thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast this is episode 73 i'm josh roop with me as always my co-captain scott larson and scott why don't we hurry and talk about our good buddies over there flipping out okay yeah i actually just so i have two pinball machines in my garage waiting to unbox as we speak. And my latest delivery is Iron Maiden Premium. And it actually has internet connectivity. So I believe that the band actually comes and plays live while you play the game. That's pretty much how it works. And if not, the Stern gets to spy on everything you do. But either way, it's a win. That's how you're going to end that? Okay, in all sincerity, contact Zach and Nicole. the best thing is to get ahead of the curb. If you think you need something, please let them know, because they know a little bit more about when the release schedule is supply chain issues, supply chain issues, supply chain issues. And so just keep that in mind, because if you have that game out there, get in line because they need to know because it may or may not be available immediately, but they've always been good to work with and really had a good experience with them. What about you, Josh? No, I'm excited. I've got a Godzilla on order, and I can't wait. I know that they've done great for me. Like I was saying on the last episode, we had a friend, Joe Lemire, that he was having some issues with his pinball machine. And Zach many hooked him up, had him a personal circuit board to him within a couple of days. And that limited edition Godzilla came back to life. And Joe is loving his game. Yeah. Well, I have three in route, I guess. I just asked for a Guardians of the Galaxy Pro because I'm missing my Iron Maiden, and I figure it's not the same game, but it has a similar vibe. So I got in line for that, and I have Mandalorian at some point when that comes out, and Godzilla as well. So I'm going to introduce our guest today, a really awesome man. We've had him on before, but not in the context of what he's been announced as lately. You know, this is the man that not only does the finances for Raw Thrills and is El Presidente for the IFPA, but he's like, that wasn't enough. I want to do more. I'm going to help create rule sets with Lyman Sheets and shock the world as we make Cactus Canyon. And now he's here to tell us all about it. It's Josh Sharpe. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing fantastic. Peace and quiet in my house. Let's go, boys. Shock and awe. Let's do this. Let's do it. okay i i want to know let's get through three out of the nine questions okay well is your dad coming on yeah yeah pretty much i'm like i have to be to work in uh in about four and a half hours and so maybe we can break it up into three segments there we go yeah um okay so i mean this is really interesting to me so i it's uh it wasn't too much of a surprise that lineman was announced is the coder for this. Is that true? It wasn't a surprise? Well, of course. I was shocked. You were shocked? I mean, when I was told by Chicago Gaming that he was on the project, I was shocked. Okay, okay. Well, okay, what I'm saying, though, is Lyman has designed these games before. He has a track record of these, you know, making rule sets for the last 30 years, And he kind of disappeared from the conversation at Stern. And so we could connect the dust that he was working on something. I guess I'll put it that way. So it wasn't completely out of left field to say, hey, Lyman's going to be involved in this. It seemed to be in the wheelhouse. I want to know how you got involved in this. And they said, you know what? Lyman needs a Robin to his Batman. How can you do that? No, I was involved long before Lyman was, actually. so my relationship with Doug Duba and the CGC team goes way back to like medieval I mean he's been a vendor for us at Raw Thrills for 20 years and used to build Buck Hunters for us not just the cabinet but the complete game assembly and you know I mean Doug has has always seen me as a pinball resource if you will the same way that that certain people in the industry We look to both, you know, I'll put myself and my brother Zach in that same category of just been around the game, been around the business, been around the industry. And we don't mind being brutally honest one way or the other with our feedback. And we don't think take things personal if our feedback is taken or not. so uh you know part of when i found out that they were doing cactus you know i kind of warned doug like hey man you know you used you did lyman's big three and i think you sorted your excel spreadsheet by resale value instead of by quality of game and i like it's not a great game because it's not done and just sort of taking him through the history of cactus and it's like i didn't know how much he knew it was just like this game's 20 grand you know because that was a lot of the medieval thing was medievals were going for whatever 15 18 20 and you could get a new one for eight it like blew the market up it was like in an insane value purchase and i think by the time he had committed to cactus which is 11 years ago now i don't know 2021 like he was already down the road so far even by the time that that i was brought in that uh you know there was some work to be done and my feedback to him if you wanted to make a game that was worthy of selling to people to truly enjoy you know that classic williams game experience and not just a just you know buying something that is worth double in the open market you know the game aside putting the game the side i say well and obviously the doug agreed with you because you you guys have now worked on a new code set for that but how do you approach a classic game i know it's kind of easier with cactus canyon because uh it hasn't felt like a complete game because it really hasn't been but how do you approach a code set for a game that has been around for this long and and revamp something that has already kind of been established uh i mean i think i know when i got brought in like the cgc team had it was like a 102 page design document of the things that that they wanted to do and you know a lot of research that they had done re-watching old expo seminars of the design team and whatnot and you know putting putting the pieces of the puzzle together if you will of trying to finish this game that wasn't finished and i think you know When the opportunity that – when Lyman became involved, it was like CGC had a path that they were going to take that was going to finish the game. And Lyman and I sort of had this opportunity if he was interested and if Doug was interested to take something to the next level and really, really go back. Like I was able to steal my dad's Rolodex and talk to all of the design team members outside of like, hey, I saw your expo seminar in 2003 and I could read the statements you made from the Pinball News article that was in the CGC document. But like what's the story here? Because it's interesting. Like it's an unlicensed game. But for what Lyman and I were doing trying to attack it, it was really a licensed game. It was just the license was created by this team of people at Williams that they created this world. So, you know, every character that that John Yowsey drew, he had to be triggered by something like, you know, he's drawing someone that looks a certain way. You know, who is this person? You know, what's their story? You know, what's this, you