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Ep 88: Pick your Jelly Belly with Scott Danesi

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 11m·analyzed·Jul 11, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Scott Danesi discusses TNA, Rick and Morty design, and announces TNA rerun with upgraded specs.

Summary

Scott Danesi, pinball designer behind Total Nuclear Annihilation and Rick and Morty, discusses his multi-disciplinary career spanning pinball design, music production, and audio work. He details the creative philosophy behind TNA (retro simplicity, original soundtrack, RGB lighting restraint) and Rick and Morty (System 11 homage, experimental bumper placement), his moonlighting design process while working full-time at Pinball Life, and upcoming projects including a VR arcade game soundtrack. He also announces a TNA rerun production by Spooky Pinball with upgraded components.

Key Claims

  • Scott Danesi owns all IP for Total Nuclear Annihilation and licenses it to Spooky Pinball for reruns

    high confidence · Scott Danesi stated directly: 'i own all of the ip for uh for Total Nuclear Annihilation so something like if Spooky Pinball wants to rerun again they just they contact me we have a contract that says they can just run uh as long as we both agree they can run uh more of them when they need to or want to'

  • Rick and Morty is designed as a System 11 game homage with modern LCD screen

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'Rick and Morty, if you were to look at that and just take a glance at it at a high level, that's a System 11 game with an LCD screen on it'

  • The bumper placement in Rick and Morty replacing a slingshot was initially a 50/50 bet on production inclusion

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'I still only gave it like a 50% chance of getting into the production game because I didn't know how the general public was going to react to it'

  • Adult Swim approved all Rick and Morty music and sound effects without requested revisions

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'I sent it over to Adult Swim and they just thumbs-up approved it right away and didn't have any feedback whatsoever for any of the music that was in the game'

  • Scott Danesi designed Rick and Morty entirely during nights and weekends while working full-time at Pinball Life

    high confidence · Scott Danesi confirmed: 'It was nights and weekends. I was moonlighting that entire project.'

  • TNA rerun will feature flip-down LCD screen, green fluorescent protectors on drop targets, and upgraded shooter display

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'the LCD is going to have the flip-down LCD screen that they used on Rick and Morty and newer games...we're going to put green, those fluorescent green protectors on it just from the factory with the translucent drop targets, and we're going to have those lit up from the factory as well...we're going to have the upgraded shoot again display too'

  • Spooky Pinball's Halloween had a production run of 1,250 units, making it the most-run game before TNA

Notable Quotes

  • “I wanted to trick people into thinking it was a normal pinball machine when you started and then use the full RGB sweeps and crazy explosions and stuff...as something that would really have more of an impact.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~7:00 — Reveals design philosophy behind TNA's RGB lighting restraint—contrast over saturation

  • “Designing a game in your spare time is very, very difficult to do just because of how much goes into it...it's a huge job. So I kind of want to take a break on it and relax for a little while, just do audio, and then we'll see what happens.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~17:00 — Acknowledges creative burnout from simultaneous day job and moonlighting game design

  • “Rick and Morty, if you were to look at that and just take a glance at it at a high level, that's a System 11 game with an LCD screen on it.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~19:30 — Clear statement of Rick and Morty's design philosophy as retro homage

  • “I kept seeing John Popadiuk put the cart before the horse with, he's like blasting art on these play fields that aren't even done yet...I'm going to show people like just with Barnyard doing this, that this is the way to actually build a pinball machine.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~49:00 — Commentary on design methodology and criticism of Papa Duke's approach; mentions Barnyard project

  • “I own all of the ip for uh for Total Nuclear Annihilation so something like if Spooky Pinball wants to rerun again they just they contact me we have a contract that says they can just run uh as long as we both agree.”

    Scott Danesi @ ~44:00 — Clarifies IP ownership and licensing model for TNA reruns

Entities

Scott DanesipersonSpooky PinballcompanyPinball LifecompanyMultimorphiccompanyJosh RooppersonMatt Scott LarsonpersonTotal Nuclear Annihilationgame

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Official announcement of Total Nuclear Annihilation rerun by Spooky Pinball with upgraded components including flip-down LCD, green fluorescent drop target protectors, and upgraded shooter display

    high · Scott Danesi: 'So recently it was announced that there's going to be a Total Nuclear Annihilation coming out...Spooky Pinball is going to rerun TNA, and the differences are going to be that it's going to be in the normal TNA cabinet, but the LCD is going to have the flip-down LCD screen'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott Danesi's design approach emphasizes RGB lighting restraint and simplicity over saturation, contrasting with Jersey Jack's The Wizard of Oz approach

    high · Scott Danesi: 'I wanted to trick people into thinking it was a normal pinball machine when you started and then use the full RGB sweeps and crazy explosions...as something that would really have more of an impact...you overuse something to the point where it doesn't actually become effective anymore'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Rick and Morty features experimental bumper placement replacing a slingshot in Jack Danger zone—atypical for modern games, initially considered risky for production inclusion

    high · Scott Danesi: 'I was like, I'm going to replace one of the slingshots with it and just see what happens...I didn't think it was going to make it to production because it was kind of a joke...I still only gave it like a 50% chance of getting into the production game'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Scott Danesi retains full IP ownership of Total Nuclear Annihilation; licenses production rights to Spooky Pinball via contractual agreement

    high · Scott Danesi: 'i own all of the ip for uh for Total Nuclear Annihilation...they just they contact me we have a contract that says they can just run uh as long as we both agree'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.213

0:00
thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast take three on episode 88 i am josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson hey and scott before we get to our awesome guest today let's talk about our sponsor okay uh flipping out pinball if you have that pinball machine or accessory that you are looking at contact zach and nicole mini at flipping out pinball. They've always been great to work with. I've been able to get the accessories I want. I have some art blades that I need to install and I've had, I bought some shooter rods from them in addition to the games I bought from them. So go ahead and hit them up. If you have any questions, they'd love to help you out, especially with a topper. Oh, you and your toppers. I know toppers are great. Hey, I also want to say thank you to them because they are helping us out with our flipping the script on autism they are one of our sponsors that have stepped up to donate some product and whatnot to help out those kids at learning solutions with early intervention with autism uh we want to thank also like stern and multimorphic haggis there's a whole slew of them brad with lit frames they've all stepped up to help us out we want to see you there at pinball expo here october 19th through the 23rd we hope to see you there and you get you some sweet swag. Why don't you go ahead and introduce our guest today, Scott? All right. Today, we have a designer who burst onto the scene with his first game that was basically a homebrew, but because of fan interest, was able to come into a production game. And this is Scott Denisey, and burst onto the scene with Total Nuclear Annihilation, but has since helped make Rick and Morty, even designing it. And so now he is with us, and so we want to welcome to the show. Hi, everybody. Nice to be here, guys.
1:58
Now, Scott, you wear a lot of hats. So you're a pinball designer. You're also a DJ. You also still work at Pinball Life.
2:09
What other hats are you wearing right now? Oh, man, I the problem is I just I do too much and I need to settle down. But, yeah, so aside from my day job, which is pinball life where I do the the technical stuff over there, whether it's, you know, mechanical, electrical engineering, I'll even do stuff like help out with tech support, help out with sub assembly or whatever needs to be done. We basically do that because it's a small business. But besides that, which is a nine to five, everything else I'm doing, I moonlight. So whether it's making audio for a new VR game that we're working on or working with Multimorphic doing audio. But it's mostly I'm just I'm doing a ton of audio right now. Seems to be a really fun point for me at the moment. Well, it's funny, too, because there's a lot of people in the pinball industry that are like musicians getting out of music to get into pinball. But you're almost like doing the opposite. that you started out in pinball and you're like gravitating more towards music now. Tell us more about that. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So really, I started writing music back in 1996 when I was in high school. And I started experimenting with electronic music and writing some really junky stuff. Sounds terrible. I actually found some of it the other day and I need to delete it. It's really bad.

