Hey, Poor Man Tribe and listeners, this is Glennie Rogers, and you're listening to the Tribe Multiple Podcast with Rachel and Tim. Poor Man Tribe's the thing, that is who we are. It and Drew. They're not in this thing, so how could it go wrong? Flip away with us, to an old blockade, and then we'll learn about each other. From two pennants to another Rachel and Tim, who do we have on the show today? Hey everyone, before we get started, I wanted to insert a public service announcement. We had a little bit of an issue with the recording and Rachel has already left for Expo, so we couldn't get together to record this, but we wanted to make sure... that everyone is aware that Pete Quint and the Nacho Street Band are inducting their pinball machine that they've been raising money for over the last year to the Ronald McDonald House of Central Ohio. So they're going to be out there. They're going to dedicate the machine. They're getting it there for the children. It's going to be really awesome. Please go out to the Nacho Street Facebook page. Check it out. If you're in the area or online, please check it out. Again, that's November 1st, 11 a.m. to 11.30. The Nacho Street Band is dedicating the pinball machine that they raised money to purchase for the Ronald McDonald House of Central Ohio. Awesome job, guys. just absolutely fantastic thing that you've done for the kids. We love you, Pete. Must beat Pete. Hello, friends. Welcome to Tribe Multiball, a pinball podcast that focuses on a pretty cool group of pinheads that belong to the tribe of the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. I am your co-host, Rachel Lilge, along with Tim Lee. How are you doing today, my friend? I'm doing fantastic. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. pretty well indeed. You want to catch up a little bit about what's been going on with you? Yeah, yeah, let's go ahead and do that. I didn't think I would have a lot, but I actually have a lot, and it's all really short. So I went and brought up my Guns N' Roses upstairs from my dingy basement at the request of Amy. She said it was too nice to be in the basement, and she really liked it so we put it in our family room and it looks pretty good there the other thing i did was remember we talked about the mandalorian and my buddy had one on order and we swapped it out with a game yes yeah he ended up getting an aiq pro and i delivered that to him this week and i set it up for him really hard he lived on the side of a hill so it was really hard to get it into his basement which was behind the house so we had to go down like 20 steps but we got it in and he sent me a text tonight that it's awesome. I completed the trade for my Deadpool. I traded a Deadpool for a World Cup soccer and a beautiful, absolutely beautiful restored taxi. It is a fantastic game. I was a little on edge, you know, if I was going to get a taxi because I'm kind of lukewarm on taxi. But once I saw how nice it was, I went ahead and got it. That's a lot of news there. Let's back up here. All right. That's awesome. That's awesome that Amy wanted Jean already come up in the living room. My bigger question is, does she just walk over there and flip it on and play? She does. I love that. That's awesome. I actually play it more now that it's upstairs as well. I actually can hear it in the distant background. There's like a jukebox mode where she plays it when she's in the kitchen. And a few times during the day, I'll hear the flippers going and the chimes and so forth. And she plays it a lot. She always has. Yeah, it's so much fun. And then I'm glad that your friend liked the AIQ Pro. Yeah, he loved it. Yeah, that is a fun game. And then you traded Deadpool, finally. I wish I could have got in on that trade, but World Cup Soccer is a lot of fun. And then Taxi, I've never played that before. Oh, no, I have once. I've played that once before. It was okay. I'd have to put some time on it, maybe a couple games on it. Yeah, it seems to be the official game of the tribe. We all own it, but it was just, you know, it was a game from 1988, and it was a complete restore. It's the closest I've ever had to a high-end restoration. Everything's been replaced, including the play field, and there's not a scratch on it. So it's just beautiful. I just like to look at it. Have you done a reveal video for it yet? I have not, no. I just posted a couple of pictures on the Tribe page. All right. Yeah, Tim Lee likes to do some type of little reveal video for his neighborhood about the different games that come and go, correct? Yep, yep. It's usually dumb. I usually try to get it in one take. It's silly. No special effects. Yeah, they're fun. Yep, all crude, like playing music in the background, and they're usually really dumb on purpose. But I haven't done this one yet. All right. It makes it less creepy for someone to come over and play pinball, right? Yeah, yep. Like, hey, come over and play pinball in my basement. Yeah, well. It makes it a little less creepy. Hey, speaking of that, you know what else I did? What? So we were out east and we were at my son's cross-country championship. And one of our listeners who had sent me a message in the past and said he likes our show, him and his wife, they both listen to our show and they're both into pinball. He invited me to like a pinball get-together of, I believe there's like a central PA pinball club. So I couldn't make it. I couldn't make it. But I'm like, you know what? This was on Saturday. But on Friday, I was actually in his hometown. I said, hey, I'll take you out. Let's play some location pinball. I'll buy you dinner. I'll buy you a beer. And he's like, well, I'm smoking brisket for my party tomorrow. And he invited me over to his house. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised by that at all. Thank you, kind listeners. Yes, yeah. We would just say C&B. I didn't ask permission to say their name, so listeners C&B, they invited me over. I'm going to be honest. I didn't tell Amy until we were almost there and my daughter what we were doing. They were a little bit freaked out. They know that I've gone to strangers' houses, and strangers have come to our house to play pinball. This is the first time that I went to somebody else's house. And I could tell this was the first time they really had a stranger over, and it was kind of a predecessor to what they were going to have on Saturday because they were going to have a lot of strangers over. And they told me it went really well. But everybody was a little uneasy for the first few minutes. And then once, you know, I'm a talker. So once we got to talking, we had a really good time. I heard Amy and Sid over there just talking away. But yeah, listeners, C&B, thank you for opening up your home. Absolutely beautiful collection. They kicked my butt on most of their games. Good. Good job. Good job. I put the GC on their Batman 66. Oh, congrats. That's cool. Yeah. That always feels good to leave a GC behind somewhere. Yeah. Amy yells at me when I do that. Why? She thinks it's rude. well it's like i'm polite to do that well here's the thing on a lot of games you can turn the gc off can't you like within the settings so that no one else can gc it right yep so well that's well that might be a c and b's own issue then if they didn't turn it off maybe they're welcoming