discuss Museum closure, Replay Foundation closure, and Tim Arnold's difficulty recruiting technicians despite offering housing; scaling issues make year-round operation infeasible

  • ?

    event_signal: Allentown Pinfest has timing conflict with IFPA tournament start (Aug 1) while expo runs Aug 30-31; tournaments using non-IFPA scoring system

    high · Ron and Bruce discuss Free State Associate tournaments starting August 1 with different non-IFPA scoring system

Topics

Museum of Pinball closure and asset auctionprimarySpooky Pinball Ultraman sales and hardware concernsprimaryRochester Pinball Co-op tournament results and upcoming Stomp eventprimaryAllentown Pinfest preparation and schedule conflictssecondaryFeasibility of maintaining large public pinball collectionssecondaryManufacturing quality and first-run hardware riskssecondaryCalifornia regulatory barriers to pinball arcadesmentionedPinball collection acquisitions and secondary market pricingmentioned

Sentiment

mixed(0.35)— Positive about upcoming tournaments and community events, but negative and nostalgic about Museum of Pinball closure. Humorous throughout but with underlying concern about collection losses and industry sustainability.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.218

Chords are the basis of all rock music, okay? Now this is an A chord. Isn't that nice? Uh, that sucks. And here's a G. The G sucks too. What the hell is this crap? This isn't music. Yeah, really. Where's the smoke machine? And the pyrotechnics? Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Halle, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Howdy ho. Howdy ho. And this is episode 171. Wow. Zoinks. Zoinks. I think we've reached the threshold here. Of? Of pinball stuff actually starting to happen again. Yay. For how long? We don't know. Well, yeah, we don't know because we're not good at getting vaccinated. So that's no fucking morons. Just fucking take the needle. Even Republicans are saying to do it now. I am a Republican. I did it. Oh, my God. You did it yesterday. No, I did it back in March. Oh, my. Oh, we're getting too political. We just have people turn off. Yes. No, no. We wait for that until we get to the tournament talk. Oh, yes, yes. We don't want to – yeah, we don't want you to scare you away with politics. Instead, we'll scare you away with tournament talk. Yes. So what's on the docket, Mr. Hallett? Well, let's see. What do we want to talk about? Allentown's coming up. Because we're living here in Allentown. Allentown. Where they're tearing all the factories down. No, no, closing all the factories. Ah, whatever. Sorry, Billy Joel, I screwed up your song. So are you excited? Yes. Are you going to wear a mask? Yes. Yes, me too. Hell yeah. There's no way. Too many people. Too many people. And I don't know how many games I'll actually be playing. I think I'm just going to hang out. I mean, I'll probably play. I'll look for deals. I'll buy and shit. That's all I'm doing. Oh, you're buying and shit. You think there's going to be deals in this seller's market? I already bought one. What? I already bought one. How do you already buy it? Is this like from the inside? Oh, classified. okay i didn't i didn't buy well ron last week sent me a a post for uh a radical and i emailed the guy and he emails me back saying you know like oh yeah i'll take a deposit i'm like okay here give me a call during this time because i'm working during this time so the guy calls me during when i'm working i get outside i talk to him like hey what's going on not much what's the machine oh it's good. You know, it works well. Okay. Well, I need your address. So, you know, I can come out there and check it out. What's good day for you. I can do it a Sunday. I'm losing you on the phone. Okay. Okay. So I hang up, try to call him back. No answer. Never calls me back. No answer ever again. So it's not like a scam. He wanted me not to go to his house. He just wanted to deposit and run. So needless to say, no radical. Cause wasn't it like, how much was it? $3,500. Yeah, $3,500 radicals. It's like, hmm. Yeah. Hmm. And then somebody pops up a $5,200 one JT, our friend of ours from the show, and I went, hell no. It's a game. It's a good game. Not that good of a game for $5,200. Okay. It's not. But what does that have to do with what you're picking up at Allentown? Well, because I have to get something secure, so I bought a game. It's an old Bally. Is it one you already owned before? Yes, I have a one on this before. Does it have a primary black and silver color scheme? No, it does not. Okay. All right, so you're going to wait for Haggis to make that one? Yes. That would be Centaur. Yes, it would be. Okay. Is it a wide body? No. Is it class of 81? No. Ooh. Oh, wait a minute. Okay. Is it the one you mentioned before you won it for some reason, even though you lost on it? No. No. So it's not Frontier. Okay. I'm confused now. I thought that was like one of the only ones you really wanted. It was, but this one came up really cheap and it was a nice play field. So I was like, oh, what the hell? I won't lose money on this. Okay. I bought many games from Mike. Hi, Mike. From Maryland. So you want to know what it is? Sure. What is it? Or is it a secret? Should we speak in hushed tones? No, no hushed tones here. Oh. Bones, don't mince words. What do you really mean? Damn it, Jim. Tell me what it is or I'll hypo you. Yes. Valley Star Trek. Okay. Not bad. You know, I think you want to make sure on that is that the drop targets are original. Yes, of course. Because if they're repro, they brick horribly on that game. I actually, I've seen lately, like, even some of the sterns, my original sterns are bricking a lot. I'm like, what the fuck's going on here? It's the ear of the brick. Yes, it is. So I did take my Gammatron off the chopping block. It's not for sale right now. I might have a local guy actually interested in it. So I took it off. But everyone was talking on the Gammatron thread in Pinside saying, oh, well, you know, it's got to be at least $2,000 more than what Bruce is asking for because, you know, those guys always hype up the prices. No. I don't want people to buy Sterns. I want them for myself. it's not a stern bruce it's a pin star no i know but it's the same company uh it is all the assets were the same they just changed a couple things so allentown what day are you going down there what kind of what day you gonna be there uh same day as i'm always there friday and saturday there you go i will be there thursday friday and saturday i'm going to be working we'll be there early Friday to try to make sure we get in. Yes. And by the way, do not hug Ron. Oh, thank you. No problem. You can hug him at Stomp. Oh! Yes! Less people. Less people. You can give Ron the nice elbow. Oh, the elbow. Okay. Yes. Yes. If you give Ron, go up to Ron and say, Ron, I love Slam Tilt! And tap him with the elbow with his elbow. That's all. Let's see. This will be the first show I've been to since I guess Indisc 2020. For me, it's probably it's Allentown. That's right. You were a bar owner. You never could go anywhere. Yeah, it was Allentown. No, it wasn't. You went to no, no, you went to Pembroke. Oh, I did go to Pembroke, yes. Yes, I did. I'm glad I have to correct you on your own schedule. Oh, I barely remember those times. It was such a hectic time. You were so wasted then, man. So, so hot. So hot. But I'll be down there Thursday looking for all the good deals. So if anyone's got an old Stern Electronics, come to CB. Ask for Bruce. I'll be wearing the It's Ivan's Fault shirt. But I found out we're going to have something really cool today. That's going to be at one of the booths. there's going to be an Ultraman. Ah, yes, Pinball Star. Yep, Pinstar. No, it's Pinball Star. It's not Pinstar. Pinstar is another thing. It's Pinball Star. Was it Joe Newhart? Joe Newhart. Yeah. Yes, Ultraman is going to be at the Pinball Star booth. And also, I guess, Luke and Bug. Yes, Bug. Corwin, Bug, yes, will be there. They're driving 14 hours from Wisconsin. A? Take off, A. So, A. It sounds like Canadian. So what do you think? You'll actually get to play it. So if you really like the way it plays, you can't buy it. It's sold out. So why? Why? Well, this is one of my things on my notes here. No, I know why. Because if you don't like it, you'd better get on Pinside real fast so you can sell your spot. Well, on the pinball show, Zach Manny, he interviewed Spooky, and he asked specifically about why no video before it went for sale. And basically, in no uncertain terms, they said, we don't want to show a video. We want you to play the game, which is fine, except you can't play the game and then buy it because it's already sold out. I mean, that's more an issue of the market, honestly, than spooky. But still. And honestly, I don't blame – if I don't have to show it and I'm still going to sell out, why would I show it? And that's funny. I think you're the only person I heard mention that when you think about it. They made over $14 million in one day. Yep. I mean, yes, that's gross. I mean, obviously, they have to build the game. So they didn't make $14 million. But I mean – They made $14 million in gross sales. Yeah. Done. Congratulations. But nobody saw the game except for the trailer. Yep. And again, the other interesting thing about it that hardly anyone's mentioned, and I think it's an important thing, this is going to be the first game running the new Ben Heck board system, the Pinotar, which is untested. I mean, I'm sure they have tested it, but there's a big difference between a few people testing it and over 1,000 people getting it. You know, things will come up that did not come up previously. I mean, even Stern, if you remember their spike, like KISS, they had reset issues with KISS. They had some issues with the earlier spike games. Yes, they did. But, I mean, no one's really mentioned that. No. I'm just, you know, I'm just putting that out there. You never know. And with Spooky, you don't want to be the beginning of the run. No, you never want to be the beginning of Spooky. Think about it. If you were at the beginning, difference between the beginning of Rick and Morty and the end of Rick and Morty. If you were at the beginning of Rick and Morty, you got an extremely clunky game with lots of hot glue and the loudest power supply fan in all of pinball. Yep. Now, if you had one of the last Rick and Mortys, you had a less clunky version because they physically changed some of the positioning of the posts and rails on the play field itself. