When pinball calls, you answer. Unfortunately, Don couldn't be on this intro. We were riding tandem on this rinky-dink scooter. We were going to an arcade in Virginia, and I made the mistake of letting Don navigate. and we ended up going like two hours in the wrong direction. Sadly, along the way, Don accidentally swallowed a huge June bug or maybe it was more likely a cicada. So his throat is all jacked up now and he's taking a break from talking for a while. However, Don totally redeemed himself because he ended up buying a pinball machine from the arcade that we eventually went to. So this episode is about Don's search for a game. A man cannot live on hook alone. Eventually, Don did get a new game and we will be talking about that in a future episode. So this is actually one of the first things we recorded a couple months ago, but then Jaws happened, John Wick happened, Pinfest happened, so now we're all caught up, and here we go with episode seven. Here we go! Come on in! Welcome to the theater of magic! Welcome to the party zone! Welcome to my home! Welcome to the Bash! Yeah, so you only owned Hook previously. First and only game that you ever had. Purchased approximately 2018. So you've been surviving off of the one game, plus many arcade visits, I guess, for quite a while now. You know, if it was up to me, man, I would have a new game every day. I just can't afford it. Yeah, that is the main issue with pinball games and acquiring them. So there's a lot of games on the market right now. You had kind of been looking at these early 2000s sterns. So I remember there was a Monopoly listed. I actually really liked that one. I liked all the little toys and gadgets and extra things that it has that make it unique. Yeah, Monopoly is cool. I played that one one time before in Raleigh at this random little bar on Hillsborough Street near the college. Okay. But the people were nice, and they had two or three games, one which was Monopoly, and I'd never played it before. So I actually went there, probably their best customer, just to play that game because I didn't find it anywhere else. So I wonder if maybe that game has anything to do with it. But there was one for sale, and I was heavily thinking about buying that one. Yeah, you had like a little rotation. So I think the first one that came up was a Rollercoaster Tycoon. Rollercoaster Tycoon, yeah. And so what is it about that era of games that you like? I think that's when I really got into it. I think maybe that was close to when I, maybe a couple years after I'd seen my dad. Okay. So I was a little bit older and I could, I don't know, it kind of became my own thing now. You know, after a couple years, it kind of became, I became pinball. You did? do you think it has to do with Lord of the Rings? It's right around there. Because that was 2003. It's right around there. That was one of your favorites? That is my favorite. Okay, that's what I thought. It's hard to pick a favorite. So just the way the multiballs are set up, where you can kind of, not stack them, but you can basically hit them one after another, right? Yeah, it's like Bram Stoker's Dracula. Yeah. And so you can line them all up to where you're basically one shot away from each multiball. and you can start one immediately within the end of the other one, basically. It is an intense multiball. You've got to set a multiball for each film, right? Exactly. But it just feels, you know, it'll be like jackpot one, jackpot two, jackpot three, you know, and it kind of builds and it makes you feel excited. And I also figured it out on my own. Like I didn't look up the rules. I just played it every once in a while. I realized, oh, if I spell keep, lock lights up. If I get it up in the right ramp, it'll lock a ball. so it feels exciting and kind of rewarding to figure it out on your own and then when that multiball happens and you're hitting all these jackpots and it's exciting and then the ring shot of course oh man the ring shot yeah but anyways that's how i learned about it i love it yeah so were you a fan of the movies before the game um yeah yeah i it's funny i wasn't the biggest fan when when it came out okay now as an adult like as a as an older person i think i was like 16 okay yeah so after like 30 i would say now i'm a pretty big fan like as i got older yeah even when i watch them now like the films so i love them i think they're masterfully done and beautiful and have you read the books no no no i mean i you know a little bit not a true fan i'm not a true fan no but it is your favorite pinball game and that's what we're talking about i'm an ally so that air that that era is special to you in particular but also it does seem like early 2000 stern games are when stern was still acting like they had competition yeah family guy yeah yeah and and but like what was that would that not be early family guys 2007 okay yeah never mind that's a little later but it's like stern hadn't given up yet it's it feel it feels like at some point they were like oh wait we have no competition and demand is low it's like we don't have to try very hard and i think that's when you got into all the like photoshopped games and you know which game and i think this is what you're talking about was really disappointing to me it was dark night dark night yeah yeah is that