know, this this artwork on the play field? And I mean, it's weird to have had a game that I've been aware of for 20 whatever years. But when you really do a deep dive into like, what is the artwork on that plastic? And it's like, well, you've never like I've never noticed it in the past. But all of a sudden, it's like, there's a story there. And a story that can then drive a rule that can then get into the game where you're just, you're really looking to pull as much out of the game as possible. as much of the story that you can into pinball rule form, if you will. So that was a very unique challenge of this one. Now with this, the story, just to catch everybody up, this was when Williams was losing market share, really, and the pinball was really winding down. So they did a Hail Mary, they cut this short, and they produced Pinball 2000, And we know the story on that is that shortly after the debut of it, they decided to shut everything down. So this was the last gasp, but it still is a retro game. I mean, if you look at the play field, it feels very much like the 90s games, which are so different than the games today. And so what is the thought process of trying to engineer a rule set? because it would be hard to retrofit a Walking Dead rule set or something like that on one of these older games. And so how do you approach doing a game that was originally designed in the 90s today, 20 years later? You do it the way it should have been done, was the choice that the CGC team had and then what Lyman and I have chosen to do beyond that. I think – and internally, I call it the Williams charm. There's something about the games from whatever, even throwing in System 11. Like there's something – the charm of these games, like they were made – the games were made to make money on location to casual players, right? So like I often describe it as like modern games today allow you to play a story that's like 1 to 10 and you're playing every chapter there in between. And the Williams games are really – you're making some shots on a play field that kind of gets you from like 1 to 7 and then you're entering a mode that is like starts at 7 and takes you to 10. It's quicker. It's like a bite-sized Snickers bar where it's really made to entertain you, entertain you quickly, and then move on to the next thing. So I think that's a big difference between what I see as someone who tries to understand games that are of the modern persuasion and games from the 90s that tend to be a little bit more digestible. You can look at the game and, you know, you make a shot. It's like on Cactus, you make a shot three times and like the inserts are literally telling you the story as you make it. And the modes that were added for the shot inserts, the shot modes or whatever, if you will, like those were an extension of the story that was already being told by the design team on the play field. So it was just like finishing these little modules of entertainment for the player. It's really about story and entertainment. And it's like I think I've talked about it in the past, but like pinball rules, a rule is a rule and a rule is kind of nothing unless you dress it up to entertain the player. So, you know, most of my favorite rules in pinball are really stupid. You know, like Adam's family has a ton of my favorites. Twilight Zone has a ton of my favorites. Like, I love seance. What's the rule in seance? Shoot three ramps. You know, I love clock chaos. If you can get it going forever and the thing's going crazy, it's like that rule is shoot the center spot target as many times as you can. The rule is stupid. But the way that, you know, the sights, the sounds, the lights, everything, it's like the emotional connection to what you're doing is paramount to the experience of those games back in the day. And I feel like it's less important now. The good games still do it, but like it was necessary and how things were made back then. Even the Williams games back then tended to do a good job of that. You know, get you in, get you entertained, get you out, move you on. Right. It was kind of a high fructose snack as opposed to a meal. Yeah. So it gives you the buzz quickly, but it was never really designed for someone to sit and play 45 minutes straight. That was never really – elite players would, but that really wasn't happening on location. Well, and I think of the questions that you guys sent over, the first question that you list of what makes a good game, and that question is really so dependent on the person that's answering it. But like, you know, when working with Lyman, the idea of the goal is to make a game that is as wide of a demographic. You want to be able to hit as wide of a demographic as possible. And oftentimes that includes stuff that for me as a player wouldn't be a focus on. And I remember talking to the Stern guys about this over the last 20 years of going in there. And it's like, you know, don't make games for me. I'm going to play anything because I'm a crazy pinball nerd. You know, it's like pinball is like pizza. Like if the only thing left in a room was a Thunderbirds in the corner, I'd be playing it all night because it's still pinball, man. So focus on doing the things that someone like her can enjoy when she steps up to a game and can have fun, be entertained, be challenged and want to do it again and again. And I feel like if you focus on people that are more like her and less like me, you have a better chance at selling way more games than to a highly focused niche group of people that maybe are more prominent of a group out there but certainly aren't the most important when it comes to really wanting to sell games in large quantities. Right. And that's exactly like medieval madness. My kids still like I can never sell medieval madness because the first thing they say is I want to, you know, they love seeing the castle explode. And even any the first time someone comes down to my game room, that's basically the first game I point them to. And I was like, it's a pretty self-explanatory game. Shoot up the middle and the castle is going to explode. And they find that so cool. It's that it factor. But you're right. It's not that difficult, but it's something that it scratches that itch for the entry-level player, which brings them coming back. Yeah, it's necessary, man. It's necessary if you want to sell a lot of games. You need to be able – every decision you make has to please as many people as you can. And I know that's something Lyman's always preached about for all of his games. It can't just be about putting things in for tournament players. It has to be about entertaining as many people as you can with what you're doing. Well, it reminds me of I've been playing Ripley's Believe It or Not a lot this week. And, you know, I watched the tutorial from Keith L. when they did for Papa. And it's one thing that you have to understand. That's like a player's game. Like I never really thoroughly enjoyed it until I realized that you have to dig a little deeper into that game It not your medieval menace it not your attack from mars where you destroy stuff it like you got to figure out these modes you got to complete the modes and you got to stack stuff with it and and i guess to the basic player you know they just don't they don't want that they want to have something fun to shoot and that game i don't want to say it's not necessarily that but it can it can kind of be that so so