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Carl D'Python Anghelo. So no more hot glue, different connectors, and a different power supply fan. Yep. So you really made out by waiting a year and a half to get your game. Winner. Winner. So when you have this game that – You want to be the last one. You want to be the last in line. This looks so different than anything else. And brand-new untested board system. Yeah, you want to be at the end. Yeah. So we have to go and look at, like, Jersey Jack, the original Wizard of Oz. the light boards. Five volts compared to 7.5. They had all kinds of issues to the point where they just sent all new light boards out. Scary. I'm always trying to think of the tech side because we'll get into this later, but when I saw the alien that Zach has, holy shit. So yes, in Allentown in the Pinball Star booth, they will have Ultraman. And I am looking forward to playing that thing. okay what you're not i can't get it so why but get interested oh jesus come on so then you can you can buy one for four or five thousand dollars more over yeah great yeah you get one for like fifteen thousand instead of the nine thousand fucking crackheads jesus fucking christ no i'm not interested so why even play it i'll play it when it gets on location uh okay or when my one of the four or five people in the in rochester about to say you're in rochester you guys buy every fucking L.E. known to man, so you're going to play it anyway, so it doesn't matter. For someone like me, this is going to be probably one of my only chances of playing it. Unless I'm in Rochester. Unless you're worthy. Unless I'm worthy. Well, worthy! Oh, the yawning. The yawning is back. It is. I'm tired. I was in the sun all day. I'm a little burnt and crispy. He used to be tired from the bar. Now he's tired from being tired. Yep. Tired from lounging out in the sun all day. I was actually floating on my... You're a ginger. What the hell are you doing out in the sun? I was floating on my wiener. Oh. I was. Let me guess, like a float shaped like a wiener? Yep. Yeah. Very good. But man, you must burn something awful. Nope, I put on 50 every hour. Uh, 50, oh. SPF 50. Okay. Sunscreen. What's it like being a ginger when it comes to sun? I must really suck. Doesn't bother me. As long as you put your stuff on, you're good. As long as you put your stuff on? Yeah. If you forget, you're fucked. I'm Italian. I just turned brown. Yeah. The guinea power blocks all sunlight. Oh, such offensive language. How dare you call me that? Yep. I'm going to have you whacked. I'm going to have you whacked. Yeah, wow. I'm Italian. I'm not using that slang terminology. What's the matter with you? One thing I did realize, though, is the problem being out in the sun now is my hair is so thin. It's like burning my scalp. Yep, you're burning your scalp. Got to start wearing a hat. I actually wear a sunproof SPF 75 shirt, SPF 100 hat. I do. And I got burned today on my legs in the pool. Oh, my. I'm enjoying the pool, which is a rarity for me because I hate water. You hate water, but it's the source of all life. Yeah, I drowned in it. But you're still here. Still here. But I did drown it. I got CPR'd. You were brought back to life. I was. Let's see. So what else at Allentown? Well, there's the tournaments. Tournaments, which are not IPA. Yes, they had the worst timing ever as it begins August 1st. Yes, it does. So they're in the other – they're in the – And Allentown is the 30th and the 31st. That's so hilarious. So they're actually in the other company. What's the one out of Maryland and Virginia? Yeah, the Free State Associate, whatever. They use a whole different non-whopper thing that I can't remember what it's called. Yeah. But they'll be running it. I think the Classics, it said it's going to be like four games and it's going to be your two best games. It's like, that'll make it easier, just playing two games over and over and over. Yeah, I know. I'm actually looking forward to that. You can actually play one of Zach's games down there. Oh, my. Zach's bringing one of his games for Classics. actually he's bringing at least two games total for one for him and one for his dad so they both can get in yes i know what he's bringing for himself because he was packing it up tomorrow for from the co-op oh oh and what game would that be far out man ah excellent i like far out rumor is a stew kicked your ass in it yeah that's the only game i think he actually played well on the whole day. Oh, but we'll get to that a little later on. Well, let's get into it now. I mean, unless you have any more Allentown stuff. Just, you know, if you're selling anything, you know, just come with cash, wear a mask, you know, be respectful of other people. If you're buying stuff, come with cash. Yeah. Be respectful with people. You know, don't crowd. That's going to be hard. I know. But just, you know, enjoy the time. Because who knows what's going to happen in the future. Mm-hmm. That's been a common thread. Go to shows when you can because you never know. Yep. But definitely go to the show and enjoy it. I will. Because if you wanted to go to the Museum of Pinball. You can't. And you never will because it's gone. Hey, dude. What do you mean, man? Yep, because pot is the way to go. What? So last we left them, they were having the one-month countdown where they either had to get a sponsor. Get someone to buy all the games or what was the third option? Get someplace to store them or something? Yeah, store them. Yeah, and well, none of that happened. Zip, zero, nada. So all the games are going to be auctioned off. Yep. And the location where they are, which is owned by the same guy, John Weeks, he leased that out to a pot-making facility. And after getting some more information about this, It seems one of the major reasons, and this contradicts what you kept saying, that the place was open year-round because it really wasn't. I know, but they had to state that it would be. It's something with banning, where they couldn't get the okay to be open all the time. That's why they were only open a few times. And someone had a hilarious comment that, like, in Southern California, you're better off trying to open a pot farm next to a strip club across the street from an elementary school than trying to open a pinball arcade with any more than five games. Yes. Which I thought was hilarious, but I guess that's true. And I guess there was a link to an article, which I have right in front of me, which is called giantfreakingrobot.com. That's the website. And it just had an interesting little tidbit here. It basically said the Museum of Pinball suffered catastrophic financial losses in recent years and hasn recovered which I was not aware of any of that Yeah I didn hear that either Owner John Weeks gave himself seven months to move the entire collection to nearby Palm Springs, attract a single buyer, or acquire a sponsorship, whichever came first. Which says not what I heard. I mean, the first time I heard the ultimatum choices were after he bought the building. and realized how much he had to try to remove out of it. Yeah, renovate it. And that's when the ultimatum came down. So I really, the information on this is so all over the place. I agree. The thing is, I looked at their tax form because they're a not-for-profit. And if you remember from our replay effects conversations, we discussed their tax form and how much money they were losing, et cetera. and the interesting thing like to back up here papa as we used to know it all the games and i believe the warehouse itself was owned by kevin martin yes and at some point they decided to make it a non-profit called the replay foundation yes and everything at that point belonged to the replay foundation the building the games etc now kevin martin was still the head of the board or committee or whatever it's called and he in the end he made the final decision to fold and sell everything off yeah but it was still owned by the foundation museum at pinball looks like they did it differently and that if you look at their tax information the building is not on there the games are not on there they had almost no assets the only assets that were on there were like a printer a tv you know that kind of thing so it looks like that was literally formed to show off John Weeks' collection in his building. It's because none of it's on there. They had no game assets. You expect to see at least $2 million in assets with the games. Oh, yeah, definitely. Nothing on there like that. They had no assets like that. So that just tells me he still owns everything. And we knew he owned the building because he leased it out to the pot-making people. Dude, man. So when the games are sold, I mean, it's not going to be unless he donates the money. It's not for the museum. The museum is, in effect, pretty much done at this point. Yes, already. Yeah. So