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Episode 74 – Pick Barb Wire!!

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Jan 18, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Joe Lemire on competitive pinball, Hobbit's flawed code, and the new ScoreBit scoring tech.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast episode 74 features guest Joe Lemire from the New England pinball scene discussing his entry into competitive pinball, his tournament organization efforts (Pinmasters circuit), upcoming State Championship Series finals, and detailed critiques of Jersey Jack's The Hobbit code. The hosts also discuss InDisc tournament coverage from California and a new scoring technology (ScoreBit) that automates score entry.

Key Claims

  • Pinball Wizard arcade in New Hampshire closed in summer 2023 (May timeframe) after being a key venue for the New England pinball community

    medium confidence · Ron and Joe discuss closure timing; Ron says 'beginning of last year' and Joe clarifies 'summer, just before the summer started. So it had to be May.'

  • Joe Lemire was ranked 40th in IFPA last year but has dropped to 70th this year due to decreased play performance

    high confidence · Joe states: 'You're ranked 70th right now in the IFPA. I was 40th last year-ish, but I had a good year.'

  • The New England Pinball League had to relocate finals after Pinball Wizard closed, initially moving to Sanctum which has since dropped out

    high confidence · Joe: 'When they closed, I thought that pinball around here would take a pretty big hit... had to find a new place for the finals to be and it ended up being the Sanctum for a while, but they just dropped out this past season.'

  • Multiple new pinball venues are opening monthly in the Boston/Massachusetts area including Mystic Pinball in Western Mass and new locations near Chuck Webster

    high confidence · Joe: 'there's locations opening up seemingly monthly here now' and mentions Mystic Pinball, Apex entertainment complex with three games, and venues opening near 'Chuck's Neck of the Woods.'

  • Jersey Jack's The Hobbit has been neglected for code updates, being held up for other games (Pirates release) while even Wizard of Oz received updates first

    high confidence · Joe: 'I'm sure they'll put Pirates on hold and they'll start to finish that code for Hobbit... even Wizard of Oz got an update recently, if I recall, before Hobbit gets updates.'

  • The Hobbit has a problematic hidden feeder system that randomizes mode selection, making it nearly impossible to pick desired modes when all are lit

    high confidence · Joe explains: 'if you hit the left ramp again, it randomly picks another mode for you... it's nearly impossible to pick the mode you want, because every time you hit that left ramp, it randomizes the selection of your mode.'

  • Joe won the inaugural 24-hour tournament at the Sanctum and came second the year after

Notable Quotes

  • “I could rant for an hour about the things that are missing in the game and the things that it needs to make it a better game.”

    Joe Lemire @ ~17:00 — Joe's introduction to his detailed critique of Jersey Jack's The Hobbit code quality and design issues

  • “The Hobbit is like Lord of the Rings, but there's no Destroy the Ring, there's no Gift of the Elves, there's no There and Back Again, there's no Valinor. You have your three multiballs, but they're wizard modes, and you just have 30-something ring modes.”

    Joe Lemire @ ~21:00 — Core criticism of The Hobbit's lack of meaningful progression structure compared to Lord of the Rings

  • “My expertise is knowing rules. I know the rules in and out. I study rules. I make sure I watch all the videos.”

    Joe Lemire @ ~26:00 — Joe's self-identification as a rules expert, contrasting with hosts who admit limited code knowledge

  • “When I'm home, we always have other things to do, or we're watching TV or doing something else, so I never practically find myself playing my games. So it kind of defeats the purpose.”

    Joe Lemire @ ~45:00 — Joe's candid admission that he doesn't play his own collection despite competitive activity, revealing collector vs. player tension

  • “I went there, did that, loved it... seems that that's the only place that does it... so I was like, well, let's try and put together a circuit locally in New England.”

    Joe Lemire @ ~55:00 — Joe's motivation for creating the Pinmasters circuit, indicating format preferences and gap-filling in regional tournaments

  • “As a community, we owe him so much money. Yep. The amount of money he's put into this hobby, I don't know how we allow him to do that without being compensated.”

    Ron Hallett and Joe Lemire @ ~105:00 — Recognition of Scott D'Angelo's substantial financial investment in tournament broadcasting infrastructure and technology

  • “You're literally taking, like, the last vestige of human error out of it... just think of the speed. Just think of what that will do for tournaments if that becomes widespread.”

Entities

Joe LemirepersonRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonSlam Tilt PodcastorganizationPinball WizardvenueMystic PinballvenueNew England Pinball Leagueorganization

Signals

  • ?

    venue_signal: Pinball Wizard arcade in New Hampshire closed in summer 2023, creating disruption for New England Pinball League which had to relocate finals; subsequent Sanctum venue also dropped out

    high · Joe: 'When they closed, I thought that pinball around here would take a pretty big hit... had to find a new place for the finals to be and it ended up being the Sanctum for a while, but they just dropped out this past season.'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Multiple new pinball venues opening monthly in Boston/Massachusetts area including Mystic Pinball (Western Mass), Apex Entertainment complex (Marlborough), and unnamed venues near Chuck Webster's location

    high · Joe: 'there's locations opening up seemingly monthly here now like there's one that just opened next to me... Mystic Pinball. I have not been, but I've heard good things.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Jersey Jack's The Hobbit has significant code design flaws including problematic mode selection randomization system and chronic neglect for code updates while other titles (Wizard of Oz, Pirates) prioritized

    high · Joe: 'if you hit the left ramp again, it randomly picks another mode for you... it's nearly impossible to pick the mode you want... I'm sure they'll put Pirates on hold and they'll start to finish that code for Hobbit... even Wizard of Oz got an update recently, if I recall, before Hobbit gets updates.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Joe Lemire's IFPA ranking declined from 40th (last year) to 70th (current) due to decreased tournament performance

    high · Joe: 'You're ranked 70th right now in the IFPA. I was 40th last year-ish, but I had a good year... My game has dropped off a decent amount this year.'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.331

0:00
Boy, some of our customers have been complaining about our french fries. Holy cow, what are these brown chunks in here? Um, hmm, I think those are caterpillars, sir.
0:12
Caterpillars are green, dumbass. Oh, yeah. Hey, that's that grasshopper. Grasshopper? Yeah. He won't be bothering the customers anymore, sir. Yeah, we caught him taking a dump on one of the tables.
0:30
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Soul Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. You know what's worse than me being sick? Nothing.
0:54
Wow, that's good priorities there. Good priorities, yes. Yes, I am sick. You are sick. And welcome to episode 74, Lethal Weapon.
1:07
That's not in this new movie. Well, it's in the game. I'm going to just go with that. And it is Sharp Dressed Man that's in the game. I was wrong. I am not wrong. Yeah. But we're not alone this week. No, we are not. We have a guest. We have a guest from the New England pinball scene. frequent guest on the Pinball Players Podcast, we have Joe Lemire. Good evening. Hey, guys. Welcome. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Anytime. So, since Bruce is sick. I'm sick. I'm going to be Bruce. I heard that somewhere. Yeah. So, Joe, tell us how you got into this crazy hobby, because that's how Bruce would probably say it. It would. Sounds legit. But really, I mean, I played here and there growing up. Nothing really serious. Just if I saw it around, I played it. And really the thing that got me into it is when Pinball Wizard opened in New Hampshire, I didn't know that pinball and arcades in general were really a thing anymore. But when I entered, I don't even remember how I had heard that the place opened. I think a friend had mentioned to me at some point, and I was like, oh, wow. So me and Leslie, who's my girlfriend, went up, I think it was the opening weekend or the weekend after. And ever since then, I got the bug. Shortly after that, I went to my first pinball show in Allentown and have been going nonstop since.

high confidence · Ron: 'you won the inaugural 24-hour tournament at the Sanctum' and Joe confirms, then states he came second to Steven the following year.

  • Joe created a Pinmasters circuit for New England with three courses last year (NH, RI, Maine) and is expanding to Vermont this year

    high confidence · Joe: 'last year was the first year I put it together, and we had three courses... This year we're adding Vermont.'