i guess the point of the statement is those like you've definitely got to look at everyone that's in the room versus just specifically one person because if you want to sell in this market right now you've got to to appeal to a broad audience at this point yeah and that's hard because it's it's hard because the people that you interact with the most are people that farm or they have a higher pinball iq than a random person so So, I mean, when I am telling, you know, Lonnie when he's making some game in 2008 to not worry about what I think for me, it's like I truly mean it because I know the importance of like – I know how not important I am to please. and it's hard it's hard to balance that pinball fame fellas of people that like if you're able to do something that pleases the people that are the most vocal on the internet or in real life like it's it's hard to do things for the greater good for the mass market but it is the uh i do think it's the most important now i i want to bring up that this is what was announced on uh during the reveal is that this is not going to be incremental releases and we're kind of used to these okay uh code 0.83 is out okay put code 0.89 is out go download it and install it from what i understand this is going to be okay the code is done here it is and that that does that does affect how you design something because if you get one shot at it how much more difficult is that or is it a little easier to say okay this this is what it is we don't have to worry about tweaking it i think you have to i mean i i think if you ask most people they would prefer to ship a game finished you know i i think everyone's enjoying their godzilla updates that like no longer crash the game or whatever but like i think if you asked everyone that works in the industry they would love to have the time to present to the world their complete vision of the game and be judged based off of that and if there's any changes beyond that you know they they can they can possibly do that if needed i think you know with with cactus especially at least with what lyman and I are doing, like we are hopefully with my experience and Lyman's experience and the few other people that we've had play it, you kind of do the best you can and go with what you feel works best and just be confident that if we're enjoying what we're doing, which we are, that we're confident people are going to enjoy what we put out. And if there are bugs or whatever that, I mean, Lyman joked with me the other day, like there's a bug in attack you know 25 years later i think the most important thing though is that the game obviously as it sits now like attack is completely functional in the universe for what it is so i think uh we're hoping to land on the same thing with cactus as we have something that's the complete vision of of what you know the cgc team the game that they're shipping now is a complete fully functional game that's going to have everything in it and if there's any changes to be made later like i don't even actually know how that works with the cgc system but the plan is for hopefully the world to enjoy what what they've done and then what we we've done when our stuff comes out i guess that kind of leads me into the next thing i was going to ask too is um and if you can't confirm or deny it it's totally fine oh yeah we're gonna get a couple of those in here yeah um what how how is this going to be updated because i know in the older games Like with attack for Mars, they just sent me a new chip when we need to do some updates and stuff like that. Can you, can you download this wirelessly? How are they going to prevent fraud? Cause obviously they've talked about putting a price tag on this, but what's what prevents someone from buying it? I have to imagine it's like the color chip for medieval. Like the chip. Yeah. Like, and I remember like I got my medieval color chip when it came out and it was whatever in some UPS envelope. And I mean, that was the card, you know, that I put into the game and then it was like, okay, now I have color. Like, obviously there's probably something security related on that thing or else i would just like hey scott josh you want this card i'm done with it it's on my game and it's done yeah clearly uh that didn't work for people so so they've i mean that's really a question for like sam at cgc of just like how the stuff logistically works but that's not even a number tonight i don't know i don't know you don't want to get congratulations you sold one copy however it's on a thousand a thousand machines now yeah i know that like you know when lyman comes over every week for us to play the newest code like he brings me a flash drive we put it in the game and then we go nothing nothing downloading online or anything like that okay uh this game is a little different than um especially with the the topper integration so cgc is known for having over the top toppers i I mean, they are really the only one I can imagine competing with that maybe would be Black Knight's topper because of the interactivity and the 3D of it. However, every other topper I've ever seen kind of pales in comparison to the quality and the integration that CGC has done. So tell me about that. Like whose idea was it to do the topper? It feels very… Doug Duba. Oh, okay. Doug did. Doug's brainchild, this topper thing. Yeah, man, he's a game designer at heart, or a topper designer at heart. I think, yeah, that thing was, well, I think they even had a sample done by the time I came on a couple of years ago to help with this thing. Like, they kind of knew the direction they were going, and Doug knew what he wanted out of it. And, yeah, man, he just, he was into it. He had an idea and he's the boss, so he's able to do what he wants. Yeah, it looks like there's going to be a lot of integration, especially with the new code that's coming out where, you know, in the past it was like video modes. But this is almost like a this feels better than a video mode because it's actually it's visual and you're going to be able to do stuff. And I'm really curious to see where that direction will go and will it be implemented like one, two or four different ways? I guess you can probably neither confirm nor deny, but I'm just wondering how you're going to integrate that into the new code. I think it's in the base game that's out there right now that CGC will be shipping. So I think there is whatever the shootout video mode, which is a lot like Raven's Bar from Indiana Jones. And there's also there's definitely interactions with Boss Bart up there in various parts of the game. if you're starting the quick draw feature or the gunfight feature. So all that integration, I think, doesn't even – I mean, there may or may not be additional things that Lyman and I are doing with the topper, but it is certainly – people who don't buy or update will enjoy their topper a ton. There's a lot of integration to the gameplay as you are shooting and lights changing and helping set the mood and whatnot. So you talked about you got out your dad's old Rolodex and started talking to these people on the original design. Do you feel like you kept to the heart and soul of what they originally intended, or do you feel like you and Lyman are like, we're going to go a whole new level with this? No, we, you know, we Zoomed with Matt Correal, and we actually had Rob Berry do some new music for us. He was the guy who did the original music