that new gc i don't know yeah i'm fine with it i won't i won't me too yeah my buddy put a gc on my machine and i've been trying to beat it now the real big news is i finally played in another pinball tournament oh i'm excited to talk about this and dissect it a little uh it was too stressful see ah but you didn't you did that's not the lead story here tim well it wasn't how did you do how did you do at the tournament i i won the tournament yes and it wasn't like it was just a small number of people it was their first tournament it was in state college Pennsylvania. They're going to have one next month. So if you live anywhere within a couple of hours of State College and want to play in their tournament, send me a note on Facebook and I'll get you the info. But it was a lot of fun. I have to say the first game I got was Willy Wonka and I had my buddy Justin, his Willy Wonka in my basement. So I did really well on it. I think I had like 7 million point score and that kind of loosened me up. And I didn't get nervous until about halfway through I played Metallica. I owned Metallica, but I had this strategy on Metallica where I was going to go for the coffin multiball, and I was in first place. So I went last, and it was a strikes tournament. And everybody in front of me played Sparky. So I decided to change my strategy and play Sparky, but I drained right down the middle, hitting Sparky twice. So then I finished last. You make a little adjustment. If you don't know where the shot is, you make that little bit of an adjustment on your next ball for sure. Yep, and I didn't adjust until the third ball. I had a good third ball, but I lost, and then I got really nervous. But I held on. How many strikes was it? It was a three-strike tournament. So you got super nervous after you took one strike. Yeah, yeah. Wow, okay. And then it came down to there was four of us. I had one strike and the other three gentlemen had two strikes. So I knew I was going to finish in third, but I thought I was a family guy. And I thought if I just finish in the top two, I'm automatically going to finish in the top two. Right. And I didn't. I lost that one as well. I played horribly. And there was a gentleman, I think back in the Papa days, he was as high as 300 in Papa rankings, not IFPA. and he was way better than me. But my buddy had this epic multiball and knocked him out. So I didn't have to play him in the finals and we played Scared Stiff in the finals and everybody told me that's his best game, the guy that got knocked out. So they're like, thank goodness you didn't play him in Scared Stiff. But anyways, long story short, I was actually down by about 4 million on Scared Stiff and I was the last person and the last ball. And I thought if I could just lock a couple of balls and start a multiball, I got a shot. I had a really good multiball. And when it ended, I was like 100,000 down. And I had that coffin multiball lit. So I'm like, if I could just hit that shot, I'm going to win. And I hit that shot and I won. And I was a nervous wreck. It's too stressful. I think I'm going to retire. Oh. Yeah. So it's about that nervous energy. Did you feel like an adrenaline rush? Did you get that or did you feel just like, you know, like you need to shake your hands and move around a little bit? Or can you describe that? I did not get an adrenaline rush. I was very nervous. Just anxious about playing. I was kind of anxious because I didn't know the rules. Oh, right. All right. OK, well, that makes a little bit difference there, too. Yeah. And they all knew them. Sure. Yeah. So I just shot the ball. You know, when you don't know what the rules are. Yeah, you shoot the blinking things. Whatever's shining and blinking at you. And if it's lit green, it's typically a lock or might light your lock. So, but no, I can understand that. Well, congratulations on winning your most recent competitive tournament and probably your last one. But I'm just kidding. I'll play. They're going to have one a month. They said something about a flipper frenzy next month. So, yeah, I'll probably try. Oh, yeah, flipper frenzies are great. Now you might have caught the bug a little bit. A flipper frenzy is a little bit different, too, because if you win, then you can take a break. So it's a different, you know, style. It's fun. Yeah. I met a lot of nice people. Hats off to the Penn State Pinball Club. I forget their official name. Joe Shaw and his crew, they did a fantastic job. Nice to have fun. I met a lot of really nice people. Everybody was great who was in the tournament. So I'll probably do it again. But I was really stressed out. Did you have fun? I did, yep. That's the most important thing there. But if you feel like you're too stressed and too anxious and you're not having fun, then you shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be playing competitively like that. For some folks that just want to come in and flip and have a great time, there's nothing wrong with that too. Yeah. I think the next one I'll be much more relaxed because I actually won and I don't care if I ever win again. Maybe. And maybe you work those nerves out. That could be a very good solution there too. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that was a lot of cool pinball stuff, Tim. Yeah, a lot of it. I was excited to tell you about the tournament, but what do you have going on? I think you did some much cooler things than myself. I don't even know who I am, Tim Lee. I woke up recently thinking, this is pinball. This is my pinball life now. This is what I'm doing. It's insane. I had the most amazing opportunity to announce for Fox Cities Pinball stream for the pinball super series at District 82. It was four days with six tournaments. I announced for five of those pretty much. Just chatting with people, commenting on what's going on in the game. It was just insane. I don't know. Ask me a question about it. So I real quick props to you. You did a fantastic job, especially taking on like, you know, that large effort on your, you know, first play by play commentary segment on pinball. I think you did great. I hopped on about four or five times. The longest I could be on. I was on for an hour one day and I thought you did great. I had it up in the background on my TV another time. You did fantastic. Thanks, Tim. I really appreciate all of that. It was just insane. It was 35 hours of chit-chatting about pinball, watching pinball, and then getting up and playing pinball. It was amazing, an incredibly amazing experience. I feel like I don't know who I am. I like saying that now because that was just an absurd amount of information that I learned from watching and chit-chatting with people. But also my mind was really blown by the amount of people that I met. I refer to myself as Rookie Rachel quite a bit on the stream because I don't know a lot of the big players. I have no idea. I had the opportunity to meet people from Neil McRae from the U.K. that came over. Phil Birnbaum came down from Canada. There were folks from 16 different states that came to play. A lot of state champs that came out to play. It was an incredible event. It was such a neat opportunity to do that. I am looking forward to doing that again in the future Eric at District 82 did an amazing job closing that event putting it together repairing and refixing all the games in between it all and also playing in it I had the opportunity to catch up with him in person the following weekend after the Super Series, and he said that he had finally recovered, but it took him about six days to recover after that, and it took me at least a week for my voice to calm down. I still don't feel quite like myself in terms of my voice, But again, it was just really cool. The overall winner of the Super Series was Raymond Davidson. He was incredibly generous, also chatting with me on stream. I had a couple of questions after watching him and other players play as well, that during their on stream, that I was able to go up to them afterwards and ask them questions like, well, you know, I saw while you're playing Xenon that you're flipping your flippers a whole bunch while the ball's sitting in the kickout. And when it shot out, you know, like, are you just, is it just idle flipping or is it anxious flipping, you know, and, or are you just using that to kind of move the machine to keep it moving, keep some rattle there? And I think the latter answer was interesting, you know, just keeping the game kind of alive. So it was, I just learned so much information. I felt like that my head has exploded, but it's a great thing too, especially at District 82 where I play League. so i'm excited to go there in the near future to finish the second half of october league and see if i can apply some of those cool skills that i've learned nice and game rule sets and all those things yeah so i'm gonna steal your question how did you feel like you know were you nervous i'm sure you were you did a great job but how did you feel yeah i was like a nervous wreck a complete nervous wreck that week i thought okay i'm gonna look up these players and like figure out where they're from i'm like nope not doing it like it's better just to go in there blindly you know i um was very anxious it's different going up and playing a game for me and i think about the game i think about the mental post-it notes i have on the game what i need to do in the game how the game works for me right and then to sit and watch somebody else play it and try to chit chat about it that was a whole nother level uh so i quickly had to learn how to get comfortable with that but once i got once i got into like maybe two hours into the stream was able to relax and when other people were able to jump on stream and have somebody with me that first night it helped me to calm things down but uh again just so grateful for that opportunity expect the educational opportunity and so much in the pinball world keeps opening up to me it's just really neat tim just unbelievable yeah it's uh it's it's good to watch you write your story that's all that's what Oh, that's a really sweet thing to say. Thank you. I feel kind of like a little embarrassed talking about it, too. I'm not a person that I don't go out and seek the limelight. That's not really who I am. I'm happy to have people get attention for Ladies with Wisconsin for my ladies pinball tournament series. That's what it's about, you know, getting more gals to come in to play pinball. Yes, let's put attention on that. when it comes to putting the camera and all that on me. I'm a little camera shy, I'm finding. But my sister and I had a good conversation about that because I got to chat to somebody. She's my best therapist. And she said, you know, either you can decide to step up into the role or just take the step back. And I think that I'm going to step up into it. And she gave, you know, I always have her in my corner, always giving me encouragement to seek my passion. So I think I'm just going to keep rolling with it and not be afraid and trusting my friends like you and my tribe and the people that, you know, encouraged me because what they say is truth, you know, so I'm going to keep doing it. So thanks, Tim, you know. You're welcome. Were you like, was it Jan or Marsha on the Brady Bunch that had that episode where when the camera went on, they like froze? You remember that? Oh, no, but it wasn't too bad. But we did talk about fried cheese curds and cheese curds, you know, on the stream, which was kind of funny. I felt that was very Wisconsin girl to be doing such a Wisconsin tradition kind of thing. And I didn't mind the camera on me. That's okay. You know, I love me. So that wasn't so nerve wracking. It's just, I think more than anything, I didn't want to sound like an idiot. I was terrified of sounding like a fraud or stupid or something like that. But I think that once I process that out and I'm like, dude, I got this. This is my home. You know, I hate Lethal Weapon 3, but I can tell you this and that about it, you know? so yeah you were very relaxed when i got there yep oh good see i'm glad yeah yeah i'm glad yeah you didn't seem nervous at all so yeah yeah and i and i didn't drink at all you know i don't uh i had one beer finally on sunday i had one beer and then after that like please don't put the camera on me because now i'm like super hot pink red from that one beer because i don't normally drink but yeah it was it was once i got into i was able to relax i had fun with it so i can't wait to do it again eric wants to have another uh super series in a year so take a look at district 82 pinball on his facebook page please give him a like he actually releases the most information on his calendar on his website that was really the number one place to go if you're looking to make a trip to come play one of his bigger events i also think he's doing like a new year's eve and a new year's day tournament as well so just keep your eye on that nice yeah all right crazy yep but enough about that enough about me enough about you yep would you like to chit chat with somebody else today absolutely i would like to welcome to the second slappiest show because we all know the most sloppy show is on uh the internet is right tim yep yep okay so i'd like to introduce mr Stephen Silver Hey guys, what's going on? Hey Steven Thanks for having me How are you doing today? I'm doing pretty good, how are you guys doing? I think we're a mess, but we're having a good time You sure are It's been a little bit since we've had a guest So we're just going to see how this rolls, right? Yep Alright, well I can't even I'm not cutting that either Oh my, oh gosh well steven your chime number is 40 is that correct number 40 yes ma'am that's that's a nice round even number yeah well steven i'm gonna ask you just a couple of questions today my very first one is incredibly difficult i think they are all very difficult i really like to quiz people it's like kind of like those blue card questions right yeah almost can you let our listeners know a little bit about yourself what your current pinball status is in this lovely world yeah so um i'm uh i live in houston texas i'm a freelance editor and animator and i'm also an instructor at a local technical college here i basically just do all sorts of stuff all the time but i for i've been in the hobby since about 2011 when i bought my first game maybe 20 yeah 2011 and i I have been working with Multimorphic for the last eight years or so on their promotional materials and things like that, their videos and their banners and things like that. And for the last three years, I've been working as the creative director of their