is that the area you're talking about i think that's 2008 yeah i think it wasn't until like metallica that artwork started getting better in the games how do you feel about the family guy like mini pinball now that was cool i think that's the coolest like extra play field oh god that's cool the way it plays in the game it just makes sense and simple and it's kind of you know it's not so crazy yeah so like that was one of the things that made me love that game but really like that whole era of games there's a lot of there's a lot of games that aren't super highly regarded so so williams closed in like 2000 they had that um star wars episode one game is what like the last yeah the star wars episode one and revenge from mars were the two pinball 2000 games all 2000 that was like the new system that they were trying to move on to yeah i think they came out in 99 maybe gotcha and then then Williams closed down and then it was just Stern. So Stern still kept kind of like really high, like pretty high standards. Like Williams, you know, there's a lot of stuff in those games. Like, um, like Rollercoaster Tycoon, it's loaded with stuff. It's not like the super highest quality stuff ever, but it's a ton of stuff. Like compared to a new Stern game, early 2000s Sterns look like Jersey Jacks compared to the modern Stern games I get you It true So yeah I mean it seems i guess like all that to say is like those games do seem like a good value relative to like you know if you want a uh jersey jack game designed by pat lawler like toy story four or something it's like 13 grand or 14 grand or something crazy and you could or you could buy you know monopoly for like four do you think those stern games are more fun than the current stern games even though they're more simple i don't know if i i guess that you know they're shallow like code wise comparatively speaking it was more accessible as a newbie modern games are expensive and they want to give you the most value for your money sure so they make them as complicated as you can reasonably make them and i guess that's where you run into trouble is like well what's your what do you think is a reasonable level of complicated it's different when you own it but i'm not gonna own it like i have to go out and play it so if i can't figure it out and have fun right away. It feels almost like I could play something else that might be more rewarding. More skill rewarding instead of trying to put my money and figure this one out. Then is the game doing a good enough job of explaining itself to you while you're playing it? That's hard. That's a challenge. And now for a word from our sponsor. They said it wasn't humanly possible. All the power and excitement of Nintendo right in the palm of your hand. introducing game boy it's portable it's in stereo and its games are interchangeable game boy comes complete with batteries and the outrageous new game tetris and for head-to-head competition use video link and blow your opponent away game boy only from nintendo now you're playing with power portable power and now back to the show okay the other games you were looking at though so you were looking at monopoly roller coaster tycoon and then a ripley's ripley is sman and all three of these games i think the roller coaster tycoon was like 3600 it was a good deal at 36 yeah the uh other ones were about four yeah they're about 43 or some routine four like 4,000 4,300 yeah yeah which is you know it's a pretty good deal but none of those are well so ripley's i guess maybe a top 100 pin side game right now yeah or they're abouts and the other two are not as highly ranked maybe maybe i'd have to own them to know why but they they all seem kind of equally fun just like playing them briefly but yeah the other ones are like in the 200s or something they're much higher they're like they're like page three pin side um right maybe maybe monopoly's higher i think roller coaster tycoon is the is the worst rated one i wonder i wonder how much accessibility and uh just common frequency of being out and about bases those uh ratings because i mean it could be a game that's kind of rare but there's not enough feedback so it could be theoretically a better rated game if it had the same amount of yeah i mean certainly the new games get a big bump because they get you know all these new people buying them and rating them and and wanting to keep the values high and so they give them high ratings and yeah i think it's just you know some games don't click with the general population as much as others and those games just get lower ratings you know forgotten about we're forgotten about we need to be like the uh pinball jesus's how's that pinball jesus's right jesus jesus is jesus's jesus you mean like being the uh spreading the good word yes of all these games that we're forgotten about yeah the page three pin side there's a lot of good games on it like roller coaster tycoon that game would easily be probably in my top 100 i think really i bet it would be yeah it's fun it's a ton of fun like it's got a stupid like troll on it for some reason i that thing creeped me out but it's got like four ramps it's pat lawler it's fun you know it's i i wish it would have reminded me more of the game when i actually heard the audio it didn't bring back the memories of the game that i thought it well it's it's like the i don't know the history of that game but it it feels to me like pat lawler wanted to make a circus carnival game that's exactly and then they were like well what license can we stick with that i see um i'm i'm sure that's what it is because because it's it's a hundred percent it's and even in the advertising they say in the tradition of you know like carnival theme really like cyclone and the williams really yeah wow i didn't know that yeah it's it's a spiritual successor to cyclone slash hurricane slash comet maybe they already made a carnival game they just needed a license like you said yeah no i'm sure that's what it was because when uh in the williams days i don't think pat lawler was ever allowed to make one of the carnival games because that was like specific to uh other designers like they all had their kind of wheelhouse that they were allowed to play in and like Barry Oursler and Python Anghelo did comet and cyclone and then hurricane yeah anyway there was this there was a kind of a specific team and it was like if you want everybody kind of had dibs on certain types of themes gotcha in the williams days unofficially yeah kind of unofficially like respecter yeah but like if pat waller wanted to make a circus game and that's like totally up his I mean, look at Toy Story. His style is very carnival-y, circus-y. So he had all this pent-up circus energy from working at Williams and not being able to make a circus game. And so as soon as he starts working for Stern, when Williams closes, like two, three years later, he's like, boom, got my circus game. Hey, buckle, heads up. Oh, geez, what is it, Rudy? Hey, listener, it's Rudy from Funhaus. I guess he thinks we accidentally left him off of this conversation about carnival games. That was no accident. Oh, what, you think Funhouse was Pat Lawler's first carnival game? There's no roller coaster, no Ferris wheel, no Dunk the Dummy. Stop it! I thought we were pals. We are pals, but let's be realistic here. A Funhouse is just one attraction that may or may not even be at a carnival. Big deal. The big deal is that you're interrupting the show and making it all about yourself. This is really starting to annoy me. Oh, yeah, well, you know what annoys me? Your giant freaking head taking up two-thirds of the play field. Roadshow does it way better and has two heads. That's not funny. Do you hear me laughing? F*** you. F*** me. F*** you. You f***ing third-rate ventriloquist dummy's head. You don't even have a body. I'm not happy with you now. Oh, what are you going to do? Your head is stuck to a 300-pound pinball machine. Oh, you spit all over. Oh, that's it. Hey, come back here. Don't go near the... Hey, buddy, stop it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. okay sorry for the rude interruption but i guess now's as good a time as any to mention that it was just announced that funhouse is getting a full remake from pedretti games so that exciting news especially if you like giant talking heads on the playfield anyway back to the show i mean by the way i wish they would have done like state fair yeah like that would have been a great theme yeah state fair would be way better i mean you get the ferris wheel that you would get in roller coaster tycoon let's put that in there yeah you got ferris wheel you could have um the like the gravitron like the spinning thing yeah yeah um csi another like not well-loved game from the early 2000s sterns actually i think it's 2006 csi has a centrifugal like um spinner thing yeah the um the centrifuge the centrifuge centrifuge yeah yeah so that game has a centrifuge which spins the ball rapidly which would be the same thing you could use the same mechanism for the gravitron stay fair man here we go this is like i think the second theme that we've third maybe fourth original theme that we somebody buy this well what theme would would you put on it now because you can't just do state fair it won't stay fair usa it's uh no there's no global appeal for that donald man why you're right you're right but you you can see how they ended up with roller coaster tycoon doesn't have global appeal doesn't have global appeal roller coaster tycoon it is and now for an important message Stay with me! I'm on you, let's move! All right! Hi, guys, can I skate with you? Nah, you're just a girl. No kidding! Go low! Let her try, you might be surprised. Okay, but... Hey! Wow, look at that! Don't judge people until you give them a chance. Because there's a chance you could be wrong. Now we know. And no one is half the battle. G.I. Joe And now, back to the show. We were talking about 2000s games, right? And then the ones that were up for debate on what I might purchase. Yeah, so just to your surprise, three Pat Lawler games. Yeah. Which is kind of funny. Yeah. That you sort of like, I want this game or this one or this one. It's like, Don, you know those are all Pat Lawler games? I mean, I didn't. right but he's definitely the common factor because those are games that have left a lasting impact on me after playing him once yeah and i think that's a pretty important quality to have in a game yeah yeah i think he he's some kind of master of just like fun factor so i mean yeah he's definitely been the common thread for me you know because those games for whatever reason they're memorable like and i remember them and i somehow subconsciously even put them in a log of like positive game or wanting to have this game. Yeah, yeah. So all three of those are licensed themes, but none of them feel like, you know, Terminator 2 or Star Wars or something like that. They're not big licenses. They're kind of like, they all feel that same way. Like, oh, well, I designed an adventure game in an Indiana Jones style. And okay, let's make that Ripley's Believe It or Not. or I designed a circus game, let's make that roller coaster. They feel like that more than you've got Arnold Schwarzenegger's head up in the corner and you've got all the very, very specific theme type of things that everybody's so familiar with. I guess you have a little more leeway with the theme if it's not something that's so beloved and part of the consciousness of the entire world. Right, and you kind of already have a storyline that you have to adhere to. with the hard licenses like terminator like you know what's gonna happen you just kind of got to work with the story and how it plays out so yeah but like ripley's you've got like a random jamaican guy doing call outs and he's super cool so like i love that guy i don't get that guy man yeah no it's it sounds cool though but no one's like oh yeah ripley's that's the voice we need is there like a thing like an episode of the show or something in the book i don't think about jamaica or that guy? I'm assuming it's just they could do whatever they wanted, essentially, and they just picked that. So ultimately you were just a little on the fence about any of those games. And we played the VPX ones. Thanks, man. I didn't even know this existed. Like the whole VPN. VPX. Not a virtual private network. Private network. Yeah, I didn't realize that was a thing. Like a whole platform. Here I am thinking arcade effects or what's the pinball effects? Is that the – Yeah, pinball effects, Zen pinball. Zen pinball, yeah. No, it's pretty neat, and I think it's a good – thanks for showing me that. And I think it's a good way to play the games without necessarily having access. It's free. Yeah, the legalities of it are whatever. But yeah, so you played all three of those, right, on VPX. vpx so the first thing that a virtual private network taught me was no no yeah playing a roller coaster tycoon um the music man yeah just i just was not vibing yeah it was not my jam and it felt like you said more like a carnival game yeah i was looking for the game i used to play where i would build roller coasters sometimes by accident sometimes on purpose try to kill people and you know because i would get mad because they would never throw the trash away they would put in the sidewalk instead of in the trash cans. Okay. Yeah, I never played that game. Then you make the coasters, right? And then you basically make one more expensive than the other. And the cheaper one, you basically make like a death loop. And then like all the people that are trash in your park, you just kill them. Anyways, like that's how much I play that game is where I develop strategies for like alternate games and alternate fun. But the core game is like theme park. But it was cool because it was one of the first ones where you could actually design your roller coaster. in a way that was easy right as a kid because i always liked i always thought roller coasters were cool and that would be like my dream job right is designing roller coasters so the game kind of let me have that so in a way the theme of roller coaster tycoon in a pinball game kind of was a disservice in your mind to the game that you knew yeah i don't know man it just it just didn't feel the same it didn't have the same um i guess spirit you know because roller coaster tycoon wasn't a carnival it was it wasn't it wasn't a fair you know yeah but yeah it feel it feels kind of duct taped together in that game a little bit and i just you know that the ramps are cool they also to me didn't really feel like roller coasters i guess they're trying to have like roller coasters and it does have the one that where the ball comes all the way down and under the flippers right so that was the coolest thing yeah that was the one part i felt like i was in a tunnel in roller coaster or something, but I don't know, man. I just didn't feel like I was riding a roller coaster Yeah now I will say when you get a multiball and it has the screaming sound effects of a roller coaster it actually pretty fun all right i had fun doing that part but i mean and i played a real one and it was fun like it's a fun game yeah yeah i think for 3500 it's a more fun game than a lot of 3500 games yeah i can see that that's that's why i was interested in it because lord of the rings is 11 000 correct and it's not 7500 better than roller coaster tycoon i'm sorry it's not So yeah, that was a strong contender for a while until I played it in the VPN. Yeah. All right. VPN. Yeah, and Monopoly. So the thing that got me about Monopoly when I played it on VPX is that Pat Lawler really took his Gophers layout and just kind of kept a lot of the same elements for Monopoly. Which makes sense because gophers didn't sell that well because it was the end of pinball in the 90s era. And that was a cool layout. Let's use it again. But the right ramp and the left ramp and the other ramp, three of the ramps are in basically the same. And the upper right flipper, the way it hits the left ramp and the way the balls return are very similar to gophers. If I didn't have gophers, I wouldn't care at all. But it's just like I've hit all those shots a lot already. for for me if i found out one game felt just like another one yeah ruined yeah like a song like i hear a song oh this is a sample oh yeah or you know like i just like oh you can play these two nickelback songs on top of each other at the same time and you can't tell that there's two songs yeah like what they're on youtube right there's tons of videos like they layer like four songs on top they literally even the tempo they don't even adjust the time they're hilarious i love that's that's i guess that's what i'm trying to get out it's it's the fun i don't want to lose the fun and i think you're right i think there's a there's a middle ground where i can know enough and still tech maybe technically get by and fix things and i don't want to know that the game is exactly the same as the other one i kind of wish i didn't know that are you are you catching what i'm saying i hope you are yeah 100 because i have this problem with music where because i've listened to too much music on a technical level with editing music mixing music all these things that you have put yourself into a different headspace and hear a song in a way that's not music anymore. Yeah. And then when you disconnect yourself from this work that you're doing, then you later hear a totally different song, but you're still hearing it in that analytical, this is it, work for me. It makes it hard to enjoy music. There's one element that doesn't sound quite right. That's all you're going to focus on for the whole song. For me, recently, the over-compression on the whole mix, is the worst yeah i mean you're talking about like there's a major artist i'm not gonna say i'm not gonna hate the single dude it's crunching crunching munching and crunching the whole like the whole and it's like the lead vocal yeah you know what i'm saying like when the kick hits or whatever like that bass drive is just like i can i feel like i'm getting choked and i don't know how that's even so apparently people some people just like that now like it's a style horrible i don't i mean i don't know how you like it but some people do instantly loses dimension and it hurts It gives me a headache. And so all that being said, we're talking about the same kind of thing, right? Feeling like if you get into the weeds of pinball too much, you won't appreciate it as much as you did. I think I'm finding a nice middle ground. I think I'm there. I think I'm at the point where I feel I can learn a little more, but I don't want to learn that much more. You're just going to have to tune me out sometimes. this might be a problem, Donald. This might be a problem. Is this the last episode? So, especially if we do an episode that gets a little technical or gets into the weeds or something, you're really going to absorb that information. I'm sorry. Well, I think... I mean... You know what, man? I'm willing to risk it. You're going to risk it? YOLO. I mean, because... You only live once. I don't think it's going to mess anything up for you. I think you will have a deeper appreciation for it, and that's it. I mean, I think you're right. I think you're right. I'm zooming out. I'm zooming out a little bit. Yeah, zoom out a little bit. A little more. Okay. One more time. Where are we at? Where are we at? Are we at like 10x? I'm maxed out. I think it's going to be great. I'm actually really excited about it. But occasionally there will be downsides, like the aforementioned, oh, these ramps are exactly the same as the ramps on that other game. But, you know, pinball designers, great as they were, sometimes they kind of phoned it in. Even the Sterns coming out now, they're like, you know, talking about how they repurpose things from other games. That's just part of being creative, I guess, but also like keeping costs down. True. The same mechanism and it works this way and we know it's solid because our game's had it for five years and it hasn't failed. Exactly. Yeah. And some of that stuff is just like, you don't need to know that. I'll insulate you from as much of the... That kind of nonsense. It's okay. I'm a grown boy. I'm going to protect you, Donnie. I'm going to protect you from as much nonsense. It's not me. It's my pinball spirit. I'm a hardened man. But, you know, I get it. You got a soft, jelly-like pinball soul. I think it ties to my backstory. If you go back in the previous episode, maybe it's a soft part of my soul. Yeah, you could see it in that episode a little bit. You could see it. Thank you so much for listening. And don't be a stranger now. Send us your emails at pod at bashpinball.com. And check out what we've been up to on Instagram at bashpinball. Next week, we're going to be talking about my recent trip to Pinfest, where I got to play a bunch of new and old games like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Looney Tunes, and The Princess Bride. When I was at Pinfest, the thing that really struck me the most was... You rule the universe! Leave this territory now. Return to your home. Evacuate all personnel. you