on the game. and the uh even talked to eric pripke with cactus canyon continued to try to to grab some of his nuggets and his games that we thought fit within the world really well and kind of merged with the stuff that that matt and rob were talking about as they were reflecting on the the game that they were putting together like our goal was to if the game is still called cactus canyon remake that's what's being sold so for i think there's there's probably some future marketing material that will come out where i reference like what what the design team did is like the tree trunk you know back in the 90s and what the cgc team did was add some branches to that and what lyman and i have done is filled in every leaf possible on that tree so it is extremely luscious and beautiful to look at, but it's all building on top of itself in the spirit of really wanting to make the design team, that original design team, proud of the finished product, the extended finished product that Lyman and I do. So it has all been in the spirit of what those guys created and what 90s Williams pinball was all about now the the designers on this and matt and tom i find it very interesting that this is really the the only known design from them like they they've worked on other projects but it doesn't from my understanding they've never taken the lead on something else is that is is that correct i think so i think they've both i know tom and unfortunately tom's at stern so i wasn't able to hit him up on this project. Yeah, I see the IPDB, and it lists a lot of stuff that he worked on with Stern. You know, Elvira, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, and the Beatles, Rolling Stones. So, you know, all these things. But it's never a, hey, he took lead design on something else. I find it interesting that this game seems a lot like an outlier. I think there's a story, and Lyman could tell it better than I could, but there was something where whatever was going to be Cactus or something else, all of these engineers had an opportunity to pitch a game. And it was sort of this, like, we're moving on to Pinball 2000, so all of the resources are being put to this future huge thing, but we need something to fill the line. Does anybody have any ideas? And it was like a science fair time of like, me, pick me. And I think Matt was a programmer, and I think he may have been the only design team, if you will, that pitched a game idea where it was – because he's the programmer, they actually had something that was way further along working than like, I have a game idea, guys. Let's do a Harry Potter pinball. Here's my David Hankin sketch. That doesn't make any sense. Like, I think a lot of how Cactus happened was, you know, between Tom and Matt, they physically had the skills to be able to, like, present something that was more than three paragraphs of information to green light a game. So that's kind of how this happened for those guys. So they had a chance to live the dream, I guess, for eight months or however long they had on this thing. Not enough time. Not enough time to finish, unfortunately, for those guys. I'm sorry you brought up Harry Potter pinball and I'm like all I can think of is did you hear that Joe Kamenkow got beat out by Homepin for the new license what are you serious that was a rumor that was wow we'll leave it at that huh okay all right like to see that happen so all right sorry we'll bring it back bring it back you've worked with Lyman before right this isn't like a new relationship you're building you you guys have been in league together over the years and stuff yeah like i certainly i mean it's funny i can probably go back to pre pre-pandemic but every every stern game when i get a chance to play there's usually you know i'll email george and the designer and the software person of like you know tron dot dot dot my thoughts you know paragraphs of information. So like the, the relationship I've had with, with those guys has been the same as it's been for ever. And so like, obviously there was a little bit more of, I guess, explicit working together with Lyman on this than there was in the past. But, you know, Lyman and I share a lot of beliefs about, you know, what we think is important in pinball. And that's kind of always been the case. So, I mean, I've known him since I was 13 years old. He's kind of my competitive pinball mentor. So he, you know, he was at my wedding. Like I've known the guy forever and we talk pinball a lot. So this has been no different, except we actually get to kind of control what ends up happening, you know, as rather than just talking about things that Matt and his team should have done in Cactus. It's like we've gotten the chance to like solve the puzzle and really do the research together to make the best cactus that we feel can be made. Knowing that if a dozen different design teams had the chance, you'd get 12 different versions, I would imagine. Yeah, I will say the super interesting part sort of along the lines of like this puzzle solving was all of the sounds that are not used in the ROM and like the CGC document that I ended up getting like has the list of every possible speech quote. And it's crazy to think like there's so much content that wasn't used. But when you start – you talk with Cory Owl about a rule that they were thinking about or whatever and the stuff just like fits like a glove into places where like of course this has to be the rule because this person has these speech quotes and they're talking to this person. And it's like you end up solving these little riddles and then you put it, you know, by the time Lyman puts everything in with the speech, with the animation, it's like I feel like this is what it had to be, you know, based off of kind of the answer key was there. You just didn't know which answer was which question. So that was that was cool. You're like Indiana Jones, the pinball archivist. You're recreating. Definitely. It's different than having a blank canvas and like being able to come up with any kind of crazy stuff you want to come up with. It was a very interesting and challenging part of the job. So did you end up recording new lines and stuff for the game as well to add into it or? Nothing yet. I think Rob, because, you know, back then everyone was on Pinball 2000. It was like a shoestring budget. Like Rob was the voice of most of the people in the game. And he has volunteered to do some pickups if we need it. And so there may be some stuff in Bionic Bart that we may tell him to throw a couple of new lines on there. But really, there was a wealth of riches of stuff that was already in the game. It just wasn't applied anywhere because stuff wasn't finished. OK, so the IFPA. Let's talk more about this. I mean, you have been such a driving force of this since, well, basically since you decided to resurrect it. um this has been an interesting few years really where we've seen this this incremental increase in interest in competitive pinball which probably brings a lot more of the casual players and who want to level up or to to be a little more competitive i noticed a lot more in utah where people are interested that you know they start off as casual players They buy one or two games and then they get into the competitive scene and they get the bug So walk us through the last three years. You're on this ascent. Things are going really well. And then a global pandemic happens. Okay, so walk us