game design. So I'm the creative director of Heist, and I'm the creative director of the next game that's coming out. Ooh, a next game that's coming out. Yes, I am. That's all you can talk about? That I'm not at liberty to talk about. Okay, that's what I figured. i figured i had to like try to get the scoop right tim i'm gonna try it just a little bit multi-morphic i have not had the opportunity to play one yet i will in the very near future ryan kuiper tribe member number one has a p3 and i am stoked to try it i've watched the videos i've watched the tutorials somebody did a tutorial on it on twitch not that long ago it's fascinating Tell me, as a creative director for Heist, is Heist completely your idea that you dreamed up? Well, the way it works is, let's say it was about 2018, Jerry started reaching out to the whole team. There's a bunch of us that work on nights and weekends helping multi-morphic out in various ways. And he reached out to all of us. We kind of started pulling ideas about which themes we'd like to do. and uh our mechanical direct our mechanical engineer tj weaver came up with the idea for a heist theme and when i heard that i was like that's excellent that we could have so much fun with that theme and so that was my vote for the pick and we we kind of put it to a vote for us and had some feedback from some other people and so uh once we decided on on heist jerry reached out to the group and asked if anybody wanted to step into the role of creative director for this game to kind of, you know, lead the project and lead the design team and kind of craft how it was going to look and feel and what the story was and the design gameplay, the layout of the machine and things like that. And I volunteered and the group, we reached Caldwell, you know, a couple days later and offered me the gig. And so we set off on this path to create this game that I actually think is a pretty unique gameplay experience and it's the game I wanted to make. But the way we do stuff at Multimorphic is that it's, you know, the reason I don't take the title of designer on the game or anything else is because I think designers sometimes get too much credit for what happens in the game. There's so much in this game that was a group effort. Uh, the, so many ideas for the layout, for the rules, for the story even came from every member of the team that we put it together. And, uh, so at the end of the day, I think it, you know, it was definitely a big, it was definitely a team effort on this. I will say this, Stephen, I actually got to play heist and going in, I was a little, I don't know. I, I didn't want to say I was lukewarm because I really wanted to play the P3, but I didn't know what to expect. and I didn't really watch any of the streams, but I thought, I really want to play this game. It was fantastic. It was a phenomenal game. It was really well executed, and the platform, it just shoots really well. The theme, you guys integrated the theme really well. How do you do that? Do you all come up with ideas and storyboard them, and do you have some sort of tracking software that you use? How does it get from A to Z? Great question. Yeah, so every game is different. And on the P3, every game is vastly different. That's one thing that, you know, go talk to Ryan Kuyper or any of these other owners that have the system and have a bunch of games in there, and they will play two different games on the same play field, and they will feel completely different because that's what the platform allows them to do. and so for for heist um i kind of wanted to do a story-based game uh you know i'm not a tournament player so i don't get obsessed with you know the the point maximizing strategies and things like that what what interests me is having a wide variety of gameplay and a game that's approachable that anybody can go up to and start flipping around and figure out what to do and come up with a lot of different objectives that you can do in the game. And so, you know, we kind of, you know, spent a lot of time watching a bunch of heist movies again and, you know, getting all the tropes together. And we just started, everybody started contributing ideas and throwing them together. We had the wizard mode in mind at the beginning, like this is what we're going to build to. And we worked backwards from that to get, you know, figure out all these modes and how, you know, what each individual character would do. And it kind of worked out that we, you know, we had these six scoops that the P3 has these, this wall and scoop system above the, there's a ball tracking screen in the lower play field in the middle of the right, right above that is six scoops that can raise, that have six walls that can raise on them. And then above that is these floppable play field modules that you can pull out and pop in a new game if you want. So heist is the latest play field module that you can swap in the back. a third of the game and get a whole new gameplay. And so we had those six scoops, and that worked out to the six characters we wanted to do. Just started coming up with modes for them and different ways to combine those characters together and play out kind of, you know, your typical heist movie trope. I can't wait to play it. That makes sense. Working backwards, that actually makes a lot of sense. I understand not wanting to, you're not being a tournament player. Not everyone can be the Penn State strikes champion like Tim Lee. But did you watch The Great Muppet Caper? Was that a movie you watched for a heist movie? Yes, Muppet Caper, Ocean's movie. I love that so much. Yeah, we just – That's so great. Me too. That makes the inner Rachel, the child inside of me, just sing for joy. That's so cool. That's a great question. Yeah. So funny. Rachel, you've got to get down to Ryan Kuyper's. I promise. I will make it happen on a Friday night. I promise. They pulled it off. Yep. It's an A plus. Like you tell a story. The game is perfect. I really enjoyed it. Steven, is there a specific aspect within Heist that was yours that came to life that you're really proud of? Yeah. I mean, I really love the side jobs that we put in. And they are short little mini games that can pop up while you're playing. Or you can play the Wheelman's Crosstown Rush where you're just looping the side shots. Or, you know, Crane Kabooms where the crane will come out. You can bash the crane for like 15 seconds and try to get as many as possible. But I love those little short mini games that, you know, qualify the character modes. and we introduced the concept of jail in this game where if you play a mode and you fail the mode, you can still get to the wizard mode even if you fail modes, but your character goes to jail and you have to go and run a jailbreak to get those characters out. Once you have everybody on your team out of jail ready to go, then you can make a run at the big final heist. And what I like about that is that, you know, one of the hardest things to do in the game is get all six people in jail because you have to, you have to qualify two characters, have them successfully finish their modes in order to qualify the, the masterminds, uh, mini heist that you, the, the heist that you can run in the game. And so you have to qualify two characters, then fail at the heist and then go back in jail. Everybody. And