that's a sad thing. And it made me think again about the feasibility of these large collections. And here's something I never heard anyone bring up. Pretend that he was able to get that building in Palm Springs and everything worked out great. So he has this new facility across the street from the airport And it can be open all the time And he can put all his games in there It was like twice the size Say everything's in there Rock and roll Gucci goo Yep Okay Did you know that Rick Derringer also did a lot of the 80s WWF theme music? No, I did not You did not know that? That's for Robin Byers right there Songs like I Am A Real Man That's Rick Derringer Rick Derrick. That's Rick Derrick. So it's like the ultimate warrior theme and all that stuff. Hmm. Hmm. But this wonderful new museum of pinball in Palm Springs, who was going to fix all the games? Well, I couldn't tell you. How was that going to work? If you had all 500 pinball machines there, that was 1,200 video games, whatever, where they were before, all the help was volunteer. Yes. It's all a bunch of dudes that are probably on their own time or after work or on weekends coming in and fixing games, maybe some retired dudes working on the games, but it was all volunteer. Yep. If you're going to have a facility like that and you were actually going to have it open on a regular basis, wouldn't you need actual full-time techs there? Yeah, well, how do you have full-time techs when you have no assets? Well, I'm curious what the tax forms would have looked like after that. Like the building has still been under his name, but not the museum. Yeah. Who knows? That's kind of weird. But Papa Replay, whatever you want to call it, Replay Foundation, they were unique in that not only did they have the huge collection, they had a full-time paid tech staff. Yep. That worked on the game year-round, and that was only basically so that the games would all work for one weekend. Yes. At the year. This would have been – you would have needed all these games to work year-round. what was the plan there are techs that easy to find for pinball i don't think so i don't know i know tim arnold of the um pinball hall of fame he's been trying to get texts he offered to like have him live behind his house and he trained them and stuff that's how desperate he was to get some full-time texts yeah don't know i just and i was thinking about that it's like see it say this all worked out great is it feasible having a collection that large No, it's not. Publicly available. I just don't see it. Because when you think about, like, what other big collections exist now? Now they have two of the biggest that are gone. Gone. And replay, and now. And you'll never get them back like that size. And you'll never get them back. No. What are the other ones out there? You have the one in the VFW Hall. Yeah, Ann Arbor. In Ann Arbor. That's Joshua Clay Harrell's place. It's like two or three buildings. It's got like 500 pinball machines. Yes. But again, it's a private club. Yep. The town only lets them open like once a year. Yep. Which is weird. It's like, we're okay having a museum of pinball as long as it's never open. Yes. But, I mean, I'm sure they're constantly repairing games and they're all volunteer. Yes, they are. But it's a club and that, you know, they probably have 10, 20 guys there or whatever on a regular basis. Who the hell knows? And they're open once a year where they have everything open. And probably a bunch of stuff breaks in and they have to spend months repairing everything after that weekend they're open. Yeah. So the only other one I can think of is Pacific Pinball Museum. Now, they own, like, I think over 1,500 games. Yes. But their museum, they have 90 in there. Yeah. Tim Arnold. Tim Arnold. He owns probably well over 1,000 games, but he doesn't have 1,000 games in the museum. No. Not museum. Hall of Fame. Who would be able to maintain them? Is it really as cool as it was walking in the Papa building the first time and seeing that many games? Yeah. It's not feasible to have a place like that open on a regular basis, like a business. Like once a year you might be able to do it. That other pinball place that's in Pittsburgh, they have like 220 on location. Okay. That's another big location. That's got to be insane. Yeah, well, they don't even turn them on until somebody walks in the door and they're like, hey, we're going in this aisle, and they start turning them on. Oh, okay. What's his name? Nap Arcade just put out a review of that place. And as he said, he's like, I'm walking down the hallway, and there they are turning them on when I'm walking down. So I just – I don't see the feasibility of it. No, there is not a great feasibility because the upkeep and the heating and the electric and everything else is like, oh, my gosh. I mean, how hard is it keeping the, what, 43 games at the co-op running? it's hard. It is very hard. And that's 43 games in a location that's open twice a week. Yep. I'm just saying, I just don't think it's feasible unless you can get some large paid tech crew that's there year round. Even then it's going to be paying the ass. Yes, it is. I mean, it's sad to see these, these collections broken up, especially something like the museum at pinball, because they just had some super rare shit there that you're just never going to see again. The one I keep thinking of is, is that 8-Ball Deluxe with the alphanumeric scores. Only one of ten made, yeah. With its awesome graphics where it just says, like, play 8-Ball Deluxe or whatever the hell it says. Just they had so much rare shit there. Like they had the Mystic with the 3D back glass. The only time I've ever seen it. They had, like, the Captain Fantastic with the uncensored back glass. The only time I've seen it. There's a lot of games that are going to be lost to private collections for this. Yep. and they're going to be private collections. It's going to be, the auction is actually going to be run out of the former museum, now going to be Pot Farm location itself. Yeah. So you better be local because shipping is just not. Unless it's really rare. Like if you wanted that eight ball. Yeah, but it's, it's in California. The taxes are so high and then the shipping and everything else. If you want that eight ball, you're going to probably try to do something like that. I guess if you're rich. Yeah. And judging how many people did things like buy both Ultraman and Halloween CE editions, there's a lot of rich people out there. Yes. There's a lot of money. All right. I know. Man, I'm being negative again. Yeah, you are. I'm sorry. It's the news. We have to mention it. Yes. We have to mention it. It's just a shame that we lost another place. It's a shame. It's a shame. So to everyone from Museum of Pinball, thank you. Thank you for what you did. Yep. We enjoyed it. We enjoyed Arcade Expos. We enjoyed the InDiscs. Yep. We enjoyed playing the Rushes. But there's still going to be a tournament out in Southern California. InDisc is still going to happen. Yep, just a lot smaller. And they're going to have to find out where they're going to do it. Hopefully it's a bigger location than the back room of a bowling alley. Yeah, I hope so too. But at least that's going to be around. So kudos to Bob Matthews and Carl D'Python Anghelo. And come on. You don't want me to name them all. Jim Belcido. Jim Belcido, yes. Yep. And Damien. Yes. Everyone forgets him. Yes. He's part of the crew, too. So, yeah. Yeah. Fun stuff. Not really. We should get into fun stuff. Like? Like. Like the tournament we had at the co-op. Yes. Stu played. I heard. And he beat me in one game. He wouldn't play me anything else because he was so happy that he beat me on just one game. Yeah, he whooped your ass on Far Out. Yep. And I had to leave because I had to go to another thing. I had to go to a wedding. And I get back, and Stu's gone. Yeah, he left because he got eliminated. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Didn't he say he was going to be in the finals? He was. Unfortunately, he was in the B Division finals. and he lost oh i thought with a person with his pride he would have just if he was an a it was nothing yeah i think he finished third and b and then he left yeah he walked right by me in the hallway as i was coming in wow yep he sucks i mean the only thing he did was uh the tournament most of the tournament was streamed there was one match he had with raymond davidson was in the group. Ooh. The number one player in the world. Yes. So they played, the first game was on Attack from Mars. Mm-hmm. And after a terrible first ball, Stu just turned it up to another level, like probably few players can. So he took first. Well, at one point, he just started doing loop passes over and over and over, like eight, nine-way combo on stream, just showing off. Yeah. he got i think eight billion and he finished second wow because raymond had 10 billion wow yeah so maybe that demoralized him in some way to have that big a game and still lose i don't know how stew ever comes back from this now i don't think we'll ever hear from him i don't think we're going to hear from stew anymore i i think i need to play instead of stew yeah which you can soon i can you can well first before we uh who won the tournament bruce it was uh our own zach yes basically at the finals the finals ended up being it was uh zach raymond davidson james who is a local from rochester gets every le known to man yes uh And Stephanie. And our own little Steph. And Zach destroyed in the finals. Yes. It wasn't. He destroyed. It wasn't pretty. No. And Raymond picked the group because he was the top qualifier. He picked the group of Attack for Bars, Super Straight, and Cheetah. And did Zach win all three? No. I think he won two out of three, and then he got second in the last game. Yeah, it was Cheetah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a dominating performance. Yep. And Raymond didn't Raymond got fourth. Yeah. I think. Yes. So he did. Steph Peter. Yep. James second, third and Raymond fourth. Congratulations to all for the first tournament at the Rochester pinball co-op, but we have another one coming up soon. We do. We do. What do we have coming up soon? Bruce stomp for pinball comes home. Where'd you get the pinball? Because it's the voyage home. Yes. So Pinball comes home. Yep. Because Rochester is the home of Pinball. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows this. And it is Ron's birthday. So we're going to have birthday cake there too. September 25th. Yes. It is already a third sold out. So we have a maximum of 50 people. We already have, we are up to almost 20. We are at 19 right now. After it was announced. One day. Yesterday. day yes yes yeah so it's you're selling out fast if you hear this there's still spots available it is 40 until the end of august after august 31st it is then 50 that gets you both entry into the place and money towards the pot yep after uh 10 rounds of match play where you'll be playing groups of four or three depending on how many people we get we will be uh playing and our match play groups will be groups of games like eras so it'll be like 78 to 83 then the next one yeah let me explain and this was i talked to zach about this yeah and and he's right timing yeah he's right as usual um don't yeah don't let him here's well he hasn't listened to our last few episodes so he probably is screw him but yeah what he was saying it's true if we're doing match play and we have foursomes and we put them all these different games at different eras you'll have like a group playing attack from mars for an hour and then you'll have another group on like flipper clown and they're done in five minutes and they're just sitting around waiting for the next round so luckily with us we have a lot of games where we can you know do eras yeah so the idea is do not sit around and if you're going to have like an you know around that's you know an hour or 45 fine but you don't want to be sitting on your ass most of it not being able to play just waiting for people to finish so it's going to be the games will be in different groups which you can do a match play so they'll be like a round that's you know older games and around that's a little bit newer than maybe around that's the newer games yeah you know that kind of thing and then the finals will be the way we the way we always do them it's three game matches and you have to pick a game from one of three different groups yes and do we not allow repeats refresh my memory we do not okay which we there's 43 games there you should not have to repeat any yes it should not be an issue like oh i've ran out of good games to pick that should not be bullshit yes and uh we have a new game at the co-op you have a new game okay you have a hoops but that was we couldn't get that ready it's ready now ah good i love hoops yes it's ready now but you can't put it next to Surf and Safari now because this new game is next to Surf and Safari. Yep. The longest playing multiball mania game there is. Yeah. Do not put that in the tournament. Oh, God, no. Do not put Lord of the Rings in the tournament. Do not put this game in the tournament. No, no. You can actually put – no. If you put Lord of the Rings and you put Guns N' Roses in the tournament, then you're good because it's about equal time. Maybe Lord of the Rings is a little faster. No, don't put it there. He's talking, of course, about Guns N' Roses is now with the co-op. Yes, it is. Yeah, I got a message as you were playing the one game. It's like, Bruce has been on one multiball for 15 minutes. Yes. What the hell are you doing? I got my jackpot of 14 million. Zach was ahead, literally. He was like 9 million points. I didn't get to play yet. Zach was on there for like 20 minutes, got 9 or 10 million, lost a 6 million jackpot and a 3 million jackpot in that game. Like, son of a bitch, you know, because he had all these extra balls, and we turned off the extra balls after this, thank God. so uh i get up and i'm at like 200 000 ball two after i was done with my ball two i was up to 19 million and it's like what the hell i'm like yeah i just oh my god yeah what i did is like i couldn't i couldn't remember any of the you know the carl d'Python Anghelo the patches and all this crap you all the the multiball preparation you have to do to maximize your multi-ballness balls i did last time I played it and I found this fun doing it this way. I just purposely didn't start the multiball. Like I got all the different band members and then I just kept locking balls. Yes. That's how I do it. Cause once you lock the last ball, it starts the multiball. Yep. And for me, it was lucky. It was an appetite for destruction song. Thank God. So, you know, the best material and I'm trying to remember what song it was, but whatever song it was, I played the whole song. And then with like one second left, I hit the final shot and got the uh what is it called song jackpot it that yeah and i immediately goes into the encore which lasted like two seconds but still it was fun and for and that was it it's a great game don't get me wrong it's a great game way too heavy on multiball uh well that's the whole game gimmick gimmick oh okay but it's a fun game yes it is but literally We played a four-player game between, wait, here you go, Zach, myself, Andy Cushman, who's won the pinball profile, and Eric Russell. Oh, Jesus Christ. It was an hour and five minutes. I believe that, yes. Yes. An hour and five, that's too long to play a game. Yes. I guess it's, but it's a game for all, Bruce, just not for you. You're too good. It's more fun to compete in an hour. In an hour. It's more fun to compete in an hour. it's the new it's the new jersey check if he uses it i'm making millions baby wow it's that'd be funny like what what would be the worst games we could put in for ball like we're gonna have a stop lord of the rings we need four games we're gonna have a stock lord of the rings a stock um guns and roses a stock black knight 2000 yep what's our fourth game simpsons simpsons spinball part there we go because you can just go to loop you know as you say loop garage loop garage yep so we'll do that and it'll be great and everyone will want to and leave the tournament yes they'll probably doing harry carry outside it'll be jumping out the second window all right but yes so we have that game uh hoops is in the back waiting for the right moment waiting for the right moment for a game to fail so it could be replaced yep uh medieval madness went into the vault medieval madness went back into the vault so it's in storage again oh okay back into the vault back into the vault and then uh i got star trek back unfortunately we warned the guy when we when we were repairing the game he had a bad acid damage i'm like uh your acid damage is ruined What does acid damage have to do with Star Trek? Next generation. Oh, next gen. Okay, okay. You're fixing a next generation. Well, you confused me, Bruce, because you took Star Trek to the wedding, so that wasn't set up. No, no, no. Okay. No, I was talking about the repairs from last time. He got it home, and it started just – the coin door didn't work. Then the coin door started giving volume, no volume. So we get it back, and since he was trying to pull off connectors, a couple connectors got damaged. I fixed those. I'm like, okay, I can get the game playing now. It already had credits on there. I cannot get the coin door to work. So me and Zach, we're like, okay, let's take off the connectors and let's try to jump at the ground and see if we can actually get anything to register on the CPU. No. So we told him, like, you need a CPU like we told you. He's like, well, how much is that going to be? I'm like, it's $175 plus shipping. He's like, oh, that's not bad. And he ordered it today. So hopefully we'll have it later this week, maybe next week. and we'll put that in, and then Star Trek will hopefully be on its way out for its long five-year mission. Well, I think in the last show we mentioned an issue with Dialed In. Yes, the light board. Which it turns out somehow a game made in 2018 was still under warranty. Because he didn't buy it until 2020. Yeah, it was bought in November 2020, so it still had the warranty. But remember, we were guessing how much the light board was going to cost. Zero. Well, no. They were going to charge you $100. Yes. I don't remember what I said. I think I said – you said lower. I think I said – I don't remember. Someone will have to tell us what we said and who won. Remember, price is right rules. So if he went over, I win. It turns out it's under warranty, and this is the part I don't get. they sent they sent the board which i think did he have to pay shipping for it no no they sent right away but yeah but did he have to pay the shipping well not to us he paid the shipping for the return here's the thing i saw the box that it came in yeah i had a note on there where it said send the old board back to this address if you don't we're going to charge your card and my thing is how would they have charged this card if they didn't already have his card information So you have to give the card when you put your ticket in. Okay. Hopefully not when you put a ticket in. Hopefully when they send you the part, they ask for the card. They diagnose it and they say, hey, we're going to send this part out to you. All right. The only thing is just like they said