through the last couple of years. It's depressing. I mean, I don't, you know, we were on, it's one of these things where if you were a business, the growth that we've had in both, you know, players and events was just year over year, every year, you know, not skipping a beat. The game of pinball, I mean, I've always felt it's so special that it's really tough to not like it. So, and I think it's inherently, you know, I think as Gottlieb said in the 70s, it's more fun to compete. There is something special about playing. It doesn't have to mean that you're playing for like, you know, any sort of serious championship. But the idea of even standing around a local monthly tournament or local league night where you're hanging with friends and you're playing a four player game of pinball. There's something really fun about that. And, you know, the only way we get we grow the player base is literally only new players like everyone has found it already. They've already been counted in our player count. So we rely on that bug spreading to people and them catching it and coming along for the ride. And like the pandemic just railroaded the train off the tracks. I mean, it sucked. It sucked. And we're – I think if I look at the numbers now, we're at about two-thirds of where we were pre-pandemic in terms of average monthly player count, event count. So – and that makes sense. I mean, I don't even know if Australia is open or closed right now. I think it changes by the day down there. But there's certainly areas – They're on their 30th lockdown, so. Yeah, there's I mean, there's areas of the world where clearly, well, I mean, I didn't go to Expo. It's like seven minutes down the highway from my house and I didn't go. So there's clearly a batch of people still not getting back out there like myself. And it also impacts the events that I organize. You know, I'm not organizing Jack right now, guys, just hanging out in my bedroom every day for the last 18 months. like i'm not worried at things picking up where they left off it's just the long pause has been a long pause but i'm not uh i'm not worried long term i feel like it's we're gonna get back on the tracks and the train's just gonna start chugging chugging chugging chugging again It would seem that with Stern and JJP and this increased demand for people buying machines, they've really – if you look at the pinball prices as any indication for supply and demand, it seems that there is going to be this pent-up demand for a product to compete when everyone feels more comfortable to go all the way out. and to actually go to these tournaments, go to expos. And so it seems, if I'm looking at my crystal ball, it seems there is going to be an explosion when everybody finally is able to get out and re-interact with everybody and start competing to the same level because there is a hunger out there that has been untapped for a while. Yes, I feel, that's how I feel personally. Like I can't wait to get back out there. So I imagine there's a lot of people that feel the same way. Like, let's go, you know, messaging, messaging Zach about like, you know, like planning a trip for INDISC in, is it whatever, three months, two and a half months. And it's like, it's, we haven't looked into flights yet. Because it's just, I can't, I haven't gotten back in the mode of like, I'm going to book a flight. That's so weird. Like, I just, I'm not there yet. But I'm really excited to get to that point again. So the real question is, are you training your kids up to start dominating the tournament scene after watching Escher and Z-Mac go after each other at Expo? And the next youngest guy is Ray Day at like 29, and all of us old fathers are like – Ryan the old Greg Grabberay? Yeah. I haven't. I have not pushed my kids at all ever to play. So that's all on them. If they want to join the league, they'll let me know. If they don't, no big deal. I like to watch them, and I'm just curious as an observer just to see if they take to it on their own. My three-year-old likes to spend a ton of time in the basement by himself. All of my games now have credit dots, and they're all broken because he just goes game to game to game, plunging flipping just chimp flipping away breaking all my stuff it's okay but didn't didn't he get to portal on tron didn't you say that it's coming for you escher yeah he refuses to go to the bathroom in the toilet but he's coming yeah also his his new plunging style too doesn't he lay on the glass and use his foot to use oh that's right i think i used that video to our Facebook group. Yeah, man, he is. He wants to see the ball on the top, so he engineered a way to do that. Yeah, he'd crawl up, lay on the glass, look at the top, and then use his big toe to launch the ball from the plunger. That's pretty awesome. That's so weird, kid. My daughter, she will start up Turtles, Stern's Turtles, and make sure all the balls drain so that way she can listen to the outro music and dance around the outro. She'll flip a ton, but as soon as it's done, she dances around the basement. There you go. Ninja Turtles. So, Josh, you had said that you're not there yet. So I'm wondering what actually would it take for you to get back there, like going to these events, feeling comfortable going to these big tournaments? For me, like my older kids, it's really more about making sure that my wife and I feel strongly about needing to sacrifice the way our kids are sacrificing right now so like my older two kids want to do stuff and you know they're now closer now they have their their first shot in but the uh you know my wife and i just decided like if they can't do stuff like it's a way for us to bond with them that like hey man like i'm not i didn't go to expo and it's like i usually bring my kids the last day of expo and it's like they wanted to go And it's like, you guys can't go, but I'm also not going to guys. So it allowed me to sort of share in their misery, if you will, rather than like, sucks. You guys can't go. I'll see you Sunday night. I'm out of here. That's just the way that we've handled it. And I don't know, we feel good about that decision. And we're close if they're their next shots right after Thanksgiving. And then it really comes down to Amanda and I will have another discussion about like, you know the three-year-old won't be vaccinated yet but do we do we go out as a family of four now and leave the little guy at home and start to do things and i think we are probably likely to do that it'll be the ben don't break strategy of uh you know i know she wants to where's my daughter she wants to take my daughter to disney which is a surprise trip that's coming i'm uh taking my son to a Bulls game, hopefully in January. So we're planning on doing things that just don't include the three-year-old. Right. Hopefully they don't listen to Loser Kid. We don't want them to spoil the surprise. Yeah, they're huge fans, I'm sure. I heard. You didn't hear anything. What are you talking about? Okay, so when you go to Disney, do you go to land or world? I mean, you're kind of halfway. We go to Orlando. You go to Orlando. Because normally – I mean actually we would have just been there this week. So because I have IAAPA every year for work that I've missed this week. Normally we spend the – we fly down the weekend before IAAPA. We do Disney. I go to work and my wife's dad – yeah, that's right. My wife's dad and a bunch of her dad's family is all down, not in the Orlando area, but Tampa, which is whatever, not far. so we'll do disney and then when i work they'll go see family that's been like the yearly tradition for the last 10 years yeah we uh well last year because we were kind of pent up and and going crazy we actually went to disney world over christmas last year nice because we're like well we have masks and we've been that like i i had just barely started being vaccinated so i was at the front of the line but uh we were just like yeah so anyway we we did it was great so i hopefully you'll be able to get back to do those family things because you know those memories as a family i'm sure we'll remember forever so my kids are so spoiled because i think my parent we went to disney once and it was like a really special thing and i feel like that's more the norm as you go like once or twice these kids go every year they're just spoiled rotten. They don't know what they got. It's almost like as a kid growing up, if you had two pinball machines in your bed. Right. I always tell my son that. I'm like, you know how lucky you are you have a full arcade in your basement? Yeah. I don't have a Twilight Zone in my bedroom, so still not that special. It's in Zach's bedroom now, I think, over there. Oh, there you go. My mom, it was in my bedroom. My mom took over my room. It's like her meditation room now. There is no, nothing pinball related in that room. It is a pinball safe zone these days. Oh, that's too bad. She needs some square footage over there that doesn't have pinball in it because it's everywhere over there. So what's on the horizon with Raw Thrills? What's going on there? We, man, it's the same backlog issues that Stern has, just not as insane as theirs but we're we're thousands of units behind just trying to to keep up every day is i mean i got an email today from like our apologies we know that the normal lead time for this part is four to six weeks but it's now three and a half to four months and it's like oh my god like what's next like it's triage mode every day and uh if we could find a way to just keep the line going it's a win so it's the good the good news is that the business is back because our business was dead like flatlined dead like dead carcass go kick the horse if you want so these are all wonderful problems to have compared to whatever a year ago a little over a year ago where we didn't have any problems because we weren't doing anything but it's it's tough it's challenging the pricing on everything is just crazy you know we've had to do a couple of price increases just to try to to stay to stay at the level financially that we need to to keep the enterprise going but uh i'd say i i hope by the end of next year we're back to normal but every three months i seem to just keep pushing it back three months of how long it's going to take for us to to get caught up and and not be having these daily emergencies like we have been but it's all good no complaints no complaints it's it's it's it's tough but we're business is good thank god no more updating the resume boys no more updating the resume well i know that when we were with uh keith elwin and a company when they were doing their uh seminar there on godzilla they said like four weeks out before they were supposed to release the thing one of the circuit boards became like obsolete and they had to like redesign to and it was like around the clock to redesign the circuit board so that way they could get it to work with what they needed for for godzilla i'm like that's insane and that's just what we're running into as a as a weekly occurrence it sounds like our poor electrical engineer got kevin at raw thrills it's just like you know i see emails with our board houses of like any substitute parts available this lead time is 65 weeks and it's like okay great wow now you guys dipped your toe a little bit into the home entertainment market i'm considering raw thrills has basically taken over all of these uh entertainment areas that used to be dominated by arcades and you go into any any sort of fun area either like a skating area you know a roller skating rink or or a movie theater and you go into the arcade and I'd say 80% of it is Rothrills-esque games. They're bigger than life, but you guys pivoted a little bit, and you guys did release a game on the Switch. We did! And that seems... I actually played it. I thought it was a lot of fun. Cool. But how... How do you balance that when you have your market so dominated by everything else? you you give people you know when your market is dead and you don't want to fire the fire if that's the wrong word you don't want to let everyone furlough people redistribute eugene is the nicest person on planet earth he committed to keeping the business running for it was like 18 months at least we're going to keep this thing going so nobody needs to worry you know we did we had some pay cuts and stuff and the bonus is all gone because that's all based on company profits that didn't exist but like everyone had their job which was man a lot to say at a time where a lot of people were for a lot of our competitors furloughed everyone and just paused development and the Antonio Cruz and switch deal for us just allowed our guys to be able to work on something that could make the company some money but you know in a world where throw continuing to throw money at a market that doesn't exist currently didn't make a whole lot of sense so it was a fun to do project and it got us to the point where we were able to see if our core market came back or not and it has so we're uh i would say we're not going to be a a switch developer for years to come it was fun and it was the perfect game to do it with you know it being that original nintendo IP that Eugene had worked on back in the 90s. It was kind of just kismet for this to happen the way it did. And I think we're happy to sell as many copies as we can and get back to making the craziest experience games that we can. You know, and I picked up a copy myself. I was impressed because it was on the top 20 for a while. I mean, it hit pretty high up on the Switch charts there for a bit. And it's a really good game. um my only feedback on it or at least my wife multiplayer is no actually it's not my feedback it's my wife's feedback is you've got to change the the screen the choose your stuff screen song because it was driving her insane the uh the testing area is right under my office at work A lot of that stuff is from the arcade game, too. And it's just, yeah. When you have a game experience that's designed to last two to three minutes, you hear the two to three minutes a lot. Yes. What was even funny, her best friend's over and I, you know, I complete the level. I go back to the main screen. I check, you know, choose the next race or whatever. And finally, she's like, can you please like either turn the sound off or pick a different game? Because I can hear that song one more time She even had that What is this like Antonio Cruz in or whatever Yeah Yeah Okay it makes me smile because i played it all in hawaii after the kids went to sleep so that what i did oh nice so okay so my next question is what are we going to do about getting big big buck hunters into the same zone as pinball machines have become and people buying those and putting them in their house it's uh it's interesting our our sales guy my one of my dear friends uh brandon has really worked hard to focus on on new markets for us which is the home market i mean it's the home market yeah five percent of our market was is home sales you know years ago and mostly Most of it was Buckhunter, but he has worked with, you guys know him well, Mr. Zach Manny. Flipping out pinball, Brandon signed up Zach as one of our dealers. We're close with the Stern guys, and Brandon's close with the Stern sales guys, that we've really tried to take their approach on things, where they have their commercial distributors, and then they have their consumer retailers, if you will. and Brandon's done a great job of bringing in those home retailers that sell to consumers and try to get this on their line card, so to speak. And, you know, I think Chris at Kingpin Games has been really good. Zach has been really good. And being able to sign up these people that speak to that same audience of like, hey, I know you got a bunch of pins, but what about a Buckhunter? And we've seen that with our Buckhunter sales for sure. Like I know we built, you know, it was this was the first year where sometime over the summer there was the talk about we need to get some stuff into production for the holiday season for these home retailers. And it was like, what? What are we? What? You know, this was not we don't we don't sell to the home like who cares? But Brandon's been really fighting the fight for us. And it's it's it's worked. We're selling, you know, I think we built like 50 games a few weeks ago and I saw Bill Lading go to King Kong Games. It was for like 20 out of the 50 games. And it's just like, what's going on? And Brad is just like, yeah, man, these guys are selling games into the home. It's crazy. How does that make it cost effective? Because I know that with at least pinball machines, the challenge is, hey, at least currently, you buy the machine, you have the machine. But with big buck hunters, you're dealing with licensing issues because, you know, it's kind of like an online game almost where you're you're paying for a subscription model or there's a standalone model. And so I guess where's that balance of being able to get people into it's like, hey, you can buy the big buck hunter, but you have to sign up for a subscription. So I think it depends on I mean, really, it's a good question for our sales guy who will take you through the best way to do it. But like we – the online content and that monthly fee, we heavily subsidize the price of the game that you're getting in order to make that work. So it's really – it's easy to say like, man, you're paying month after month. Yeah, dude, but you're getting this $9,000 game for $5,000. Right, and that's what it seemed like to me. It's like when I looked at the price of it, I'm like, that's actually a it looks actually pretty close to cost almost. So what Brandon will usually tell, you know, because we'll get emails from people that are looking, you know, they'll come directly to us asking and then he'll connect them with Zach or he'll connect them with with whoever. But the way that he sells our online model is, hey, listen, you can buy this fully loaded car for nine grand or you can buy the base car for five grand and rent all the content. play as much as you want for whatever 30 or 40 bucks a month and you know think of it as like play everything for a year that's like 500 bucks so your your five thousand dollar game is 5500 you get all the content you get anything we update during this 12 month period and at the end of the 12 month you you may determine like man there's a lot of this stuff i don't play and you can buy the individual a la carte parts and take your game offline at any time so that's kind of the best way of like sampling the menu and then saying like well i don't need the terminator game we played the crap out of that and it's like a you know a 40 minute level and i'm kind of done but you know the traditional buck hunter experience is something i want to keep or this zombies game is something i want to keep because that seems to have some longevity to me so really it's we put it in the power of the consumer to ultimately tailor the game for exactly what they want and if new content comes up they can buy that content separately how's that you guys gonna buy a buck hunter now um i actually want one no no i i have been eyeing my my downstairs game room and i have an area 51 which is which is great and i played it uh i played it to the end a billion times and and i'm the guy who just keeps hitting uh continue add more quarters because you know I'm just, I'm not really interested in, in beating it on one quarter. Yeah. But I'm like, actually having a big buck hunter would be, I really eyed that area to say, maybe I can swap that out and put that in because it's good because there's no barrier to entry. People show up for a big buck hunter. They know what to do. Pick up the gun, shoot things. With pinball, I have to lead them through. And how many times do you go down to your game room after you've had an entire event and every single game is started and there's always a ball in the shooter's loft. It's 100% of the time. And music is going 100% because that music does not shut up, but there's no one down there. And so you have to go and you have to plunge every single ball and turn off every single game. And then you power up the one game you want to continue to play. That's right. So I've actually always looked at that. And so I think that the Big Buck Hunter experience is a really good one. and even cycling in and out. I was like, oh, I'll get this subscription for a while and I'll turn it off for a while and I'll just, when I'm planning on playing it up, I mean, it seems like a good model. So I think it's a good addition to a home game. I mean, I would say if we didn't heavily subsidize it, it probably wouldn't be as good of a deal. But like the fact that we are allowing people to get in cheaper and then feel that out, that, I mean, we feel like we're giving good value to the customers with the model that we have. Yeah, seems like it too. I just want to know, you know, if Stern's redoing these themes that they've already done once or twice, and when are we going to get another big Buckhunter? I think Ellen would slay that, you know? Oh, you mean a pinball version? Yeah, let's do a pinball. It's so funny because the pinball rules nerd that I am, I remember when I found out that Gary was going to license Buckhunter for us. I like spent the weekend writing up like, yeah, designing a game because why not? That's what I do. Right. So it's like I went into Eugene's office, you know, after the weekend on Monday morning and I'm like, hey, man, you know, I was just playing around over the weekend. And, you know, here's like a five page document of some rules that I would do. And I don't even know what the play field looks like, but I would do stuff like this. And like none of that shit was used. But like it was a lot of fun to think about. And yeah, we're a cheap date. maybe you'll circle back around to us and uh we don't mind and you thought i'm never going to design a game rule so why not give this a shot that's right my my notebook my notebook of pinball designs rules and playfields is uh tucked away under my bed still yeah it still makes me laugh when you when you finish that game and the the cow pies shooting the cow pie is the replay yeah Yeah. It's a fun game, you know. It is from an era, let's say that. It definitely is. It's a time capsule. It