medium confidence · Scott Danesi discussing production numbers: 'What was the run of Halloween? Because that won the initial most run game...I think it was 1250...Yeah, so 1250'

  • Scott Danesi is working on an official soundtrack for a VR game called 'Arcade Legend' releasing end of year on Steam and Oculus

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'It is an official soundtrack for a VR game. This VR game is coming out on Steam and Oculus and all the VR platforms at the end of the year...It's called Arcade Legend'

    • Rick and Morty
    game
    Weird Algame
    Arcade Legendgame
    Gerry Stellenbergperson
    Zach Minneyperson
    Nicoleperson
    The Wizard of Ozgame
    Matt Andrewsperson
    John Papadukeperson
    Charlieperson
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    LAI Gamescompany
    Adult Swimcompany
    Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
    Flipping the Script on Autismorganization
  • ?

    code_update: TNA rerun will include minor code updates addressing score bit integration and potentially new multiball, though Scott Danesi is uncertain about multiball implementation

    medium · Scott Danesi: 'I am planning on doing a code update, which has some just minor little things in it here and there...I want to try and fix the score bit integration...I wanted to put a new multiball in it, but I don't know if it's totally fun, and it might take away from the actual original code'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Scott Danesi maintains full-time employment at Pinball Life while moonlighting on game design, music production, and audio work—acknowledges creative burnout and plans to focus primarily on audio

    high · Scott Danesi: 'designing a game in your spare time is very, very difficult to do...So I kind of want to take a break on it and relax for a little while, just do audio...It was nights and weekends. I was moonlighting that entire project.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Spooky Pinball planning TNA rerun to meet continued demand for unavailable used machines; no official announcement yet on production run limits

    high · Scott Danesi: 'There's been enough demand where people want to still purchase the game and haven't been able to find a used one...I don't know if that's what they're going to do though so we'll we'll see what happens'

  • ?

    content_signal: LoserKid Pinball Podcast episode features extended interview with Scott Danesi covering game design, music production, and industry experience

    high · Full episode transcript discussing Scott Danesi's career and upcoming projects

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott Danesi advocates for story-first, then mechanics, then art approach to game design; criticizes designing art before gameplay is finalized

    high · Scott Danesi: 'I came up with the story first and then started building the game with music and everything, and then let the art flow afterward because in my mind, I truly think that's the proper way to do a pinball machine...what a waste of time'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Scott Danesi has multiple unannounced pinball designs in development pipeline, but prioritizing audio work and taking design break for now

    medium · Scott Danesi: 'So I have tons of ideas, but I'll tell you what, designing a game in your spare time is very, very difficult...So I kind of want to take a break on it and relax for a little while, just do audio, and then we'll see what happens. But I do have tons more ideas.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Adult Swim's approval of Rick and Morty music without revisions surprised Scott Danesi and contrasts with reported horror stories about other licensing experiences

    high · Scott Danesi: 'I was actually very scared working with the Rick and Morty license...But I sent it over to Adult Swim and they just thumbs-up approved it right away...I think I just got lucky, though, because I've heard horror stories of other things'