  • ScoreBit is a new product that automatically captures scores from games via DMD feed, eliminating manual score entry and human error in tournaments

    medium confidence · Ron describes it as 'some kind of board that they had in the game that would basically pull the DMD and it could grab the score constantly... instead of typing the score in, they could just show it to the player.'

  • InDisc tournament in Banning, California at Museum of Pinball featured professional broadcast quality with graphics, green screen, multiple cameras, and Scott D'Angelo as technical director

    high confidence · Ron describes: 'full like large scale production they had like a green screen behind the announcers so when they showed them they had like graphics behind them.'

    • Bruce Nightingale @ ~97:00 — Recognition of ScoreBit's potential to revolutionize tournament logistics by eliminating score entry errors

  • “I literally watch every stream that's ever put on the internet for pinball.”

    Joe Lemire @ ~87:00 — Joe's extreme dedication to studying competitive pinball play and rules through video review

  • “they kept saying, please pick Barbed Wire, please pick Barbed Wire. Nobody picked Barbed Wire. I was disappointed.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~82:00 — Suggests Barbed Wire is a game Ron wanted to see played in tournament context, indicating interest in specific title

  • “Those west coast guys, they're always ahead of the curve when it comes to technology.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ ~107:00 — Recognition of California tournament scene's technological leadership and innovation

    • Pinmasters New England Circuit
    event
    The Hobbitgame
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    ScoreBitproduct
    InDiscevent
    Museum of Pinballvenue
    Scott D'Angeloperson
    State Championship Seriesevent
    RIP Pinball Clubvenue
    Game Onvenue
    Martinperson
    Stephanie Harveyperson
    Chuck Websterperson
    Apex Entertainment Complexvenue
    Lord of the Ringsgame
    Williams Grand Prixgame
    The Localvenue

    event_signal: Joe Lemire created Pinmasters New England circuit modeled after Vegas format; first year had 3 locations, expanding to 4 this year; features golf-format with strategic threshold scoring; includes bonus registration discount for winners to attend Vegas Pinmasters

    high · Joe: 'last year was the first year I put it together, and we had three courses... we're in the process of setting up this year... we're adding Vermont... this year we also have the added benefit for people that... if you win one of the Pin Master events, you get 50% off your registration.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: ScoreBit is new automated scoring technology that captures DMD feed directly and feeds scores to tournament keeper devices, eliminating manual score entry and potential human error

    medium · Ron: 'some kind of board that they had in the game that would basically pull the DMD and it could grab the score constantly... instead of typing the score in, they could just show it to the player, like, is this it? Hit okay, boom, done.'

  • ?

    content_signal: InDisc tournament in California featured professional-grade streaming with multiple cameras, graphics, green screen, and Scott D'Angelo as technical director; set new standard for pinball broadcast quality

    high · Ron: 'full like large scale production they had like a green screen behind the announcers... they had like graphics behind them scrolling up and down which was cool... Carl D'Angelo... running everything in the background... his broadcasts are amazing. He's just the new gold standard.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community expressing significant appreciation for Scott D'Angelo's substantial self-funded investment in tournament infrastructure and broadcasting equipment

    high · Joe: 'As a community, we owe him so much money... The amount of money he's put into this hobby, I don't know how we allow him to do that without being compensated.'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Joe emphasizes rule knowledge as critical competitive advantage; studies rules extensively and notes players can lose games despite better gameplay by not knowing specific rule interactions

    high · Joe: 'My expertise is knowing rules. I know the rules in and out. I study rules... you do the exact same thing as me... but I have the revolver. Well, guess what? You lose.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Joe Lemire prefers Pinmasters golf format over standard golf format due to strategic threshold-based decision making; finds standard golf 'samey and not thought-provoking'

    high · Joe: 'I've never been a person who really enjoyed the golf format for pinball because I just find that it's very samey... But playing in pinmasters... every single ball, there's thresholds. So there's always all these decisions of what you should do... that thought process... is a lot more interesting to me.'

  • $

    market_signal: Despite new venue openings, most are concentrated in Boston area making them inaccessible for players further out; historically players had to travel 1+ hours for pinball venues

    high · Joe: 'This is the first time in my life I've ever had pinball near me. Most of all the other locations in Massachusetts or anywhere near me always average roughly an hour away... I mean, it stinks that they're all literally in Boston around there, which is a nightmare to get to.'