so we've got that and we've got police cars that make crosses back and forth across the play field. And if you hit your ball into those scoops when the police cars are crossing, then one of your characters gets jailed. And I don't know. I love that kind of stuff. It an interesting it just an interesting new twist on gameplay And the heist the jailbreak multiball is a subtractive multiball So if you've got five characters in jail, we kick out six balls and every shot pass on that upper playfield can grab the ball and remove it off the playfield. And so as you are hitting the character shots, they are escaping from the jailbreak. And so you'll hit a shot up the orbit and then that ball will be pulled off the playfield. and you set the cat burglar free and all that. And so once everybody's escaped, you're down to one ball again and you've finished the multiball. So there's a lot of stuff that we can do on this platform that I just love that we had all that flexibility to do because of how it's designed. That's unbelievable. I'm going to process that. So side jobs, kind of like a little side adventure, a little side quest that you need to complete. Yeah, I love that. Just little mini games. And if you don't want to play them, you can skip them. Like they're really short. One of them is where you've got to do, you've got to catch the ball behind the upper flipper that we've got up there. And you've got like enough time to do two shots at it. But if you don't want to do it, you can just trap up and wait it out. It's done really quickly. But I think they're just fun little things to break up the gameplay while you're playing through the rest of the game. Man, I can't wait to play it. Ryan, you hear that? I'm coming. I'm coming to play that. Let's stream that. Got to get there, Rachel. Got to get there. So, Stephen, you did mention that you collect games as well. Tell me a little bit about your collection. Yeah, so right now I've got a World Cup Soccer and I've got a Deadly Star Wars, which was my first game. I've got a Skateball and a 1970 Gottlieb Playball machine. And I've also got my P3 with all 13 games that come on the platform right now. Well, I'm not surprised that you have the P3. But what was the Gottlieb? What was the Gottlieb called? It was Play Ball. It's one of those baseball games from, it's not a pitch and bat, but it's one of those that launches the ball from between the flippers and all that. There's a guy here in Houston named Dan Ferguson. He used to own the Lone Star Pinball Museum up here on the outskirts of Houston. And we'd always get together at Dan's place and have these launch parties for the Houston Arcade Expo and everything like that. And it was one of my favorite places on earth. and he would occasionally do raffles, and I won this machine at a raffle at one of his parties, so that means a lot to me. Oh, that's funny. Hey, that's all right. I recently entered a raffle, too, for a pinball machine. Here's hoping. Fingers crossed. That'd be the coolest thing to win ever in a raffle. Yeah, that machine cost me $20. Wow. Like the best game I've ever got. Wow. Nice. It was in pretty good shape, I would assume so. It was all right. They're all players' machines and everything, but I like it a lot. Nice. so why did you choose star wars as your first game so when when i started in pinball what happened was we uh i worked at i worked at a post-production company here in houston and in 2009 we hired this australian guy named david vannis um he you might know him because he's been working at spooky pinball for the past you know several years but he came in and started working with us and he he's this friendly australian guy and he started talking about getting back into pinball because he collected them in Australia and I went and you know he took a trip up to Arkansas to go buy his first game and I was like man why would you spend like $1,500 on a pinball machine I love pinball but man I can't imagine that much money on a single game and yeah and so then he started taking me to uh local tournaments and everything where I routinely got my ass kicked by six-year-olds you know I'd come out last in like a six-person tournament and like these little kids would talk so much to me and they would get it and uh but I had so much fun doing it and then I started going to the Houston Arcade Expo and my wife got me like the pinball arcade game for the PlayStation 3 or something and I started playing that at the office and started learning the rules to all these games. And I was like, man, I've got to get a machine. So we started looking around. And at the time, I was like, well, if I'm going to get one, I'm only going to get one because that's what you always say, right? You're only going to get one. So it needs to be the one. And I was like, well, of all the themes out there, I think Star Wars would be a good one. And we looked around and asked. And Ed Vander being the guy who runs the Texas Pinball Festival was selling one. And I took that weekend to run up to Dallas area to go visit my brother and I spent that weekend buying the engagement ring for my wife and buying my first pinball machine so it was the most expensive weekend of my life up to that point oh my goodness which one did you spend more on I spent more on the ring okay but uh yeah I brought it back home and I was hooked from that point on and I went through my buying stage and bought a whole bunch and I don't sell much too often but I've kind of whittled the collection down over the years. Do you feel what's in your collection now are bolted games? Not necessarily. The only one that's bolted, I'll let you take a guess, but Data Youth Star Wars is probably one of the last I've sold. I know I love State Ball, but things come up. I had a Whitewater I thought I'd never sell, and I ended up getting rid of that last year. Things come up, you need to liquefy some stuff. Totally understand that, for sure. yeah we share that bond uh dady star wars i told the story that kind of got me back into pinball love that game yeah yeah that's definitely a game and i had a good game and i went through and threw all the ships in there and that was the first one so i went through and hand painted the whole cab again and like touched up everything i like took a piece of wood from the inside and took it down and got the paint color matched perfectly to uh to give me that can of blue paint and did a bunch of stuff on that from the very beginning. It's also the one my kids like to go up there and play because they recognize the Star Wars from their Lego show. Right, with R2-D2 right there. I made a game. It's right next to it if you guys want to play that. No way, Dad. Star Wars. That's pretty funny. I can't blame them. I can't blame them. you know how old are your kids i've got a my youngest just turned four today and then my second youngest is six and i've also got a 23 year old so well the two littles don't know any better yet right yeah yeah they don't know any better now i'm going to assume that heist is not a dream theme for you maybe it is maybe it was but if you have a i think this is a great question do you have a dream theme are you secretly working on something late at night i do have a dream theme i just can't tell you guys about it because i'm working on it right now that's so exciting oh boy congratulations yeah it's one of those things that i really i mean we i'll say this working on an original licensed game was such a gift and a treat because we had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted, right? And so it was basically designing a choose-your-own-adventure into a symbol machine with video clips. And there's something like 1,400 animations in that game that I did. And so you have to cover all the aspects of everything that you need in that game. But we basically got to play around with the story and create everything from scratch. We had no limitations or anything. But you always want to work on a licensed theme. And before you get a licensure, you know, they all seem like crazy out of reach. But I really wasn't sure we were going to be able to get this one. And when we did, I was just blown away and so excited to get to work on it. So I can't say much more than that. But I'll just let you know that Jerry's talked about it. He's excited about it. And I am extremely excited about it because this one means a lot to me. So do I need to go out and get a P3 tonight? Yes. But you probably can't because we're backorders right now. Lots of people have been saying the same thing because people have been seeing the P3 for years. Maybe they came up to a show and they played Lexi once in the early stages or they walked up like at TPF where we had, you know, 10 games lined up side by side with one example of every game that we have on the platform on there. And there's lines on these machines at every show we go to. and maybe they walked up and they played like barnyard or or you know uh grantham right or one of the smaller games and they formed their opinion about the platform based on that one experience or whatever but a lot more streamers have been getting into it a lot uh people have been showing it off more and learning more about the system and giving a real chance and seeing just how much value is packed into this in one game for example when i got my game uh my game came with eight games on it right in the past two years we've added five additional games to the platform uh since then and seven if you include uh the fact that jerry added a complete new form of gameplay with uh the career mode in cosmic kart racing and uh he added online head-to-head gameplay with Cousin Cart Racing, which I've said this on other podcasts before, but that's the most fun I've had playing in my house. Pinball is playing online, head-to-head against other people's machines in real time over the internet, all over the world. And you can hear when you play a power-up against their machine, and it makes their machine pop up the scoops and block the balls from going up the ramps and things like that. And you hear them cussing your name, and nothing feeds my soul, like knowing that I just screwed my buddy over with my pinball machine by messing him up on his. So it's just a ton of fun. You're getting me fired up. I really want to get one. I played it. I loved it. I'm a believer. Is your new theme Transformers 1984? You're not allowed to tell me if it is. That's my dream. I'm not allowed to tell you if it is. All right. So now I got to order a P3 tonight. Add that to the list. Yeah. It's backordered for a little while. But like I said, I think, like Jerry said, when we announced it, for years and years and years, everybody's always said, like, the P3 would be great if it only did this or if it only did that. You know, we've been slowly checking, and I say we, that we've been doing a lot of work there. There's some really brilliant people that work at Mopimorphic. Jerry's brilliant. TJ's brilliant. All these guys do all the work. And I'm the idiot of the team that comes in and says, hey, let's make something. but they've been doing awesome work and continually pushing forward the capabilities of their system. And what's great about it is if you own it, the next game that comes out, maybe it's something you love, maybe it isn't, right? But you as an owner of the platform benefit from that because the library of available games to you just got larger. And so every advancement for it, people who bought the P3 in the very beginning have had the opportunity to buy Heist for $2,750, right? Buy Cosmic Kart Racing for $2,500. Siri just released a complete rewrite of a code for a brand new game called Sorcerer's Sopranos that plays on the Cosmic Kart Racing play field. And it's an amazing game. It has like, it's basically like going around and learning spells and then using those spells in different ways to work your way through the game and find keys and stuff like that and then battle this sorcerer where you've got to go and and collect all this stuff before you go into the sorcerer battle because you'll get your ass kicked if you don't it's like a it's like a choose your own adventure book that comes alive in a little bit in a way too it's like i like the idea of having that really making the world under glass really come to life i love the idea of a much bigger story concept. Like you're reading along in a book, but you're playing pinball, right? Yeah, definitely. And like with Sorcerer's Apprentice is on the exact same play field as Cosmic Kart Racing, but everybody who plays it says it feels like a completely different game. And that game, that entirely new code set was $500 to everybody who had a Cosmic Kart Racing play field. Cheap for a game. That's cheap for a game when you think about it. $500 for a game, cheap. Yeah, and it's just a really good value. But I don't know. Of course, I'm into the system, but I think you're seeing it more and more, getting other people out there that have bought it that are speaking up, and then people are getting the word out about it. Yeah, I played that one as well, and here's the interesting thing. Ryan had switched from Heist to The Sorcerer's Apprentice while I played another game. I think he had it swapped out while I was playing Avengers or something else. I might have played a game or two, and I looked over, and he's like, hey, it's ready for you, Tim. and I went over it's just as fun as you said it was but I was like amazed at how fast he got the playfield in and out yeah Jerry's been doing this at shows for years but the longest thing that the longest thing to do when you're swapping playfields is removing the glass and putting the glass back on it's literally like a couple of clips like three or four plugs in the back it lifts out the next one goes in and then you're you're good to go so it's it's really uh and that's one thing what we wanted to do with heist I wanted to bring more gameplay down the the play field down in the lower play field so we i tasked pj with coming up with a way to dangle the ball in three dimensions you know lower down the play field and he came up with the awesome crane design and you know but we wanted to do it in such a way that swaps would still be super fast right and so we've got this backwards compatible slipper upper flipper module in there that you don't have to swap out when you're putting in other games that don't use it and you can still pull the play field in and out in about two minutes to get the next one up and running. And that's just one of those awesome things about the system. Additionally, everything in that machine is modular. If you want to work on your flippers, you just unplug them, pull them out of the machine, take them over to your bench, and you can work on them. Everything. We can design different flipper modules we can design different uh side walls and stuff so nothing's necessarily locked in stone in that that game things have been changing over time but you could you could definitely design anything you want to go over that lower screen you just got to rethink how how it works you float mechanisms above the screen rather than drilling a hole through it yeah so let me ask you this now i always joke with people about like transformers and some dream themes isn't there an SDK where I could develop my own game? I know I couldn't distribute it, but if you're like a home user, isn't there something that I could use, some open source library to develop my own game? Yeah, Multimorphic has released an SDK. It's completely free. You don't even need a P3 to start developing. It's all built on Unity, which is a pretty common game engine that people have been writing games on. And like when I said five new games in the last two years three or yeah three of those games have come from third party developers Nicholas Baldridge is just an amazing guy and he bought into the platform He was one of the first people to get the heist play field when we, when we sent it out and he, he wrote this amazing game called Ranger in the Ruins for the kart racing play field. And he would just release another game using Scott Benison music for, for the heist play field called Silver Falls. And they're just they're just they're they're like one hundred thirty dollar games that you can get for these playfields that are just really fascinating, different takes on on what gameplay could be on the on the P3 and like hooping it up. It's a free game that that plays on the Lexi play field that another third party developer, Greg Goldey, created for the platform. And he just decided to put it out there for free for people to download. But Jimmy Lipum from 86 Pixels did Grand Slam Rally, which is a pitching bat for the Cannon Lagoon play field. So that's the thing that excites me the most is that people getting out there and making their own games for this system. And you're already seeing the fruit of it right now with like one guy deciding three games in a year. but lots of people there's a ton of people in the thin dev slack channel and the discord that are trading ideas back and forth and developing third party games on it so there's a lot more coming I can tell you and there's going to be some really cool stuff out there. Yeah that really excites me I have a background in software development so you know what I'm thinking Rachel What Timothy? I'm thinking Drew sucks at pinball the game Tim Lee it'll make a million dollars Tim Lee I'll give you three I love you I love you and you know poor Drew he does not suck at pinball all the time at least not when he's playing by himself he doesn't lose weight yeah he does Anyways, move along. I really hosed the interview now. Oh, boy. I was going to ask, Stephen, you said that you're an instructor at your local community college. What do you do? Yeah, I teach different aspects of video production at a technical school here. So I go in and teach people editing and business classes for film and things like that. So it's just another one of those things that keep me busy. And that's more of some stable income coming in between the freelance gigs that I've got. Yeah, that's fascinating. Is that something that you naturally fell into? Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things that the timing worked out well. It was, you know, right around the beginning of 2020, whenever I had one of my main retainer jobs dry up. And so this job opened up and I jumped into it and got to teach for a few months and then COVID hit and the Houston campus. So but then they hired us back. And not too long after that, I found that I like it a lot. Like mostly you see all these young people coming in and they're they're really energetic for it. And I get to, you know, beat them down, tell them about how the real world is. This is what life really is. welcome to the trenches they give these future assessments to all the students and like they came back and said man Steven all your all your students are really bummed out why is that I was like I don't know it wasn't me just tell them too many trips to Pinside you're depressed yeah Steven I want to say thank you so much for creating the most amazing cover art for Tribe Multiball with Tim and Rachel. It is the coolest, mind-blowing thing that I've ever had anybody make for me. Well, and Tim Lee, too. Thank you so much. It really is awesome. Yeah, I used to do that a lot. For the local Houston guys, I would get different back glasses and make inside jokes. There's this guy, Barry Sanders, in town that I'd always put him on a back glass and change the name from like you know barricor to barry cora or something like that and put his face on there and i always love doing that just mess around in photoshop doing these little visual jokes and things and i haven't been able to do it for a while so getting back in with uh you know ian and drew and and doing stuff with the show and that's been one of those things that something he'd scratched that creative itch and and when glenn reached out and suggested uh or he just he all glenn did was play me the song the intro song he had recorded for uh the show and i was like you know what this needs this needs to be a frontier next to a dolly and i put glenn's face and uh rachel's face on it and then it morphed out of that into the uh the show art for the show so i thought it came out nice and it was yeah thank you so much it just it humors me so much i for a while I had it as my desktop at work because it just makes me giggle and every time I play Frontier which they have at District 82 I think about you and I think about that art and it just gives me such a chuckle yeah yeah Glenn was the first person from the tribe that I met he reached out uh after they they inducted me and so he's a super cool guy super friendly and I love talking to him you've also did a little bit of art for uh poor man's pinball twitch stream too do you want to describe those lovely images that you created for everybody yeah um you know how i got into the tribe was well ian ian reached out on his facebook page and asked if anybody could help out with some animations and i saw that and i just i reached out and said hey i'm creative director of heist i did all the animation there's some way i can help and he you know we talked back and forth and And he told me these ideas of stuff that he wanted to do. And it sounded like a lot of fun. And I was like, well, I'm really slammed. And I just, as long as you don't need it really quick, everything. And then I promptly procrastinated on all my real work and focused completely on that. Because it's a fun project instead of the boring stuff that I was doing. So I, like, later on that day was like, here you go. This is a blast. So I put that out there. and then you know i started that's kind of when i dove into the show was because i mean before that i had i had gone on a long period especially while i was developing hikes it's just tuning out all pinball media and pin side and everything like i just i just couldn't handle it and then when i just came out i started needing to listen to stuff again to see what people were saying and kind of keep my pulse out there and everything and i and i'll listen to a couple of their shows and I could just pick up on their chemistry right away and really loved it. But I really got involved with the show whenever they started doing their live streams. And that was just so fun watching those two dudes just get up there and just can't even get through a show without busting up and just watching them try to eat moon pies and get through it and things like that. So, yeah. And then, you know, it'd be funny because the chat interaction with the group, That's whenever I saw like how great and how fun the chat section was of the shows. You'd hear, you know, Ian and Drew drunkenly start screaming out, Stephen Silver, you need to do this. Me and Drew riding a unicorn with Skittles. And I was like challenging something. The next day you send them their little thing. And so that was always fun. Those streams were really brutal. I mean, people really roasted Ian and Drew. I loved it. Absolutely. I really miss the chat, chatting with friends on Monday nights. I really look forward to that. We've got to do that again. Come on, Drew. Get on screen. Let's make it happen. So I guess that really leads us into our final question, Stephen. How did you get into the tribe? Well, the short answer is that Ian and Drew gave up. I was the first tribe member, and this actually meant a lot, but they were basically like, you know what, we're tired of picking people for the tribe, and they reached out to you guys and said here's what who would you guys vote into the tribe and apparently like the you know a bunch of people were like wait if stephen's not already in the tribe because i had been in the chat a whole lot and they they voted me in that way uh just because i i guess i'd been uh being a jackass pretty prominently in the chat for a while but uh yeah that's that's basically it that's how it happened and then they announced that i was in the tribe on the show and then nothing happened for a week and i was like oh well i guess they forgot to like let me in the facebook group or anything like that that's great and then i got a call from glenn and glenn's like welcome to the tribe like out of the blue and he just was the nicest coolest guy and uh you know real friendly and we just started you know getting along real well right at that point and then they finally let me in the that's so funny i didn't know there was a little bit of a delay there. Well, shame on you, Ian. Shame on you, Drew. I am now the moderator of the group, so now that falls onto me to do that. But back then, it's totally their fault, not mine, and nothing to do with it. No, I just thought it was funny. All this fanfare and nothing. Yeah, nothing. Hey, I voted for Kaneda. I didn't vote for you. Sorry. Yeah, that's alright. He got my vote too. Just kidding. I think that's the only tribe member that we voted for. Was it the only one? I think so. Yeah, I think we tried a second one, but it didn't work out. It's not so hot. I think you were the only person voted in by popular demand. Number 40. That's all right. Well, thank God for him and sure being lazy. Well, we're so happy to have you in the tribe, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's like I didn't quite understand it at first because, like I said, they didn't let me in the Facebook group for a while. But it's definitely such an amazing group of people. You know, I've gotten to get on some of the live get-togethers that we do occasionally, and everybody, you know, just chatting back and forth. And I definitely, I got my coin, so it's definitely a great experience. Yeah, I can't wait until we get to meet in person and coin up. Yeah, I know. I was going to, I just, Expo's not in the cards for me this year. It's falling on Halloween and it can't travel yet. So yeah, maybe in the future, but I'll be at the Houston arcade expo. If anybody makes it down for that, I wish I could, I wish I didn't have to work and I won the lottery so I could go to all the pinball shows. Yeah. Me too. Okay. If I could quit one of my four jobs and just go to an amazing time. Anything else for you today, Tim? No, I, I appreciate coming on Steven. I, I can't say it enough. Ryan Kuyper let me play his P3. You and your team did a fantastic job. Love it. Love your collection. Love that you're in the tribe. I think me, you, and Glenn had a really good idea for Ian and Drew with a little skit, and I'd love to pull that off someday. Maybe I'll have to tell you about it offline, Rachel, but you're probably one of the most creative minds in the tribe. I am not, so I appreciate your talent, and I appreciate you. So thank you for coming on. Come on. The guy behind the real men of genius ads is claiming not to be the creative guy. Those things are amazing. I could come up with like a one-minute song. Those were amazing, man. Those are my favorite parts of the show, man. Yeah, Glenn and I still talk about those. We still come up with them, so maybe we'll have to do a couple more. Just singing them into the ether. Yeah. Yeah. I'm jealous of that taxi, man. I had a taxi that I was all set to do a complete restore on, and then I had some job stuff come up, so I had to get rid of it. But, man, someday I'd love to get a really nice taxi again. It looks brand new. It's got new decals, new topper, new pin score system, new back glass. It's got a hard top. You know, I think some of the purists would say don't get a hard top, but it is beautiful. Yeah, I had a new CPR playfield. I had a new CPR back class. I had all new ramps. I had everything to turn mine perfect. Decals and everything, and I just had to dump it all. Oh, that was sad. Yeah, but you have a Star Wars day to East, so I'm jealous of that one. Yeah. Cute. Very cute. Well, thank you, Steven, so much for being our guest today. I really appreciate you. We had to do a little rescheduling. and we finally got you on the show. So I'm so happy that you're able to spend some time with us. I feel like I learned quite a bit actually about P3. I did see, just thought about that I saw a Twitch stream on Silver Falls and that game looks really appealing visually to me. So I'm hoping that when I get to Expo, maybe I'll be able to play that game too. We'll just see how all that works out. But again, thanks so much for being here and spending time with us today. It's really nice to get to know you better. Yeah, definitely. and a couple of the plugs me and Billy YJ worked on the poor man's hat that's the inverted Milwaukee Brewers logo so you guys go and pick that up I worked with Jimmy Lipum of 86 pixels to do the Tron pin vision mod which is the where you replace the back panel with the screen in the back of your Tron machines where you've got moving you've got new scene imagery and all of those so if you see that pick that up and go buy All the P3 games. Absolutely. Will do. It is on my list, and I will own one within a year. I believe that. I believe it. Awesome. Yep. All right. Well, you take good care. All right. Thank you, guys. Happy flipping, and who sucks at pinball? Tim Lee. Tim Lee. Tim Lee. Tim Lee. Love you all. See you. Somebody's checking in. Somebody's checking in. 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