    • 3:30
    But, you know, I've been doing that as just a little side hobby for so long. And when I started getting into pinball, I said, well, hey, wait, maybe I can take this other side hobby and smash them together and see what happens. Right. So when I built Total Nuclear Annihilation, I just said, hey, let's see how crazy of a soundtrack I can make that's still acceptable to the normal pinball person. Right. And we got the TNA soundtrack. And I'm actually very, very proud of that, how that turned out still to this day. Now, tell me about what inspired you to build TNA. There's a lot of people who are like, yeah, I'd be interested in building. But with you working at Pinball Life, that gave you an advantage that a lot of people don't have. And that I would have no idea what parts even make up a pinball machine. But you're well aware of this. So at what point did you say, you know what, I'm going to try making my own game? Yeah, so that's another really great point is I had all these industry connections prior to doing this. And what I did was I said to myself, I was like, hey, you know, I've been working with Jerry Stellenberg and building up this homebrew community for years at that point before I started working at Pinball Life. And I was like, you know, I'd never actually built an entire pinball machine from scratch. I have just been dabbling in rewriting code for previous games. I'm just kind of playing around, nothing that I would have distributed to anybody.
    5:02
    But I got to the point where I was like, you know, there's new games starting to be created, right? So Wizard of Oz had just hit, and, you know, that was doing really well. And I look at that game, and I'm like, there's so much in that game. I'm like, but it's not really the type of game that I personally want to see. So I'm like, you know, I'm going to build a homebrew of what I personally want and what I think my closest friends would play dollar games with me on. And I said, I need, you know, just a simple single level play field. It's got to be very brutal so that ball times are very short. You know, just other little wacky things. I need to put the latest and greatest technology into it so I can run full RGB with including the GI. and so and then I'm like well now I need to program it and I want to make sure that I use the RGB of differently than what Jersey Jack was doing because at the time Jersey Jack was just blasting rainbows on everything all the time and I get it because Wizard of Oz that makes complete sense but I was like hey that's like you overuse something to the point where it doesn't actually become effective anymore you're just like great you know rainbows and cool the lights can do all that stuff. But if I, I wanted to trick people into thinking it was a normal pinball machine when you started and then use the full RGB sweeps and crazy explosions and stuff that are on the actual play field and in the light shows as something that would really have more of an impact. So that was like the main driver for like the, even like the light show generation on it. Then I also needed something that I thought sounded really good and something that I wanted to hear. So I threw in my own music that I created from scratch for that. But yeah, it was like a lot of that stuff. So really that high level, that's really why I decided to make that game. And really, I just wanted to bring it places and share it with people and play dollar games on it with everybody. You're going to steal all their dollars, huh? Well, you know, it's funny because I am not a good pinball player, but I am average enough that I can win sometimes. So losing a few dollars here and there is no big deal. But I got a lot of satisfaction out of losing dollars to people on TNA. That was worth the dollar to me. Now, remind me, wasn't, I don't know if I'm remembering correctly,
    7:30
    at the Pinball Olympics, wasn't this on the turntable? It was this year, yeah. Or this past Pinball Olympics, yeah. So 2021. Yeah. Just in case the game's not hard enough. Add it spinning at the same time as you are. Yeah, it's that's pretty rough.
    7:48
    So I would say that this soundtrack is probably revered as one of the best soundtracks in pinball, especially for original score. I doubt there's one I can think of that is higher.
    7:58
    Has it been hard because you you've recently you did music for Weird Al and then you did it for Rick and Morty, I guess, vice versa. has it been harder to deal with licenses than doing your own jam or is it kind of easy because you get kind of a template to work off of no absolutely so that's a really good question because there's uh i was actually very scared working uh with the rick and morty license because i always thought the worst right i thought like hey i'm gonna remix one of their songs for the main theme and it's got to be energetic at times and you know half time at other times I'm really nervous about sending this over to them and having them having to like make a ton of revisions like feel bad about it but I sent it over to Adult Swim and they just thumbs up approved it right away and didn't have any feedback whatsoever for any of the music that was in the game and that goes for the sound effects too which is just incredible to me I think I just got lucky though because I've heard horror stories of other things and yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna go with luck Let's go with luck on that one.
    9:02
    Well, luck and skill, I guess. Okay, so with Rick and Morty, though, you went a different level. You're like, you know what? I've done a street-level game. I'm going to put some ramps in. So how was that different doing a more modern take? And you also put a pop bumper down in the danger zone. So that was interesting. Oh, yeah. The pop bumper thing is just crazy. I just had a, when I started designing the game and Charlie told me that it was, that we could get the Rick and Morty license, that's when I said, okay, well, I need to actually create a chaotic game. And how am I going to actually do that, right? So I wanted it to have, I wanted the low ball times again, and I wanted to create more chaos. So I actually put, I was like, well, I'm going to try and put a pop bumper somewhere weird again, because I love where I stuck it in TNA. It just, it's not very typical right there for modern games. So I went really extreme with it and I was like, I'm going to replace one of the slingshots with it and just see what happens. And really it's, I didn't think it was going to make it to production because it was kind of a joke. I was like, ah, let's see, you know, let's see what I can get away with here, you know? So I, uh, I, I cut the first whitewood and we powered up all this stuff. I threw, uh, I threw a P3 rock system in it so I could actually power up the slingshots and the pop bumper and the flippers and everything. And, and I'll tell you what, it was, it was really fun and it actually worked. It was out of the way enough where it didn't, you know, intrude on the lower Italian bottom stuff. And it just, it was neat because it was actually sending the ball upward on the play field and you could actually have it create or like make shots for you. So we decided that it was, it was a go, it was great. And then at that point when we said, hey, let's push this forward more, right? Keep it in the whitewood.
    10:56
    I still only gave it like a 50% chance of getting in the production game because I didn't know how the general public was going to react to it. So that was a big key. Because remember, like I have to make a game that will sell for spooky, right? Like if I made something too crazy and people just didn't want to, you know, accept it, right? That could hurt Spooky's bottom line, really, on that game. So I was a little bit worried about that. But every single person that I've had play it who are very trustworthy friends of mine who will absolutely tell me something is not good, they all played it. And every single one of them said they loved it. So I was okay, I guess, pushing it to production. And Charlie loved it, too. So it's a whole thing there. It's pretty crazy, actually. well and when we talked to you at texas pinball festival you told us like everyone sees that tna is a love letter to like early solid states but what a lot of people don't see is that rick and morty's kind of a love letter to system 11 games was there was there any games that kind of stood out to you that kind of helped you influence you making that game no that's you're 100 right though so no specific game but rick and morty if you were to look at that and just just take a take a glance at it at a high level that's a system 11 game with an lcd screen on it yeah really it i wanted it to still be retro and simple and not really take the ball away from you too much and i don't really like uh tons of cluttered playfields so i tried to keep it as clutter-free as possible um i know i got a lot of heat for that though i mean people wanted toys and stuff and more things all over it and i understand that that's like something that people do like but again i was kind of building in half for me again and then in half for everybody else at the same time. So I kept it pretty stripped down. But Spooky did end up putting some toys and things in there for production. But yeah, it's a System 11 game. And I love System 11 games. I've had a majority of them in my collection over the years. So that's the last game that you have, or at least design that is in the public? Do you have other things in your development cycle, I guess? Yeah, absolutely. So I have tons of ideas, but I'll tell you what, designing a game in your spare time is very, very difficult to do just because of how much goes into it. Because if I design a game, I'm going to want to do the audio. I'm going to want to do all the sound effects, right? And that's a full-time job right there, right? And then I'm going to want to go and make sure the rules are correct and the rules designers kind of staying within what I would want. So it's a huge job. So I kind of want to take a break on it and relax for a little while, just do audio, and then we'll see what happens. But I do have tons more ideas. I'm not giving up on anything.
    14:02
    It just dawned on me. I don't know why this clicked in my mind, but does that mean you made Rick and Morty? Like, obviously, TNA was a home project thing. We all understood that. But Rick and Morty, you were still working at Pinball Life. So I assume it was all on, not on the side, but like kind of after hours of work, right? Nights and weekends. It was nights and weekends. I was moonlighting that entire project. Yeah. Holy crap. Yeah, that's right. It's like, it kills you. You got to be really careful, like not to do too much because you miss out on life, you know? so how was it doing sound for weird al because it's already a musician how do you go in and say i'm going to add to your what you've already made oh yeah that's that's fun um so all of the music that is in weird al was taken from different generations of his albums right so there's a really broad spectrum of like of music from his early career in his later career um all of it was mastered differently, right? So different like loudness levels and like all sorts of crazy stuff, like different EQ settings. So the first thing I did was I went through and I remastered every song that we're going to use in a modern style of mastering technique where it's very loud, it's very compressed, sounds really good on pinball machine hardware. And that was the first thing I did, which took a bunch of time. But then I said, Hey, we have, we have some like open areas that we need some music for. So I was able to create music from scratch in the tone of Weird Al, which is like, which is really fun for me because his music is so quirky and, and, and it varies so much. So it's like, yeah, it, it was really interesting. And I think if you listen to that high score music on there you'll see it just it fits right in with the rest of everything else going on but i did write that from scratch i was gonna say it all sounds like it was made from weird al so you obviously did a really great job of matching his style because i played that game we played it a handful of times at tpf and there was never once where i played it and was like this doesn't sound like weird al at all this must have been scott you know well most of it is weird Yeah, just like so I wrote two songs for that. And it's let's see, the two songs is the high score music was something I wrote from scratch. And there's also I believe they use it in Drink from the Firehose. But I could be I could be misrepresenting that. But they use another one of my tracks there.
    16:33
    Did you get to talk with Weird Al at all? I didn't. I wish I did. That guy sounds like it would be really fun to just chat with and talk about just music stuff or just life in general.
    16:46
    You need to tell Jerry that needs to be in the contract next time. If we're making a license for you, at least get to come down and meet all the people on part of the project. I know. Again, they should have had Weird Al come in to the actual fly into Austin and be like, just meet with everybody. I would have flown down there for that in a heartbeat. Oh, yeah. I'm sure he's on tour, though. Mm-hmm.
    17:08
    Actually, the crazy thing is you knew Weird Al was valedictorian, right? No, I did not. Yeah, so the guy's crazy smart, and I just find it funny that he decided to do his career in basically joke songs. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, he's a smart guy. He's also does like anyone you ever talk to you about Weird Al is always talking about how he's just such a nice guy and how he just, you know, does all this really charitable stuff, which is really great. So may we ask you you said that you have other developments in the pipeline Is some for Spooky more for Multimorphic As of right now I am just helping Multimorphic with some things But the main project that I'm working on now is actually not confidential, which is cool. It is an official soundtrack for a VR game. this VR game is coming out on Steam and Oculus and all the VR platforms at the end of the year and I'll also be releasing an album with my record label I'll release that entire album on there which is interesting because that album is an official soundtrack for the game but it also contains some of my prior work that has not been yet released on an album so it has some stuff from TNA in it. It has some things. There is a song called Silver Falls that's going to be on that official soundtrack, which I actually wrote for a homebrew project. So I got that going on there, which is really cool. But it's like 12 tracks.
    18:51
    And yeah, that's going to come out later this year. So that's the main thing. What kind of game is this? Is this like Guitar Hero or something? It's called Arcade Legend. so it's like a uh it's a game where you go in stick your vr headset on you go into an empty arcade you find the keys to this arcade you go and you clean it up you buy some games you throw them in there you maintain them you like you could set everything up and configure your arcade exactly how you want it like put couches over here like you know all the really cool stuff um it's mostly redemption things um but it has things like you know like i don't know it's just all sorts of really cool stuff in it um but you can also invite your friends in to play games in your arcade and win tickets and then you win the tickets and you can go buy virtual things in the actual you know inside the game so are these gonna be like licensed games inside your arcade licensed games yeah yeah they're absolutely licensed games yep it's a legit uh operation uh most of the games right now are licensed from LAI Games, who makes a ton of different redemption games that I'm sure you've played. There's a less balanced game. There's a... I forgot the name of the thing, but it's a basketball game. There's Speed of Light, which is a thing where people... It's a big wall of buttons in front of you, and you have to hit them when they light up as fast as you can. Is it like Chuck E. Cheese, where you go to a redemption center, and you get like a Chinese finger trap or a frog jumper? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, but in this case, there's other things you can buy too inside the game. So there's a jukebox in the game, and you can actually buy the tracks from the official soundtrack with your tickets and put it in your jukebox and have it play for people. Oh, wow. How did that happen? Do you start putting out your information and say, hey, I'm an artist. I didn't know how to write electronic dance music. How does this work? Because I would have no idea. Yeah, it's all about the relationships that you make. So in VR, I became friends with somebody who was on the team of that game, and they were going to actually just use like, you know, you can get like unlicensed songs or royalty-free music. You just kind of pay for it, and you can just use it however you want. But then again, so can anyone else, right? So you're not hearing any unique songs. You'll be able to hear those in other games or something.
    21:25
    It's like stock art, but stock music. Yeah, exactly. And he was like, you know, I love what you did with TNA. And they're like, would you be interested in talking about doing an OST for this game? And it just kind of happened that way. So it's cool. You never really know what life's going to throw at you. you know. So what's been your favorite project so far? My favorite project? Oh, man.
    21:52
    Let's see. There's so many crazy ones. Probably just the TNA thing, though. Not favorite because of how many years it took off my life, but because of stress and stuff. But it's my favorite because it's the most I think it's the most well received of the projects that I've done. now you're still a child of the 80s you're you're very much influenced you still i believe drive an mr2 correct oh no so i don't have a fiero oh it's a fiero oh that was really an 80s but i actually got rid of that in 2020 i sold that okay uh and i picked myself up uh mitsubishi evolution um but this is what that is it's a it's the rally car version of the lancer okay so it's a it's an evolution 3 from 1995 so it's a it's an old uh right hand drive only made for the japan market type of car so it's uh it's super cool it uh it was a former race car in its days um and now it's a retired race car that I just care for. Okay. So it's super cool. What, what inspired you to buy that? I mean, it's, I, I've never even heard of this, but it feels very early nineties. It is. It's like, yeah, it's a, if you can pull a picture of it, my Instagram, it's a picture of me standing in front of the car actually. Nice. Um, so the, uh, the reason I really liked those is because back in like around 2006 ish. Uh, I got my first real job out of college, like a real deal career job with a trajectory. Right. Uh, and I said, I'm going to treat myself and buy myself my dream car, which was a Mitsubishi evolution. And that was a brand new 2006 Mitsubishi evolution. Um, it's a, uh, it's a very fast rally car. Uh, and I loved it. Right. And I drove that for many years and I ended up getting rid of it and got something more practical because of the, you know, I'm like, ah, you know, it's just, I'm going to keep breaking this thing. I can't daily drive this thing. It's just, you know, it's like a race car. So I ended up selling that and getting something more practical, but then, you know, it just kind of ate at me over the years. Like, man, I should have just chucked that car in a storage unit and just forgot it was even there, you know? um so it came up locally uh one of my friends actually had uh the evo 3 which is the third generation of the mitsubishi evolution that was not supposed to be in this country uh and he's it became legally titled and he's like wanting to sell it so i ended up you know trading him some pinball machines and sold the fiero and uh and picked it up so it's uh it's really cool and It's just been a real fun thing to tinker on. I had a fast car for years. It was a Lexus 300, you know, IS300. And it was fun. But one day I was driving it and I hit black ice on the freeway and I spun around like eight times. And thankfully, I didn't crash into anything, even though the freeway was full of cars. And I just said, I can't drive a rear wheel drive car here. There's too much weather. So recently it was announced that there's going to be like a TNA 2.0 coming out. Can you shed some light on that? Sure. The first thing is that I think we should stop calling it TNA 2.0 because that 2.0 designation means different. It is not really different. It's a rerun of TNA. Okay. I am planning on doing a code update, which has some just minor little things in it here and there. because there's some things I have to fix. I want to try and fix the score bit integration, making that more seamless. I wanted to put a new multiball in it, but I don't know if it's totally fun, and it might take away from the actual original code. So I'm probably – I don't know. That's up in the air now. But it's a TNA rerun. So Spooky is going to rerun TNA, and the differences are going to be that it's going to be in the normal TNA cabinet, but the LCD is going to have the flip-down LCD screen that they used on Rick and Morty and newer games, mostly because the flip-down screen is really handy to get in the back box and it kind of angles the screen back a little better, makes it look nice.
    26:30
    But they're going to load this thing up with all the really cool mods. I think they're going to put, I don't know the exact mods that are in there yet, but I do know it's confirmed we're going to put green, those fluorescent green protectors on it just from the factory with the translucent drop targets, and we're going to have those lit up from the factory as well.
    26:51
    So, yeah, I think it's also we're going to have the upgraded shoot again display too, which has extra LEDs on it to give more light show stuff. But, yeah, it's really just a rerun. There's been enough demand where people want to still purchase the game and haven't been able to find a used one. So can you retrofit any of the new stuff that you're talking about on the original run of TNA? Oh, yeah, it's all bolt-on stuff. Yeah, so nothing that's going to be on the TNA rerun game is – it's nothing that you can't bolt onto the original. it's basically just a rerun of the original again with just the stuff installed prior for you so you don't have to deal with it okay cool so how does that that work i mean i know with with licensors you if you want to run i mean what stern ran iron man vault editions for about 20 years after they made it and so how does that work with spooky did they have to contact you and say hey we want to license some more games or or do they just have free run to make as many as they want how does that work yeah so uh it's really quite simple um i own all of the ip for uh for total nuclear annihilation so something like if spooky wants to rerun again they just they contact me we have a contract that says they can just run uh as long as we both agree they can run uh more of them when they need to or want to. And they just contact me, and we license it out, and they run it. Yeah, it's pretty good. And I just keep helping support it. So with the rerun, does that mean they'll be making more games? So will TNA become again the most ran game at Spooky? Oh, I'm hoping so. I really hope so. I hope there's demand for it, to tell you the truth.
    28:44
    But we'll see. I don't know. I think, what was the run of Halloween? Because that won the initial most run game. So that's... Wasn't it 1250? I think it was 1250. Because I think they had 500 Ultramans and 1250 of Halloween. So I think it was 1750. Yeah, so 1250. Yeah, I don't know.
    29:05
    I hope there's demand to blow that number out of the water, but I don't know. And I don't know the plan for Spooky, whether they're going to limit it or not. They haven't yet announced anything superficial. so that was going to be my next question if they were going to limit it or if they're just going to keep running until they they i would keep running that until you couldn't yeah i would that would be it would be very smart to do that um i don't know if that's what they're going to do though so we'll we'll see what happens i guess okay so the art on tna i know you've talked about this before but remind me i mean it definitely has a retro 80s feel so not so in addition to writing the game, you also had to basically write the story and you basically also had to serve as art director to say, how do I want this to look? So tell me more about all of that. Absolutely. So I had to do everything on that. So I came up with the story first and then started building the Whitewood and art was the last thing I wanted to touch, right? So I just, I wanted to get this game fully going Whitewood with music and everything, and then let the art flow afterward because in my brain, I truly think that's the proper way to do a pinball machine. And I kept seeing John Papaduke put the cart before the horse with, he's like blasting art on these play fields that aren't even done yet. And it's like, what a, I keep seeing this. I'm like, what a waste of time. You know, I got, I, I'm going to show people like just with, by doing this, that this is the way to actually build a pinball machine, which most people understand, I guess, you know, Stern definitely knows that. So I left it to the complete end on that art. And I got to work with Matt Andrews as I am not a good art director, as I've learned. And Matt Andrews has he had saved my myself many times during this project by saying that, like just saying, hey, Scott, stop. We're going to let's let's think about this for a second and do how about this way. Right. So it was really great actually working with him.
    31:12
    And if I remember correctly, your wife is the inspiration for the girl in the game too, right? Yeah. So my wife really put up with a lot while I was working on that project. And I wanted to get a little nod to her. So I gave Matt just a picture of her and said, hey, when you draw the main character, if you could make it sort of look like her, and it would be just kind of sealed into this piece of pinball history.
    31:39
    And I thought it was just a nice gesture for everything she had to put up with. That's quite the love letter. It is. Do you have the Translight hanging in your house somewhere? I don't, actually, because I have the machine. So I don't feel like – I'm very limited on art space. So I like to try and keep it as diverse as possible.
    32:02
    I hope you're happy because it's ruined my relationship now because the poster hangs on my wall. I told my wife the story. She's like, well, why don't you do that for me now? Yeah, see, that's it. So I probably shouldn't admit it. You know what? Hey, let's just go back. You can just change what I said. Just change it with one of those AI things.
    32:23
    No, I think it's awesome. If I could, I'd do it. Well, it captures the feel of the 80s, which unless you grew up or at least experienced it, it's – you can tell when someone who – from Hollywood tries to set something in the 80s, but you're just like there's something not quite right about the feel of that. There's two different – there's two things to that actually, and I think I can probably shed some light on this. There's actual what things looked like in the 80s, and there's the retrofuturistic version of the 80s that we all think of, right? And TNA is the retrofuturistic version, which at the time, this retrofuturism thing for the 80s was just starting to gain mainstream popularity. It's everywhere now, as you can see. Like, you know, I've got a shirt with Stern's logo on it. with it. It's like in that retro futurism thing. And it's one of my favorite shirts. It's a, it is great. Like the, that style is not really the eighties though. If you think about it, right. It captures the feel of the eighties, but it's not right from the eighties. I, and I have pictures to prove it of myself opening presents on Christmas day. Oh yeah. Like the eighties looked real brown. Yeah. Brown. Like the couch with the flowers. That's what I was about to say. What about the TV? The TV was stuck with siding, like wood siding on it, wood paneling. Yeah, it was other things. Wood paneling on the walls. Exactly. It wasn't even quality wood paneling. It was like fake wood paneling. Yeah, it was like the really cheap, real, like, particle board with, like, a wood paneling finish on it. With a veneer, and if you put a piece of tape on it, it would rip off. Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, the funny thing is I've seen those memes. There's, like, what everybody thinks the 80s are, and it shows, like, all basically this color splash everything. And it says what actually the 80s were, and it shows the TV on the ground with the Nintendo, the NES in front of it with a light gun and the floral couch and the shag carpet. And we had orange carpet. It was ugly. Yeah. Ours was like beige-ish brown color, and it was like long. It was like – it's just kind of – you wouldn't see that in a house today.
    34:36
    So here's what you need to do. with the rerun of TNA. Keep doing the futuristic one, but run an 80s edition where it's like the brown ashtray on top of the pop bumper. Yeah, the brown ashtray from McDonald's. Oh, McDonald's ashtrays?
    34:51
    Oh, I remember those. Those are awful. I wonder how much those cost on eBay. Hold on a second. I think I might need one of these for my bar down here. The tagline is, it's brown.
    35:04
    McDonald's ashtray. Let's see if it's like... Oh, geez. It's affordable. It is terrible. I want the glass one. Yeah, yeah. Where's the brown one? The brown glass one. Yeah. It looks like they took a beer bottle made into an ashtray. Yeah, it's a beer bottle. It's a beer bottle color. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's some. It's $18.
    35:25
    That's a still of a deal. Yeah. I not seeing my own Man they even have these disposable ones I just find it amazing that if you tell kids yeah when we went to restaurants because they have all these clean air laws which are great now because I don like smelling like smoke But I mean, that was unheard of. It's like, hey, which section do you want to sit in, the designated smoking section or the non-smoking that still smells like smoke? Yeah, exactly. It was really gross. And I remember there was a specific time where they outlawed smoking in bars, right? And I could go to a bar with my friends and come home and not smell terrible. It was really like it was a weird thing. Like the next day you'd be like, oh, you take your clothes and you're like just chucking them in the hamper and like closing it and getting it out of there. It smells like cigarettes. But yeah, that it's a it's a thing that doesn't exist anymore. Well, they don't they don't allow smoking in bars here.
    36:21
    Yeah, I don't know where they do. I guess they probably do somewhere in Vegas. The only time I really smell a lot of cigarette smoke is in Vegas because everybody has to change smoke while hitting the penny slots. Yeah, but you can do almost anything you want in Vegas, and it's just – they claim what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the STD still comes home with you.
    36:42
    You know what? Don't they wear diapers in Vegas too? Like some of the people, like, and they sit the slot machines because they don't want to get hurt. Yeah, that is a level of commitment I'm not interested in. Oh, man. Yeah, just sitting there. Like imagine like not being able to leave your station, right? Because you're like, okay, this is going to be the one. This is going to be the hit. You're like, it didn't drop, man. I don't even want to. Yeah, forget it. Well, but if you do go down there. So people from Utah really go to Mesquite or Wendover, which is like the mini Vegas's. It's like. I don't think a lot of people go to Mesquite. They basically drive through. Like Mesquite is the very ghetto version of Vegas. And Wendover is not even that. It is like an outpost. It feels like an abandoned saloon town. It's the old folks' home of Vegas is Mesquite. Yeah. But that's probably why I was going to say that's why they're all wearing diapers at the slots is because there's a lady smoking a cigarette while having her oxygen bottle right there. Oh, yeah. She's like 60, 70 years old. Isn't that an insane fire hazard too? Oh, yeah. That's just crazy. Trust me, when I worked at the VA, you'd see people out there with their with their oxygen tank and their pole standing in the rain smoking and like something's going to happen.
    37:58
    Wow. OK, so what are you looking forward to now? Like what is what is on your horizon other than the like what are you looking forward to in pinball? I mean, not necessarily what you're personally doing, but is there something in pinball that gets you excited right now? Yeah, absolutely. So as crazy as it sounds, I am really excited to see what Multimorphic does with that platform. Multimorphic got a lot of publicity from the Weird Al game, and it's just going to push those guys, who are a very smart team of people, to do some crazy things with that platform. I know still there's a ton of people that don't accept it yet as a pinball machine. And I'm wondering just, I want to see what happens, you know? So I'm excited to see what the, some of the most smart people that I know can do with that because they're driven. They, you know, that's, it's something, you know, Jerry and the team over there are really, really driven to try and make that platform, you know, just get it out there to people. Well, and I hope they get some recognition this year too, because let's be honest, I guess there hasn't been a ton of games released this year, but of all of them, I mean, Weird Al's up there. It is. And they did a really great job with Weird Al. It's a that was a really fun project, too. It's it's neat to see the team kind of working on this stuff. And, you know, it's a it's a lot different from when I was doing stuff at Spooky because of how much I had to do. And it was to be able to just have access to watch the development team do their thing and then just be like, OK, well, I'm just going to do sound. Right. And that's really all I need to function and like worry about. Right. And it's really neat to see that, you know, instead of just running around all over the place trying to get everything done. Okay, so speaking of that, since you've actually seen behind the scenes on Multimorphic, did it give you an itch to try your own?
    39:59
    You know, I've got ideas, but I don't yet have them completely fleshed out. Do you think a multimorphic project would be easier or harder than doing a traditional pinball? I think that, and honestly, I don't know. I think from a complete dev perspective, right? Like if I were to try to build a pinball machine completely from scratch on the multimorphic platform, I think it's going to be much harder because of all the video assets. And this is only for me personally because I don't know how to properly create video assets.
    40:37
    So it's just something I would have to work with someone else to do. It's like black magic to me, man, how these people do this awesome video stuff.
    40:46
    So don't know. A traditional pinball game, though, is extremely hard as well because there's so much that has to go into it mechanically as well. There's nothing really pre-made for you. the multimorphic system has like a pre-made you know flipper assembly that slides in right and a pre-made like side target assemblies and upper flipper assemblies so you just build on top of that right yeah but it has so much more dev on the software side the other thought i had too sorry so i'm i'm straying away from from that but we first met you at pinball olympics in chicago at pinball expo last year which i must say is one of my highlights to the whole trip weren't you part one of the madmen that made some of those machines up there so well so most of it was made by my buddy jay um i did help him with a few of the events um but mostly i help him with um just running the thing and getting people excited and and you know i wrote some software for uh for pinball olympics that we use to keep track of the scores to make everything easier but uh yeah i did help build a few of the machines um but mostly it's jay yeah he's the mad scientist you got to get him on the show one time and pick his brain oh definitely because those machines are crazy they're insane yeah well just like looking at i think it's quick quick silver is one of them that's like it's a it's a normal a narrow body game in a wide body machine because of the way that it spins and stuff inside the cabinet it's just a shifty quick silver is what it's called Oh, yes. Some of that stuff is not. It kind of – it like pivots in the center and just kind of like shifts side to side, like rotates side to side just to mess with you. If you want to experience physics on a pinball machine that you never dreamed of, go to Pinball Olympics this year at Pinball Expo because you're going to see some crazy stuff. It's worth the drive. Absolutely. Okay, so when you're at Pinball Life, now you are on the, hey, I'm an average guy. I'm calling you. I don't know how to fix my machine, okay? So from your standpoint, what are like the top five things that you wish people understood about pinball? And what are the top five products that you're like, you know what? If you are working on your own machine, you need to have these. Yeah. So the main thing that I feel bad, so I feel bad when this call comes in. You ready for this? This is the top one for me. They say, hey, I don't know much about pinball. I can do basic soldering. I'm like, great. Like my coils, my flipper assemblies were like, you know, kind of sluggish. So I replaced the coils on my flipper assembly. And they put, you know, they wired it backward for the diodes, okay, or they put diodes on something that didn't need diodes and they had them on backwards. And what happens is when that may be, you know, it's really not that big a deal because you can put it in there and then they're not really doing anything too crazy. But the problem is when that diode is backwards and you don't know what you're doing with that, it blows up the transistors on the actual board, on the driver board. and telling somebody who can barely solder, who doesn't know how diodes work, that a piece of their circuit board now needs to be replaced. And the problem is it's their fault, right? It's like, there's nothing that we can do to say like, hey, that's going to work in your game or not, unless they call for a suggestion, right? So I feel terrible when that happens because they usually have to call a service tech and it ends up costing them so much money. Yeah. You know, so that's probably the number one thing. We get a lot of calls just from random people just asking how to install some of the kits that we have because most people throw away instructions. Really? Yeah. Oh, I do it too. I'm not saying I don't, okay? So I did a piece of IKEA furniture, and I really don't feel like looking at the instructions. I want to try and figure it out. It always ends badly. Okay. Okay, so is there a – I'm looking at Pinball Life right now, and I see a knocker assembly for Stern Machines, which I thought was interesting. Is there one that works with Beatles?
    45:09
    Let me see. That one should, actually. It's a Spike 2 game. Let me see. It says Sam. Oh, that's a Sam knocker. There's a Spike knocker. Oh, is there? Yeah, yeah. Because I got that the other day when I was playing Beatles. I'm like, ah, you cannot get a fake knocker in Beatles. It has to be like the old school.
    45:30
    Yeah. It's a, if you type in like a spike knocker, it comes right up and it's just a little kit that installs in there and it puts a real knocker in there for you. Oh yeah. There it is. It's actually really cool. I, I drew up and engineered the board and the hardware for that kit completely. Oh, there you go. Yeah. I hope Stern's not too mad at me for that, but it's just something that really needed to happen. Yeah. I hope they realize it. I just hope they realize I'm doing it on good faith. Like I'm not doing this to like try to screw them over or anything like that. But it's just, I just hope they know that's a, it's just a needed thing. Hey, legitimately, I thought my first machine was Simpsons and I had it for a few years. And I finally was like, what is that sound? I had no idea because I was so new to pinball. And I finally emailed them. I'm like, what is this terrible sound that happens occasionally on the game? They're like, I think it's the knocker.
    46:25
    so i was like oh okay so once i turn that off i'm like oh so much better that's the first thing i do every time i set up a machine is turn off that that annoying fake knocker yeah absolutely well if you've ever had someone that has never really played pinball before and they come over for the first time and they're playing it and i always have my replay set up as extra balls because i figure if you're playing good enough to get to the replay you should at least earn something since you're not out on location. And that knocker goes off and people are like, I think I broke it. What's wrong with the circuit board? I think I blew a speaker. What's going on? I've had that same thing, man. Like my doctor dude has the loudest knocker I've ever heard in my life in it. And it scares the crap out of everybody. That's awesome. Okay, so what are some of the things you're like, okay, if you are going to assemble your pinball workbench, what are some of the products that everybody should have? Oh, first of all, fuses, because every time you buy a machine, it's always almost a fuse. It's always a fuse. So just overfuse everything. And no, I'm just kidding. Don't do any of that.
    47:31
    So yeah, so the fuse joke is something pretty funny, though. I don't know. Some viewers will get it. Some viewers won't. But anytime they say, this pinball machine doesn't work, it's probably just a fuse. It's probably just a fuse. I'll take $10 off. Yeah, exactly. You're like, but what caused that to actually break? So this is what I would do. I would get your workbench needs to have some of each coil sleeve that goes in a pinball machine. You need to have, depending on the era of machines, you should probably have a couple of rebuild kits. But usually I would just buy the rebuild kits like as I needed them. The rebuild kits contain end of stroke switches. And on older games, those end of stroke switches blow out like crazy. um so and they're super cheap and easy to replace like just you know soldering into things and screwing it back in there um so yeah the coil sleeve is number one um but you should also have uh you know i i have coils in my toolbox but i don't need them um and this is like low level so i'm forgetting like the really common things like rubber like having a complete set of rubber just there so if you break a flipper rubber you can replace it immediately um what else am i missing just standard cleaning supplies extra pinballs that kind of stuff and pin gulps you gotta put pin gulps on all your stuff oh yes shameless plug i actually i shameful shameful shameful i tell people all the time when they ask them like the first thing you need to do is get something for people to put their drinks in because otherwise they're going to put them on your game yeah forget that and it's angled so they're just again just about ready to fall over yep yeah it's great did you see the uh the new pin gulps that we came out with in the past year yeah you uh take them off like it's uh yeah yeah it's the 3.0 right yes 3.0 yeah those are crazy because they're actually really cheap so they're they're better and cheaper yeah which is crazy we the only reason we still sell the original pin gulps in in the um the pro version and the premium version whatever we call them i forgot um but uh we sell those because people don't like to have non-matching pin gulps in their game room oh yeah i can see that yeah but the 3.0 is the way to go i actually swapped all of mine out i just gave all my pin gulps to jay for the pinball olympics and you know just yeah just put all 3.0s on there because if i'm climbing between games i need to pull them off real easy. Yeah, actually, I probably need to do the same thing, but I am neurotic and I probably will replace them all together too. Well, dang it. I'm looking at these and now I need to get some. They're only 10 bucks a pop. Yeah. Yeah. They're cheap. Yeah. And they'll go on sale too when we do like the October like expo sale where like everything on the website goes like super cheap. I think they get down to like seven or eight bucks. Nice. If not more, I don't know. they're cheap so i want to bring up one project that you don't i don't know if you talk about much but and i don't know if many people know that you did this but you found an earth shaker and like redid it from kind of like a software ground up didn't you absolutely yeah so earth shaker um so i stumbled across um i found earth shaker the prototype number two so it was the second game built and a friend of mine had it and he restored it with like a clear-coated playfield and everything and he um he was looking to get rid of it so i traded him like a funhouse for it or something right and i went through it i'm looking at this thing and i'm like oh it's so cool it's a piece of history right it's like got all these prototype ramps on it and the prototype building and like all the right prototype everything on it and uh then i was like i hate the music in this game like legitimately hate the music but i like the gameplay and so i said i am going to reprogram So I got a P-Rock and a P-Rock adapter board and wired the whole thing up in there and then started digging in and rebuilt the software completely from scratch for Earthshaker. It is very similar, but it has different music. It has expanded rules on it.
    51:44
    And I posted that software online for people to use as reference. And that is still up there to this day. I don't have that earth shaker anymore. I ended up selling that, um, you know, pre pandemic, um, some, I think someone in Michigan has it or Florida. I don't know exactly where it is right now. Um, but yeah, I took this prototype earth shaker that was beautiful. And, um, I, in this prototype play field and screwed an auto launcher into it. Uh, you know, people, uh, were not super happy with what I did to it, but again, I gave that whole machine something to be even more special. now that it's the only one in existence. Definitely. And if I remember correctly, didn't you actually take the back glass off so that way you could, like you had like a plexiglass translight so that way you could just go into it. It was straight tempered glass. I put a piece instead of the back glass, I pulled the back glass out and wrapped it up real nice and set it aside, right? So I didn't like break it or anything. But I put a clear piece of glass in there and then cut out some vinyl that said Earthshaker Aftershock on it. and then um what i did was i i put some led strip in the back box so it lit up the circuit boards so people could see that it was not like it had a p-rock in it and it had this crazy adapter board and you know an alphanumeric converter board and stuff like crazy stuff that did not exist in the game before uh and uh i just i could i could make that led strip change colors programmatically and it was really cool so that project was a lot of fun that was my first time writing pinball code completely from scratch from the ground up Well and if I remember correctly didn you have you your wife also redo some of the lines and didn't you redo some of the lines as well in there? Absolutely. Yeah. So I, everything was redone by the way. So it was like, again, this is a complete from scratch build. So I had to have someone record the vocals and my wife actually did that for me. And let's see what else. I didn't write any of the music, but I did do all the sound effects for it. All the music in that game was actually just ripped from other artists that I really liked.
    53:52
    But since I wasn't selling it or giving it away even, it was fine to use that as a fan project. So what inspired Earthshaker? Was it just availability? You had the option of doing it? It was really it was just because I I had this I had this game and I also just hated the music so much that I needed to redo it. So it really just comes down to that. Cool. We're kind of running up into you're going to be going live here shortly to hang out with your pay phone. I am. Yeah. So that's a that's a whole nother. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about your pay phone, because we were talking about offline and I think it's awesome. Yeah. So I actually have a restored pay phone that is installed in my basement right on my bar that is hooked up to my landline, which I still have. I had to call and reactivate my landline because I didn't have one. And the lady on the phone, you should have heard her. She goes, you want to do what? I'm like, I want to add a landline to my account. She's like, why would you want to do that? Yeah. like everyone's just getting rid of the landlines. I'm like, well, I got the Comcast modem here and it has a landline output on it. Just, just activate that for me. And I finally convinced her to do that. And it ended up saving me $20 a month, actually. Okay. I don't know how that's possible. We actually have a landline and it's the same thing. It's like with Comcast, you pay 10 bucks a month on top of whatever you're doing. Yeah. But it saves you like $20 a month by bundling it together. Yeah. We, we have it because we still have, you know, we have young kids who don't have their own cell phones and we're like, you know, just in case they need to pick, pick up and call nine one one. But yeah, it does. It does come in handy about every year or so when a company from 1992 asks for a fax and you can send it. That's funny. That's awesome. Yeah. So the pay phone, like, yeah, so it's actually hooked up. I have a, I have a piece of radio, old radio equipment that taps into the phone line, which allows me to send my voice and the caller's voice through an XLR output into my audio gear. So I'm going to tonight spin up my Twitch stream. I'm going to post the number online, which is really risky to do.
    56:17
    And I'm going to just talk to anyone who calls in. Obviously, I can hang up on people. There's no dump button. And so if and I've already set it up to where if anyone calls that number with a with like star six, seven, remember that how it blocks it? Yeah. It will automatically never even ring the phone. So it doesn't even tie the lineup. Oh, wow. And I do have a caller ID on it. So if somebody calls in and does something stupid, I can I'm going to have my laptop up in front of me. So I'll be able to block the number immediately and it will just never come back. So we'll see what happens. It's really risky. I could get kicked off Twitch tonight. I don't know. But I do know it's going to probably be entertaining. I think it's worth the risk. I think it's worth the risk too. Yeah, and I'm actually going to do that in an hour. I've got one hour. Yeah, okay. So I do have time for food, and I do have time to kind of prepare for that. I've got a really crappy camera angle, which looks like a camcorder sitting on a countertop that is going to be pointed at me and the phone. uh which the uh which the guys are actually looking at right now because i think no it looks great it really if you grew up in the 80s and you had to call your mom from the arcade this is your phone yeah it's great i'll have the pinball machines on the background too i just there's two of them over there that are in the camera view um so we've got big lebowski and tron which are two great games yeah okay yeah actually we didn't even talk about that what is in your collection right now yeah let's go down here i'll go down i'm gonna look i'm just gonna read them off right so right i'm going from left to right around the room here uh big lebowski that's the actual prototype number one first game ever built by um by those guys uh i've got a tron which i call uh powerball tron because it only has power balls in it and it will never have steel pinballs in it ever again um because if you play tron with steel pinballs you're cheating seriously and it's awful it plays awful with steel pinballs in it go put four power balls in tron and i'll tell you what you will never ever want to play with steel eyeballs in there again that's hilarious i'm gonna have to tell my uh tell my buddy who bought my tron to try that up yes please do and spread the word because it's uh it's absolutely important so going over this way uh we've got the obviously a total nuclear annihilation which shouldn't surprise anybody um that one is the uh that's the first one that was built by the guys uh doesn't have a serial number on it the serial number is just Scott, which is kind of cool. So when, you know, eventually one day when I pass away or something, someone's going to find that and find serial number Scott on it. And it's going to, they're going to be excited. Next to that is a Rick and Morty with the serial number Scott as well. I have no idea when that was built. I think that was built like halfway through the run.
    59:04
    I have a Bride of Pimbot 2.0 and then a Multimorphic P3. And then the Dr. Dude that's over there and a revenge from mars which is one i just picked up recently you know my revenge from mars played a revenge from mars at my friend's house and my wife thought it was awesome she's like they should have made more of these this is really cool yeah and actually the reason i got it was because it was my wife's favorite game and i had one a while ago it was like the third game i ever bought way back in the day and my wife really loved it and when i sold it she was actually upset and I didn't realize how significant that was until later on because she doesn't really like pinball she just tolerates it and goes ah whatever you know um but uh when I talked about getting another one again she actually was like oh I'll actually play that I'll come down and play that so I'm like okay well it's a done deal does it have the LCD conversion too it doesn't this one's all original and it has a bright tube in it still which is really crazy that is crazy because I do like the LCD conversion because the other ones I've played, just the CRT is boxed. Yeah, and that's really common. I got really lucky with this one, which is why I hopped on it. The lines on that game are so classic. I love that game. Oh, they're so ridiculous. I thought of picking one up. I have Attack from Mars, and I love it, and it would just be fun to have both of them. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, like the funny lines here, like there's a little scene where the alien's massaging the girl in a massage parlor and he goes, I need you. Yes, you need? Yeah.
    60:42
    It's like, she turns around, ah! One of my favorites is, Clinton was still in office, and it's while the aliens are ducting everything off the White House lawn. And he says, take my wife, just don't take the secretary. He says, save the interns. Oh, wow.
    60:59
    It's so great. No, it's funny. It's hilarious. But yeah, no, I get it. It's done in a way that's not like disrespectful either. It's just silly and funny and everyone laughs at it and everyone loves it. It's really, really well done in that game. Don't take the car. That's the chick magnet. Yeah, it's like funny. Like what the heck?
    61:24
    Oh, I need to get another one of those. It's been years since I've had one. There's such a good game.
    61:30
    There's something I can say to interrupt you, but like there's some really cool thing going on with revenge from Mars right now. There's a guy out of the UK named Jim Askey who has expanded on the actual code in the games and he'll send you like you, you buy like this little kit from him and you plug your computer into the revenge from Mars and you can update the code to like this new code that he's working on right now. He's like, cool. Really? He's actually unlocked unused voice call outs and stuff that are in the game ROMs that are not using the game. I'll have to get that link from you because my friend has one. And Josh, you still have yours, right? Or did you sell it? I sold mine to buy Attack from Mars, but I am actively looking for Revenge from Mars right now. Yeah, it's such a cool game.
    62:16
    I do know where there's another one for sale right now in Chicago, but it's a little far. I know a gentleman that owns – he owns a couple of them actually because he owns a pinball company here in Utah. so I might have to call him and harass him because he's always like, yeah, if you ever want one of these you call me I don't think he's a fan of them I don't know if it's because they're heavy or what it is Yeah, probably because of the prism card is scaring people but, you know what are you going to do?
    62:47
    Well, it's such a good game, it really is My vote is play it until it dies and then figure it out later Well, I think that pretty much wraps it up for us. Is there anything else you want to tell us, Scott before we hop off? and wrap it up? No, I think that's pretty much it. Yeah. We got to get you the 2.0 Loser Kid hat. Oh, yeah. I can't remember. Do you have the original? I don't think I do. I don't think I have any Loser Kid stuff. You don't have that one? Okay. I do not have that. Okay. So we've run into you twice and we never gave you a hat. I don't have a hat at all. Yeah. No, we need to get that to you. Because you actually wear hats too. I do wear hats. Actually, I grew my hair out during that COVID thing. and I was going to cut it off and donate it. But like, it's now I'm still, I'm just waiting. I still got long hair right now. It's crazy. Nice. But yeah, I wear hats like only, I don't know, 25% of the time now. I used to wear them every day. We'll make sure it can fit in your man bun. So perfect. They can stick out the back. It's fine. We'll definitely be up there for expo. So worst case scenario, we'll bring you a hat at expo. That sounds perfect. Well, if you want to get ahold of us, actually, before you get ahold of us, if you want to get ahold of Scott outside of his pay phone, because that's happening in an hour. And by the time we release this, it'll probably be done. So you could go watch the Twitch stream, the VOD. But we'll see if there's a VOD. I don't know.
    64:08
    If someone wants to get a hold of you, Scott, how do they do it? You can go to my website. That's the best way to do it. Just scottdenisi.com. There's a contact form on there.
    64:18
    You know, my email is not hard to figure out if you know what my website is. I'm sure you can probably guess it. But that's another way. you know so the yeah so that's probably the best way don't contact me through Facebook because it's I just don't look at that very often at all but you know yeah websites and I'm websites the way to go gotdenisey.com yeah but it's awesome I'm here now I'm looking at this this is it's pretty cool yeah Not many people can say they have their own website. No, it's great. I had to have a place for all the random crud that I do.
    65:02
    There's a lot of reference material and blog posts that I wanted to just make sure that that information didn't die.
    65:10
    Okay. So the website's the best way to do it. It is. And this is a cool-looking website. Go check it out, everyone. Even if you're not going to contact them, at least go there and check out this website. There's a TNA code there, too. You can download that. nice well if you want to get a hold of us we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com we're on all the socials facebook twitch twitter instagram all at loser kid pinball we've we've kind of simplified it to make it more simple for everyone else um other than that what do you got for us you know i'm just really looking forward to uh more stuff coming out and i i'm really looking forward to getting my rush fixed so that's what i'm i'm looking forward to but i'm also looking forward to um we're really expo and that's my next big thing so yeah about four months away yeah same here yeah and uh it's not even four months away we're we're in the middle of july it's gonna be here yeah we need to get close august september october yeah we're we're three and a half months if that so hey scott do you still need one of these for your uh for your see that okay so check this out actually uh i installed by the way for those who don't know what i just showed i i i have an old cassette uh with the adapter line in so all the people who bought a car from the 80s that still have the cassette but they had to convert to cds that's what you'd hook up your cd player to all right so i got i got a quick i got a quick statement about those okay so um i had in the fiero i had a working tape deck right and that was all i had i had fm radio working tape deck am radio didn't work too well so what i did was i just i have a collection of cassette tapes and i would just pop those in and listen to them and a ton of people were like hey let me give you this thing and you can plug your phone into it and then like you can listen to anything you want and uh i had to keep reminding people that that's that's actually not the point like that that actually ruins the uh it ruins the experience of being stuck with a tape and having to listen to every song on that album right um when you have too many options you aren't as satisfied with the outcome that you pick well so what happens though is it basically has itunes killed albums yeah like very few people actually put together a great album start to finish now because they only focus on one or two singles and then a lot of other filler stuff because it's so easy to hit next song next song next song but a lot of the songs that i've grown to appreciate on those older albums were were songs that took me a while to really get into yeah yeah absolutely and again there's a there's a whole study that happened with this thing with uh with with jelly beans right they would walk out with uh two options of jelly beans and ask people like what they want do you want lemon or do you want coconut and people would be like they'd be like oh well I'll take lemon, you know, and they eat it, right? You know, they get to pick one, right?
    68:10
    And after they had eaten the jelly bean, they say, well, how satisfied are you with your choice? And they're like, well, very, because I like lemon and I don't like coconut as much. So there you go. And then they did the same experiment again with like a hundred different flavors of jelly bellies, right? And so then they're like, okay, pick one. And everyone's like looking around. They're like, well, I don't know. I mean, I like apple, but also, you know, the marshmallow one's pretty good or this and that, you know, it's like, and, uh, they'll eventually settle and pick one. And then they say, well, how happy are you with your choice? And they're like, well, not, not entirely. I should have picked the lime one. Cause I, you know, I, you know, I, I kind of got overwhelmed and I didn't, I lime would probably would have been better. You know, it's like you get overwhelmed with options and cassette tapes are an amazing way and vinyl too it's an amazing way of listening to music and being more satisfied with what you're listening to you're you're more captive audience yeah you are well this is actually uh this is what costco actually zeroed in on is that you there's a paralysis of choice so if you go into costco you have like two or three options for one thing. You don't have like 10 or 20 options. You basically, it's like, you want ketchup? Here's the Costco ketchup. And they found that they sold a lot more that way because if people had like five choices then they're just like, I don't know which one to buy and so sometimes they wouldn't even buy one because they just didn't make a decision.
    69:42
    Yeah, it's crazy. I feel like this should be a title for the episode, Pick Your Jelly Bean. Pick Your Jelly Belly.
    69:52
    Well, thank you, Denise, for coming on. I really appreciate it, man. We've wanted to have you on for a while now. This just worked out perfect.
    69:59
    We are so excited. You are some of the fresh blood in the industry and we have just loved your games between TNA, Rick and Morty and I guess the sound on Weird Al. Hopefully, you can get to a time that you can make another love letter to maybe an era pinball machine and we'll be looking forward to that too. Absolutely. Thank you again for having me on. It was really fun. Thanks, Scott.
    70:23
    Shut up and sit down. Bye.