    • 2:40
    Very good. And unfortunately, a moment of silence for the Pinball Wizards Arcade. It's no longer with us. That went away at the beginning of last year? Has it been that long, really? No, I think it was like in the summer, just before the summer started. So it had to be May. Yeah, I want to say summer. Yeah. All right. I could be wrong there. I'm wrong a lot. Whatever. Whatever, Bruce. I was there a lot more times than you were. I actually was there for like six or seven times because I had a job two weeks, and I went up there every night. All right. So maybe you beat me then.
    3:16
    I was there for the Pintober Fest. which were always fun. Ah, yes. I think I played in two of those. They were brutal. They took all day. Not 24 by 7, you know, the 24-hour brutal, but they were pretty brutal. About as long as you could do besides that. Thankfully, I won the last one that was there. So then that was the only, that was the, you get those awesome trophies, which was really all I cared about. Those things were amazing. Yeah. I got one of those for, was it Pintastic? So what's the pinball scene like now that that place isn't around? Like, is there any locations that you go to on a regular basis? When they closed, I thought that pinball around here would take a pretty big hit. And really the only thing that's taken a decent hit is the New England Pinball League because all of a sudden we had to find a new place for the finals to be and it ended up being the Sanctum for a while, but they just dropped out this past season, or for this season. so that's kind of made some difficult things when changing the format of the league and the way the league is now but there's locations opening up seemingly monthly here now like there's one that just opened next to me it's this big Apex entertainment complex that opened down the street from me in Marlborough and they have three games in there they own them but they have like go-karts and rope courses and all this stuff in there but the only thing is that they own the machines, so they're brand new, you know, new in box, but they don't have updated code on them, but they have a Guardians, a Star Wars, and an Aerosmith, which is nice. This is the first time in my life I've ever had pinball near me. Most of all the other locations in Massachusetts or anywhere near me always average roughly an hour away, But we just got a new location in the Western Mass, Mystic Pinball. I have not been, but I've heard good things.
    5:16
    And a couple new out near Chuck's Neck of the Woods. I'm trying to think of what the name of them... Down the Road, I think, is the name of one of them, which just opened and had, like, 15, 16 machines. And I think another one just opened. I'm not sure exactly where that one is, but it seems like monthly the new ones keep opening, which is great. I mean, it stinks that they're all literally in Boston around there, which is a nightmare to get to. But pinball keeps getting bigger and bigger around here, thankfully, and everywhere, it seems. Well, not everywhere, but I still have to go, like, two hours if I want anything. So, do you own any games? And if so, what are they? I own Grand Prix, Williams, and your favorite game's The Hobbit. Oh. I like Grand Prix. Go Grand Prix.
    6:12
    Yeah, I could, I mean, I do love my Hobbit, but I could rant for an hour about the things that are missing in the game and the things that it needs to make it a better game. Oh, no, we're good at ranting. Come on, let's go for it. Come on. I mean, it's just, you know, as far as, you know, it's a gorgeous game. It has some nice things in it. I think, like, the Arkenstone wizard modes or mini wizard modes are amazing and well done.
    6:46
    It's just, you know, the rest of the stuff just doesn't really work together, in my opinion, when it comes to the way that the modes work. I'm sure they'll put Pirates on hold and they'll start to finish that code for Hobbit yeah, that's been the story for a while it's kind of the neglected stepchild of the collection I mean, even Wizard of Oz got an update recently, if I recall, before Hobbit gets updates oh yeah, I mean, Wizard of Oz they put a lot of love into, and that was really the basis of me buying this game I mean, this was my first new-in-box pinball machine, and my favorite game is Lord of the Rings, so I always envisioned that, you know, this would be next to, eventually, a nice, hopefully they fault it, Lord of the Rings, and that would be my cherished collection. But, like I said, it's the, like, black sheep of the game collection for them. You know, we had heard that back when the last, any major update that they got for it, They had said that, you know, oh, you know, it was on hold until Dialed In was out, and then Dialed In was released, and now it's on hold until Pirates comes out. So it's, I mean, it's really frustrating, obviously, on this end. You see there's a lot of good ideas there, but, you know, like on the opposite of, like, say, What Are the Rings? It's just none of it, none of it seems to flow or fit together. Like, there's this hidden feeder system in there for the modes that seemingly means that they want you to play modes in very specific orders, because if you do, you get bonus points in all the modes you play after it. But the way to pick specific modes is to hit the left ramp, and it allows you to cycle through each other's ramps to the mode you want. But if you can't get there, you'd think that if you hit the left ramp again, you could just continue your progress into picking that mode. Instead, it randomly picks another mode for you. So you can be stuck in a place where you constantly keep on hitting the ramp. Especially when you have all of the modes lit, it's nearly impossible to pick the mode you want, because every time you hit that left ramp, it randomizes the selection of your mode. So I had Bowen over here to play a game on, and he was one away from the Sauron mode, which is the really imbalanced scoring mode, and he was one away. He hit the ramp again, and then it moved it, and he just started screaming. It was great.
    9:19
    So you seem like you're really into the code. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean, like, a lot of people say, like, they're like, oh, well, you know, the hobbit's so deep. You know, and in my opinion, it's not deep at all. It's very wide. There's really not much depth. you know, when people ask me like, oh, you know what, I kind of look at, I like to say that the Hobbit is like Lord of the Rings, but there's no Destroy the Ring, there's no Gift of the Elves, there's no There and Back Again, there's no Valinor. You have your three multiballs, but they're wizard modes, and you just have 30-something ring modes. You get nothing for beating. That's why I keep my Lord of the Rings. Oh, yeah. I mean, if they vaulted Lord of the Rings today, I would be trying as much as I would be trying probably. I mean, I would probably trade this for a Batman right now, honestly, because I think that the way that Batman's going. I love the Batman from the day it came out with standard code because I love the play field and I could see where Lyman was going with that one. But I'm trying. I'm hoping that they're going to put some love into this and make it. there's so much in there if it was just put together better with more, you know, cohesion and stuff that make it all fit. It's just tons of ideas that are put together that don't really work, in my opinion.
    10:49
    It's depressing. Seems like Jersey Jack can use a new programmer. Do we have a volunteer? Huh, if I wish. I took programming in school and doing HTML, and I wanted to kill myself. So I don't envy anyone who has to do any of the coding. So do you work in IT or no?
    11:14
    No, I decided to. I was doing drafting since high school, so I decided to just go into that. Really? A non-IT code like Rulescape? This is unusual. holy crap I mean wow I didn't think this was possible well I mean that's like I mean I guess I'd say that that's my main most people say that's my main skill set is that I my expertise is knowing rules I know the rules in and out I study rules I make sure I watch all the videos I look at change lists when they come out for games that I know I'm going to be playing and stuff like that so you're like the anti-Ron I'm the anti a lot of people I could give two S's about code. Well, I mean, like... Oh, my God. No, no, no. I'm watching a tournament, which we'll get in later on, but I'm watching a tournament over the weekend, a stream, and they're streaming whodunit, which I own, and thought I knew the rules for. And then they're explaining certain things about it. Like, really? I had no idea you could do that. All right? No idea that was a thing. No clue. Like what? Like things like you want... What is it? When you go into the basement multiball, like you want the revolver, and then Jackbot goes off, which it doesn't do if you don't have a revolver. See, I didn't know that. I'm just trying to get to the basement. No clue.
    12:37
    Yeah, I learned that watching one of the Papa streams. Yeah. Yeah, what a mess. That's one of those things. So I think role knowledge is extremely important because it's like, you know, you do the exact same thing as me on that, you know, do exactly the same thing, but I have the revolver. Well, guess what? You lose. not because you couldn't shoot things better than me just because you didn't know that one little stupid rule. That's kind of why gravitate towards classics, I think. But enough about me. What kind of games do you gravitate to? Well, I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say modern, mostly sterns. I just find that my main thing is to have things that I can't achieve or, you know, a carrot that I can't... Like, I know a lot of people's favorite game is, like, is Tron, which I love Tron. It's one of my favorite movies. I think it's, like, the perfect pinball theme. But I don't think I could ever own a Tron because it's, there's really not much there. You know, maybe if it was in a big collection, you know, I could, but, like, I have to say, but I would probably rather own an X-Men, which is kind of the same exact thing as Tron, but with way more rules and depth to it to keep me interested. Because if the game's really shallow and I can get to everything, then it loses some interest for me. But, I mean, then again, I probably shouldn't even own any games because I hardly touch the games I have, even when I had Metallica, which I sold to get my Hobbit. Oh, fail. Yeah, in hindsight. Because I... Hindsight 2020, always looking back, still a bit fuzzy. Yeah. Which, I mean, even then, I still didn't play it. Because I find myself that, like, I go out so much to play pinball, and I play in tournaments pretty much as many as there are around, that when I'm home, I really don't want to play pinball. Like, when I'm home, we always have other things to do, or we're watching TV or doing something else, so I never practically find myself playing my games. So it kind of defeats the purpose. So maybe no games would be better if I didn't have any games in my collection.
    14:52
    Yeah, mostly the modern games. Probably my top three lists, probably Lord of the Rings, ACDC, then Metallica. Probably my top three. Beautiful, man. I love that. That's beautiful, man.
    15:05
    You mentioned tournaments. You are one of the better players in the New England area. and say you won the inaugural 24-hour tournament at the Sanctum, I believe. I did. And I came in second the year after to Steven, who by the time I actually got the play-in that night, he had already won. We got into the last group, I beat him, but he only needed one point, so that was the end of that. But he's a much better player than I am anyway. But yeah, I'm probably confident saying I'm the most active player in New England. I probably play the most. I'm definitely not the best. I would say I'm probably top five, but I'm definitely active. I try and play as much as I can. You're ranked 70th right now in the IFPA.
    15:57
    I was 40th last year-ish, but I had a good year. I was able to win a lot of the majors that I went to. Well, majors, using the word majors loosely. The major tournaments in New England, I was able to win a decent amount of them. My game has dropped off a decent amount this year. I haven't been playing as well, so I'm trying to get back. Plus, you also run tournaments, like you did the actual pinmasters this year, if I remember correctly, right? Yes. This year, I started pretty much what had happened is I went to Nationals for the first time, I guess two years ago now, I think. I got to play Pinmasters for the first time, which was mind-blowing to me. I've never been a person who really enjoyed the golf format for pinball because I just find that it's very samey and not thought-provoking at all. pretty much you go up to game, do said thing until you get score and move on. So it's not very interesting to me. But playing in pinmasters down there and the way that, you know, you get five balls and every single ball, there's thresholds. So there's always all these decisions of what you should do. And, you know, it's a lot more strategic. And, you know, if you're on Metallica and there's two, you know, a million and a half, two million from the next threshold and you're so far away on Sparky, well, you're not going to go against it. For the one time ever playing Metallica, you probably shouldn't go for Sparky. You know, you should do a couple pistons or something like that to get to the next threshold. And that thought process and having that be possible is a lot more interesting to me than the standard golf, which I find is just very boring to me. But yeah, I went there, did that, loved it, and was like, well, it seems that that's the only place that does it, and, you know, going to Vegas is expensive, and only once a year. So I was like, well, let's try and put together a circuit locally in New England. So last year was the first year I put it together, and we had three courses, and it works pretty much like the Papa Circuit, where you have multiple events, and then at the end, how you did in each of those events gives you points, And then at the end, the top 16 of the most points get to do one final 18-hole course at a final location and find out who the pin master of New England is. And we're in the process of setting up this year. And last year we had New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine. And this year we're adding Vermont.
    18:41
    So we're getting bigger slowly. And this year we also have the added benefit for people that, thanks to Josh, that if you win one of the Pin Master events, you get 50% off your registration and you go to the big boy Pin Masters in Vegas. Oh, very cool. It's pretty cool. Excellent.
    19:00
    All right, let me look at my little notes here. I might as well bring this up now because I think this is something that applies to all three of us. Ooh.
    19:09
    Fuck. The state championship series, the SCS. finals are this weekend, this Saturday. And I believe all three of us are participating, each in a different state. Yep. I am in, well, Bruce, you are in New York. Yes. I am in Massachusetts.
    19:29
    And Joe, you are in? Rhode Island. Now, where are we ranked, each one of us? Oh, me? I was, God, I don't know, 40th something in Massachusetts. Where you're playing Oh, where I'm Oh, well, I'm playing at Chuck Webster's Yes, and what's your Oh, my actual rank? I had no idea Okay, I'm going to pull yours up right now I think you said who I was playing last week You're ninth, and you're playing Kenny Wiener Oh, that's right, you made the same joke last week Yeah, that just happened Okay, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah You think I would remember that, but yeah, okay He's going to kick your ass for that. Although, Bruce isn't going. I'm not going there, so it's even better. He's going to take it out on Ron. Yeah, don't take it out on me. And Joe is ranked number one, and he is playing Stephanie Harvey.
    20:25
    And Mr. Nightingale himself is ranked 11th, and I get to play a fellow New York Upstater, Andy Cushman.
    20:39
    So it should be fun for all three of us. It's going to be tough, Bruce. He just won your tournament. Yes, he did. Yep. He played very well. Luckily, I can do like sweeps. I had a lot of choices. I mean, I was first in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. But I originally picked Rhode Island because my girlfriend was supposed to be playing with me, and she was going to make New Hampshire or Rhode Island. We've always played together. Last year, she beat me in New Hampshire. and then once it finally came out with the numbers and everything, she ended up being 16th in Rhode Island, so we would have had to play in the first round, and both of us didn't have any interest in that, so she decided to go to New Hampshire, so I just ended up staying in Rhode Island. The couple that doesn't compete against each other stays together. Does that end up with each other? Well, the last time it happened, it didn't go well. Yeah. At least for me. Yeah, for her it was great. Oh, yeah. She was kicking ass with taking names. She did. I believe that, yes. I mean, she did well from, she took out a lot of big players on the way of taking me out in the finals. Nice. Very cool.
    21:50
    So the SDS will be this weekend all around the country, which is always the cool part, seeing the results as they come in from each state. So where is the Rhode Island one, Joe? It's at RIP. Okay. ball club in Rhode Island. It's owned by Justin Blair.
    22:09
    He owns a building and he has his own collection there. It's really nice. I've played there a lot and pretty much it just came down to whether or not I was going to be also playing in that or at Chuck's house because I have no interest really in playing in places that I've never really played or don't play. I find that if you kind of go somewhere where you never play, it's like what are you really doing there? So I just go where I play the best and that's what they ended up with. It was not being able to come, but yeah, they have a great collection. There's a lot of moderns. It's very varied. There's a lot of classics, too, but that's where we had the finals for Pinmasters. I didn't win a single Pinmasters event, but I ended up winning the finals, which was there, so maybe that's a good omen. Who knows?
    22:56
    Yeah, that's why I went to... One of the reasons I went to Chucks, because I've been there, and I liked the games, and I want to play BMX again. Why? I love BMX. I like BMX. It's fine, I guess. Well, I had a bad experience on it. He had just restored it for Wicked Pissa, and I was playing Eric Stone in the finals, and now I have to say it's draining out the car wash because the car wash, which is the center area where it comes from the upper blade field, which looks like a car wash with a little cut fabric that's there, which is draining right down the middle. I lost two balls that way, so it's kind of sour in my mouth right now, but I mean, it's not that bad. I do like the game. But it's on my shit list.
    23:44
    And Bruce, you're going to be playing at what is it called? Game On. Which everyone will probably like because it's mostly a sternament. Oh, okay. Yeah, mostly new sterns, including Game of Thrones Pro,
    23:57
    Walking Dead Pro, Ghostbusters Pro, I did get out of last time exactly but still bad yes a monopoly they had last time there and a couple others NBA Fast Break too oh I thought it was a Stern I'm like ooh look at I know it goes outside of Papa I know they're rare yeah they are it's awesome I like that game yay I haven't played a lot of it but someone who likes it besides me seems fun I'm on crack I don't know come on Come on. I always get a pee on everyone's parade, Bruce. Yeah. Every freaking time. Actually, most other people said they hated it, too. But I found someone who agrees with me. Who likes it. Yes. They have two of them there, Papa. They have two? They have two. Because I remember, because one year they had one where the disc was spinning and one where it wasn't. Oh, yeah. I actually remember that. Yeah. That's why it's like, they have two of these? Wow. Yeah, they're actually pretty rare. I believe that those were made in team. There were a couple team versions of those too, I think. Or was that my thinking of NFL? Do you think of NFL? NFL. Yeah. And they did make a Chinese version of it. I thought that the fact that Yao Ming was on it was pretty much the Chinese. No, no, no. Actually, when we were at the tour back in 2009, 2010. The tour of what?
    25:29
    Of Stern Network. Really a tour, remember? It wasn't really a tour, though, because they weren't building any machines, so they showed us the play fields they had made for shipping these machines overseas to China.
    25:41
    And they were in Chinese. Hmm. Interesting. I think the hatred for that game comes a little out of the fact that no one has access to it, and they probably play it in tournaments and hate it because they probably get wrecked on it. I mean, I don't see anything with the game. I mean, granted, I have very limited access to it, So maybe that also clouds how much I would like it if I played it all the time. Maybe I'd hate it. I don't know. But, I mean, if people played it a lot more, I think there'd be more people who like it. I mean, it's better than, you know, the early Stern games of, you know, talking Monopoly or Rollercoaster Tycoon in that era. My opinion. I like Monopoly. I like Monopoly, too.
    26:22
    But NBA, I mean, it also has the World Cup soccer guy on it. The NBA Fastbreak dude doing the announcement. Boom shaka-laka? Yes. So that makes it good automatically. See, I haven't really, when I did get to play it, I really couldn't hear it. Oh, yeah. So I did not know that. Yeah, he's on it. But that does make it better. Yep. And it's got that cool toy. I think that the basket toy is cool. That is cool. Yeah. That is very cool. So we agree NBA is great, right, Bruce? No. Okay. No. I thought of you the whole time I was watching Indisc, which we'll get into right now. Okay. Because they kept saying, please pick Barbed Wire, please pick Barbed Wire. Nobody picked Barbed Wire. I was disappointed. Why not? I was so disappointed. I would have played it. So did you see any of Indisc, Joe? I did not. I tend to always catch the broadcasts after it's been archived and chucked up on YouTube. That's why I tend to watch pretty much all of them. So I will watch it because I literally watch every stream that's ever put on the internet for pinball.
    27:29
    So in for those who are like what the hell does that mean It never drains in Southern California Funny fact I didn know that that was actually I thought that those originally when I first started playing I thought those were two separate tournaments
    27:43
    Oh, okay. I got you. Yeah, I never put that together. So, and most of the people playing it just call it InDisc. They don't obviously use the full name. Yeah, exactly, which is what confused me. Yep, and it took place in Banning, California, at the Museum of Pinball, I think it's called. I think I finally got that right. Where they had, the entire museum was open, like all 400 games or whatever available. They had, InDisc was actually, there's like two buildings, or two main rooms in the place. There's the pinball room and the arcade room. They actually had the, the tournament was in the arcade room. and they had it like portioned off like curtains around it and he had uh carl d'angelo hi carl he had tvs over each game in a full like large scale production they had like a green screen behind the announcers so when they showed them they had like graphics behind them scrolling up and down which was cool god oh yeah we owe him so much money yes and when they got to the fight this is the best part. When I get to the finals, you got the announcers who were announcing, and Carl, by the time they got to the semi-finals, I believe he was eliminated, so he was kind of like running everything in the background, and he would occasionally, you would hear his voice like he would correct someone or answer a question over everyone else. It was like the voice of God. Yeah, he is pretty much the broadcasting God. I mean, I love Bob and everything, but his broadcasts are amazing. He's just the new gold standard. He is the new gold standard. And they debuted a new product which, if I was a good reporter here, I would have written down. It had a name. But basically they had a theater of magic there. They were trying out this new product. This new, I think it was actually some kind of board that they had in the game that would basically pull the DMD and it could grab the score constantly. So they had a display underneath.
    29:48
    You'll see it. If you watch the stream and if you want to watch the stream, go to twitch.tv slash iepinball and you will see the archived copy of the stream. It showed all four scores for all four players at all times.
    30:04
    And it would when the game was over, it would just automatically go to the scorekeepers' iPad, whatever they had. You know, their device. So they could literally just, instead of typing the score in, they could just show it to the player, like, is this it? Hit okay, boom, done.
    30:20
    Wow. So you're literally taking, like, the last vestige of human error out of it, which was the entering of the scores. Now you're going to make it so even that can't be messed up. Just think of the speed. Just think of what that will do for tournaments if that becomes widespread. Because if you're playing games like Bruce Namigame, that takes forever to show the high score. Creature in the Black Lagoon. There you go. So you're playing Creature, and you forgot to get that score, and you had to wait for the entire credit sequence to go by. Nope, don't have to now. Or, side note, I don't know how many of you guys had American Most Haunted near you when it came out, but, like, when it was at Pinwiz, I remember in League that in the first few revisions of the software, like, literally, once it didn't show the scores anymore, they never came up ever again. Ever. Wow. That's somewhat of an oversight there. A wee bit, so we'll find out the hard way. That's not good. But I apologize to the creators for not knowing the name of it. Like I said, a good podcast would know that. It was probably called Pin Something, I'm guessing. I don't know. Pin Scores. No, those are just plays. That's already used. Oh, man. You know what? I can edit. I'm going to go there right now. scorebit s-c-o-r-b-i-t hopefully that will catch on and be used in more tournaments those west coast guys they're always ahead of the curve when it comes to technology oh it's nuts like the I mean just everything that Carl's been able to like his first connecting displays directly to the feed you know I think he was the first one to do replay and just I mean having the scores and all the bios and everything that he did for, like, Pin Masters one of those years, and all the equipment he has. Man, as a community, we owe him so much money. Yep. The amount of money he's put into this hobby, I don't know how we allow him to do that without being compensated. It's crazy. When he told us how many cameras he had, my jaw was just like, what? Yeah, I told him to go over the tech crap, because I know we have techies who watch. I remember that. So in Indisc, we had Martin from the Head to Head podcast. He ended up 43rd, and I guess his rating must have been low enough that he got to play in B. And he took second in B.
    32:55
    So he was one out of the sandbagging champion. Oh, good job, Bruce. Yeah. I technically could be right up there with Ron. I'm not sure where Ron was ranked. when he... You won B at Papa, right? I won C at Pinberg. Oh, okay. I won B at Papa. I don't know if that would be considered a sandbag or not. I felt like that was really hard. I then played A the next year, and it was no bueno.
    33:23
    Yeah, yeah. And Martin had a chance to... He was him... He was player four in the last game. They were playing all the finals games. They were doing it Pinberg style. They played like four games, doing the 3-2-1-0 scoring. So he got up, and he basically had to win, and he was second, going into his last ball, and he was the last player, and this was on Metallica.
    33:49
    I think he got crank it up lit. I think he started it, and he was in crank it up, hitting the shots, and he was also trying to go for the piston target for, like, the doubler. So he was going for it. He was going for it all, which I liked. Double cash. Yeah, and Buddy ended up. It was like a quick, it was like a power drain, gone, I think on the left side. So we ended up second. And I was thinking, because he said on the head-to-head podcast that they were going to be recording right after that. And they're like, it's kind of late now. He's probably not going to feel like recording. And sure enough, they did not record. Jinx.
    34:27
    Guess they're going to record today or whatever. So congratulations to Martin. That's awesome. And then I'll let you take this one, Bruce. We missed out on some booze. We actually won booze from one of the questionnaire things that they had at Head to Head. And he had a 12, I think it was a 12-pack of Mordello. And he's like, I got the booze. Where are you guys? Okay, he is Roto Dave, who owns like a... I said that already. No, you didn't. Yeah, I did. No, you didn't. Who owns, has a huge, I think he has like every System 11. Yes, he does. And he was on the Head to Head podcast, and they did a contest where they played all these System 11 sounds, and Bruce, being the pinball geek he is, gets the most sounds. So the prize was free booze whenever he sees you next. And he had the booze ready, but... Yep, but we weren't there. We failed. Well done, sir. Yep. We failed. But his daughter did not fail. No. His daughter? Her name is Danielle, I believe. Look it up right now. Yep. Danielle, or Danielle Peck, won the women's finals in InDisc. Congratulations. And impressive. And she is just hilarious. In the finals, she got game pick. One of the games they had there was Pool Sharks, which probably hardly anyone knows. But since her father has every System 11 game, she knew it. That game's bad. No, it's not. I like pool sharks. Okay, to be fair, the only version I've ever played was the garbage one at Pinwiz, so maybe the game is good if the flippers work. Oh, yeah. Well, the one I played was at a show and the flippers did work. It's one of those, you know, when you're walking down, all the games and all your Attack from Marses are in use and all your ACDCs are being played, and there's that pool shark sitting there that has this terrible back glass with sharks and no one wants to play it, and I play it. And it's like, hey, you know, this isn't bad. re-theme of the Sharknado is playing pool. Yeah. Would you play that, Bruce, or are you too snobbish? No, I'd play that. I like the game, actually. Oh, okay. Just checking. I would probably play it if it was working. I would like to see what a real game would... I mean, it seems like it was left orbit all day on that, maybe? Yes, it can be. It really can be, yes.
    36:53
    You'll see if you watch the stream. You'll get to see lots of pool sharks. Oh, yes. And then Classics, Raymond Davidson won.
    37:03
    Woo! Hi, Raymond. Congratulations to Raymond. Wins again. Wins more stuff. He's good. And then the overall champion was Robert Gagno, who beat Zach Sharp in a playoff. Wasn't that a theater magic? Theater magic. Oh, my God, really? The playoffs ended up being the final four. There was two ties. tie for third and fourth, tie for first and second. Or, well, tie for first, tie for second. So they had that two playoffs, and the first one they had to determine third and fourth was on whodunit.
    37:38
    That's when I got to see whodunit played in a very high level, of which I will probably never play my whodunit. Did they bug it out? No, I thought they mentioned something like they had a fixed software version, which I'd like to know where they got that from, because I was unaware that existed. I had no idea that it was bugged out like that, And so I was watching, you know, when Kaylee and all them was going, like, what's going on here? And then I later found out. And that's good to hear. I mean, I'm really interested in seeing what competition theater looks like, because it seemed like that was blacklisted from competition. Oh, yeah, theater. What did they do to theater? They had a modified ROM in there.
    38:15
    But most of the changes were, like, the left orbit. They made it so it wouldn't come all the way around the ramp. So it was just going to the pop bumpers every time. Oh, I heard that. So that strategy was nerfed. They made it so, like, if you hit the shrunk once, mode would be lit to try to get people to play modes.
    38:34
    And they also, what was the other thing? The feed coming from the right orbit, when it came down, they made it so somehow it would hit like a post or something. It would bounce straight out right into the slingshot, completely out of control like every time. Wow. Nice. I'm looking forward to seeing that. Yeah, they made it much more playable. So you got to see what you would never get to see. And that's another thing about Indis. They will have games there you normally don't see in finals for reasons like that, or just other rare games, usually like Gottliebs. They have like a Robo War there that was in the finals. And I noticed they have another neat little feature where whoever the top qualifier is can eliminate a game from the bank.
    39:14
    And I'm trying to remember who the top qualifier was, but the eliminated game was Game of Thrones. Smart. person. Because I thought of that later. I'm like, you know, oh yeah, that's right. I wonder what they eliminated. I had to go back to the qualifying to see all the games and then see every one of the games I saw in the finals except Game of Thrones. So I was like, that had to be the one eliminated.
    39:37
    Yeah, I think last year or the year before they had the modded party zone. They had the kickoff on the ramp so every time you hit the left ramp, they'd throw it into the pop pumpers. Yeah. They do. They really come up with neat mods out there to get games playable. That's awesome to hear about Theater of Magic. Teed Off, which is one of my favorite Gottliebs, except the fact that you can trap everything and it plays way too long.
    40:03
    Jim Belsito, when he brings all the games in, he did something with a wire form so it wouldn't come down slow anymore. It just came down fast. You couldn't trap it at all.
    40:14
    That's cool. It played completely different. Big Teed Off fan here. What do you think of Teed Off, Bruce? Whatever, Bruce.
    40:25
    It's a pretty good game, especially as Gottlieb's go. Yeah, I mean, it's got... I like the fact that you don't lock balls the normal way. It's like you go through nine holes. Then you lock a ball, and then you can lock a second one for three ball. Or if you screw up, it's only two ball.
    40:40
    I don't like that the modes are generally not worth playing, and you time them all out. And basically all the points are like the super jackpots. But it makes you shoot all the shots, which is, you know, at peace. Yep, it makes you shoot all the shots, and then you get the super whatever it is. And then you have the other one that's like cats and dogs, which is all bonus, so you don't want to tilt.
    41:00
    And I'm about to eat off. I talk about to eat off too much. I'm sure Bruce doesn't say that. Yeah. So anything else about InDisc? I'm sure a fun time was had by all, and I really am considering going there next year, especially since it's in January, and the weather really sucks here in January. The one was there. Yeah, the one didn't go that far. I don't think he got out of the first round.
    41:23
    He must not have won it. I think he did go at it. No, he made it out of the first round. I don't think so. Because Sanjay showed the picture. Oh, that's right. That's right. He made it into the second round.
    41:32
    He didn't even show up until the Saturday. Because qualifying was Friday and Saturday, he wasn't even there Friday at all. Yeah, because he was waiting for Katie to come in on the flight. I thought he was just challenging himself. No. The least amount of hours I can play and still qualify. Yes. At this point, I mean, what else are you going to do to challenge yourself when you've won everything you could possibly win? That seems to me like that would be a neat challenge. When he puts out an amazing game, that's going to be the last challenge left in front of him. No, when he puts out pinball 102.
    42:05
    They were working on that. That will probably never get done now, but they were working on that. I think they released some parts of it. but he's still busy on Golden Girls. I can't wait for that to come out.
    42:18
    That was on the stream too, folks. If you don't believe me, just watch the stream. They mentioned Golden Girls.
    42:24
    We're not the only ones saying this. This is fact. Not opinion. We have the inside info from the one. It is Golden Girls. Yes. They also had a bunch of things this weekend. They also had a pinball star. that we always mention at the end of the show. Where I got my Hobbit. There you go. Pinball star. They had a Pirates of the Caribbean party.
    42:51
    They had food and games and Pirates of the Caribbean. And they streamed it. So I know Koi was there. I saw him in the background of the stream. Was it working? It was. The part I saw was working. Interesting. Because they had a launch party. here locally, and I had a few friends that went, and they said that, like, the ship was disabled, the chest was disabled. Bummer. Which I was like, why show it then? Yeah. Like, they kind of did the same thing with the Hobbit. When they were showing that around, it had issues with the vertical uptaker and all these other things. It's like, you can only make a good first impression once. Like, just don't show it. Well, you remember when they had dialed in, was it automated, and they had it, like, in the row, where they must have had too many things plugged in. Yeah. Because you would hit a certain shot. What was it? There was a certain shot you would hit and the game would just... It was multiball, I believe. Yeah, and the whole... Every time you'd start multiball, the whole... The whole row would reset. Yep, I did it like three times in a row before people started going, Ah!
    43:54
    It was your very own Ron Hallett right here who figured out, like, well, why don't we turn off Hobbit or one of the other games? And boom, it corrected the problem. You could get multiball without, like, the whole row resetting. Got too dialed in. So what do you think of Dialed In? You went there just to play that, so what did you think about it? I did.
    44:15
    Dialed In is amazing. Honestly, I've liked every other game except for The Hobbit. Oh, man. The Dialed In is great. It shoots great. Everything makes sense. It explains the game to you when you're playing. You're not hurting your brain trying to figure out what the heck's going on, it's great. I love dial them. If you're thinking that Bruce is really quiet today, he is sick. I am dead to the world. He's dead to the world. Maybe we should say why you're dead to the world, because you had a really long drive today. I did have a long drive. I woke up at 5.30 this morning to drive to Maryland. Why would you be driving to Maryland? To the coin-op warehouse. Warehouse. The coin-op warehouse. What did they have? Well, they had about 1,000 games in the back. He actually let me go back and go hunt for games, which was kind of cool.
    45:18
    No good sterns there. Okay. So you picked a good one, right? I actually got one because I was sitting there. It was, I am now part of the Fist Club.
    45:32
    I'm taking the fish, boys and girls. Woo-hoo! Me and Ron are going for head-to-head. We're going to have the classic stern head-to-head competition, I think, because I now have a dragon fist.
    45:46
    Congratulations, Bruce. Yep. And as usual, it is probably nicer than mine. I think it is a little bit nicer. Fucker. I mean, congratulations. Good. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. But we have to go to, we both have to go to BG, restorations for our backless, because mine's probably just as bad as yours. So maybe we can get a two-for-one deal. Sure. He's done one before. Yes, he has. It can't be any worse than mine. Mine is bad. I have no reds. Bad. I have no reds. Ever played a Dragon Fist, Joe? I'm looking at the game right now. I have never seen one of these. Yes, there's only 302. The only one that would be closer to me would be Scott before us. It screens silver, quicksilver. Yes. Same designer. Yep. Similar rules to Sea Witch with the roving Xs for the drop target banks. Oh, you mean like Viper, almost. Oh, Viper. No, no, no.
    46:48
    I got to talk to the Sanctum guys. I do have an improved Viper ROM in that I asked Tim Sexton, like, you know, what would you improve on Viper? And the one thing he said is the spinner's never worth anything. I mean, it's really, even with the Playfield multipliers, it's not worth, like, what other Stern Games spinners are when they're maxed out. They all need to be spinner games. Oh, hell yeah. So our very own Scott supplied a modification, a modified ROM, where the spinner's worth a lot more. So we've got to get that on the sanctums so we can have a more enjoyable Viper experience. The funny thing about Bruce's Dragon Fist is this is the same one I think we probably mentioned. Yes, we did. That was in the coin opera house that was put out for sale about an hour after the 24-hour sanctum tournament started. Yes. I didn't see it. Bruce didn't see it. And then it sold. And the guy who bought it just never picked it up and decided to sell it, so it was still sitting there.
    47:53
    So then I was the first one to jump on. People were complaining he bumped it up price. Guess what? I don't care how much he bumped it up. It was $300 of a maid. How many things are still sitting around? So I grabbed it, drove down on Martin Luther King Day, which I had off today, and I got back around 6 o'clock. Sorry, everybody on. There it is. I dropped it off at Zach's, and it said not working. And I was like, I had to go meet my wife for dinner, and then I had to come for the podcast. And Zach said it is fully working right now. I need to rebuild the high voltage on the driver board, and I have to get a flipper rebuild kit for the Type 2 stern flippers. They can go from there. Excellent. And then try to peel off mylar. Yeah, they Mylar-ed it after it already, but that's, yeah. It's bad. Yeah. I mean, the play throw wasn't really that bad, but then they put Mylar over it. Everywhere. Everywhere, yeah. And she doubled Mylar-ed it because, you know, because the best thing is when you actually have the Mylar circles in front of the slingshots, and then you put a full sheet of Mylar over that.
    49:09
    I'm sure her play's great with all that Mylar. Actually, Zach said it didn't play that bad, but the flippers were pretty wasted. since they're probably original. It's Dragonfist, man. It's tough to make you play bad. And I have the original spinner on mine. I don't have no cock spinner like you. Mine is superior. I have the cock spinner.
    49:28
    What is it? 68 spins, baby. You're sorry. When I get 69, I'll... You're not going to get... Nope. Impossible. That's going to be a thing. Who has the higher spin total?
    49:39
    That's the other thing the game has. It has the spin counter. So it's like not only high score to date, high spins to date. What a great concept. I love that. That's me. Yeah. And as long as it keeps spinning. So I got the 68 because I crushed it, and then I got the ball back, and I was able to crush it a second time. I think the most, like, full spin with just, like, a single hit is around 57. So you've got to juice that spinner up, Bruce. Yep, I will. So that's what I did today. Now, I can't really do the heads-up challenge, though. I mean, I can't bring it. You'll have to bring all your games here. What the fuck? Well, my Dragon Fist, the cabinet's falling apart. Literally, I can't move it. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, Chief. I'm right with you. I think every Dragon Fist cabinet is fucked. Yeah, I think you're right. Like, what? Is the bottom falling out of yours on the back? Yes. Yeah, okay. Yes. And my, you know, the spacer plate between the head and the body? The pedestal, yes. The pedestal? Part of it was gone, actually. I found it inside the cabinet. Really? Part of mine is gone, too. What the hell? But I fixed mine because I just, you know, I saw it and put another couple nails in it, and I'm good. What the hell's with Stern? Are you sure he didn't just pick up your game? I think I did. Did you go down and start to check?
    50:58
    That'd be funny. You should give the cabinet to Vance, man. This one is pretty bad. I think I'm actually going to look for a donor. Can you build a new one? I don't know if he could. I'd arrest him. See, I say it would be a good project because the original art is terrible. Yeah. Maybe try to come up with a cool new design. Or just buy a newer stern cabinet, slap it in there and be done. And then I can just re-sensile anything I want also. You know, here's the thing. I don't think there's any other conventional size stern cabinet that just says stern on it, that doesn't have game-specific artwork. I don't care about the artwork. Okay. If I was going to make my own artwork, who cares? I just want a better cabinet.
    51:43
    All right. See? Thinking ahead. Find me another cabinet. Stern donor cabinet. Bruce wants a stern donor cabinet, folks. Not wide body, of course.
    51:55
    Yep, conventional. That's literally why he does this. I do, just for this. All the deals he gets. Yeah, and they did cheap it up on the last, like, I noticed it doesn't have, like, the ball roll tilt. They stopped doing that. They used a smaller, like, panel on the side and got rid of some stuff. Yep. To save money. So you won't have to worry about a ball roll tilt switch because there isn't one. Darn.
    52:21
    So let's see. What do we got here? We have the InDisc. Oh, SVS, we talked about that. We talked about the Jersey Jack thing. And also, I was in a tournament this weekend.
    52:31
    Ooh. Wasn't really expecting to go to a tournament, but I got PM from Tim. Tim Balls. What's a PM? Private message. Okay, good. Just like you do to me. I know.
    52:46
    Thank you. Dick. So, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, so I got a PM from Tim. There was a tournament in New York City at the Crazy Levy's Funtorium.
    53:04
    Levy is one of the never-be people responsible for the New York City Championships, pinball championships that will be coming up in May.
    53:15
    And every few months he has like a tournament at his place. Actually, it's his showroom, I guess it's called. And Tim can't really use his work laptop anymore because he was using his work laptop for streaming and other things related to pinball. So he said, like, can we use your laptop? Like, I'll come along. You can use my laptop as long as you drive there because I'm not driving to New York City. He's like, no problem. So we used my laptop, and since we had my laptop, he brought his streaming stuff, and we also streamed it. We streamed the finals, which is out on our Twitch page and is also already uploaded to YouTube. So check it out. Three or four hours of tournament action. How did you do, Ron? Where you can watch a, whatever, where you can watch an awesome jackpot game and have it reset. How did you do? And then you can watch a, oh, how did I do? Yes, how did you do, Ron? I didn't make the top eight. Fail. Yeah. I basically needed to win the last two, it was match play. I probably should say what format. Seven rounds of match play, foursomes. I basically needed to win, win, be first in round six and seven. And I was, I think, second in six and first in seven. That wasn't enough. So that sucked.
    54:43
    Yeah. Yeah, very disappointing. I had, you know, it just, when it's not your day, like I'm on jackpot, soft plunge, trap, open the visor, lock a ball, soft plunge, trap, second one, boom, multi-ball starts. I immediately get two balls block two balls for the super whatever jackpot balls come down I like hit the flipper button I guess too hard or trying to like a little slap Not even a nudge And I get warning warning tilt Right in the multiball You animal. Yeah, yeah.
    55:22
    That pissed me off. Like, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's pinball, bro. Yeah. That's pinball.
    55:31
    Whatever. Then I see people, like, shoving the game and they're not getting tilts. Yep. You know the drill. It was just my particular type of slap must have been just not with the game. It was the aggregate. It was probably the aggregate. All the different mini slaps. Yeah, I tend to hit the flipper butts too hard sometimes. It goes from playing all these older games.
    55:51
    And the winner was Alberto Santana, who just told me today that he is coming up to the Upstate New York Championships. Ah, excellent.
    56:02
    He was there last year. And so is Steve Bowden from Abonis. Yep. I talked to him. He wants to check out your place. That's very cool. And it's because it's at my place. That's really cool also. And where's your place? That is the Silver Ball Saloon in East Rochester, New York. Oh, okay.
    56:20
    And then we had a tournament this weekend for Stern Army. And our own Zach won it. Bastard. Took me out in finals. Yeah, someone needs to set Zach straight. Well, we'll see what happens this weekend. in SDS because he's a higher up ranked seed, so we'll see if somebody takes him down. Because he was on the chat during our stream at the Funitorium. And he said some things that pained me greatly.
    56:47
    Attack from Mars is overrated. He said things that Spirit is greater than Black Hole, which is greater than Cheetah.
    56:55
    Blasphemy. Come on. Is Black Hole a better game than Cheetah? Black Hole is pretty garbage. Viper is better than Black Hole. Yeah. I mean, they can't have much more of a not-fun mechanic as, ooh, look at the cool play field. Oh, you're dead. Oh, cool.
    57:15
    Just as we need to explain to him the whole Gottlieb concept of, like, locking balls for a multi-ball and then you drain, and then it just unlocks the ball so you can watch them drain so you have to re-lock them is not fun. It is a terrible player experience. because you have to jump back on the machine and go, wait, what? Oh, yeah, and then you realize the flippers are dead. I mean, terrible concept, terrible rules.
    57:40
    As Tim told me, when you're playing a Gottlieb, don't think about the rules because they didn't. Oh, wow, nice. Yeah, you like that? Actually, someone else told him that, and then he told me, but I thought that was a good, that's a good quote. They have a couple good games. They do, they do. But Black Hole ain't one of them, sorry. Correct. I would, yeah. The whole concept, you didn't complete that bank of targets. Okay, we're going to drain your ball now, and you're going to get to just watch it. Yeah, that's by far, that's probably one of the worst things I've ever seen in pinball. Yep, pretty much. Shot lead. It's almost as bad as the new trend of saying you fail on stuff.
    58:21
    That I don't get. They need to stop doing that. I think Spooky does that. Highway does that. They have modes, and if you don't do them, it just says, you failed.
    58:32
    Well, you know, Stern doesn't do that. JJP doesn't do that. I'm just saying. Don't want to piss off your player base by telling them they failed over and over.
    58:42
    Yeah, well, yeah, they don't say, they don't use the words, you failed. They do on Alien. It hangs up. Oh, yeah. I haven't had a chance to play that. Yeah. It'll say, like, you failed. It'll say, you failed. Actually, Total Nuclear Annihilation, at the end of the game, every game it says, you failed.
    58:59
    Just technically, if you don't destroy all nine reactors, you failed. Yeah. That's probably their best game that they've put out, I think. Agreed. I do like Haunted.
    59:13
    I think Haunted is by far their second best game. Rob Zombie, no thank you. He's a distant third. A very distant third. I mean, I love the sound, I love the art, I pretty much love everything except for the gameplay and the rules. I think I put Domino's ahead of Rob Zombie. Oh, no. I've never played that, or I've seen it. I'll say, the one thing I'll give Rob Zombie is the call-outs.
    59:39
    I think it must be an actor that was in some Rob Zombie movies. I don't know his name. That does some of the call-outs. Like, you know, Jackpot, you know, Extra Ball, or Add-A-Ball, Nice, or whatever. I think it's Captain Spalding. Yeah. I mean, the call-outs are... Yeah, but that sounds great. are good. I mean, it wasn't a phoned-in thing. He's all into it. So I'll give credit there. The call-outs are nice. The only problem is it'll be like the same call-out, like multiple times, as opposed to like a certain game. You might have a similar call-out, but it's done with different inflections, so it's a little different every time it's said. Yeah, that's the big problem with America's Most Haunted. Yeah, it'll say like the same thing. It'll say like the same thing. It'll say like the same thing, you know. jackpot, jackpot where like a Stern game where they say jackpot, jackpot okay now it's sounding like 24 jackpot okay a better one would be like extra ball extra ball, extra ball you know just say it like five different ways yeah little things like that make a big difference more than you would think in my opinion but yeah I think the big problem in that game, mainly his playfield. That's the thing that always cracks me up about that, is that playfield was like everyone, what was it, the zombie game that he had come up with, and everyone universally was like, no, we don't want that game, that playfield's garbage, we don't want anything to do with that game, and then he came back with exactly the same playfield, and he's like, drop zombie, and everyone's like, we need it, we love it, it's amazing, and it's like, ah!
    61:18
    It's the same exact playfield, what changed? is just the theme. If you didn't like the Blakeville Den, why do you like it now? Because it's got a bucket of chicken on it. It does. And that robot from Phantom Creeps.
    61:30
    I don't know why he's in it. I think he's part of Rob Zombie's stage show, if I remember. He comes out. I believe he's in Thousand Corpses, too. I think he's in some of the weird, freaky parts for me. It's like the robot from Phantom Creeps, which was a serial from the 40s. The only reason I know that is because it was on Mystery Science Theater episodes. It's like, oh, it's that robot. It's the same one.
    61:53
    So let's see. We got SCS. We got, we talked about the SCS. Yeah, I think it's time. I think it's time, Bruce. It's time for face-off. Or no, wait a minute. Let's go through the news first. We'll let you, we'll let you, we'll let you throw it out there.
    62:10
    Come on. You always, you know, I got Gottlieb again. But we'll get into that first. Let's just look at the news really quickly. Again, this is from this week in pinball. Kudos to them. That's thisweekinpinball.com. Hi, Jeff. The source of news for all podcasts. The Beatles are coming. Really? Although the rumor is, okay, the rumor here says it's a Kapow title. And, Bruce, you're insistent on that's the Munsters. I'm doing with the Munsters still. I'm going to say that I think the next Kapow title that's going to be revealed at Expo this year is going to be the Beatles, not the Munsters. So we'll see who's right. Interesting. I would lean more to Earthmonsters, too, because I always had thought that the Beatles license was on Obtenium. No, they got it. Now, what that means, or what kind of, I don't know, what kind of game that's going to be. I mean, it could be like the Walking Dead license. Yeah. Not really. You know, I mean, there's no way Paul McCartney or Ringo are doing any custom speech for the game that I can see. Unless they're just closet pinheads who are just like, oh, I'm going to have a pinball. Sure, we'll do it. the only chance to even get any of that anymore is it has to be a band related because the rest you just can't get a hold of people anymore or if they're fans like what's his name for Star Trek what was his name Carl Urban he was the pinhead it wasn't even planned for him to do any speech work however he found out about it about the game I'll do it so he got an LE Boom. There you go. Yeah, I wish that that was the way it worked a lot more now. I bet you probably a lot, if you could actually contact and get a hold of a lot of these people, they'd probably do that, but there's so much crap between that you can't even, you never even get to get close to the person. And then they just go, oh, you know, it costs $25,000 to even send an email to the manager or something. Yeah, I mean, I was so psyched when they were able to get Betty White to do all the custom call-outs for Golden Girls.
    64:09
    Fuck yeah. I hope that's true, guys. That's totally true. The one told us. The one would never lie to us. Flash multiball. It's going to be in there. What else do we got here? We got also news. Cosmic chaos. That's going to be the theme of the Texas Pinball Festival this year. It's something that Mark Ritchie came up with.
    64:32
    But they might actually turn it into a game. Possibly. Maybe. Some award shows this weekend, too. The Twippies, the T-W-I-P-Y, Twippy Awards will be on Friday. It's going to be live at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Oh, they put the right one there, EST. Thank you. It's going to be on Twitch. Let's see. It's going to be on twitch.tv slash SDTM pinball, as in straight down the middle pinball. You guys are in the running for one of those, aren't you? I'm not allowed to say anything. Bruce will yell at me. Oh, jinxing? Yeah. Of course, the voting's over, so... The categories are Best Animations and Display, Best Light Show, Favorite New Mod, Best Theme, Best Toys and Gimmicks, Favorite Pinball YouTube Channel, Best Theme Integration, Best Sound and Callouts, Favorite Pinball Twitch Streamer, Best Code and Rules, Best Playfield Gameplay and Layout, favorite pinball podcast best artwork in game of the year is dialed in has to be it should be anything else and I'm demanding a recount you'll be fine with TNA which I think is a crime but TNA's all good and all but compared to dialed in like come on And then, what else we got? To talk about Iron Maiden being next turn, I don't think it's Iron Maiden.
    66:13
    I still think it's another. Well, you still think it's Golden Girls? Yes, Golden Girls, of course. According to what he says, well, this is a rumor. Keith Elwin is doing Iron Maiden, and it wasn't John Trudeau. So, I don't know. I don't think so. I think it was John Trudeau. Go on, Archer, man. Damn it. I know. Golden Girls. I'm sure they'll have the same play field layout as Archer. Well, I watched his videos on that, and then I literally went and watched the show, and now I want an Archer pinball machine. I know. Great.
    66:48
    Of course, you could go back and watch his videos, but you can't because he pulled them all. He did? Yeah. Really? Yeah, there's no Archer. He used to have the Archer gameplay videos on his YouTube channel, but they were pulled as soon as he got hired by Stern. What about his other videos of him breaking games? Oh, yeah, that's all on there. Those are still there? You can watch him destroy games in... ridiculous fashion. See, the fact that they pulled the Archer videos is a little hope. Well, no. Yeah, there's hope that whatever Golden Girls looks like is going to look a lot like Archer. I can't imagine that Archer would be a hard license to get.
    67:21
    But would it sell? That's the question. What were you saying, Bruce, about code? Alien got a new code update, but I heard it's hard to get loaded onto people's machines.
    67:33
    Why is that? because the way they were putting the file in, some of the, I guess, the earlier machines didn't like the way it was written in the ending of the file format. So, yeah, just another fun story of Highway Pinball and their quality control and what they lack in. If only every game could update as easily as Jersey Jack games.
    68:02
    Yeah. Yeah, I had no issue. Done. Yeah. That's it. And it keeps all your shit. Even the full update was just like, you just had to format the thumb drive in a certain way, but you put it in, turned the game on. The only issue I have is it just takes whatever screen is the first one to come up, so it was actually the hologram. So I got to see everything upside down.
    68:25
    Nice. You got to see the code update going on. