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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 34: TPF 2023 Recap with Colin MacAlpine

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 26m·analyzed·Apr 1, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

TPF 2023 tournament recap with rules designer Colin MacAlpine discussing format, strategy, and standout competitive moments.

Summary

Colin MacAlpine, a former world champion and rules designer for P3, discusses his experience running the Texas Pinball Festival (TPF) 2023 tournament. The hosts reflect on tournament format, logistics, and the competitive play, including standout performances in the Classics finals (won by Escher Lefkoff) and main tournament qualifications. The episode establishes context for discussing six new games debuted at TPF.

Key Claims

  • Colin MacAlpine is a rules designer in a consulting role for P3, working on an unannounced game project alongside other P3 collaborators

    high confidence · Colin directly states his official title as 'rules designer' and confirms he's working on something he 'can't talk about' with a team including Bo and Karen

  • Rules design is significantly more complex than commentary suggests, requiring integration with choreography, video, graphics timing, and scoring mathematics

    high confidence · Colin explains the unexpected depth: 'It's also a lot more work than you expect... how the rules integrate with choreography, how they integrate with video, how they integrate with graphics, the timing of things'

  • Texas Pinball Festival's Classics tournament is designed to hit exactly 100% TGP (Tournament Game Points) capacity

    high confidence · Colin states: 'Because that classics tournament at TPF is designed to hit exactly the 100% TGP mark'

  • TPF tournament changed from attracting primarily local/regional players to attracting top players from across the country and world, including Stern Pro Circuit players

    high confidence · Colin describes the evolution: 'It's attended now by people coming from across the country, some even from across the world. We now are consistently getting the top players in the world that travel there.'

  • A new rating system (mentioned as 'Whopper system') launching next year will use efficiency percentages that make poor tournament finishes (like 140th place) significantly impact competitive standings

    medium confidence · Travis explains: 'If a potential whopper system that's going to be out next year, which affects your efficiency percentage... if you finish that low, it's going to torpedo this metric. And it's very hard to dig your way out of it'

  • Escher Lefkoff won the TPF 2023 Classics finals, triple-rolling Old Chicago (300,000 points) in the tie-break against Preston (230,000 points)

    high confidence · Colin recounts: 'Escher triple rolled it... He put up $300,000 on Old Chicago in a very convincing fashion... Preston put up 230,000 on Old Chicago, and took second'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's a lot of work. It's cool. But it has given me a new sense of appreciation for all those other people that have worked on or are currently working on games and doing rules design and doing just game design in general. It's so much more than anybody realizes until you've actually taken the plunge.”

    Colin MacAlpine @ ~08:00-09:00 — Reflects on the hidden complexity of game design and rules systems, a common pain point in the community where armchair criticism is rampant

  • “TPF is a world class premiere show and anybody that's been there will say that it is I would argue it's the best show but if it's not the best it's one of the best two.”

    Colin MacAlpine @ ~17:00 — Establishes Texas Pinball Festival's reputation as a premier industry event, contextualizing the tournament's importance

  • “The original intent was always to have a tournament that went along with this world-class show... I think we as a team of people that helped to run that have been successful. I think we've succeeded at turning that tournament into a world-class tournament.”

    Colin MacAlpine @ ~20:30-22:00 — Demonstrates the intentional design philosophy behind TPF tournament format balancing competitive play with event experience

  • “For me personally, it would be just the volatility of it because there's only eight plays, right? Classics is much more difficult to control than a modern machine. You put me on a modern machine, in eight plays, I'll get a hold of it.”

    Travis @ ~27:00 — Illustrates the strategic difference between vintage and modern machines in tournament play—a key tension in mixed-era tournaments

  • “Nine balls in a row, three straight games, only two actually got to a flipper. Like seven were like legitimate house balls... I think I finished, like, 140th or something like that.”

    Travis @ ~30:00 — Demonstrates RNG volatility in vintage machines and its competitive impact, particularly concerning under emerging rating system changes

  • “It was the best competitive game of Old Chicago I've ever seen before in my life... Escher triple rolled it... He put up $300,000 on Old Chicago in a very convincing fashion.”

Entities

Colin MacAlpinepersonTexas Pinball Festival (TPF)eventTriple Drain Pinball PodcastorganizationEscher LefkoffpersonP3 (Multimorphic)companyTravisperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Triple Drain Podcast expanding technical infrastructure (video recording capability via Zencastr) supported by Patreon funding ($20/month production costs)

    high · Joel: 'We use Zencastr for recording... we're trying something new... It was a free program. It's no longer a free program. We have to pay for it. So $20 a month... Thank you to all the Patreon supporters'

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2023 tournament successfully established as world-class event attracting top players internationally, now integrated into Stern Pro Circuit

    high · Colin: 'It's attended now by people coming from across the country, some even from across the world. We now are consistently getting the top players in the world that travel there. We're on the Stern Pro Circuit.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Texas Pinball Festival tournament format improvements successfully achieved design goal of allowing players to compete while enjoying venue, though volume of tournaments (main + Classics + women's) creates time management tension

    high · Colin: 'The original design of it... was to create a tournament that allowed players to both play in the tournament and enjoy the show... I think we've succeeded at turning that tournament into a world-class tournament'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Mixed-era tournament format (vintage + modern machines) increasingly adopted at major tournaments; TPF pioneered extensive classics use in main events alongside Pinberg

    high · Colin: 'TPF main was one of the first tournaments, big tournaments that used the classics extensively in their main event. And since then, more and more tournaments have gone that way'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.440

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. What was that? All right, Travis, I know. I'm just blowing your mind. I don't even know what that is. What was that? That is literally the intro that is before every TPN podcast, every single one. So if that's a surprise to you, you've just admitted to the world you've never listened to in entire years. Has that been before our podcast? Yes. That is in front of every single TPN podcast. Well, I never listen to one of our podcasts, Joel, because I'm freaking on it. I'm saying TPN podcasts, like all podcasts. All of them. Yes, and the same lady says, yeah, Triple Grain, but it'll say The Pinball Show. Oh, yeah. Or Free Play Pinball Podcast. I forgot then. My fault.
0:50
Okay, so with that taken care of, Travis, you good? You ready? You ready for this? Yeah, it just threw me off. I haven't heard that before. So now I know. I know what it's from. Oh, wonderful. Tom, you good? Yeah, except, you know, drop targets are mechanisms. Oh, yeah. We're going to have to get into that. Hey, extra ball. Third person here. Yes, Colin, are you feeling good? You ready to go? I'm feeling great. Okay, here we go. We're three guys who like to talk in the hall. So we came up with a class by name. We're a joy track down the tongue. And we call ourselves Triple Drain. We're Triple Drain. All right. I feel bad. Colin, every single time they said triple, he held up four fingers. So, yeah, apparently we need to edit our song when we have an extra ball, just so you feel included. No, it's fine. I was just foreshadowing to a topic running into this later. Oh, perfect.
1:59
Okay, all right. So we have three real quick housekeeping items. First off, hopefully everything sounds good and looks good. We use Zencastr for recording. Zencastr has always been a great program, but we're trying something new because we actually want to start recording video through Zencastr. It could make things easier. Also, it was a free program. It's no longer a free program. We have to pay for it. So $20 a month, we're sending their way. So thank you to all the Patreon supporters. That is a great use of your money to pay for the program we need to make this show. It could turn into an absolute cluster, though, too. It could. Yeah, we're just going to have to wait and see how this pans out. Yeah, but, hey, there's sound boards here. That's why I played that intro song. Travis didn't know that, so maybe I don't have to put it in afterwards, you know. We're going to see. Will this help Travis's camera? The answer is no, it will not. It will go out. I told you before the podcast. I attempted to fix it I attempted record show I did attempt I can predict let's just move it along mine's going to look great Collins is going to look great he's a freaking beauty but he looks like he's streaming from a potato right now I don't know what's going on I'm guessing though the raw footage or whatever that it captures will be good we're trying this all out so anyways Patreon people thank you Thank you for your support. If you're looking, check us out, Triple Dream. You'll find us. Second line item.

Laura Streeter, a newer competitive player (approximately 2 years competitive experience), made the Classics finals final four

high confidence · Colin notes: 'Laura Streeter from Arkansas... I think when I looked at her profile afterwards, I think she's only been playing for about two years competitively at least. Yeah, she played phenomenal.'

  • Triple Drain Podcast finished 7th place out of 10 in the Twippies awards (podcast category)

    high confidence · Joel announces: 'We actually ended up getting seventh place, seventh out of ten for podcast, which was awesome'

    • Colin MacAlpine @ ~50:00-52:00 — Highlights elite-level competitive play on vintage machines, showcasing technical skill in nudging and ball control

  • “I feel like with these, they actually had time, which was pretty cool... for them to get a break, to ever leave the room, is so rare.”

    Joel @ ~38:00 — Notes how limited-entry format creates competitive balance between tournament participation and venue enjoyment

    • Tom
    person
    Joelperson
    Neil (Tom's son)person
    Monicaperson
    Laura Streeterperson
    Prestonperson
    Ed Van Der Veenperson
    Liz Dronetperson
    Twippies Awardsevent
    Stern Pro Circuitorganization
    IFPA/WPPRorganization
    Zencastrproduct

    competitive_signal: New competitive talent emerging rapidly: Laura Streeter reached finals after only ~2 years competitive experience, indicating strengthening player pipeline and competitive depth

    medium · Colin: 'Laura Streeter... I think when I looked at her profile afterwards, I think she's only been playing for about two years competitively at least. Yeah, she played phenomenal.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Rules design requires balancing appeal across skill levels from novices to elite players (Escher Lefkoff tier) while preventing exploitation and managing complexity through team collaboration

    high · Colin discusses need to balance 'for the novice all the way up to an Escher Lefkoff' and having team members 'pull me back from the cliff of going down like the Kiefer path of having something where there's just way too many just over-complexity stuff'

  • $

    market_signal: Texas Pinball Festival now recognized as premium show competing with Twippies (voted best by community); positioned as top 1-2 pinball events globally

    high · Colin: 'TPF is a world class premiere show... The Twippies gets voted as the best, and for good reason... if it's not the best it's one of the best two'

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament director role requires balancing operational control (finals management, game selection oversight) with competitive participation; Colin chose to prioritize TD duties over playing

    high · Colin: 'I take over and actually the hands-on TD for the Classics finals... There's just not time to do that... I think I tried doing that the very first year... I don't think I had time to play that. So, yeah, never again.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Emerging WPPR rating system changes ('Whopper system') will significantly impact competitive strategy through efficiency percentage metrics, making poor tournament finishes difficult to recover from

    medium · Travis: 'potential whopper system that's going to be out next year, which affects your efficiency percentage... if you finish that low, it's going to torpedo this metric. And it's very hard to dig your way out of it'