send it back. It's like no prepaid postage return. I mean, come on, man. Your part failed and now it's my problem. Yeah, now I have to pay for shipping. That's bullshit. Again, it's a warranty. That doesn't happen with other – No. Like commercial – I mean, I work in IT. If we have a disk drive fail that's under warranty or that's under support, they send you one, and they give you the return label, and you stick it on there, and you send it all back. I'm sure it's the same what you did. Yep, it's the same. And also, the same thing just happened to me. I have one of the Milwaukee battery-powered soldering irons. It failed. And I have a five-year warranty on it. So I email Milwaukee. They have this thing. You do it online. Really nice. Type it. Once you put all the information in, they're like, well, do you have your receipt? I'm like, no, but, you know, and they're like, well, we'll go off your serial number. And they go off your serial number like, okay, it's still in a warranty. Here we're going to send you a prepaid shipping thing. So you just put it in the box and you ship it off to them. And their website is really nice. It tracks where it's going. Like, oh, we saw you dropped off at FedEx. We just received it. Oh, we have the repair evaluation. Oh, here is the shipping going back to you. You just received your shipment. Really impressive. I was very, very nice. And needless to say, they gave me a brand-new soldering iron because it was only six months old, and it's probably cheaper for them to give you a new one than repairing it. But the good thing is I got a brand-new soldering iron, which is great, but they didn't charge me anything. Not one red cent for their field. It's just something about you're paying for, and that's for buying. How much is the soldering iron? $99. $99, and they're doing all this for a $99 product. You have a $7,000-plus product. Yeah. And they're charging you to return it. I just thought that was kind of lame. Yeah, that was fucking really – that was cheap. But it did fix the issue, and it was a totally different light board too, like a different revision. Revision, yes. New revision. But, yeah, so that was just annoying a little bit. I was like, really? Yeah, I had to bring that up just being a dick just because when I saw that, I'm like – because I saw the box. It's like there's no return label in there. and there was actually a sheet in there that says, please mail the broken one to this address. Like, really? I have to print that stuff out myself and I have to go to FedEx or whatever and pay for that? Come on. Yeah. Lame. All right. But I heard you are an asshole, Ron. I am? Yeah, I heard from the Pinball Network something about that Pinball Network thing where, you know, we're the odd couple? No, you're the asshole. I'm the good guy. Oh. Yeah, yeah. How am I the asshole? You haven't heard any of our episodes? No, not at all. I'm the sweetest guy out there. Yeah, on the pinball show, they gave us a – well, Zach Manning said congrats on your fifth anniversary, which of course is wrong. Because I purposely avoided the whole anniversary term because that's wrong. It's not our fifth anniversary. It was our fifth year of podcasting. Yes. It would actually be our fourth anniversary if you want to be technical. Wow. I know. If someone says nice, then I'd be a dick. So maybe I am the dick. You are the dick. So what do they say? We're the odd couple. We're the odd couple. Because I'm supposedly the positive one and all professional, and you're just the asshole goofball. And what's the problem? I'm just as much an asshole goofball. I think you're actually sometimes more. Lately, you've been really bad. Well, the listeners have never heard any of our conversations we used to have when we would go to shows and stuff. Yeah. Oh, we were dicks. Well, you more than me, but yes. Yes. You would tell a person their game sucks in front of them where I would. Yes. I would not say that. Or you would say it's just some random – I always – well, for those who haven't heard all our episodes, I'll say this story again. One of the shows, I don't know, it was Texas, something like that, whatever. It was a demo man. one of the first uh when the leds first started kind of coming out and it was just like had the full clown led stuff going on like all these different colors and all that and we're playing it and there's a guy standing next to us just kind of watching us play and i'm thinking to myself i wonder if that's the owner so at some point he has his he has bruce like what do you think of the you know the leds bruce like it looks like shit and the guy's immediately like oh it's my game and it's like oh god and Bruce is there hey it's your game man you do whatever you want with it but it still looks like shit and Ron's just like oh my god I'm just like oh god I want to disappear because I saw the guy stand down there that's got to be the owner and as soon as he said that I'm there oh god it's definitely going to be the owner and they said I'm the owner like oh fuck and you don't be I just go double down yes yes so yes I am the nice guy and Bruce is the asshole check that off Got that? Well, you mentioned Coindor is not working, right? Yes. Well, I got to play Zack's Alien. Oh, no. Oh, great. Wait a second. His new alien from? His brand new alien from Pinball Brothers, where if you open up the Coindor, it's a HAP Coindor. You know, like the same kind that Stern uses. But since you don't charge money to play Alien, it's free play only, it's not hooked to anything. Like half the wiring is not hooked to anything. Like none of the CoinMex work. What do you mean? Like, wait a second. How much was this machine? $7,000 plus? How much is it? Yeah. Like, literally, the CoinMex are not hooked up. Like, if you put coins in there, there's nothing. It would never register. The wiring isn't even connected. So it's got to be like one of those Apple things. Like you touch the play. No. No. What do you mean? No, no. Some of the stuff I saw on this. Maybe it's like credit card. You put your credit card in. It slides in and out. you put it in a crack you know what a lockdown bar receiver is bruce yes i do pinball brothers doesn't know what that is because there's not one in the game i know there isn't they have two little metal brackets where the playfield hooks to they do not have a full lockdown bar receiver they have the same lockdown bar it looks just like a stern and it uses the same um what's it called latches latches but they fucked up when they put the latches on the latch on the left you couldn't actually latch without lifting the play field up slightly because the play field was in the way of the latch yeah i know nice nice it has a up post in the back i'm doing the bad stuff first has an up post in the back that's supposed to stop the ball so it goes in the pop bumpers it doesn't work most of the time either it hits it and rejects and then ends up just going behind the xenomorph head or blows by it. What? And it's cheap plastic with like plastic around it and it just snaps right off. Multiple alien owners have already had it just break off. What? So hopefully they're making a better one. They really should have used like one-way gate like all the Sterns do. Yeah. Or a better up post like a metal one. Yeah, that didn't work. The xenomorph. Me and Zach I think are convinced at this point. It has a magnet in front of it just like sparky like almost the same distance away except it never fucking catches the ball because what's supposed to happen you hit the two targets in front and it activates the magnet we think that the game is is not able to activate the magnet fast enough no the timing the timing is off it cannot activate it fast enough and the ball is already out of the area by the time it activates the magnet so it never catches the ball so the xenomorph tongue thing comes out which is noisy as hell oh my god and and it never gets the ball because it just doesn't work it works maybe 15 to 20 percent of the time yeah it's bad the thing i was worried about was the lighting because everyone i've ever played i couldn't see the ball so he turns it on and i'm like okay i'm thinking to myself so the gi is not on yet huh no like no that's it like are you serious they have like the targets are lit up and a lot of things are lit up but there's like no real GI lighting on this game. Not at all. And it makes stars look bright. Yes. I mean, I know it kind of fits the theme of Alien, but holy shit. I had to play with the lights on because I couldn't see the ball otherwise. Mm-hmm. What else? What other wonderful things? Quality of the metal work and everything like that from the legs. Oh, the legs. The legs. They're already sending Zach new legs because the legs were so bad. He's opened. Well, we had him on the show. He said he opened, like, what, 15 tickets or whatever the hell. And it looks like they're using Zach as one of their American test people. Beta testers. Yeah, because they sent him all new light boards, completely new light boards for everything. And it's still some don't work right out of the box. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, one or two did not work right out of the box. And James, who we just talked about who won the tournament second, he has one, and he's had bad light boards sent to him that don't even work. The thing is, it takes them like a few days to get back to you because they're in Europe. Yes. So there's usually a delay. Since they don't have a lockdown bar receiver and they just have two little brackets that hold the play field on, I felt every time I hit the flipper button, I could feel the whole front of the game like vibrate. Yeah. Yeah. Like because, and I think it's because there's no lockdown bar receiver to take the shock of this. So you feel every flip way more than you usually do. I know. Plus, at least Saks will occasionally just lock up and you've got to reboot it. The right flipper will just die for no reason and then come back to life. So when's your order coming? Here's the funny thing, Bruce. Forgiving all that fact, all that stuff. When I actually played the game and it worked good enough, I thoroughly enjoyed playing Alien. So when's your order coming in? No way. I don't want to be a guinea pig for fucking Pinball Brothers. No. No, there's too many issues. The thing is, though, it's – It makes – here's the honest thing. It makes Big Lebowski like a gem. Yeah. It does. The back glass. It's like plexiglass. There's no lights. It's plexiglass. There's no lights back there. And it's got the key is in the plexiglass. It's part of – it's like just a hole through the plexiglass to lock it. So you could just pull on the thing and pull it out if you wanted to. Yeah. But, like I said, playing it, I love the modes. I like what they did. I love the modes. I love the theme. I love everything about it. I wish it was made by a better corporation. I mean, at least they are sending new light boards and stuff. But, I mean, there are so many bugs. How much money are they losing? How much money are they losing? But there's so many just bugs with the game, too. Just the game locking up. And you turn it on, and the screen just doesn't come on. I'm like, okay, turn it off, turn it back on. All right. You're playing. Right flipper just goes there. Oh, okay. Or you get stuck in a ball. It loses the ball massively. Well, here's the funny story. So I play my first game. It's like, okay, I'm going to play Alien. Okay, Zach, you want in? No. Just do one-player games. Less chance of it locking up. Like, are you serious? Yes, because we proved that. Like, he was absolutely serious. Yes. It actually, when me and Zach played it, because it's the first time we played duels with it, he's like every game we played it was like locking up or getting lost or not even being able to react he's looked at me and i look at him and said this is not funny he goes it doesn't do this when normally when i'm doing a one-player game well he does it doesn't do it as much that was his exact wording like you know it's a really it's a good game a lot of promise this is the one you want the last one on the line well yeah that's true this yeah play field looked nice though yeah play field looked nice that's about it it's just i mean you could hit you could make all the shot well again this went through the exact tweaking procedures so you could hit everything with all the flippers so that was a nice and when i played full games very good that's a nice today you're making fun of us italians again are you huh oh yes i've already gotten three nasty emails about this so i'll just keep it up oh man we We make a good pinball machine, and we made it to Zachariah. We made all this other stuff. My great-grandparents, Frank and Conchetta Labella, were not happy with what we're saying. We make it now a pinball brothers game. You don't worry about it. We're good. I apologize. We all know Italians are the greatest group in the world with the best food, and we rock. And you are wrong, Bruce. We know that gingers are the ones that are truly evil. Wow, Jeff. Are you going to take this? Jeff Teolas is now going to come after you. He's going to take it and like it because he can't come over here. Not yet. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. So that was Alien. It's funny. I mean, if you take away all the stuff that doesn't work and you fixed all that, I actually wouldn't mind an Alien. But there's no way I'd have confidence buying what I saw. No, it's terrible. There's just no way. There's just no way. I can have a game where you just play the thing and it just like locks up constantly This is supposed to be a production production product This is not like alpha beta version this is beta i mean i just but congrats to people who are actually getting them yeah congrats for getting a turd imagine if you weren't zach yeah imagine if you couldn't diagnose issues yourself and weren't opening up like 15 tickets with pinball brothers to get this stuff fixed yeah what the fuck do you do again it's nice that they're responsive but god damn how can you release a product that do you have testers you have people playing this thing at all hey you know the monkey that's on my shoulder when i crank it up to shoot the sound box that's the test hey well you know that's the more hey we're gonna go to the ball bag but we actually have nothing in the ball bag this week but i have a feeling after all this uh we're gonna have stuff in the ball bag next week. Hey, Bacigalupa, the nut in the bag. Yeah, demanding an apology from you. No, they won't. You know I don't apologize. You know I don't apologize ever, yes. Oh, the monkey, the monkey testing machine. Go, yay, you go. I'm an asshole. I am a fucking asshole. You heard it here first. Bruce, a fucking asshole. Hey, guess what? At Allentown, just for that, all the Italians can come out and hug me. Okay. Or whack you, one or the other. Or whack me. You know, I'm going to make them an offer I can't refuse. Yeah. That was actually all I had on my list. What? What else do I have? Stop? Yeah, we did stop. Other than to say that it'll probably be an extra week before the next podcast. Yep, because Ron's going on vacation somewhere. Well, wait a minute. Next weekend, well, we wouldn't usually record anyway, but next weekend is Allentown for this upcoming weekend by the time this release. And the weekend after that, I will be going to one of the first big Whopper Point events in Wisconsin. Wisconsin. District 82. I'll get to check out that place. I've never been there before. I'm going to ask them how they get such good reception on their streaming. We can't get. There you go. Yeah, go. What's the secret? Actually, kudos to Zach for helping me. We both were troubleshooting the rig on Friday and found some just weird things. Like there's certain channels that you have to put the things on. Otherwise, they interfere with each other. And then you physically have to kind of offset them so they don't, like, run into each other's beams or something. It's very bizarre. Yeah, so you can fix it all. I want one more round at it. I want to move some of the actual transmitters around on the rig a little bit more. But, I mean, we're close. The Playfield cam was flawless the entire five, six hours or whatever we streamed. Never had an issue. It was only the other cameras that would just randomly have issues. And we found out I definitely need – the one thing I forgot to bring was spare batteries. But I definitely need to bring those. So we need more of the USB packs ready to rock? Well, I have two. I'm going to bring two fully charged ones. Whoops, I'm away from the microphone here. I'm going to bring two fully charged ones for Stomp. Cool. That'll be cool. Are you playing in Stomp, Ron? Hell no. I'm running the rig. I didn't play in the last Stomp either. I ran the rig. Bruce, are you going to be playing in Stomp? Fuck yeah! America! God, I love that movie. that's right gary you know bruce proved he was 100 devoted to the team he proved it last night but i won't i won't go that far no no i'm not gonna go there i love that movie more than a person should love a movie my favorite comedies of all time so if you're selling older sterns i got cash come see me i'll be there thursday i'll be actually setting up the games i'll be helping setting up the games and putting them in locations so electricity is not overextended. I hate when electricity gets overextended. Yeah, and we blow breakers. That's a bad thing. Anything else? I actually don't have anything else. I mean, nothing's really – well, how about American Pinball? When's their new game coming out? What's the delay? What's the delay? Everyone says it's Legends of Valhalla. Yeah, that's what I keep on hearing also. With a different name. Yeah. But, yeah. if it's already done what the yeah i mean unless it's just a part shortage but i i mean plus they're probably only going to sell a couple hundred i can't see that being a big seller i know i know it's just i don't know well they're supposed to put two out this year so maybe yeah they said two and one of them was supposed to be in the summer so this the summer is halfway over yeah this is a filler i think this is the filler to keep the line just busy to the next game. Well, you can still get the other games. You want Houdini? You want a, well, their best game, Hot Wheels. I played more Hot Wheels. I like Hot Wheels. When are you buying that? I don't like it that much. But I think it's by far their best game. Definitely their most fun, highest fun factor game. Well, speaking of fun factor, here we go. I'll do a last rant here. Uh-oh. Jurassic Park. is pissing me off. I think I've made a wrong decision. Ooh, so when are you selling it to me? Man, I feel like I have to be Keith Elwin to hit anything in that game. Now, you know me. I am not accurate. No, no, no. You, no, no, no. And you don't always like, hold on. Ron is one of the least accurate people there are. He doesn't know rules, but he still plays good. Because I save a lot of shit, so I keep missing. but then keep saving so I get to miss more than a typical person gets to miss, which gets even more frustrating. But the thing is, I can play like Deadpool, which is not the smoothest game in the world, and I can miss everything and I still have fun because it's Deadpool. When I play Jurassic Park, man, I just get so pissed off. I want to get to Visitor Center, you know, a little mini wizard mode. It's not like Dracula would get me just as pissed off. Bram Stoker's Dracula. But if you had a good enough game, like in five minutes, you could get the three multi-balls going at once. Yeah. 30 million! Yes. With Jurassic Park, it's going to take me a while to try to get to Visitor Center. And if I get there or like one dinosaur away and fail, I don't feel like playing again. You know what I mean? I just get in these things where I just clunk all over the place. I've already had to make some adjustments trying to get that feed to the upper flipper good enough to hit the side ramp, which that still rejects on a regular basis. I don't know. The call-outs are just – they have so many different people doing call-outs. You have the one guy that's awesome, the guy that's the welcome to Jurassic Park, him, Mr. DNA, that guy. But then everyone else is like – they just have a random woman who's just okay. then you have the guy that's supposed to be South African with a terrible accent then you have the control room guy then you have the other guy that's just like we've lost another truck you only have two trucks left I'm just not feeling it I'm like say we'll use another Elwynn game Iron Maiden the call outs in that are awesome I love the call outs in that actually out of his three games I played I'd say the one I enjoy playing at this point the most is Iron Maiden but the issue with that was I kept being in multiball constantly because it was like much easier that I think it's easier than the other two and I was just in so much multiball it's like I don't think I could own this so I don't know either I need to get better and what made it even worse is I watched Robert Byers on top rope pinball hi Robert and he got to the when dinosaurs rule the earth the uber super wizard mode and watching him play that thing. He had two games in a row. I think one he almost got to Nublar and the second one he did that. I can't do that. I can't play that good. We knew that already though. Yeah, well, the thing is it's not like I have the game set wicked hard. This is factory. This game has the most nasty slingshots of any new stern I've ever gotten out of the factory. These things just hair trigger and the ball is always out of control if you just miss once on this thing it's just you're dead it's over yeah and as soon as you use your left kickback you better get a relet or you're just yeah you're done yeah i just find it a just frustrating clunky mess at times for me wow so when you selling it ron will be taking offers for a trade for an le uh and i have the art blades in it and the super cool t-rex head you know as we know because i'm a meanie you are mean because of the previous episode yeah I don't know. I'm just frustrated. Maybe someone needs to give me some lessons on how I should better approach the game. Oh, I'm doing something wrong. I need I need to enjoy this game more. Because the times I got to Visitor Center, I was super cool. The whole like the Raptors and trying to get the two shots as they go around the play field. It's like, yeah, I want to get back to that. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's going to be too hard for me to get back to that. And it's not – I don't – like right next to it is my Spider-Man, which I have never been to Super Hero and never will. But I can get to the mini-wizard mode. Yeah. I can't get to the freaking mini-wizard mode most of the time on Jurassic Park. I don't know. I think I got a game that is – Hold on. Hold on. We're getting our first email today. It says, Ron, play better. Okay. Okay. That was from Pinsypedia. I don't know. it's just the first i think just i honestly i don't think i'm good enough to play that game i think that game just requires a skill level that i do not have that's why i want to i want to since i have this game either for a stop or a future event get some players here way better than me have them play that and i'm hoping they'll be like wow this is the hardest playing jurassic park i've ever played and be like okay so it's not just me or they completely blow it up and And it's like, yeah, okay, I totally suck. Because I played way better on Zack's Jurassic Park than my Jurassic Park. Wow. And I love Escape. I love Escape Nublar. I love that mode. That was one of the doing the Escape Nublar challenges. That was one of the final things that said, yes, I'm definitely getting this game. Because that was freaking awesome. But, you know, forgetting the part that, oh, yeah, I actually have to get there legitimately if I don't want to just start the game with that. And it doesn't look like I'm good enough to do so. Gotcha. I do have one of the pizza news when you're done Oh, pizza news Okay, yeah, I'm done, rant off Finally, fuck man We are going to have our first launch party in Rochester Oh, really? You're a member of the Stern Army, right? Yes, we is Is that means you're going to get some cool prizes from Stern? Yep, Mandalorian time We are going to have a Mandalorian by next month at the co-op and we will be running the Mandalorian launch party. So hopefully we'll get Ron out there. You can give him a big hug because we have less people. When is this? We don't know yet. We're talking probably the beginning of September. Is it the way? September 11th. That will be the way. It will be the way. Yep. So come on down. And this ain't going to be no ordinary pro. This ain't no pro. Oh, is it going to be an LE? This ain't no premium. Oh, it's going to be an LE. We're only doing LE, baby. Rochester only does LEs. They don't screw around. Yep. So that's how you're going to be playing in this launch party, LE time. Okay. I do have a tournament coming up at level zero, but it's in November. Yes, I'm looking forward to that. You're going to come down for that? Oh, yes. Mr. Matt Hall is. Really? Because it's for 518ers. You're not a 518er. There's also for the regular people. There's a non-518er. Yep. So guess what? I'm going to come in there, and we're going to show the 518ers how to play. Oh, we? So more than you? Yep. Who else is going to come with me if they're coming from my area? So you're going to have, like, the Rochester contingent just put us in our place? Yep. Smack you around like the bitches you are. Wow. Them's fight words. I'm sorry. We don't have the amount of LEs to practice on that you guys do. No, you do not. But maybe you come out to the co-op, and you can show us up. Well, you know, Bruce, if I wanted to come out to the co-op. Where would that be? Where would that be, and when can I come out there? You can come out there Thursday between 5 and 10 at night, or you can come out on Saturday between 3 and 11 at world-famous Rochester Pinball Collective, www.rocpinball.com or www.rochesterpinball.com at 349 West Commercial Street in East Rochester, New York, Suite 2965. Come one, come all. pay one price stay the whole day you can come and go as you please that day okay there you go and the other thing i like is you have free wi-fi yes free wi-fi i mean it's not yours it's the pizza place under you but it's still free we have free wi-fi don't let people be on it they'll screw up the stream blame zach blame zach oh god did he turn that on canada blame canada Oh, the hockey hullabaloo and the bitch I marry too. That's right, Gary. We're not even a real country anyway. That's from South Park the movie, by the way, if you're wondering. Bruce did not make that up. Heck no. Blame Canada. No, we love Canada. Oh, Canada. our home and native land. Don't know the rest of the words except for the end. We stand on guard for thee. The puck drops at five minutes. Yes. All right. Get that club thing off the ice. Well, thanks, everybody. This has been episode 171 of the Slam Tilt Podcast. You can reach us at slam till podcast at gmail.com that's slam till podcast at gmail.com check out our website www.slamtillpodcast.com all our links are in the upper right hand corner including twitch youtube facebook it's all there instagram although i haven't i used to use the instagram to post pictures from shows on the slam till page hopefully i will get to do that again at allentown and don't forget write us an email tell us how we're doing write us a review tell us how we're doing that way too even though we won't listen to whatever they say and you'll just make fun of them if they criticize us that's about right okay just checking just checking to make sure hi steve follow bonus everybody in the universe jeff what's it called we got a ton of people you know Marty, Brian C. Everyone in the messenger thread we're in. There you go. No one listening will even know what that means, so that's fine. Exactly. And hi, Zach. Our own Zach. Yes, our own Zach. So thanks, everybody. Until next time, remember, one extra week. Oh, God, one extra week of not having us? How are these people going to survive? The way they survived all the other weeks they didn't have us. It's quite easy. Wow. You sure about this? I'm sure about this. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, pinballers. Oh my Oh my Oh my Oh my Oh my Well, that was nice and short. And you didn't even plug your own show. I love it, finally. Oh, wait a minute. I didn't plug my own show? Nope, nope, nope, because you didn't plug us on the last show, so guess what? Wait a minute. What do you mean you didn't plug us? You didn't plug us. You didn't plug yourself. You plugged yourself. You mentioned it on the last episode. You said you were going to record again. no I'm talking about your guys the Silverwall Chronicles didn't plug us I didn't? no! so it was perfect I'm sorry I even have a note on here that says plug you need to tape it to your freaking monitor next time

Allentown Pinfest is August 30-31, but IFPA tournaments in the area begin August 1st using a different scoring system than IFPA

high confidence · Ron discusses timing conflict: 'they're in the other company... Free State Associate'

Rochester Pinball Co-op
organization
Stompevent
Ultramangame
Valley Star Trekgame
Pinball Starcompany
Tim Arnoldperson
John Weeksperson
Carl D'Angeloperson
Jim Belsitoperson
  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball Ultraman generated $14M gross sales in one day despite no pre-release video; demonstrates demand independent of transparency

    high · Bruce: 'They made $14 million in gross sales' but 'nobody saw the game except for the trailer'

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky deliberately withheld video before Ultraman sale to maximize FOMO/scarcity narrative; strategy successful regardless of feasibility concerns

    high · Zach Manny interview with Spooky where they explicitly stated 'we don't want to show a video. We want you to play the game'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zach demonstrated dominance in tournament finals, winning 2 of 3 games; selected to design match play groupings for future tournaments

    high · Ron: 'Zach destroyed in the finals' and Zach consulted on Stomp tournament format

  • ?

    product_strategy: Spooky deliberately sold Ultraman without video demo to avoid format of showing-then-selling conflict; chose demand generation via scarcity over transparency

    high · Bruce notes the contradiction: 'you can't play the game and then buy it because it's already sold out' and Spooky's explicit rejection of video transparency

  • ?

    product_concern: Manufacturing quality improvements documented across Spooky production runs; early units (Rick and Morty start) had significant issues (hot glue, loud fans, poor positioning) fixed in later units

    high · Ron: 'If you were at the beginning of Rick and Morty, you got an extremely clunky game with lots of hot glue... different power supply fan. So you really made out by waiting a year and a half'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: California regulatory environment extremely hostile to pinball arcades; Banning location restricted to limited operating hours; easier to operate cannabis facility than pinball venue

    high · Comment cited: 'in Southern California, you're better off trying to open a pot farm next to a strip club across the street from an elementary school than trying to open a pinball arcade with any more than five games'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Spooky Ultraman is first production run of untested Ben Heck Pinotar board system; early adopters risk hardware issues common with new platforms

    high · Bruce: 'this is going to be the first game running the new Ben Heck board system, the Pinotar, which is untested... over 1,000 people getting it. You know, things will come up that did not come up previously'