is. It's a time capsule. Well, it makes me chuckle. You know, you look on Pinside now, they go for like five grand is the average. It wasn't even a couple years ago. I felt like you couldn't give them away for two, you know. Hey, if you got a pulse right now, and I've got my Tron I'm willing to sell for $15,000 for anyone who wants that. Oh, yeah. Pro or LE? It's a pro. However, it's heavily, like I sent it out. I bought it for a certain amount. And then I sent it away and had it customized. And I put more into the customization than I did into the base model of the game. Oh, my goodness. And it's actually, I will say, the way that they customized it, it is better looking than any LE. that a 15 is a bargain yeah exactly you should buy two of them now come on it's it's a beautiful game and i and i have enjoyed it um but you know it's it's one of those where limited space right i sold mine at some point it's worth more to the world than it is to me right when things get crazy yeah so so hey i it for me i just threw it up on pin side i'm like hey if someone really if someone wants it it is a premium game i'm i don't feel like i'm setting it too high considering all the things i did to it but uh you know it's your sale ads where it's like you know what please don't buy it because i kind of don't want to get rid of it right you want to email me pm me man yeah and that's pretty much it so anyway good times well i talked to an operator back from the 90s and it's funny because he was talking about like everyone knew adam's family was going to sell well but like everyone laughed at like twilight zone because they didn't the i guess the vibes back then i was like this isn't going to sell and he's like i wish i would have known back then what was going to happen because it went insane you know yeah what about five of them so yeah so yeah it was a bitcoin era 20 years ago yeah exactly no yeah all right man well thank you so much for uh for coming and spending time we are super excited for cactus canyon um i know No, hold on. Before we wrap this up, I have one more question, and I'm going to call this segment still. I don't know if I'm ticking these guys off, but if you had to choose between Martin Robbins and Jeff Teelis on a boat, who would you throw it overboard or who would you save it? So I feel like I would throw Jeff over, and then I would ask Martin to hand me the life preserver. and then I would like almost throw it to Jeff and like almost throw it to him and then almost throw it to him and then he drowns. But he thinks that I was trying to save him. You'd like throw it and pull it back. The whole time, yeah. Oh, man, just reach. It's almost there, man. Oh, you're dead. And you're secretly throwing Chum in the water. Is that what you're saying? That's right. Just in case you get to heaven, St. Peter's there and he's like – and Jeff's like, he's the gatekeeper, right? You just want to keep a good relationship. I tried. I tried. Yeah, you tried. Man, look at the replay. It's totally there. Well, Josh, we are super excited. Obviously, we don't know when the new code is going to come out, but we're looking forward to it. Me too. Me too. When it's all done, let us know, and we'd be certainly interested to know more about the finished product. I'm cool man apologies Lyman couldn't join us but uh as he says he actually has to do all the work I just get to play and send him messages of thoughts I don't actually have to work it's like the easiest job ever you're the show monkey yeah well even even like you told us when you were announced you're like I don't know why they announced me I only get coffee for Lyman I think it's you are the eye candy I think that's what it is that's right it's like it's like office space i work with the customers so the engineers don't have to yeah i have people skills that's such a great i'm that guy from office space while lyman's slaving away yeah no okay but now i envision lyman as the guy who they kept moving around he actually works out of his basement so yeah it's pretty cool i'm gonna go i'm gonna get him a red stapler for christmas that's my new uh i gotta do that oh wait wait um oh where oh you're gonna pull one out oh my goodness oh my goodness swingline red stapler and they actually re uh they reissued it after that film because they had so many requests yeah awesome stuff boys well thanks i appreciate it looking forward to uh the ifpa getting back online looking forward to you rejoining us and hopefully seeing us in the future. Yeah, man. Totally. Next Expo for sure. Yeah, I'd definitely go to Expo again. I don't know why there's people out there saying they wouldn't, but, you know, I enjoyed it. It was pretty cool. I thought it was great. We had a good time. That's all that matters. It's all about the pizza. Like, honestly, half of that's like I'm coming back up for the food. I don't know how. Don't let Chris get you down. Don't let him get you down. It surprised me how skinny some of you Midwesterners were considering how good the food was. I'd always be eating this Italian beef and pizza. Your body can chew through it, so it digests it in such a way. Ah, gotcha. Well, and Teolis, man, trying to eat – we'd get a small pizza, one of those deep dishes, and he's like, I'm going to finish this whole thing myself. And we're all like, he's going to die. Good luck with that. It's a good thing I'm a doctor. I can do CPR. Yeah. Well, even Raymond Davidson, like, are you going to come to dinner with us? And he's like, where are you guys going? And I was like, well, Teolis said this place like, yeah. He's like, oh, not there. He still has leftovers in my fridge from the other night. but well rain was too busy competing anyway so that's right that's right too busy being grandpa to all these kids i know when did we get a daycare and why are we letting these kids play the pinball you know we laugh but they'd all kick our butts at pinball now yeah okay if he if he's the grandpa then i am like uh methuselah compared oh yeah i'm four generations removed i'm pushing 50 closer i'm pushing what they're getting so well cool if you want to get a hold of us uh we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com you can also get a hold of us on loser kid pinball at facebook or vice versa on that also on instagram and twitter uh if you want to get a hold of us we are on soundcloud all that jazz uh i am officially out merch but i think scott has a couple more things if you have a few more shirts um but yeah we're we are back ordered too so and look at that supply chain yeah little thing hey and if you want to buy my tron let me know well it's funny is i got a call from the lady and she's like i know you like your hats in black red and white but how about green i was like like green black and white and she's like just green i'm like 40th anniversary hats yeah exactly money money no 199 199 sorry yeah anywho that's it for us you got anything else for us scott or josh no I'm gonna go deal with these kids who are bugging the crap out of me welcome sorry for all the editing that that's gonna cause oh no it's awesome my kids are actually heading out of town on Friday tomorrow they're leaving but I'm not meeting them until Wednesday when I fly down after work so enjoy your enjoy your peace and tranquility yeah I'm actually gonna open Maiden and Beatles that's what I'm doing on Saturday awesome enjoy boys Thanks Josh Take care Shut up and sit down Bye.