    • 3:27
    Tom and I, we've really struggled with the last week sleeping. We have guilt. We feel terrible. There was a fan. There was a guy that came up to us on Sunday. We were in the hallway outside the tournament room. We were talking to Raymond and Tom's son, Neil. We were talking to them, and it was kind of a small hallway, and we were chatting it up about, I don't know, whatever. And there was a guy that came up in a triple-drain hat, and he said hi to Tom and I. You know, he's like, hey, I'm a big fan. Thanks for your content. And we basically said thank you. You know, really, it was a very short interaction that we had with him. And then I felt bad because then there was kind of a weird moment, and we kept talking to Ray, and the guy was like, okay, well, see you later. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean there was a weird moment? Joel just kept talking. We didn't. Like, there was no follow-up. Like, oh, hey, you know, like, what games do you have? What are you into? Like, isn't Travis an idiot? Thank God he's not here. There was nothing. We didn't, like, continue the conversation with him. And I felt bad about it. Oh, you're saying the fans of Triple Drain have found out what Joel is really like. Yeah. I'm a jerk. He's a big celebrity. Oh, yeah. Now everybody knows what happens behind the scenes at Triple Drain now. So I felt the guy started to walk away, and he was pretty much at the end of the hall. And I looked at Tom, and I was like, Tom, we probably should have talked to that guy. And Tom's like, yeah, you're probably right. And then I looked down, and he had already turned the corner. And it just – that stuck with me. Like, I genuinely feel bad about that. I have an excuse. I don't talk, so. Oh, so Tom was consistent. I was not. So it's just me. So whoever that was, I hope you still listen. I hope you're still a fan. And I'm very sorry that we did not give you the time of day you deserve. And next time you see Joel, you can kick him in the balls. Sure. Travis thought that was okay. I can take video of that. Yeah, exactly. HomeAway probably has a picture of Joel in his bedroom right now just poking darts at it. Yeah. I wouldn't blame him one bit. Yeah. His room looks like the guy in, what is it, Waterboy? No, Waterboy. Ace Ventura. Like the Finkel. Yeah, yeah. Laces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyways, sorry to that guy. We do want to say, though, we had a bunch of people come up to us at TPF with nothing but pleasantries. They were super nice. It was awesome getting to meet so many different people and talk to them. Took a few photos. I signed a guy's shirt, which I thought was cool. I mean, it was awesome. It was incredibly cool to know that the three of us are literally sitting in our basements or, you know, Travis has upgraded from a closet, and we just talk about pinball. That's all we do. And the fact that there are people literally around the world that are enjoying this is ridiculous, and it's awesome. So thank you so much for anybody that said hi at TPF. We greatly, greatly appreciate that. Third little thing is Twippies. We actually ended up getting seventh place, seventh out of ten for podcast, which was awesome. So thank you for anybody and everybody that nominated us and voted. Travis wasn't there, so he's playing dumb. He thinks we won, you know, because. I know we were the first ones on your list. Yep. I'm going with that. All that matters. And Tom and I announced an award, which was pretty cool. So Tom was able to scream rush in front of a crowd of people.
    6:46
    So, I mean, he's living out his dreams. That's like my wet dream. Oh, God. Okay. So enough of all that. There's all of our stuff out of the way. Time to dive in here. Colin. Colin McAlpine, a former world champ.
    7:00
    Currently you do, what is it, like code? You don't write the code, but like code and rules suggestion or consulting with P3. I mean, what's your official title? Do you have an official title? What's your official title with P3? I'm a rules designer. Rules designer. That sounds great. And he was. Yes, it's a consulting gig. So, no, it's not my day job. It's just something to do on the side that's a lot of fun. And, yeah, first time doing that. I've, you know, just on the sides contributed to other people's rules and just, you know, they'd bounce ideas off me or we'd just talk about them online or other stuff. And so, yeah, the first time doing that actively for actually designing it from the ground up. And I must say it's really cool. It's also a lot more work than you expect. Anybody can armchair quarterback from their keyboard or from their podcast, you know, on how rules should work. But when you have to get into the nitty-gritty of not just the rules design, but how the rules integrate with choreography, how they integrate with video, how they integrate with graphics, the timing of things, you know, doing all the math of scoring. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It's a lot of work. It's cool. But it has given me a new sense of appreciation for all those other people that have worked on or are currently working on games and doing rules design and doing just game design in general. It's so much more than anybody realizes until you've actually taken the plunge. Sure. And I know we talk about it a lot. I mean, I know at least between the three of us, our skill sets vary drastically. So that's the one thing that I'm realizing the more that I get into pinball, designing a game or designing a rule set that is fun for a novice all the way up to an Escher Lefkoff, you know, like anywhere in between. And how do you balance for that? How do you balance for the guy that's going to find the one thing, exploit it, and just hit the same shot over and over again, versus how do you make it fun with cool, you know, choreography and sound and just fun things to do very close to the start button for Joe Schmo that just walks up and hits the start button. So I have nothing but respect for you guys and taking that on because it looks near impossible, to be honest. I mean, is there – do you have an – so you're right now working on Final Resistance, which was Scott Nese's game. Did you consult on any of the other games? So I'm very hardly involved at all on Final Resistance. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that's Bo and Karen's on that. I had some input into that game at the very, very beginning of it, the very inception of it.
    9:54
    So you're Weird Al then? I was very only at the tail end getting involved with that one. I'm involved with something that I can't talk about. Oh, even better. Yeah. Well, good for you, man. so this is like so this is your baby then or this is like this is all on you is that well it's not all on you it's a team thing yeah so it's really cool as far as collaborating and that actually helps a lot because when you have just like you talked about how you have different skill sets you have amongst team members you have different varying levels of skill and differing levels of just you know what you think makes a good game and so it's really good to have those different perspectives So that way they pull me back from the cliff of going, you know, down like the Kiefer path of having something where there's just way too many, you know, just over-complexity stuff. And so, you know, striking that balance, which, by the way, I really like Kiefer's rules a lot because I like that kind of complexity. I like board games too. but it's cool having a team that we can all work together on it and come up with, like you said, something that can be appealing to the novice and the person that's just stepping up for the first time and to the person that's going to break the game because they're so good at it. Cool. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. That's exciting. I mean, congrats to – it sounds like you have a project that you're leading or you have a big role in. So that's exciting, and I look forward to that. One of the main reasons we did invite you on, though, is you were the main, you were the tournament director, the main TD at the TPF tournament, which was last weekend. So you live in Texas, correct? Correct. I live in Austin, Texas. Yeah. So this is like, you took ownership of this and you ran that tournament well. I know I only popped in a handful of times, but you were killing it. I will say I really enjoy your commentating. I enjoy it a lot because I feel like the more excited you get, the quieter you actually get. And you have these like kind of whisper like, oh man, he hit the lock. It's like, because I get it. You're in the same room as the person playing. So you don't want to be obnoxious or interrupt them, but it's, I loved it. I loved it. So it was cool being in the room, at least during finals and semifinals and listening to you and listening to Jeff. And I don't, I don't know the other guy that was announcing at that time. But the three of you guys did a fantastic job doing all the commentating. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, it's kind of a nice, you know, fun way of spending your time in the tournament after you crash out.
    12:37
    And since I run that tournament, I get to kind of decide if I'm going to do the commentary. It also makes for a great way of actually watching what's going on. So you're trying to, you know, observe and still be, you know, tournament director at the same time, but I, you know, I really enjoy doing, you know, commentary. It's fun to do, and it's fun to, yeah, it's fun to get excited and to, you know, get, you know, emotional about stuff. I mean, I think there's also a place, a time and place for somebody who's, you know, just kind of more deadpan in their delivery, but I tend to get emotional about stuff. I think it's exciting, and I think I try to convey that with my voice, whether that's through pacing or through volume or pitch or whatever. And so I'm very intentional in trying to do that because I think it adds a lot to have somebody who is genuinely excited about what they're watching as opposed to just watching it and talking about it. Well, so maybe this is an interesting question. Travis, you made it very far in the tournament. Did you, when you're playing in that room, whatever, 15 feet away from the people, do you hear them? Do you block that out? I can hear it before. but during no like i during the ball i'm just totally focused on what's on the play field and everything else is just kind of zoned out but before i can hear it but it's not a big deal at all i mean come from a baseball background i'm used to being yelled at no matter what so hearing somebody talking to background it doesn't really matter i mean it makes it more fun to be honest with you because i think even before i think we were on taxi and i could hear jeff teal was behind me because he was talking about us plunging to a certain spot and all that just kind of in jest and I remember turning around and being like, no, I'm not going to do that right now. So that type of interaction cracks me up. I mean, it's pinball. At the end of the day, it's fun. And, I mean, until like the only other time that maybe like I may not acknowledge it at all might be if we happen to be at InDisc and a world championship is on the line or something like that and there's thousands upon thousands of dollars. But other than that, I mean, at the end of the day, it's pinball. We're all friends. You've got to have a good time while doing it. Well, where do you guys want to start? The goal for today's episode is we definitely want to highlight. We haven't really had a ton of tournament talk recently, so we definitely want to highlight, especially with Colin here, we want to talk about the tournament that was at TPF, you know, just overall thoughts, how we thought that went, all that stuff. And then, obviously, at Texas Pinball Festival, there were six brand-new games that were all there, ready to play. And I know the four of us, we all played them, and so we kind of want to give our initial impressions. They're not reviews. initial impressions of those six games. Unfortunately, there was no Bond 60th. That was the other game that I was hoping to play. We'll just have to continue to rely on Tom to tell us how great that is.
    15:25
    Travis, you guys haven't played Bond 60th yet, right? I've stared at the box. I've only watched Tom's stream of it. So, Tom, since the last time we talked, have your feelings changed about Bond 60th at all? No, not at all. Still love it. Good, good, good, good. Okay, so tournament-wise, tournament-wise, I don't know. Maybe we'll start with Colin. I mean, you ran the whole thing. What do you feel? I don't know. Is there anything unique about the TPF or the Texas Pinball Festival tournament? Maybe the format, style, or what is there? Did you feel there was something that went really well? Is there anything you want to change? Yeah, I mean. Overall thoughts. I think, you know, first off, overall, I started, I got involved with running the TPF tournaments because I was a player in them first.
    16:14
    And there were some things that I saw along with other players that could be done better. And so I brought those up to Ed Van Der Veen, and he used that as an opportunity to say, hey, Cullen, you want to be part of the solution? And I was young and naive and said yes. and so yeah we took that show and so the overall vision that I had from what six years ago now or seven years ago was TPF is a world class premiere show and anybody that's been there will say that it is I would argue it's the best show but if it's not the best it's one of the best two. I mean, the Twippies gets voted as the best, and for good reason. So you guys have talked about that, and everybody else has another reason why TPF is so good. And so I wanted to take and create a tournament that would mirror that world-class show and have a world-class tournament that took place at TPF. And it had kind of gone in a direction of being more of a local, regional tournament, and It wasn't run at the level that was attractive to people traveling from really outside of the region specifically to play at the tournament. There's still some great players that were there, but they weren't necessarily always there just for the tournament. They were there for the show. And so we developed a format that the idea behind the original format was to create a tournament that allowed players to both play in the tournament and enjoy the show. And so our original design of it, we just had the one tournament. We didn't have a classics tournament. At that time, there wasn't a women's tournament. It was just the main tournament. And we intentionally designed it as a limited entry. So you can't just pump and dump all day. You pay up front for a certain amount of entries. And once you've used those entries, you're done with your qualifying. You just hope that you made the cut line. And then the idea was, hey, you can then break apart, maybe take a break from doing entries for a while and go enjoy the show and then come back or do them all at once and then go enjoy the show the rest of the time or enjoy the show first and then you get the idea. Sure. Now, it was a victim of our own success that we had people showing up that were really into tournaments. They said, hey, we want more than just one tournament. You know, every other big tournament has an extra classics tournament or a side tournament. And then the women's pinball scene has taken off. And thankfully, we have a great tournament director based on the Bells and Shines Houston, Liz Dronet, that helps to run the women's Texas takedown tournament. And so, you know, we started then adding those other tournaments. And so you can now, if you really wanted to, you could spend pretty much all your time in the tournament rooms or most of it there. But the original intent was always to have a tournament that went along with this world-class show. And so I think we as a team of people that helped to run that have been successful. I think we've succeeded at turning that tournament into a world-class tournament. It's attended now by people coming from across the country, some even from across the world. We now are consistently getting the top players in the world that travel there. We're on the Stern Pro Circuit. And generally the feedback that I get for the tournaments is very positive, even with it being unique. It is not like most other tournaments where you can just keep paying and paying and paying and playing. or having a match play tournament. It's not a match play tournament, although the women's tournament is. And so, yeah, I'm really proud of where we've come and where we were and where it's come to. Dude, that's awesome. That's awesome that you're getting positive feedback. Travis, what was your negative feedback that you wanted to share with Colin?
    20:11
    Classics. That's the one I'm actually most salty about. My God. So I was planning on not playing it at all, and everybody kept coming up to me and being like, well, you signed up for it. Are you going to play? And I was just like, you know, I think I'm going to hold off. And then somebody, I forget who it was, somebody came up to me and said, well, your wife is qualified. Like, Monica's about to have a bye. I was just like, okay, my ego's taken over. I'm going to go over there and get a bye, too. And, yeah, it was like five games later I was, like, totally screwed. Maybe this is a dumb question, but why wouldn't you play? What's the negative in playing? For me personally, it would be just the volatility of it because there's only eight plays, right? Okay. And it's classics. Classics is much more difficult to control than a modern machine. You put me on a modern machine, in eight plays, I'll get a hold of it. I'll figure out how to get four really good scores. When it comes to classics, though, you're at the mercy sometimes of just the fates of the pinball gods. no matter what you do. So to put this in perspective, my first, or maybe not even my first three games, but at one point I remember nine balls in a row, three straight games, only two actually got to a flipper. Like seven were like legitimate house balls. I wish I could say, hey, it was my fault, but I was focusing on my plunges and everything, and I was just like cussing in my head. I was just like, what am I doing right now? And I think, literally, I think I finished, like, 140th or something like that. It was horrible. So, is that a – Everything fell apart. Does that, like – so, okay, so that sucks, right? I'll agree with that. But does that impact your, like, global position? Like, does it hurt you in a negative way? Not yet. It might next year. Just wait. Yeah. So basically, to put this in perspective, if a potential whopper system that's going to be out next year, which affects your efficiency percentage, and we don't need to get into the weeds about that, let's just say you just don't want to F up a tournament like I did with the classics. Because if you finish that low, it's going to torpedo this metric. And it's very hard to dig your way out of it. So you've got to be a little bit more, I guess, intelligent about what you're going to do and how you're going to go about it. And I was severely lacking that Saturday. So, yeah, it was pretty bad. So, yeah. Okay. So classics, Tom, how did classics go for you? Not bad. I didn't make the cut, but I was, I think, three spots off the cut. Nice. I had a really good score on Gorgar. I think I was, like, second on Gorgar.
    22:58
    But my centigrade score bled out. And I was going to save like a couple entries towards the end, and then I decided to play them. And I should have saved one because if I – well, I was playing catch-up, though, too, because I needed a good score on flash. But that's the hard part of it. You know, four of your games count, but you only have eight entries. So you've got to make the most of those opportunities. And Colin, did you play?
    23:33
    Not in Classics, no. Not in Classics, okay. I played in the main in the Wizards tournament. Yeah, but with running it and everything, there's just not time. And also I take over and actually the, you know, hands-on TD for the Classics finals as far as sitting there and, you know, making sure that people are, you know, picking their games and their player order and all that fun stuff. So, yeah, there's just not time to do that. I think I tried doing that the very first year that we added Classics, and I don't – I think I didn't have time to play that. So, yeah, never again. But, yeah, it's tough. That's a – you know, it's – because we designed that Classics tournament to be a – just a simple add-on, it was not intended to be the main draw. And so – and we also kept it as a limited entry. You know, it's just trying to manage the – really it's just a throughput capacity analysis. You know, we only have a certain amount of space, so you can only have a certain amount of pins, and you limit it to a certain amount of people, and you estimate how many games, how many minutes per game, and you just, you know, you run that math and then add some buffer to it. So you deal with the fact there's going to be pins that are going to be down for a certain period of time. And, yeah, there's a – you know, there's part of me now because of the change in the Whopper rules where you can get more value for your tournament when you are adding on the qualifying and the finals. Because that classics tournament at TPF is designed to hit exactly the 100% TGP mark. And, you know, if I were to change the format, I could get more out of it. Like if I were to change it to an unlimited entry, I could get more out of it. And then, I don't know, we'll see. It's something I'm toying with, so maybe I'll talk to Travis offline and see if he agrees with my analysis on whether or not to do it on the bid or not. Anything that helps him qualify, I totally agree with that. Anything.
    25:36
    So at the end of the day, what was it? Who won? Was it Escher? I thought Escher. Did Escher win? Escher won that. So spoiler alert, sorry. Joel threw in it for you. Bye-bye. But, yeah, he won in a very convincing way, at least on the tie break. So I'm spoiling it again. So if you want to watch the VOD, then fast forward. But it was a fascinating Final Four in that Escher was really in a position where he was probably going to take third in going into the last game on flash and even going into the last ball on flash. He was tied with Neil. Yeah. Yeah, they both had two points, I think it was. Yeah. And the other people, it was Preston and – Yeah, and from out of nowhere, Laura Streeter from Arkansas. Right. That has not been playing. I think when I looked at her profile afterwards, I think she's only been playing for about two years competitively at least. Yeah, she played phenomenal. Oh, man, she tore it up. She was great. and she had a chance there in that game of flash, game three of three, that she was playing great, but Escher played really well, and if she could have caught him, then she would have won it outright. Instead, they went to a tie break on Old Chicago, and it was the best competitive game of Old Chicago I've ever seen before in my life.
    27:05
    The second place, Preston put up 230,000 on Old Chicago, and took second. And Escher triple rolled it. Triple roll. He put up $300,000 on Old Chicago in a very convincing fashion. So it's a really good watch, even if you've been listening to this and got it spoiled. It's still worth watching because you can appreciate the skill in both handling both the kick out and going right back in for collecting over and over again Old Chicago. And then both he and Preston had some just amazing techniques in nudging the machine and keeping the ball alive. So really, really good play. Awesome. So I know, what was it, Neal? Neal ended up what? So this is Neal. I feel like we do need to clarify sometimes because we just throw out names like we assume people know them. Escher's a big deal. He's like number one in the world. Neal is Tom's son. There's your clarification. Neal ended up what? Was it third or fourth? Fourth. Nice. So he bought dinner is what it sounds like.
    28:10
    No. I still bought dinner. And how'd Monica do? Monica qualified. Yes, she took 12th. I think she actually got a bye. Hey. So, yeah, she played outstanding. She's been practicing a lot at home on the classics and everything. So I was happy for her. At least somebody in this house can play classics. So that's good. Yeah.
    28:32
    So awesome. Weren't we supposed to get Monica instead of Travis? That's what we talked about, Dan. We're like, if Monica places higher than Travis, we should get her. We should upgrade our Miri. She offered. And I said no. But Tom, theoretically then, we should have got Neil too. Just saying. Yeah. Just saying. I'm retiring. Bye, everybody.
    28:54
    So classics, awesome. So then you had the main tournament. And I know, yeah, there was qualifying for that, which was like a day and a half or whatever. And then that started up on Saturday. And it was cool because I've been to shows with these guys, and normally the two of them are just in the tournament room the whole time. Like, for them to get a break, to ever leave the room, is so rare. And I felt like with these, they actually had time, which was pretty cool. Travis did qualify for finals. Tom, you didn't, right? But Neil did. Where's the audience going, Tom? I played like Doggy Do in the main. Doggy Do. Awesome. For lack of a better word. But it's also, as Travis was mentioning, it's another limited entry. Right. And it's actually, ratio-wise, it's about the same. You have 25 total plays, and you have to put up your best score on 12 different machines. So it's just a matter of you do have a little bit more flexibility then for those games that you can actually get a hold of on your first game to give you some more extra plays on something else. And they're not all classics. But there's a lot of classics. There's a lot of classics. The TPF main was one of the, you know, it was one of the first tournaments, you know, big tournaments that used the classics extensively in their main event. And since then, more and more tournaments have gone that way of using classics and not just moderns. You know, Pinberg obviously was a pioneer in doing that.
    30:22
    But it's cool that we have that. I like having people have to demonstrate their proficiency across all different eras and also have to do that in finals, too, because they're forced to pick up. Each group is forced to play a pin from each one of the three eras. So you can't just have – you're not just going to see somebody pick all three moderns for their finals. Well, I will say I just kind of watched it from afar on Saturday because it was most of Saturday. And then the Twippies were Saturday night. and Tom was like, well, I'll be free, but Travis was still in. So we're like, okay, we'll just announce it ourselves. We held up a shirt in Travis's honor. I mean, it's, you know, he was there-ish.
    31:04
    Got through the twippies and then we're like, oh, it's semifinals. Travis is still in it. So Tom, me, and Neil, we went straight to the viewing room and watched the projector or whatever. So we were watching the stream next door. And I remember seeing some cool taxi play. Taxi is such a fun game to watch. Like, it's so easy to know what people are trying to do that there's no, like, what's his plan? What's he going to do? No, it's like you know what he's going to do, which was pretty neat. Watching Taxi. And then I remember the last game of semifinals, for Travis to make finals, he had to go at it in Godzilla. So Godzilla was in. And it was super cool sitting next to Tom and Neil because Neil, like, started geeking out. He's like, he needs 250,000 points. So all he has to do is he has to do this, this, this, this, and this. in this order and then he's got it and it's like to see his man his brain working and then all of a sudden watching travis it's like boom he's got his 2x boom he's got his multi ball all ready to go he's got his battle lit he gets into that he hits this shot and then i mean there's so many animations that like everybody in that room's like he did it he did it and nobody's you can't even see a score like joe b over here joe schmo i had no idea and then sure enough boom as soon as it actually shows the score it's 280 000 or whatever it was and crowd was wild and it's just that type of complexity and to see the room, I don't know, all your brains were thinking that. That's what he's going to do, and he did it. And so that was really cool to see. Well done, Travis. It got you into the finals.
    32:33
    Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Tom, you were sitting there. You were thinking the same thing. I mean, it was really – that was pretty neat. That was pretty neat to see Godzilla go that way. Well, that's one of the reasons why Godzilla is such a good game. Yeah. is because it's not – I mean, like, for instance, talking about Taxi, Taxi is like a straight execution game. You've just got to execute, and everybody's going to be executing on the same thing. There's a little bit of variation you can try to pull off, but there's really not much. And with Godzilla, because of, you know, Elwin's incredible rules design and scoring design, that you have the opportunity, even stepping up as player four ball three with only, what, two million points, Travis, I think, in that semifinal game? Right around 15. Okay. 14 or 15. It wasn't much. I had to take it down like 218. No, it wasn't much at all. Yeah. But you knew because you know the game and you know how the scoring and how those modes work and you get rewarded by playing and just executing well on any given mode and on any given multiball. And, you know, you can do certain stacks like the one you did of stacking, you know, Titanosaurus with the Godzilla multiball and with some other ally stuff. and yeah, just the points come rolling in. And not just by starting, you still have to do the thing. You still have to execute during the multi-ball. But I love games that allow you to, you know, you never feel out of it. Whereas like sometimes in older games and some classics where, like on Mars Trek, if you're on Mars Trek, you kind of have this cap of every single ball of what score you're going to get. And yes, there actually is the potential where you can collect bonus and rebuild your bonus, but you're generally not going to survive long enough on Mars Trek to do that. And so you kind of have this idea like, man, if I get behind by more than 200,000 on going into ball five, there's very little chance that I'm going to catch. So it's really cool in games like Godzilla where you can step up and you know that, hey, if I do the right things, I can catch. Yeah, and that was just really cool to witness. It was cool to witness the crowd, like, solving the puzzle in their head, this is what he has to do, and then to actually see it executed was very cool. So give me a glimpse of what's actually going on in your heads. Did you figure out what I had to do, Joel? Because you have a Godzilla. Yeah, I do. Are you starting to figure it out a little bit? I did not realize that Titanosaurus was like – I always see everybody go Gigan. Like everybody always goes Gigan for their first thing. But then to see this, it's like, why are they going – I asked Tom. I was like, why are they going Titanosaurus? And it's like, well, if you do it quickly, there's more points possible the quicker you knock it out. So if you do that plus the multiball, and then I think you had the two times with Ronan.
    35:10
    Rodan, whatever, going, and it just like... Yeah, so it's basically if you can get halfway through a mode or a kaiju battle, it'll light one of your allies. And so I knew that by stacking... So when you're thinking about these different modern games, it's kind of like thinking of it in terms of layers, right? So you're trying to get to your first level, then you want to do your second thing, then your third thing. And it's almost like hitting the gas a little bit more, a little bit more, and then when finally everything's together, that's when you really just take off. So this is kind of like that, to where you're holding off on your mode, you're trying to get your multiball juiced up, and then you can bring in your mode, then start your multiball, right? And then from there, it's just getting halfway through that battle. Because once that battle's halfway through, then priority shifts to the scoop, trying to figure out how to get a ball in there as soon as possible. And then on top of that, it's using the right flipper to make sure that you rotate your allies around 2B to 2X. because at that point, an Ataball wouldn't really do me any good because I knew I still had the Spinner left to go, and then I also knew I didn't want Mothra because I needed points at that point. It wasn't like I was trying to chase down 600 million. I was just trying to chase down 220 million. So that's well within the reach of a decent Godzilla multiball and a Titanosaurus, and I knew also that midway through that mode, I would start focusing more. If I couldn't get the Mazer target, which would have been the fourth step to that, I knew I could start spamming the wallop shot because I would reach at some point to where I have a super jackpot lit and I be able to spot a shot at the same time So that was kind of my line of thinking of going after something like that And it kind of, if you see it, it all happens within about five seconds or so. It's so quick. It was really impressive. Do you know what the wallop shot is, Phil? The wallop shot, yes. The wallop, it's like the back door into the building and it spots the shot. We taught him that a couple episodes ago. He's like a Godzilla expert now. Okay. You know, I've interviewed Keith about Godzilla. I'm pretty sure Keith is going to start contacting you for rule set observations. Like, how do I fix this mode, Joel? What do you think I should do? He's going to break his contract with Loser Kid?
    37:17
    Keith, yeah. No, part of me wanted as a joke, I mean, I was joking around with Travis about, like, hey, if you need any help on taxi. Like, I know taxi pretty well. I can teach you some rules. There was one I didn't. I didn't know how to relight your lock. I was like, oh, good to know. And I almost cracked that joke with Carl. And I was like, I don't know. I'm going to leave Carl alone. You know, he's like, hey, Carl, if you need Godzilla help, I got you, man.
    37:42
    No, it was really cool to see. And then finals roll around, and your final three games were once again taxi. So it's like we've already seen a good bit on that. So just seeing strategy unveil on that, Godzilla, and then the last game was Bally. Was that right? No. Yes.
    37:57
    And, yeah, I don't know. Before we get into the games, there's another layer of the onion here as far as tournament play and strategy that Travis utilized. And that is he was – the rules of this one and other tournaments as well, there's constraints on not being able to pick the same pin again. So in this case, you can't pick the same pin two rounds in a row. And Travis being that he was a bus driver, at least he was guaranteed to be a bus driver in round one because I think you were the fourth – qualified fourth, Travis?
    38:27
    Yeah, third or fourth. I think I was right behind Raymond, so I think third. Yeah, so he was driving the bus in his first round, and then depending on who was left in the tournament, he could have been driving the bus in the semifinals, and he did.
    38:39
    But in the semifinals, Travis chose to defer. So he deferred and chose to go fourth in player order and just let somebody else pick. And so he felt confident enough in the games, or he knew who the next seed up was and figured that they were going to pick games that he liked to play. And that left him in a position when it came time for the finals, Travis was the highest seed remaining because Escher got knocked out, Raymond had gotten knocked out, and who was – I forget who the second seed was. But anyway, so Travis was – yeah, it was just those two, then he was fine. So then at that point, Travis now finally picks games during finals. It was the first time that Travis picked games the whole time, if I'm not mistaken. Correct, Travis? I got to pick in the first round, and I think I went with Foo, Taxi, and Volley. Oh, you did pick that. Okay. Yeah, so it's kind of the same way. I ended up, so in finals, I ended up going with Godzilla, Axie, and Volley. And, of course, a lot of people watching are like, well, why would you go Godzilla against Carl and all that? So my line of thinking is that I only want to play games and have fun. And at the same time, it's not saying Foo Fighters isn't fun, but I also want to challenge myself and just get after it and play against the best people against the games that they can play really well. And I know it sounds psychotic because I did the same thing at end disc. A lot of people don't realize that the reason why it crashed Gordon was because it kicked my ass at free play Florida. And I was still like, I was still fuming about that. And so it's almost like I want to prove it to myself that I can beat this game and I can do it against, you know, the best players in the world that are really good at the game. So, you know, maybe it bites me in the ass, maybe it doesn't. There might be an alternate reality here to where I come out on top of Godzilla, but, I mean, at the same time, I'm still confident in playing Godzilla because I have one here at home, and I have it set up basically on death mode with the Zuzohap rubbers, with the outlanes completely gone, tilt tight, everything set on hard. So I definitely am trained up. Multi-ball mechs that don't work. Yeah. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, I mean, I don't mind my picks at all. I was happy to do it. And I knew that if I would have deferred again because Carl was in my group and he's the one I picked in semifinals, well, he probably doesn't pick the games that I necessarily want to play. So at the same time, it's kind of like I was telling Carl, I was like, well, we played these games last round pretty much. I mean, just trading out Bali and Mars Trek, so at least we're ready to go. But I knew it was going to be an uphill battle against Carl on Godzilla, And then I knew Taxi was going to be an uphill battle against Bowen because he had just blown it up earlier in the tournament. So, but it's just one of those things that you get to a certain level, you're playing players that they're going to play great on the pens no matter what. And it just comes down to execution at that time. So, two things I want to kind of, well, one. So, one comment, Taxi. Normally when I see Taxi played, or at least in a tournament, those flippers, the flippers get weak. And so all of a sudden it's like, can you hit the left ramp? Can you actually start multi-ball? And just watching the ball just like, oh, oh, it goes up and down, up and down. This taxi was awesome. I mean, people were drilling that left ramp. And so I think I had heard during your – somebody switched something out. Somebody switched one of the coils or something out and made it more powerful, which was pretty cool. And then they also made the spring on the plunger more powerful. So instead of this wimpy little plunge, it was like rocketing around that funnel two, three times. So it kind of brought in a, I don't know, a little bit of mystery of like, are they going to be able to plunge where they want to plunge on this? So Taxi ended up being a very interesting or entertaining game to watch. So well done on that.
    42:29
    But, yes, we should probably just get into it, Travis. Your game of Godzilla in semifinals was awesome. your game in finals though went in a very different direction and um i don't remember was it both i think it was ball three or ball two i don't remember what ball it happened on uh ball three ball three so you got everything lined up ready to go again you locked your third ball so this was a premium the tower comes down you locked your third ball but what's odd the word lock is subjective. I did not lock my third ball. And it shot it up. So it was on top of the roof. But yet the game didn't realize that. So you were in a weird state. The balls are up there. You're waiting for the multi-ball to start. Typically when the multi-ball starts the balls are let go and a ball save comes on. It didn't know what was going on. So it starts going into ball search. And here's Travis looking like an idiot standing in front of the game trying to figure out what to do. Yeah, you can take it from there. Well, here's the big thing. There's a lot of things about this situation that people don't realize. So, one, I've seen this before. Oh, really? Yeah, I have. It's happened on mine at home, and eventually the software caught up and gave me the lock. I've seen it twice at my house. That's why I sat there for a second. I'm like, okay, it might happen. It might happen. But then as soon as I saw the building start to move when it did its first ball search, I was like, oh, crap. You know, this is because I knew within like seconds, I'm like, okay, here it goes. It could go either way. It's going to be 50-50. It's either going to read it or it's not. And so from there, once I realized it wasn't going to read it, then I was stuck in between, okay, do I stop it from moving or do I just sit here and wait? So I was like totally stuck in between. And if you watch back on the replay, you'll notice that I forget the exact time stamp, but by the third time it starts to do a ball search, I actually put my right flipper up because I decided I was going to stop the ball search and then finally just, like, figure it out from there. But I literally put up my right flipper at the exact same time the final ball search, like, started. So I didn't block it. What would putting up the right flipper do? It would indicate to the software that I have a game or a ball on flipper. is what it would do. So it would stop it from going. Okay. That would be the idea. So, yeah. So that was my plan. And then, of course, when I realized, oh, shit, I missed that too, then I knew it was going to exactly happen. And it was just mass chaos from there. And my mistake was is that I decided to try to trap right when all the balls were coming down instead of, like, flipping away and then waiting to see if I could get under control, like, 100%. So it was just like total mass chaos. Women and children were screaming for the exit.
    45:32
    It was horrible. It was a triple drain. It was actually a quad drain. Where was the fourth ball? So here's what happened. There was a ball that immediately went out to the left out lane. It consumed my Mothra. And I heard the Mothra go off, but I was so preoccupied with the other ball, right, that I did not see the ball launch and come to my flipper. So if you watch the replay, I don't even flip at it because I'm trying to watch the other ball, which hilariously I lose in the glare at the same time. So I don't even know where that ball is because if you watch, I don't even make a shake because I think it's still on top of the sling and about to come back down to my right flipper. I'm just like looking in that area. And then next thing I know, I see it in the outlay and I'm like, oh, crap. Like it just all happened. It all happened so fast. Yeah. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. We were watching it. And I think, Colin, you had even started to stand up when he was waiting. Like, because I think you were about to like something. I don't know. I don't know if you had stood up yet until after it happened or what. But all of a sudden it just everything happens. And everybody in the room, everybody was like, what just happened? Like that just, ball search happened and everything's gone. Everything he had is gone. But now what? Now it's time as a TD to make a ruling, right? Yeah, I didn't see the quad drain. So I was, I'm sitting there watching it. And, you know, we're, you know, we see the, we see Travis shoot the lock. We're like, all right, it's party time. Travis is going to do the thing now. And then we're just, we're sitting there like, we thought that we'd lost the score cam. so we thought the score was frozen because it was frozen on whatever i forget it was titanosaurus you know mode screen and so we were like oh crap because we they've had some issues with obs you know previously in the stream and you guys know this when you stream you know things go wrong and so that was the initial thought and then we realized that oh no because that you we weren't getting the normal light show from the inserts in the play field that you get during the prelude to Godzilla multiball. So like, oh, no, something's not right. And so then we're just waiting and thinking. I had never actually seen it before. So I don't own a Godzilla. I've played it a lot in location and tournaments. I'd never seen this before. So I'm thinking, hey, the software, it's just like taking its sweet time to register. And so I'm thinking, okay, it's going to start the multiball eventually. But then I, same thing, I saw it start doing ball searches. Like, oh, no, that's not good. So by the time it started its second ball surge, I'm taking off my headphones and getting up from the booth. And this is how fast those four balls drain. From me standing up from the booth and walking not 10 feet over to Travis standing at Godzilla, his balls were gone. Gone. Yeah. So I get over there, and I'm going to dump on him because Travis is looking over me with this heart puppy dog look on his face. Please help me. They're gone.
    48:39
    And I'm like, what happened? So I go back over to the booth to ask him, like, what happened? I didn't see anything. I thought that it had killed your flippers. That was my first thought because I didn't think that it was possible to drain that many balls that quickly.
    48:54
    You haven't watched my stream, is what I'm hearing. Yeah. So I go back, and then people confirm. They're like, all of them drained. It was a complete, every ball drained. And after the fact, I went back and watched and saw that actually there's a moth run, so the fourth one drained too. And so, yeah, then going back over there and conferring with one of my fellow TDs, Dick, and then also confirmed it was Zach Sharp who was in the crowd as far as getting another resource from another TD that wasn't involved in the game, somebody that's on the IFBA board. He knows his rules. He knows his rulings. And Zach was like, yeah, I can tell you right now what the ruling is. And it's, sorry, Travis, you're out of luck. You're screwed. I saw Zach stand up. Because I've heard that if TDs are struggling to make a ruling, you can basically call Zach Sharp at any time.
    49:51
    Well, it's usually Josh. It's usually Josh. Oh, Josh. Okay. I thought it was like, that's right, because he's the president. They got it. But it's like somebody will make a ruling from afar, which I think is cool. But, yeah, I see Zach just stand up, and he's like, well, if you need a second opinion, unfortunately, Travis, you're screwed. Like, it was just like. I will put the no in this call. He's like, I'm sorry, but. Thank you, Zach. And I was just sitting there, and I was just like, oh, no. And, yeah, what a, I mean. It was mostly my fault, as in like 100%, because here's where I made the strategic mistake, is that that mech is designed to put balls right down the middle. I mean, Elwin's been on record to say that. Except for the left flipper is what Elwin said. So I knew that that was coming. Yep. And where I made a tactical error outside of just holding up the flipper and preventing all that from happening is making the decision to try to trap up immediately. Like, it didn't even cross my mind to one time to start flipping away because in my head, I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to get a bunch of balls at me. And I have Titanosaurus going. I can't just flip away at this and then hit, like, two or three shots in a multiball that's not a multiball. So it put me in this weird spot that I was like, I can't do that.
    51:10
    And so automatically I legitimately just handcuffed myself trying to get under control in that situation. And in hindsight, maybe the right thing to do, because I think from people I've talked with, they said, yeah, you would have been perfectly within reason to do something like that, would have been just to kind of chimp flip away. For a temporary time being. Right, to know for sure that I can get a ball and a flipper. Because at one point when I did my little micro flip, it briefly crossed my mind that I was just going to put it to the right ramp and then let it come over and then ski jump back over. But in my head, I was just like, well, I can't flip away at this because I know I'm supposed to get trapped up as soon as possible because I have multiple balls out there and it's not a multi-ball. But unfortunately, it's like now that I know, that was probably the wrong decision to make. But again, I'm not advocating for anybody out there. If you're in a multi-ball, you're not supposed to be in a multi-ball. you need to get trapped up. You need to get under control. I think just in that situation, I made a crazy tactical error deciding to try to immediately get trapped up with all those, all those balls coming at the same time. Cause the moment I did that, I was pretty much just done for. So that's how it was. Are you familiar with this rule, Joel? That's what I'm asking about. So you're not allowed to be in a multi-ball.
    52:29
    If you're not in a multi-ball. Okay. So in that, so what the goal, So if you would have just flipped to get the balls up and out of the way and then trapped up one ball, you would what, then let the rest of them drain purposely? Yes. That's the plan? Yeah. And then I don't even know what the ruling would be from there. I guess, Colin, what would have happened to me if I would have got trapped up? Yeah, it's what Tom just mentioned. So you can kind of view this rule on a continuum or a spectrum. On the one end, you're not allowed to play in a physical multiball state when the game state is in a single ball state. And because it never registered Travis' third lock, he is in a single ball game state, but he's in a physical multiball state. So he's not allowed to take advantage of that by continuing to play this multiball. On the other end of the spectrum, Travis can't lose all his balls or else his ball is over. And that's what took place. And so in the middle there is some gray area. And the gray area is really kind of how long you take to get trapped up. Got it. And so that gets down then to player intent. Some people talk about, like, it's not actually in the rules. Some people are like, oh, well, you have 30 seconds. It's actually not in the rules if there's any time limit as far as, oh, you get this free time of 30 seconds of flailing away. You actually don't get that. you are supposed to actively try to trap up. So Travis did the right thing in terms of trying to trap up. It's just that you have this risk side on the other end of the spectrum that if you happen to lose all three balls, you're done. Interesting. So, okay. So, yeah, if you would have just been flailing away for 30 seconds.
    54:18
    Go ahead, Tom. Here's what I don't understand about Godzilla. There is no virtual lock in that game, correct, for the premium? There is not. I don't think there is. There is not. So the question is, why isn't there?
    54:34
    Because they came up with a cool way to handle it where the VUC behind the building, they adjust the building height to a mid position so that it goes back on a habit trail for anybody that locks the ball when there's two in there. It's still not there, though. that but there's still no like optos on top to read which balls are up there so my thing oh that's true that game probably got confused because i remember carl was in um he was working his way towards multi-ball and the game was actually doing what you were saying the ball was in the block It lifted the building up, shot the ball out back to him to his flipper.
    55:19
    But, you know, I think the problem is somewhat software related because, you know, had the game known what was going on, this wouldn't have happened. And a lot of times in tournaments, you turn on virtual locks so that crap doesn't happen. Well, so let's just let's clarify this. So even, let's say in a hype in this alternate universe that it had virtual locks. And so every time you shock that VUC, it's then going to, I guess if it had virtual locks, it would kick the ball through the building as opposed to on top of it. Because you'd never want it to attempt to go on top because then it's going to have to take an extra few seconds and dump it right down the middle on you, which is no fun for anybody. So, yeah, I guess if you had virtual locks, if they were able to tweak that code, you would have every player get a virtual lock. And so everything you locked the ball, it would just kick up by the fuck and go through the building and go down one of the habit trails to your flipper.
    56:21
    Yeah. Well, what I was saying is if, if you were saying the game was still confused then, cause everything was gone, I'm assuming there's some sort of logic to see, Oh, I have five balls in the trough or I have whatever in the trough. So two balls or, you know, there's six balls. So if there's only three in the, or three in the trough, there's two have to be somewhere besides the ball. That's just ejected out. Like, there's got to be some logic there. I don't know. Maybe not. So, if Travis would have trapped up and he had his ball, would you at that point be able to give him balls back? No. That is what it is, and you're down to one ball. Well, yeah, he'd be down to one ball, but the lock was still lit. Oh, so he could have locked it again. It would have still been there. Yeah. And then, okay. Yeah, but when you try to trap up. The balls would have to kick back out. Yeah, yeah. From the ball trough. Yeah. Yeah, so the good news about Stern games is that when stuff like that happens and the player traps up, and let's say you trap up and you end up with two balls still on flipper, whether it's one flipper or two flippers, it doesn't matter. If you have two, then the TD comes over, opens it up, takes one of the balls, and puts it in the drain. And thankfully, Stern logic is built in so that way when you drain those extra physical balls on the play field, it doesn't kill your ball. It doesn't kill your game, yeah. It doesn't kill you, yeah. Just like how Travis and Cameron just died. software glitch yeah yeah yeah yeah so running yeah that's like now all that happened so quick and to know now what actually is going on is really cool what were you saying tom so let's say you know the ball or the game did you know three ball searches and call it or travis had uh you know called you over what would be the call then would it be to take the ball off of one of the balls out of that lock mechanism, put it on his flipper and let him shoot the ball back in there to lock his third lock then?
    58:19
    Yeah, I would have taken one off a building, which thankfully it's very easy to do that with the glass off because there's some other physical ball lock mechs out there in different games where those are really difficult to get out of the ball lock. Like Groove's Mouth? Yeah.
    58:35
    So, yeah, I would have taken the uppermost one that had just been kicked up there, put it on one of his flippers, and then Travis would have promptly nailed it or bricked and drained because that happens when you get a tech pass. A tech pass is when you're trapped up and waiting for the TD to do something and you get the ball back. You can usually count to five and your ball drains. So as soon as you saw it start to do the ball search, Travis, you could have just held up the right flipper and at that point waved Colin over and said, do something. Is that correct? I don't think at that time while I was doing his ball search I couldn't really do anything because I knew that one of the TDs was just off to my side. His name's Dick Curtis. So I knew he was there. Yeah, but you could have asked – you can always ask for a ruling.
    59:21
    Like even during a ball search? Sure. You could have like – I mean, because you take the risk of if that ball search does empty the three balls while you're turning your head and asking for a ruling, if those three balls drain, it's on you. Right, exactly. And so that was part of it, too, is that I knew that there was a TD right there, but I also knew I was not going to take my eyes or my hands off whatever was going on. Because obviously the TD wouldn't be there. Everybody knew something was going on. but from there it was just kind of like my focus was on the game waiting if a TD comes over and says hey do this I'll do it but it didn't even cross my mind at that point to even say like hey are you going to do anything here because I just figured I'm focusing on the game I'm just going to do what's necessary to get under control at that point that was kind of my line of thinking And then, you know, it's just the bad part is about it is just not flipping away. I just, I had it in my mind because I knew if I flipped away, honestly, I probably get two, three, maybe even to the fourth shot of titanosaurs because I already grazed the first one in there. And so it was basically, it was almost all but a guarantee I would get two or three done while in a multi-ball that's not a multi-ball. And so, obviously, that's not very fair. But then at the same time, you know, I back myself into a corner to where if I lose all the balls, then you're screwed either way. Yeah. So, I mean, there's several different realities that this could have gone. And probably somewhere out in the multiverse it went completely different. I whipped Carl's ass somewhere out there. So, yeah. I do think I've seen a clip of Tom actually demonstrating what you should have done. I think there's a clip of Tom with both hands on the game screaming help during, I forget if it was like Star Trek or something. He's like, help, help. I don't remember what it was. Thanks for reminding me of that. So apparently that's what you should have done, Travis. Yeah. And that still didn't help. Just yell out.
    61:26
    Well, so that was game two, right? That was game one. Okay. And that's literally when I realized I was screwed and I've lost another Stern Pro Circuit. But literally right after that. I remember Taxi was like, he'd have to win that. And I think you – I forget what you got. But they were good games at Taxi. And then I just remember by the time we got to Volley, you were the first player in Volley. And you put up a killer score. Like, you were like, holy cow. He's, like, crushing – what? Tom's camera just went out. I just wanted to make Travis feel better. Oh, okay. I was like, what is going on? I mean, don't – like, I knew I was going to have to put up monster scores all finals long. But I knew after the Godzilla game that I was so SOL. The only chance I had to win is if, one, if Donovan decided just to go downstairs and drink beer with everybody down there and just quit playing in the tournament. Two, if Bowen did a tutorial somewhere else in the building and just dropped out. And if Carl found out that he had to, like, go fix something for Pink Lash. That was literally the only way that I had any chance to win at that point. So that was just a long-term ride. The taxi game was good, but then I remember going into game three, volley, that you just went up there and crushed it. Like, you put up a killer score, and then I think. 149,000. Yeah. Donovan got really close to you, but I don't think he beat you. Oh, no. He beat you just by a tiny bit. He beat me. That's why I took fourth. Yeah.
    62:54
    150,000. Yeah. So it was like, wow. Okay, those were two killer games. And he only, and Joel, he only had like 2,500 after two balls, too. Yeah. He had to score like 50,000 points on his ball five, which was just insane. Which was awesome. And then Bowen had like, he was at like 50,000 or 49,000. So I remember when Carl went up there, there was a point where it's like, if Carl places last, then I think there would have been a three-way tie, like 6-6-6, three-way tie. That could have been interesting. But Carl's Carl. Carl went up there, and I think he did it on his ball two or something. Just like, yeah. He didn't get to his final ball. He just went up and just blew it up and boom, Carl won. Yeah, he got the volley party started on ball two and then cashed it in on ball three. He got the complete reset. I think he had all three of the banks lit. And then when you have that, the 5,000 just come raining down. It's a crazy feeling. Yeah, it was just like, geez, Carl. It was the most ridiculous volley game that I've ever been a part of. So his final score was 154,000 because he walked off on ball three. I know. So 150,000 to 149,000, and Bowen didn't have a good game at 49. And it's a five-ball game, right? Correct. Yeah, it was awesome.
    64:10
    But I want to say, yeah, that was awesome on volley, you know, and the malfunction notwithstanding. I just want to highlight that this finals, if you haven't watched it, go back and watch it because the level of play across all three games, I mean, so in game one, Donovan didn't have a good game on Godzilla. Game three, Bowen didn't have a good game at volley. But even with Travis's malfunction, you know, he had 314 million points at that point on a tough-playing Godzilla. That thing was not playing easy. Yeah. And then Bowen had 536 million, and Carl had, you know, 598 million that he finished on. He had to catch Bowen on his ball three. So just ridiculous to get in. And then taxi, you know, Travis took fourth with $2.7 million on a tough-playing taxi with a max jackpot of $1.5 million. Then you had $4.6 million, $4.7 million, and $8.3 million. That's stupidly competitive. Yeah, yeah. It was a ridiculously very good, very fun-to-watch finals. Yeah, and this is all happening at 1.30 in the morning. Like, that's what was interesting. Tom and Neil are going to bed. I think you guys finished watching. I was literally falling asleep while Bowen was playing taxi. I mean, he was playing it awesome. Yeah. But, like, it was like multi-ball, multi-ball.
    65:37
    It was awesome. It was 1.30 in the morning. Yeah, exactly. And I was watching in the other room, and then I ended up in the finals room. It was really cool to see, just to be there. So I enjoyed it. I know, Travis, fourth was not what you wanted, but still. I mean, top four, pretty impressive. Ten balls still fun. It was the most fun fourth place I've ever had. Yeah. So it was really cool.
    65:58
    What about that trophy behind you, Travis? Oh, this thing? Yeah. That's for the TPL, the Texas Pinball League. Yeah. Which is no longer a league. It's just a tournament. But we keep the name just for posterity. I'm going to drape it in Oklahoma State flags and all that before I bring it back. It is approaching obnoxiously big. Like, it is – that is a big – Everything's bigger than in Texas, Joel. I know that. Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it. Yeah, that is the pin bot cup that Travis won at the play tournament.
    66:34
    Yeah, and if you didn't notice, somebody commented on our last video that you can light that. It turns out. That was Joe saying that. But remember when I opened it up, we were like, oh, it's broke because the pitch hasn't light up? Yeah. Which makes it funny. Well, I mean, that's a solid hour of tournament talk right there. I mean, if there's any tournament player listeners that have been itching for some tournament talk, I think we gave it to you. I think we gave it to you this episode. Is there anything left? The big question is, Joel, are you playing next year, at least in classics? Well, this was cool. I will say, like I said earlier, the other shows that I've been to with you guys, you guys are in the tournament room the whole time. And to me, it's like, I want to be at the show. I want to see the show. So where's the balance? Where's the balance to be playing in the tournament and also getting to experience the show? And what I will say is it looks like this is the show to do that. There is a, with the limited entries, you're not grinding away all day, and you're not feeling guilty for not grinding away all day. You just, you put in your games. They are what they are. If you qualify, you qualify. So it's like, okay, I respect that. That's right up my alley.
    67:46
    So, yes, I think next year, depending on travel, if I travel in early enough, or even, no, Even if I got in like I'd normally do Friday afternoon, I can still knock out classics or something. You could do it all Saturday night, just like I did. Let your ego take over. Just machine gun through them. And place 140. Yeah, okay. There you go. All right. Well, awesome. Awesome. So, well done, Travis. Way to perform. Tom, way to support. And Colin, way to run. Way to run. I'm always there for you, Travis. And Neil. And F and Beauty, Tom. Yeah, Nacho. That's fine. Okay, so there was way more than just the tournament at Texas Pinball Festival. Way more. There was. There were a lot of people. And there were a lot of games. So there were. Which game do you want to start with? There were six new titles that were out there. And to be honest, it was almost like you had to be strategic. Like, where do you want to queue up? Where are you going to wait?
    68:45
    Not Pulp Fiction. Well, sure. We'll start with Pulp Fiction. Why not? I just said not Pulp Fiction. Why was it not Star Wars? Pulp Fiction. Why not Star Wars Final Resistance? There's actually almost seven, if you really consider, like, the Queen game. It had never really been in a show in volume. Maybe even eight, if you count Ninja Apocalypse. Oh, yeah. Ninja Apocalypse was there. Ray and I actually played that, and Joel played that with us. I did. Real short story about that. So this is Turner Pinball. These are the guys that bought all the Deep Root stuff. They're making their own game. I will say it is very – it's very much a homebrew. Like, it's a whitewood at this point. There's very, very little in the game. But what I thought was interesting was Ray played first, and Ray, he's like a kid in the candy store. He's like, oh, what's that shot? I want to hit this. I want to do that. And he's, like, determined, and he's just exploring his way around the play field. And there was a mode, so it's like, oh, that's lit green. Let's see what happens. Well, nothing happens, but he's still just hitting the shots. And at the end of his game, his third ball, I see one of the kids. They were very young. They were very young, everybody there. He, like, slowly pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, and he takes a picture of the score and then put his phone back in his pocket. And the way he did it, I was like, are they recording every score? Just, like, is this a score balancing thing? Is this or that? I don't know. So then Travis goes up and starts to play. Well, that guy pulls out his phone and shows the main guy, the main Turner pinball guy, the score. And the guy's eyes light up. He's like, who did this? And he pointed to Ray, and the guy turns and goes, that's the highest score we've ever seen on this game. The highest score we've ever seen on this game is like 740,000. And Ray put up like 2.5 million.
    70:25
    In one game. Yeah. Oh, it gets funnier. It gets funnier. So Ray's like, oh, yeah. I mean, you know, like, that's cool what you're doing here. And they're having a conversation. Well, Travis plays a ball. And then I played a ball. And then Travis played a ball. And we ended up at like 1.something million. Yeah, like 1.8, 1.9, something like that. So the guy's like looking at us and just like, what is happening? kind of like what is going on like shoulders out and we've said some pleasantries you know like hey keep going keep doing what you're doing we know getting into pinballs hard like you know hey you got some unique stuff here and and whatever and ray actually was like i like this shot and he had talked to them more well we start to walk off and i stop and i walk back to him and i was like hey just a heads up like travis is a top 25 player and Ray is currently number three in the world. And they're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And I was like, and Ray's the main, like, one of the lead coders for Stern Pinball. He's doing Foo Fighters. And they're like, wait, what? They had no idea. They had no idea who Raymond was, and he just blew up their game. And so I don't know. I thought that was kind of cool for, I don't know. I think they were excited, so good on them.
    71:39
    The animations look cool. There's very little in the game. I mean, this is very, very early. Are they trying to use the pin bar that they purchased? No. I did hear, I think Ray was the one. Somebody said. He asked that. Ray was like, where's the pin bar? It's like, geez. No, it wasn't. They did have a cool sequence, though, to where it would go.
    72:00
    There's like two scoops, right? It was the only time I enjoyed scoops in the game. To where one was at the side. They were both at the sides. Right. Well, there was one on the right side, one on the left side. and then somehow, I forgot how it happened, but there would be a ball that would end up, I think, in the right side. Yeah, if you shoot the right one, it would shoot into the left. To the left, yeah. And then the shooter across the plate. It was weird. But it was unique. They had a ramp. I mean, they fabricated everything in that thing. So it was like one of the ramps you couldn't hit. I have a cool idea, though, that you could do, that if there was a magnet, kind of like World Cup soccer or something like that, by a flipper where you could stop it, get a ball trapped up, and then there's a timer that goes down. and imagine like timing your shot to hit a ball that's flying across. Flying across. If you hit it, it's like Dracula missed. You get a multi-ball out of it. Or shooting it back and forth. Yeah, they have such a great opportunity there, but I don't know if they'll do it. It's like a ninja flying through, you know, the sky. Sure, maybe. It's the same with a scene. There you go. Yeah, we played that. You did mention Queen. I played Queen with Tom and Neil, and we'll just keep it real short. We had very little fun. It was, I don't know. Joel beat me so that he sucks. I did. Yep, I beat him in that game. I actually beat Tom in four games. I was drunk.
    73:22
    Queen I don know I mean it a pretty looking game but game but just I it was weird Did we still have the bugs It was weird There was a bunch of expo when I played We couldn't hear most of the, like, it just seemed, maybe, maybe it needed a reboot. I don't know, but it was odd. And the, all the scoring was in bonus. Like, Neil doubled his score in bonus. I mean, it was, it was odd. I met Marty over with Haggis and played Fathom. That was the first time I played it. It played beautifully. That game's gorgeous. It looked great. It flipped great.
    73:53
    It was awesome. Nothing but positive things to say about that. How did the flippers feel on this brand-new Fathom versus, like, your traditional Bally old-school Fathom has a certain flipper feel to it? Do you know what I'm talking about? It didn't feel like a certain flipper. It definitely felt like an older game, but it didn't feel like a beat-up game. It felt like a HEP restored, pristine, perfect, brand-new out-of-the-box. But, yes, it felt old. What is interesting, though, is they had the new code going, so it was weird having to look down in the apron for the LCD screen. Like, that's unique. But it would definitely be something you could get used to. And I enjoyed it. I only had time to play one game on it, but I was really impressed. Like, beautiful, beautiful game.
    74:39
    But, okay, so the big six, the big six that we played. We'll start with Pulp Fiction. I'm going to let Tom talk first because I know Tom is buying one.
    74:49
    Tom, are you excited about your purchase? What were your thoughts? I'm very excited. I thought the game was spectacular.
    74:58
    The bad thing was in the hall you couldn't really hear a lot of stuff, and that's just with everything going on. The hall's packed. Everybody's talking, yada, yada, yada. But the shots on the game were great. I like how they, you know, are taking the kind of the early solid state layout and making it a modern. Yeah. And, you know, the multi balls and everything. I actually saw a lot of the game. I put up about, I think I played it twice. I put up about a million points each time. And it was just fun to shoot. I really enjoyed it. So, Tom, one thing I want to ask your opinion on, because you're one of the few people on this earth that can give this opinion. So having played Pulp Fiction and having played Bond 60th, compare and contrast. Okay. So Pulp Fiction seems a little – the rules seem a little more fleshed out and deeper than it does on Bond. Okay.
    76:12
    And, I mean, that's just my opinion, of course. But they're both hard games. They're both – there's so many differences to them. But this feels more like the Bond 60th feels more of a unique game where Pulp Fiction, you know, there's little bits and pieces of Mark Ritchie's games in it. You know, you got the drop targets and the hole in the middle. It feels like Indiana Jones. And then you got the saucer up top that collects all the characters, and that feels a little bit like Taxi.
    77:03
    They both have the inline drops, which I absolutely love. I love the early solid states that have inline drops. But it's cool how he did the inline drops and then it goes into a ball lock.
    77:18
    But, yeah, I love it. Is there more covering in Pulp Fiction than James Bond? Yeah, yeah, sure there is. I literally couldn't hear a lot of what was going on. That's the unfortunate thing I would say about all the games we're going to talk about tonight. Like, we really don't have a good feel of the audio. Like, it's just so loud. It's so loud. Or if they had, like, GTF was they had that thing so cranked up the audio was, like, painful. You could hear the GTF audio. I was about to say. I couldn't hear the speech in GTF, but I could hear everything else. And I don't know. So Pulp Fiction, though, I will reiterate everything Tom said. That game looks gorgeous. I'm super impressed. Like, I'm borrowing a Cactus Canyon right now. I'm so impressed with the build quality of that game, and you could feel that on Pulp Fiction as well. They had four of them there. They were played nonstop, and I don't think I ever saw them take the glass off. I mean, that game was – which makes it – there's no mech in there. There's no unique mech that's like – it's not like a building going up and down or anything. It's just – everything that's in there is a reliable, consistent mech. I know Tom has opinions on what he qualifies as mechs or not, but, I mean, reliable drop targets, reliable flippers. I mean, the game was built like a tank. It looked gorgeous, and it just, I mean, it was awesome. It was the surprise for me. I thought it would be good, but I was really impressed with it. Even the light shows were, like, really cool.
    78:55
    I talked to multiple people that were, like, kicking themselves. Like, why did I not get on the LE? Like, why did I not do that?
    79:05
    So, I don't know. Travis is. Because you have young kids and you can't have. I mean, I'm not. Yeah, it's not going to fit in mine. But it's just, I was super impressed with the game. Colin, did you play it? Did you have a chance to play it? I did not have a chance to play Pulp Fiction. I, you know, I really didn't get down to the floor to do anything other than Sunday after I had slept in a little bit after being up late for the tournament. So I played other games that I walked around the hall, but unfortunately, Pulp Fiction was at the tail end by the time I got over there, and there was a pretty deep line still. So I watched a lot of people play it, and I was impressed with what I saw, but I did not get a chance to play that one. I do find it funny that you said it was built like a tank, though. Oh, good point. I need a new motto because, yeah, built like a tank means something totally different in pinball. I will say there's no LCD screen. And then on top of that, you couldn't hear the audio. But yet I was impressed that just through the alphanumeric display and the lights changing, it still actually communicated rather well what you need to do. So for a simple game, there actually looks to be some complexity there in modes and rules. And yet it did a really good job. Like I was just overall very impressed. Travis, you played it. Do you have any thoughts to add?
    80:27
    I have not played it. Oh, Travis. Well, I didn't want to stay in the line. The line was so long because they only had four pins there. For those that weren't at TPF, they had four. So it was guaranteed to have long lines. And I talked to a lot of people that played it, and they said that they waited in line for 40 minutes. I heard one person say for over an hour. And I just wasn't willing to wait that long. But that being said, I watched the game off to the side, and it looked fun. And the vast majority of people that played it all came away impressed. I probably, I could count on one hand how many people that I heard from that played it that didn't like it. And that's like after 30, 40 people. So, I mean, the game's overwhelmingly, people are enjoying it.
    81:11
    Is it counting on one hand, like that's typically what you do? That's kind of where you max out? Is that a normal?
    81:21
    Yes. Okay, just checking. Okay, so Pulp Fiction, I don't know. We can wrap it up. I would just say A+. I was just super stunned with how it's impressive. The sad thing is it's going to be a long time before we see those or customers see them. I mean, they're talking, what, Q3, Q4 before they start making them. The end of Q3. Yeah. I think MGC coming up this weekend is going to probably have a few, and I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do with these four that they have built going around. I think it was Josh Sharp has one in his basement. So try to get invited into there. I don't know. I don't know who's going to be able to play it, but it was awesome. Power 100. It was awesome. I was about to say, Power 100. It was awesome. And if you are in on one, you made a good choice. You made a good choice.
    82:08
    Yeah. Speaking of long lines, the other long line I stood in was Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo had a constant long line. They had, like, eight games there. I mean, they had a bunch. They had a bunch of games, but at least what I was seeing and what I experienced was it's just a long-playing game. It's just a long-playing game. I will tell you, by the time I finally got up to it, the game is gorgeous. The game is beautiful. If you're a Scooby-Doo fan, it's all the Scooby-Doo you'd want. It looks amazing. The light show's great. The sculpts, the presentation of the game is great. The animations are really good. The audio, I could hear it a little bit. The audio sounds good. but I will say I definitely, you know, shots wise, it's a lot of horseshoes. It's a lot of horseshoes where you lose the ball. I mean, you'd learn, you'd learn where it goes. And once you get to that upper play field, you can, you can spend some time up there. You can definitely spend some time up there. So I don't know. You can spend a lot of time up there. Yeah. I don't know exactly. You could spend the whole time up there. And the reality is if you drain off the upper play field, it just feeds directly to a flipper, and you can just hit right back up to it. I mean, it is a super safe.
    83:27
    I don't know. My main takeaway was there were two parts to it. One, the game crashed on me, ball two.
    83:36
    So I unfortunately had to walk away on my second ball. Did you put your hand up and ask for a CD? No. I tried to trap up and everything went away, you know, that's what, no.
    83:49
    And it just, I don't know. I, it was like, I felt like I had experienced the game in a ball and a half and then the ball and then the game crashed and that was it. There are enough of it. I will say as a homeowner, if you are a big Scooby-Doo fan, you're kind of a novice player, intermediate player, you'll probably love it. You'll probably love it if that's your thing. But if you're really looking for like kinetic satisfaction and a super unique layout that like, ooh, that shot's I want to feel that shot again or whatnot. I didn't have that. When I woke up in the morning at TPF, there were two games that in my mind, I want to go play that again because I want to experience those shots. Unfortunately, Scooby wasn't one of them. Did any of you guys have a chance? Tom, you played it before. Travis, did any of you play it while you were there? Travis is shaking his head. Well, I played it before I got to TPF. I got to play it on location. and my first game, the game froze up. Okay. That you're talking about. And then it came back to, so that was, I have no idea what happened there. But, yeah, it's just pretty much what you mentioned, just a lot of repeatable shots, long ball times, and this is even with the adjustments of trying to make the game play as difficult as possible. And I think a lot of it is just based off the design alone. There's not really anything on there that's necessarily a dangerous shot, So that's going to make it awfully hard to, I guess, code the game to guide the player to make dangerous decisions. Because as of right now, it just doesn't seem like that that's there. And so, I mean, for what it is, the theme's great. I think people will gravitate to the theme. And I think if you are anywhere from a casual to an average player, it's probably going to be the pin for you. But if you play a lot of tournaments and you pride yourself on very skillful play, you know, you might just play this a handful of times. And then from there, you might be good because then it just becomes repeating the same things over and over again until your hands fall off. And that's sometimes, I don't know, some games that can be fun to do that if you're just racking up a massive score. Like we've all been there before where you're trying to cash something in. Yeah, maybe on GNR or whatever. You know what I mean? You just try to do something massive. But I don't know. With the way Scooby-Doo is running, with the song that kept playing over and over again, with the, what was it, like the Captain Custer multiball? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure the game has some elements of fun to it. I do like the theme to it, and I do like a couple of the shots that are on there. Sure. So, but, I mean, in terms of owning it, if it's, you know, out in location, I see it, I might drop coins in there. play every now and again. I won't take a zero on purpose in a tournament. So that's good. Well, yeah. So, I mean, I, I just think there were definitely people that, you know, loved it. Like there are definitely people that played that and those, all the games they bought were sold before the show even opened. So there will be plenty of Scooby-Doo owners that will love that game and preach, you know, singing about it and singing its praises forever. And that's fine. That's fine. It's just, that's what's cool about pinball is, you know, different, different, There's plenty of different pins out there that you can enjoy. A good transition for, like, Scooby, if it's a long-playing game, the most brutal game that I played was actually the Final Resistance, the P3 game. And there are some people saying this is TNA 2.0. I don't agree with that. It isn't the same world-ish. Like, it's cyberpunk. Obviously, it's Scott Denise music. The music's very similar. The color palette's very similar. but it's not like he just took TNA and added stuff. Like that's not it at all. Yeah, the gameplay is totally different. Absolutely. And what I will say is one thing that Scott is known for is brutal, like a brutal fast game, and the scoop on TNA, that ball goes in and it's out so fast and comes back at you. Like the scoop is out just like Travis's camera. It's picking a man up. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.
    87:50
    Oh, that's kind. Thank you, Sean. Yeah. Solidarity. Don't, don't. You're better than that, Tom. Oh, sorry. There we go. So the scoop, of course, on this is brutal. It goes in and it comes back. And I will say, in this game, there's an alien ship in the upper right, and you can lock three balls, and the whole thing is it will shoot those balls back at you. Everybody said, I even talked to Scott on one of the Flippin' Out streams. Everybody said, Scott even was like, just heads up, it shoots those balls fast. So in my mind, I was like, okay, these are going to come out fast. It came out so much faster than I thought they would come out. Those balls fly back at you. You will laugh your ass off at this. So the first time I got into that multi-ball, I was expecting it to be fast, but not that fast. And somehow the pinball gods were just laughing because all three balls got to my flippers, like instantaneously to a trap. And I just stood there just laughing like a maniac. I'm like, yeah, of course. Now it works. So that was after the Godzilla. That was after, yeah. This was on Sunday. So, yeah, but those balls come out fast. So fast. It's crazy. And then on top of that, the right orbit, he has it set up where there are certain times or certain modes that the right orbit actually takes your ball and then spits it back at you. So there are multiple shots. Like a Yag-Op ticker on Fab 14, yep. Exactly. And there's like a barrier in front of the ship that's just rubber. So that screwed me because I forgot I had completed a ship, and then the thing came back down. So now two shots that used to be a ramp and a lock are no longer a ramp and a lock. It's a wall of rubber. So you hit that expecting the ball to do something, and boom, that ball is coming right back at you.
    89:38
    What's cool about that wall of rubber is you probably didn't have a chance to notice, and I don't know if – I think it's fully coded, but maybe partially coded in the game, but that wall of rubber also has switches in it. Oh, so it detects it. So it detects when you hit it. And also not just detect it, but there's two of them, so it'll even detect on which side you hit it on. Nice. I will say, I mean, one of the things Scott, from a design standpoint, he took this idea of he wanted this to be a P3, like use the P3 stuff, as in all the IR sensing and the display changing and the animations, but yet he wanted this to really feel like a pinball machine. So the back box, the only thing that's moving are the scores.
    90:21
    And in the lower play field, there's actually, like, arrows that would be like an insert. And I will say it definitely felt like this game really does bridge the gap between a standard pinball machine and then, like, a P3 game with all the bells and whistles and all in on animations and graphics. And it just felt more familiar. Like, it felt more like, okay, this is a game. Let's figure this out. And I had a blast. I had a blast on that game. Colin, you've probably, I'm assuming, put the most time on that game compared to us. Yeah, I've probably put more time on it than most other. I mean, there's certain people within Multimorphic that have put more time on it. But I did have the chance the weekend or maybe two or three weekends prior to TPF as part of what I was doing for the team there was I went up and I just play tested it for a couple hours. Nice. So, yeah, I've had a chance to – I did play one game there with my son just because I wanted to play it there and also show my son the game and show him how cool it was. But I'm curious to know from your guys' perspective, you know, what – so, yeah, the shield, I will – I'm glad to hear that it killed somebody besides me because when I was playtesting that and recording it, my voiceover was sent to the rest of the team and I was cussing out Scott, you know, because that shield killed me so many times. You know, the cannon, I mean, the ship cannon, you know, would also kill me sometimes, but I think I got killed more by the shield than by the ship cannon. And part of it, I'm a taller individual, so my perspective of that, like, I think kind of – Well, that's not saying much compared to me. Well, I could not really see the wall very clearly, and I actually mentioned it to Scott, and he said there's, like, three rubbers, and I think they're planning on alternating, like, a black, yellow, black or something. Like, they're going to try potentially to make that shield more visible because it's like, yeah, it's almost like a shadowed area under the ship. So whether or not it's a wall of black rubber or just a shadowed area under the ship, at least from my angle, I couldn't really tell. So it's either you have to pay attention on what's going on or they'd have to do something with lights or animations.
    92:33
    But it burned me. It definitely burned me on what I thought was a safe shot. And boom, that ball's coming right back. I love your logic here, Joel. Oh, that I have to pay attention? You have to pay attention. Yeah, I know. I want it to hold my hand, okay? You know? I'm okay if the— That's why we got first place right there, guys. I'm glad if I get screwed by the Jag off target or the scoop just blowing the ball back at me, but, you know, hitting a rubber and then not realizing I just hit a rubber. How do you like the left ramp? I found the left ramp to actually be a very satisfying shot in my game. I really liked how it shot. Every, I mean, we played, I know we played more than just that. We played Weird Al. Tom and Neil and I played Drained. That was an interesting module to play. And just to be honest, spending more time on the system, like, you can absolutely control those flippers. Like, the flippers, you know, I felt like the flippers on Queen felt more, like, more different. Or the flippers on the Turner Pinball game. I felt like those felt more different than the P3 flippers. Like, I get it, the way the linkages and everything work. You can do some weird, the P3 pass and whatnot. Like, there's some stuff you can do with it that you obviously can't do with a standard game. But I felt like you can adapt to that really quickly, and I just felt like the flipper control is there.
    93:53
    So I just, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the system every time I play it. And it's really impressive how different the game feels. Like, that game feels so different than Weird Al. Yes, agreed.
    94:04
    So I don't know. I had a lot of fun on it, but there was a long line. All I could really hear was the bass, and boy, could you hear the bass.
    94:13
    And big old thumbs up from me. I'm looking forward to playing that more. And I'll tell you, the P3 system is just getting more and more, like, it's just getting more and more impressive. Yeah, I think that's what we're, I think what people, we're also seeing, you know, at Multimorphic, and we're seeing as well from the feedback from the community, both from comments as well as from people's wallets, is people are now, they're getting it. Yeah. Like they're getting the value of the concept because now that you have this critical mass of enough high-quality titles that have come out for it now, that appeal now, and now with Final Resistance appealing maybe even to an even broader audience than what some of the other titles had appealed to. And so the value of the concept is there. You realize that, oh, yeah, I can spend this $11,000 or whatever for the system plus one module, but now there's other modules I'm interested in more than just one module. Oh, yeah. I'm interested in two or three, and then we got more in the pipeline. So then those modules only being like roughly $3,500 or whatever, it's like, oh, and now if you're running out of space in your home. So I think it's a cool concept. I have two questions for you guys that played Final Resistance. So did Tom and Travis, you played it as well? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did you actually use the power-ups? I didn't understand, like, the weapons and things like that. Okay. I was just going for multi-ball the whole time because I just wanted to see that neck go off over and over again. I used them. Did you understand that one of those power-ups would help you get to the multi-ball? The hack? No. The hack. Yes. Joel knew this. I played it the one times. Joel knew a part of it before we did, Tom. Because I paid attention. No, I watched, I mean, I love Scott Diniz. What a genuinely amazing, nice guy. No, I watched the Buffalo stream. I watched the Buffalo stream when they did the reveal, and they talked about that. Oh, okay. The rollovers you can solve back. Got it. You get it on the right. I didn't make note cards like you do with your games, you know. I just remembered it. The whole noggin, huh? So I remembered, I mean, there's multiple buttons. If Joel doesn't play in tournaments, we'd all be screwed. Just watch out. He's a rain man all the time, apparently. I mean, I know some of the taxi rules. I know some Godzilla rules, you know. Just watch yourself.
    96:43
    No, I know. So, yeah, I mean, I figured it out. The white buttons, you can scroll between your power-ups, and then to actually use one, you have to hit the launch button. Correct. It was cool. I mean, that is cool. And then where do you get the power-up at while we're on the subject? Well, hack you get with spelling it. Yes, from the in-lames. Spell it. H-A-C-K. I don't know. I'm going to come to Indiana, just slap that hat off your head, and then play Godzilla. What? Okay. All right. But the other power-ups I did not have a chance to earn or use because I know there's like a shotgun. There's a chance to slow time. There's a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah, you qualify them, then you get them at the scoop. Yeah. But anyway, there's some communication improvements coming on that front because that was something that I identified when I was doing the play testing and the lead-up to TPF. They were fixing on the major things and making sure all the major things are working. But we want players to understand because that's a really cool feature of the game, and you're battling this ship and fighting against it. It's cool to have those power-ups. So that's question number one. Question number two is, did any of you get to play the trapped mode? So I didn't, but I saw the guy in front of me did. And watching him play it, it was really cool. Did either of you play it? It's where the wall comes up. I don't think I had that. I just went for multi-ball the entire time without any power-ups. So you never got to a mode? You never played a mode, Travis?
    98:18
    This is where you just repeat it again. I think I literally just went for multi-ball the whole entire time. I was just backhanding it and forehanding it. And then when it came out to me so fast, I literally just restarted my game and wanted to do that again. Yeah. It was just too much fun. The trapped mode, the wall comes up. So the scoop, the wall of scoops comes up with the individual walls, and one is open. And so you have one ball you have to hit it in, and then it'll go to a different one, and it spits out another ball. So now you have to hit two balls into that, and then it'll go down and up, and now you have to hit three balls into that. And it's just, I don't know. I watched the guy get all the way, I think, to like four balls, and then something happened. I don't know. But it was fun. Do you know the unique thing about that multi-ball?
    98:59
    No. If you lose one ball, you're done. Oh, it's just one and done. So, yeah. It's pretty cool. That's my one claim to fame on that game. So that was my concept that I came up with at the very beginning of the inception of the game. Now, the implementation that they did actually is much better than what I came up with. but my whole concept was to do what I call a survivor multi-ball. And so it's, you know, and the idea is that, you know, you have this, you know, multi-ball that you can keep adding balls to that, you know, but you risk by putting more balls out, you risk losing a ball. And if you lose even one ball, you're done. So that's what they did. And tilt your flippers. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was, it looked awesome. I didn't have a chance to experience it, but I don't know. There's clearly some things that you can do with a P3 that you can't do on a standard pinball machine. And it's cool to see how all the different designers with the different modules use them in a completely different way. So Bowen and Scott took it to a different level, and they put it with the wall and stuff, and they did it with the ship. And I didn't have, you know, that's not what I came up with. But it was cool to see that finally get implemented because it was an idea I came up with a long time ago. And I think it's a neat little kind of a twist on how multiballs work. So I actually spoke with Dwight Fulton. I spoke with him. About the P3? Yeah, afterwards. And when I was in line, unfortunately, we didn't have a good conversation, but I spoke with him afterwards because I saw he was busy. But when I was waiting in line. You had a shitty conversation? What does that mean? No, we didn't have a face-to-face conversation. We had one afterwards online.
    100:35
    Oh, no. Did you, like, ignore him, too? No, I did not ignore him. Yes. So Dwight was talking to Bowen, which was cool to see, like, because, you know, their brains are just all the brain. So you're, like, Bowen geeking out about rules and Dwight loving every second of it. When I talked to Dwight later, Dwight, like, I think Final Resistance was his favorite game of the show. And I think seeing the strategy there and the additional, like, rules and way to attack it. And I know, Colin, you had mentioned board games. It's like that logic. Like it seems like this game, sure, there may be some very direct, you can be Travis and just go multiple all day, but there's also, it looks like there's way more there from a strategy standpoint, which is pretty cool. So the next time you play it, and if anybody else is listening to the podcast, the next time you play a Final Resistance, which will be maybe, I don't know when the next show it's going to be at, but the modes kind of just happen to you because the concept is you're being attacked. And so the modes, you'll see a timer in the middle of the screen, and when you get down to the end of the timer, as soon as you shoot an orbit, your mode starts then. So you don't have to qualify your modes. Nice. The modes happen to you, and you hit the orbits. Now, you can then do what's called a preemptive strike, which is a better mode in terms of scoring and in terms of the mode logic by completing the ramp sequences. So there's the two ramps with the pink inserts that are in the screen, like you guys are talking about. And so if you do that prior to the mode attacking you, then you get to do a preemptive strike, and you get to have a better mode. Oh, cool.
    102:17
    Well, yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. Yeah, big old thumbs up from me. I don't know. You guys have anything else to say? Oh, two thumbs up from Tom and Travis. Yeah. Oh, four on screen. This is a fun game. You got a live P3, Tom? there's always that possibility.
    102:35
    Nice. Yeah. I thought Tom's goal, clearly, from your recent purchases is just no ramps. You're done with ramps from here on out, you know, between Pulp Fiction and Bond 6-year. Let's not go crazy, Joel.
    102:50
    Because Foo Fighters has three ramps. Well, let's go to Foo Fighters then. Let's go to Foo Fighters. I will tell you right now, this was the game that when I got out of bed, Saturday morning, I'm like, I want to go play more Foo Fighters. I love the way that game shoots. So, Colin, you played that. Go ahead and let's hear your thoughts on Foo Fighters. Yeah, I mean, your first comment is probably the most noticeable and the most memorable thing from the way the game shoots, the kinetic satisfaction you get from hitting those shots. And it's not just ramp combos. Yeah. So the ramp combos are cool. but Jack has done a very, very cool thing with that game in terms of a couple other shot paths that he's got in terms of that left jump ramp that kind of snakes around and ends up feeding you up a flipper and then the right orbit that then does a figure eight through that little mid-right side lane and then combined with how those ramps just flow so smoothly and it's just, as a pinball player, I think That's why so many of us love flow to varying extents. But when you feel that flow and you hit three ramps in a row or four ramps in a row or whatever, you feel like a god. Yep. And this game is very accessible in terms of hitting those combos. That is one of the easiest side ramps to hit that I've ever, ever played before. And one thing I noticed about that, I was going to bed one night after this past weekend, and I can't think of another modern game, or any game, that has a side ramp from an upper flipper where the side ramp is above the inner loop.
    104:39
    Every other game out there that I can think of that has a side ramp and inner loop, the side ramp is below the inner loop. This one's above it, and yet it flows like butter because he's done a remarkable job of keeping it shallow, whereas most other side ramps are very steep. Well, that's a really good point. And when you talked about combos, I have two thoughts with that. One, there's a whole thing, there's a whole system on the screen of, like, you can link combos together and you start doing, like, a, I don't know, like some sort of pattern glyph kind of thing, and it's tracking your combos. I was playing next to Tom, and I look over, and he had an 11-point combo going, so he had comboed 11 shots. I mean, the thing was going nuts. So I was like, okay, this thing's a combo beast. I was like, Tom, you have 11 combos going. You're like, what? Like, I mean, it's just, I mean, you can just combo everything.
    105:33
    Well, Joel introduced me to the six-way combo skill shot. And I was like, he's like, oh, there's this. And I'm like, oh, do you do it like this? And I'm like, yeah. And it was just awesome. Yes. Just doing this. Did you do the thing where you were like, okay, if Joel can do it, I mean. Well, Joel didn't do it. Not fair. Not true. Okay, so first off, I mean, Tom's talking trash over here. What do you mean not fair, not true? Did he do it? Okay, the first game Tom and I played on Foo Fighters, I beat him. Just saying. It's true. He did. He did, though. I was like, oh, there's another skill shot over here. So you hit the left, far left shot. It squiggles across, feeds the upper flipper, and then you can hit either of the loops or the ring. Right. It feeds it back down, and then you can do that again. And so here's Tom getting achievements. It's like skill shot one time, two times, three times, four. It goes all the way up to six. I was like, dang, Tom. The next day, I got it. You can check my thing. I have got the six-time achievement. So, Kerry Hardy took the glass off of his game for you? No, no, no, no. But that says a lot. If me, Joel Division, right, if this guy can hit a six-times combo on that game, it says a lot. I mean, that game shoots so well. It shoots like butter. It shoots so well. So good. To be honest, the last time that I had this type of kinetic satisfaction playing a game was the first few times I played Godzilla. Like, it just, I love the way it shoots. And we can't hear the game. You can't hear the game. It's a band theme. Like, we can't hear the game. So all of the Foo Fighter stuff, like, we didn't experience any of it.
    107:10
    And the animations look incredible. but truthfully this was another situation where the light show did an incredibly good job communicating what you need to hit. So when you're in a mode, we're not relying on a call out. We're not relying on the screen telling us what to do. The light show was telling us what to do. And I was able to get through two and a half cities, which I was pretty pumped with because I was approaching a mini wizard mode.
    107:33
    But Travis, I know you've played a lot of Foo Fighters because you were grinding away trying to figure out the exploits before, before, I mean, Your thoughts on that? We found them. Well, you were playing mostly a pro. So there's a big difference between the pro and premium with the upper play field. I did get to play the premium some. And I've got to admit, I much prefer the pro after playing both.
    107:59
    I am the opposite. For me personally, I just feel like the pro plays faster. I like the idea of seeing the ball whip around the right ramp. Even the side ramp Just like Colin talked about Just being able to see that all the way through Visually for me I just much prefer That look I didn't think the mini playfield Covered the side ramp That much where you couldn't see it No it didn't cover that That much No But I mean it just For me I'm not really an upper playfield fan To begin with but I gave it a little bit of a try, you know, gave it the college try just to see how it worked. And, you know, just for me, I just prefer the Probe. But I know I'm going to be in the minority. I think the vast majority of people are going to prefer the premium version of it. I was. Which is mostly fine. I think the dead post is pretty cool. Oh, yeah. When that happens, you know, that's kind of like an exciting event to happen once you remember it's there. Yep. I think it's not necessarily the coolest part of that for me isn't using that. It's making the decision afterwards. When the ball gets on the flipper, you can't trap up most of the time. You just got to send it and then just get right back on your way. So that's what I like, that you're instantly just put right back into action. And it's not necessarily the uniqueness of it is that unlike a kickback where you're spending that time getting back under control, you're basically just hitting the gas all over again as soon as that ball gets back to your flipper so that's the unique part that i think is pretty cool about it the dead post is definitely like it's your fault if you don't save that ball it's your fault and that's that's what i love about it is it's not a gimme it's just not an automatic ball save like you have to pay attention and you have to see oh the ball's going out there i have to hold up my left flipper and i may even have to nudge the game a little bit, depending on speed, to save that ball. So, it feels earned. Like, it's an earned ball save And I know there are certain games like TNA where you can flip and potentially line up the right light to save your ball And it like okay I did that Like I saved my ball because I was paying attention This is that to a whole new level And I thought it would be a novelty, but I really enjoyed the dead post. And then also the, on the premium, the UFO mech, the overlord mech, there's a bunch of lights under that. So when the ball's under him, it lights up really, really cool. And there's a magnet down there. So it does some really cool things just visually. So I definitely think for novice players, they will enjoy that mech and the interaction with that game. So overall, fantastic. Fantastic game. Big, big thumbs up from me. I don't know. Any other thoughts on, oh, the kicker, the kicker two, man, that ball hits that thing and just sends the ball back up. I don't know. So many good things. Big old thumbs up. Any other thoughts there? No? Okay. Two more games. Two more games. Godfather. Godfather. Godfather, we talked about earlier about just strategy and whatnot, and I don't know, initial impressions of Godfather. I don't know. Anybody want to go first on that? Anybody? I played Godfather. Go for it. And is my audio okay? Yeah, you're good. Okay. So it is a lot better in person than it was on stream when I watched Carl stream it. Yep. And I was very, very impressed and satisfied with the shot layout and how just getting to shoot different shots. The problem persisted for me that it was the – it plagues a number of JJP pins where just – where everything's lit.
    111:55
    And so – and also you have like three multiballs going at the same time. It just started by feeling like happenstance. Like I'm playing a multiball like, oh, there's another multiball stacked. There's another multiball stacked. And so it's just multiball frenzy that I've got as far as five, six balls flying around the play field. I have no idea what I'm shooting at. Sure. But I will say, and also I was very impressed, the flippers felt much better than most of the time when I played J.J.P. flippers at a convention. I agree. So I don't know if they fixed something with their power in terms of the number of pins they put on a circuit, or if they've actually done something different with their flippers, but the flippers felt better. The shot layout, the layout of the pin was very cool. I see a lot of potential in that pin, if I can ever figure out the rules. Well said. Well said, Colin.
    112:49
    I don't know. Travis, go. Yeah. It is. To me, I think it's – I was very surprised. The last podcast that we had with Carl, I was kind of talking to you guys about it at the end, and I had a feeling that once I play it that I might be hooked because I was able just to look at the pen and look at the design and think of it in terms of like a whitewood, just strip away everything else and see the shots. And after flipping it, to me, it shoots really fun. Like I had a great time on it. Probably by far it was, I would say out of all the pins there, it's probably the most fun I had on shooting in general. So that part I enjoyed. I think the outside of the cabinet looks gorgeous. The artwork and all that looks fantastic. I'm still, when I look at the play field itself, I'm still kind of taken aback because it just looks, I don't know what it is. It just looks off to me in general. But in person, the lights really weren't that big of a deal, as in like seeing a bunch of rainbows or anything like that. I'm sure they might have still been there, but it wasn't really that noticeable to me. And yeah, just the game shot very well. I thoroughly enjoyed that part. And I did get a chance to talk to Eric a little while, and he was walking me through the game. So I got a general idea of what to shoot, when to shoot it. And so that was really helpful as well. but my only if I had like one critique over it it would probably be the same thing Colin kind of alluded to earlier it's just that it does still seem like it's multi-ball heavy because I did find that there was it just felt like there was a lot of multi-balls close to the start button almost like all like it's almost like there's four or five bozo multi-balls right there to where it's just really easy to get to and I think what's going to end up happening with that is that if this pin for whatever reason ends up in tournaments it's ultimately whoever knows the rule set at least in terms of how to get to one or two multi balls stack it up and just keep revving up your job and just keep trying to get that score boosted up and take that risk to get the reward i think they're going to trounce players that are lost on it more times than not because it's it's definitely set up to be one of those pins that you could get rewarded if you stay in play long enough but of course in tournament settings, it's not necessarily going to be that. So I could see something like that happening. I don't know if they're going to choose to code around that at all. Who knows? But I will say comparing this to a Toy Story, which I do still have, by the way, I would say Godfather is just light years ahead of it. I mean, it's almost like when I was playing it, I was talking to somebody else next to me. I think it might even been Monica. I was just like, this doesn't even feel like this was made by the same company. it just it feels like a totally different experience that's highly positive it was I feel like that there's enough nuance in the code probably if you tone down the multi-ball a little bit it would allow you to explore more of that and so I'm kind of curious to see how that would be in a home setting being able to do that but yeah the shots they felt great and I was very impressed by it probably for me it was probably the best shooting Jersey Jack game that I've played before out of all of them. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah. It was even better than Dialed In. I agree. Really good job. Kudos to Eric on that shot layout and design and how the different shots do different things. It kept me on my toes. Yeah. Tom, I played a game with you and Neil. Your thoughts on it?
    116:25
    You know, it was the first game I played out of all the new games. And, you know, I didn't have quite the best thoughts going into it. You know, I'm like, Godfather theme. And, you know, it's a it's a drama movie. I don't know, you know, kind of thing. And and after playing it, kind of like Travis, I did a 180 on it. I'm like, this is really cool.
    116:54
    I thought the shots were awesome. I love how that ball comes down back at your ramp and, like, just shoots on a target and goes flying. Yeah. It's really cool.
    117:06
    There's a lot of mechanisms in the game. There's a lot of diverters. But what is the mechanism, Tom? Right. Well, you know, it's parts that work together. Drop targets aren't mechs.
    117:23
    Yeah. Flippers aren't mechs, apparently. But, yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed it. I decided to get one. Oh. I didn't know that. I do have reservations. You just heard it now, Joel. Geez. I do have reservations, like Colin and Travis alluded to, about it being very multi-ball heavy. Yeah. But I like how they – it's kind of a mesh between pirates' rules and Guns N' Roses' rules. Travis is gone. See you, Travis.
    118:04
    So it's every 30 minutes. So it's almost a good, like, we're hitting the two-hour mark, you know? It's just like – yeah. Instead of paying for the software, can we just buy me a new camera? No, you're a big boy. You're a big boy. You can figure out how to keep that camera on. Yeah. keep going Tom where was I the rules don't let Travis ruin the show I really like I like how there are a bunch of multiballs you can go for but also I like that aspect of you can play these modes and build up your score and try to cash it out like Guns N' Roses was but you know I think it's done in a very good way this time around whereas with guns and roses it was like you're in this multi-ball and you got to keep the balls going and you can't trap up and you know all these all these different things and you got to keep the ball alive during uh november rain and it's like 20 minutes on you know yeah i i i agree with everything you all three of you said i i was super blown away without it shot it shot incredibly well i enjoyed that a lot the diverters though keep you on your toes you don't necessarily know i mean this is going to be a game you're going to have to learn because you're hitting a shot like that kind of the right ramp oh that'll feed this nope it's coming back at you this way or no it's going that way so uh you got to pay attention um i watched neil neil blew it up neil blew it up when we were there remember remember the lady behind us she was bad for her because he he was pissed yeah she ended up going to another i mean it's a weird thing when you're at a show, it's like, okay, he's killing it, but yet there is a line, like, should he drain? And he even asked, he's like, should I drain? And we're like, no, like, we're about to see, like, he was two stained glass windows away from, he was deep in the game, which is interesting that the first or second time he played it, he's blowing through the game. But then again, every job he started, as soon as he could cash out, he just did. Like, he wanted to get through the game. He kept getting into multi-balls. And I know from a scoring standpoint, there's a whole weapon thing there that we weren't using. So, like, you know you're going to cash out. You can do a weapon. There's a multiplier associated with that. Is that like a 2X and a 5X? It's a whole thing. It has to do with the spinner, I believe. I believe you have to hit the spinner to rev it up kind of thing, your weapons. I don't know. Well, you need to start listening to the loser, Joel. Oh, did he talk about it there? Yeah. Need to pay attention. See, the way that I learn pins is I watch Carl. Joel told us it was all in his noggin. He knows it all. I watch a stream. And then I really – it doesn't stick until I play the game. It doesn't stick until I play the game. But anyways, it was awesome. It was awesome to shoot. The art on it is gorgeous.
    120:56
    But I agree with everything you're saying. It seems – it is very much a J.J.P. thing. All the lights, all the time. So like I said earlier, there were games like Pulp Fiction and there were games like Foo Fighters that you couldn't hear the game, but yet the lights still choreographed well what to do. And this, it's just like, I had no idea. All the lights are on, and I don't know. Like, it's not there. And this is the first JGP game that I've played that doesn't have that secondary monitor that's telling you exactly what to do, like in Toy Story and GNR. So it's going to be a game that I think if you own it, if it's in your basement, you really dive in and learn the rules. There's so much there. And luckily, the game shoots really, really well. So, really, another game that I was, like, pleasantly surprised at how well I enjoyed the game. Yeah, I'm going to have to stay at Tom's place next time I go to DAP so I can play John 60, I can play Godfather, I can play Pulp Fiction. Yeah, yeah. Or I just have event number one at Tom's house at this rate. We've got to do a Penskins here. There we go. Yeah, it was awesome. So, another big thumbs up from me.
    122:00
    So, we saved the best for last, right? We saved the game. We all just, so first off, so many people ask, did I get a lunchbox? No, I did not. Unfortunately, I did not get my lunchbox. I saw them. They looked great. They weren't for sale. Apparently, those were just like samples, and their main shipment of lunchboxes didn't come in in time. So whenever those go up online, I will be buying a lunchbox. I did get a poster from Franchi. Franchi was awesome. Talk to him. He hooked me up with a poster. Super nice guy. It was great talking to him. And the art, okay, I mean, I think we can all agree, the art on GTF is fantastic. Very good. It looks incredible. Like, Chris killed that package. If you've ever wanted one of your pinball machines to look like a tank, they did it. They did it really well. Like, it looks like a freaking tank. I mean, it's absurd. And I went to the AP seminar, and Dennis Norman said, he's like, if you're just going to put this in a row, don't buy the tank. Like, just buy the normal, the standard one. But if you have room, a corner, or you want to put it at the end, and you want something to look kind of cool, buy the tank. I mean, I don't think anybody's requested it, but there are definitely people that are like, all right, I'm in on that. Did they actually explain the application?
    123:26
    Did they show, like, how to turn it into a tank? Yeah, it's an instant latch. But what is interesting, it's an automatic latch, but they did say we do recommend putting the screws in the back box, though. So, like, nobody's going to do that. So you have to, like, unscrew the back box? Well, that's what they're suggesting you put those in, probably to cover themselves if somebody shakes too hard and their whole head comes down. But it's just an automatic latch where there's a button you put and lay it back down. I mean, it's pretty quick. And it's impossible for that to happen because one of the versions I played on it, The back box, we literally stopped playing because we were like, is this going to shake off? Every time we barely nudged it, it was.
    124:06
    The back box is a totally different design. Not only the tank one, but also it's a thinner back box, and they kind of have the panel, like the speakers set back a little bit, so there is a cool light that they put there. I mean, cosmetically, the game looks insane. It's really a great game to look at. audio.
    124:26
    I couldn't hear any call-outs. The only thing I heard was dubstep. So Dennis Norman said, this is my universe that I'm creating. If you want to know the storyline, the storyline is you're on a moon that the atmosphere of this moon just happens to be a good atmosphere for livestock to live on. So cows and chickens live on that. How did they get there?
    124:48
    You're going to have to use your imagination here, Travis. How did you know the lore? Or how did the cows and the chickens get to the freaking moon? I don't know. But with cows comes milk. With milk comes ice cream. So the whole lab is all about ice cream, and then that's why these tanks are invading. They're trying to steal your ice cream. So they're trying to steal the cows. They're trying to steal your ice cream. That's the whole thing. This is his world. Wait, wait, wait. So the tanks were not part of the galactic tank? No, we are fighting. We are fighting the invading tanks with our tanks. We got a big old tank battle over saving the cows. So we, for whatever reason, we brought, so we got a moon base. Yeah, yeah. Let me get this straight. And you got a new tank. We brought cows, chickens, and tanks. Yeah, to protect the ice cream. Three things that go together. It's just science, man. I mean, you were talking about Oklahoma. You kind of need the cows to make ice cream, right? It's imminent. What are the chickens for then? I get the purpose of the tank and the purpose of the cow. what the purpose of the chicken. I don't know. You can't just eat ice cream all the time, Travis.
    125:57
    Make some protein. In wizard mode, you just bake chicken now? He said very clearly in the seminar this is his universe so anything goes. He's like, I like dubstep. He understands it's a 1950s aesthetic, but he doesn't want 1950s music. This is his universe. He wanted dubstep, so he put dubstep in it.
    126:18
    I mean, so if you hate dubstep sorry i mean but if if you're into that you're into it um so that's the only audio i could hear that there's a ton of cheesy i mean they went all in on the cheese on on uh there's a lot of cheesy lines there's a lot of like one another you know get your um what the fudge happened there you know there's a lot of dairy jokes a lot of puns um and then the video assets they were very proud they said it during the seminar that they have two animators So everything that you see was done with two people. You know, a lot of other places have big animation teams.
    126:56
    I think the animations are good, but it kind of looks like two people did it. You know, like it doesn't look like a huge team.
    127:06
    So I don't know. It's just I was okay with that. I was okay with the animations. I was okay with the audio, and I was okay with the art package. Anybody have anything else in terms of the aesthetics and the sound, thoughts on how it looked. I thought the light show was pretty cool with the, you know, you have the light strip coming down the middle. Yeah, kind of built-in pin stadiums, basically. Yeah. Kind of, almost like backlit kind of thing. Sure.
    127:36
    Gameplay-wise? Yeah, let's go. So, yeah, that's all good. Big old thumbs up on all that. That's what I would say. Big old thumbs up on all that. So we have one thumb up so far. I'm talking about the cabinet and the art and the light show. And the ice cream. Yeah. If you are a pin collector, if the goal with owning a pinball machine to you is just like, you just like looking at them or you like having a tank in your living room. You just like, you want just something that looks cool. Nailed it. Like nailed it. It's a good looking game. Colin, did you play the game? I think you're going to be. Did you play it? I played it at the tail end of this festival. So on Sunday. Yeah. I know you've spoken positively of all these games, so I'm going to let you go first because I think you're going to say this in a very kind or as kind as you can. What was your thoughts on the gameplay of Galactic Thing Force? It wasn't my favorite.
    128:30
    Okay. I don't know if it was a function of being at the tail end of the festival and therefore maybe things had gotten tired, but the flippers just didn't feel good. It was very, very difficult to make the ramp.
    128:48
    So, like I said, it could just be a function of the coils getting tired over the course of the weekend and the tail end of Sunday even. And, yeah, it kind of just on the opposite end of the spectrum of something like Foo Fighters in terms of the kinetic satisfaction. I did not get much kinetic satisfaction from GTF. I got no kinetic satisfaction from GTF personally. That was something, yeah, there was not, I can't think of a shot that felt like, ooh, that was like it just, I don't know. Travis, he's raising his hand. What shot? I can tell you. Oh, yeah? The shot, the one that goes right up the middle. Oh, yeah? And then goes over your flippers into the ball trough. Kinetic satisfaction. Air balls. So the tank. Multiple times. The tank has five small stand-up targets in front of it, and there are different points where you have to hit very specific ones. Other ones you just have to bash that. And there's actually a little robot dude that pops out at certain points, which is kind of cool. It's a mech dead center of the game. You can't miss it. The problem, though, I experienced it. I watched Travis experience it. If you hit those stand-ups, I mean, this is not new. Like I know on, like, Sparky on Metallica, there's problems where if you hit those targets in front of them, the ball can fly back. So there's like entire like plastic protectors to like keep the ball down. Well, what happens here is you drill that stand up and the ball literally flies in the air over top of your flippers. And they put an actual like ball save post, big old rubber post between the flippers to try to help you with that. That only helps if the ball stays on the play field. It's just the game honeydicking you. The ball goes, like, right over it into the ball trough. I mean, it happened to me two or three times. I watched it happen to Travis. And Arcade Hollywood actually has some – he had access to a game, and he has, like, a seven-minute, like, kind of cool stream clip, and he has a clip of it. Like, it happened to him. Like, this is a problem.
    130:59
    I tested this, Joel. I played three different games on three different pins for GTF to see. Maybe it just happened to be that one. Yeah. It was all three of them. I had air balls every single time. And so the very first time I stepped up to it, I was remarking to who was with me there that I was kind of shocked to see that there was no air ball deflector anywhere in that area. because we were just running under the assumption that it was probably going to happen because we hadn't seen any gameplay. Then, sure as shit, very first shot we took, you could hear it just hit off the glass and go flying. It's like, okay, this is fun. Yeah, and it's another thing I saw is because even if it doesn't, even if you're lucky and it doesn't fly over your flippers, it still is getting airborne. The play field. You're one-timing it, yeah. The play field, though, in that area in front of the flippers is cratered. Taking a beating. It is taking a beating. And that's something I've had hot wheels here, and the play field was gorgeous. Like, I think it's not, like, it's, I think it's just, it's brutal. And I get it. Those pins were basically being played nonstop for three days. But it's just, to see that, I don't know how you address that when it's a mechanical problem. You just put optos on both sides. So you have that beam that goes through, and the ball goes through it. It's like a million points. That's what the ball says. You've got to put some kind of plastic over those five targets. But I remember when I had a Transformers LE, there was a drop target that you had to hit, and that thing was a massive, massive airball thing, and they had to come out with a fix for that. So, I mean, I think it's definitely possible that that could be fixed. I think we've got to see that. There has to be an airball deflector there. Otherwise, I mean, it just makes the game. Yeah, it doesn't make the game unplayable because you can still do other shots. But if you want to just do that shot, yeah, it's like you have to just avoid it completely. And that's, I mean, you don't want to produce the game in which somebody has to actively avoid something that is so prominent in the game. So I think that that's the fix for something like that. Or if you're a novice, you know, and you put your dollar in and you go up there and second time you drill that tank, the ball's going to get up. It's like, well, what was that? Yeah.
    133:26
    I agree with all that. And there's really, there's just some stand-ups on the left. There's some stand-ups on the right. You have an orbit shot on the left, an orbit shot on the right. Your ramp is on the left. And then on the right, there's kind of a shot to go into a VUC. And then you have the tank. And that's it. You forgot about the movable mechanism. Oh, the movable UFO cow target, which is a hurry up. Got to save the cows. There is a cool light show with that. Oh, yeah, it has lights. It definitely has a light show. It's got lights. It's got art. It's got sound.
    133:59
    So my problem with the game, because I was very hyped for this game. My problem with how the layout is, is it's just after you avoid the tank, it's just kind of like, I don't know. It just feels very milquetoast-like. It's just the shots are what they are. If the flippers aren't powerful, like, good luck with the left ramp. We had multiple times to where the magnet was felling us in the backside to where the ball was just, like, going right past it and we weren't getting our locks or anything. And that could be a result of the show in general, too, just the coils getting hot. Sure. You know, who knows? So it's kind of hard to judge off that. But I will say, because I owned a Hot Wheels for a while, I much prefer that layout over GTF, but I like the idea of tanks and ice cream and cows and chickens. We just got to figure out how to put this all together. Yeah.
    134:53
    I've spoken to a few different people, and I think there's a lot of us that we're, like, really hoping to be just wowed by GTF. Like, just to this be this, you know, unlicensed, crazy darling of a pin that's just insane. You know, and I had high hopes, even though I didn't know what to. And I was I'm sorry, but I was really let down, like really let down with my experience with GTF. And I hope I hope they can make some mechanical changes. And, you know, they talked about it, though, in the AP seminar. They've had this play field a long time. Like in the way they talk about it is they're like, yeah, even when it was just a whitewood, we found ourselves playing it for like 30 or 40 minutes, just having a blast. and that's the only thing that it's like if you've had this long to work on this play field they said it was a lot more simple too they said when they got to American Pinball actually added stuff into the game their their initial goal was a more simplistic game um so I don't know I don't know but I do think there will need to be some sort of adjustment mechanically and um and then when it comes to the audio package or the video I until we until we start seeing people stream it. I don't know if that'll be good, annoying. Don't really know. So part of me wonders too with the front, with those targets right there, because I noticed on some of the pins, they were kind of not perfectly lined either. Like some of them were a little bit offset too. So I wonder if they come offset, maybe that causes the air balls a little bit more dramatically than others that might be aligned properly. I don't know, because I don't see how this is missed in the Whitewoods stage. That's the thing. Maybe move them back, actually, a little more under the tank if you can so that the tank could potentially stay. I'm not a game designer. I have no idea, Joel. I just play the games. I'm not either. I just go for multiple. Just go for multiple. Yeah.
    136:50
    I don't know. So that was it. Those were the six games. Those were six games. Any other thoughts on GTF or any of the games we talked about or any other games you played there that you want to – we've got one and a half of those. What was the game of the show?
    137:04
    can you pick one? when I walked away my final thoughts my game of the show is like Foo Fighters if I was going to add a game right now Foo Fighters is the game I can't wait to play it more and I think Zach is going to let me borrow one maybe even as early as next week to start streaming so like Foo Fighters is absolutely the game that I'm most excited to play my other thought was if you're in on a Pulp Fiction LE you made a brilliant choice you made an amazing choice That game looks incredible. Well done, Tom. And then the P3. The P3 just as a system in general is becoming more and more fun, and I really enjoyed my time on Final Resistance. So those were kind of my main takeaways, personally.
    137:49
    Let's go around. Colin, what were your thoughts walking away from TPF? What were your main takeaways? Exhausted.
    137:58
    That's fair. That's fair, yeah. Yeah, I think as far as takeaways, you know, I knew a lot about Final Resistance because I got to play test it and stuff like that. But the thing that my biggest surprise at the show was how much I enjoyed playing Godfather. Because I knew I was going to enjoy playing Foo Fighters after watching the stream. That's why I put it in the tournament because I saw how well it shot. I knew I could, after talking to Ray Day, I knew I could trust that the rules were going to be good. I was happy with my decision. A lot of people were questioning me about whether I should put Foo Fighters in a tournament, and I think it worked out well. But I was really – my biggest surprise of the show was how much I enjoyed playing Godfather. Nice. Travis?
    138:47
    Yeah, I would just echo the same thing. I went into the show thinking, okay, Godfather might be a solid three just because just playing it, just seeing the design, the layout. but I would probably put it right up there with Foo Fighters right now. I'd have those tied right now. And I just need more time on Godfather to kind of see how the code shakes out. And just probably because I played Foo Fighters enough now, just in an enclosed area to where I could hear the sounds and everything. And it's a lot of fun. Shots are great. Songs are great. Animation is great. Everything on it is fantastic. And I just think with Godfather, I want to give it a little bit more time to kind of see where it's at exactly, but I would definitely put it up there close to Foo Fighters at this point, just based off my experience on it in general. And I would actually put Final Resistance up there as well. I was very impressed with how that played with the speed of the game, the sound of the game. And no, I didn't play any of the modes, but I still did explore all the slots. But that multiball, though. Oh, that multiball. It's pretty sick. as fast as it comes. So those three I probably really enjoyed. I don't know. I hope to see something out of GTF, like the fix that we just talked about. I think that that could help it out a lot. They can figure that part out.
    140:09
    I mean, Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo. We've discussed that plenty of times. And then Pulp Fiction, I didn't get a chance to play it, but it looks fun. So just based off looks alone, I'd probably put it mid-pack at this point until I actually get a chance to play it, but I do like the theme, though. I've probably seen the movie at least ten times, so the theme really draws me in to something like that. I like the idea of a single-level game, but if Pulp Fiction happened to be what Godfather is, I would probably be all-in on that one. I think you will be after you actually play it. I still hold on to the thought that if that game was Sopranos instead of Godfather, it would have gone over like gangbusters because there's a lot of people in pinball, pinball collectors that love Sopranos more than what people realize. Interesting. Very interesting, Joel.
    141:10
    Tom. Yes. Final thoughts, Tom. overall tpf was fun tp oh man it was yes um no game wise what stood out or yeah you're uh yeah it's hard to choose i i would say probably foo fighters at the top um and then kind of like tied for second for me would be pulp fiction and godfather yeah and lucky for you all three of those pins are coming your way. Yep. And then I would say, you know, right there behind them would be Final Resistance.
    141:55
    And then probably, you know, a little kind of in the distance, GTF and Scooby-Doo. Yeah. No, I agree. I totally agree. But it was awesome. But TPF was great between just all these awesome new games to play, the tournament, you know, even as a fan viewing it, watching it was awesome. There were so many people there, being able to meet people and talk to people and see friends and everything.
    142:26
    TPF is definitely, if you are listening to this and you've never been to a pinball show, it's worth it. Like, TPF really is worth the trip if you can only make one, if you can only make one. It is a fantastic, fantastic show. And there are dates already for TPF next year. Oh, cool. I don't know what they are. I don't know what they are, but I know it. But they're there. It'll be March. It'll be March something. In case anybody looks it up. It's over St. Paddy's Day, isn't it, I think? Yeah, it might be like the early March thing. I think it's a little earlier. Yeah. It's just the one thing that's remarkable about the show with TPF is if you buy the early bird special price, it's so ridiculously underpriced. For what you get to be able to go to that show for Friday evening, Saturday, and then half day Sunday for, like, what is it, $65?
    143:18
    That's cheap. I bought my tickets at the door, and I paid $85. I mean, it's just – Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. I don't know. Yeah. I really – I was going to tell Colin this. I really like how the tournament ends Saturday. Yes. And you have your time to enjoy Sunday.
    143:43
    And, you know, it's a little lighter on Sunday, too. But it's, I mean, it was still packed, but it wasn't quite as packed. But, yeah, that was nice, you know, just to enjoy the show and everything.
    144:01
    It was really cool. It's a great show. Great show. But anything else? Anything else the three of you guys want to discuss?
    144:08
    Or should we just go ahead and wrap her up? We crushed it, Joel. Cool. And this is why we're number one right here. Well, what I will say is the audio has sounded good this whole time. The video has been in and out of potato cam all – so I have no idea what's coming. If you're watching this video and it looks great, well done, Zencaster. If it looks terrible, we will go back to the old method next week. So we will see. But, yeah, we'll go ahead and plug it up. Plug away, Colin. Whatever you want to plug, it's all you.
    144:41
    Yeah, just come to TPF next year if you ever were on the fence about coming to it. And if you did go to it, come back. It's the best show. Awesome. And good luck with your endeavors at P3, for sure. Thanks for being on here. Thanks for running a good tournament. Can't wait to see what you – Yeah, I will say one last thing about P3. If you're on the fence about P3, get in line now. Like get your deposit in now because it's a pretty long lead time. You know, Multimorphic is not a big company. So you're going to get the value out of it. And the one interesting thing is you don't see – I don't think you see P3s on the secondhand market. And that should tell you something right there. Yeah. It's rare. Because I've looked a few times. It's rare. It's rare to see them. But, yeah, it's a year. It's a year of leeway for sure. If you already have one, then the modules are a lot less lead time. But, yeah, it's a pretty awesome system. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Well, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for being on here. Travis, plug away, man. I know you've got a long list. Yeah, you guys can find me on the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast right here on YouTube and on whatever podcatcher. Well done. Thank you. Way to crush that list. Thank you. I'm all over it. Yep, yep, yep. Thanks for wearing the merch, man. Appreciate that. Look at you. Oh, yeah. You guys can find me on OnlyFans also. Oh, God. Okay.
    146:10
    Tom, plug away, man. You can find me here or on Fox City Spinball. Awesome. And Twitch and YouTube. Yes.
    146:19
    And, yeah, you can find me on the Flippin' Out YouTube stream every Wednesday night from 10 to midnight Eastern Daylight Time or on this wonderful podcast. Yeah. okay well I think that's it I think we'll wrap it up once again Colin thanks for being on here really appreciate that and um like always Tom you get the last words good night time for bed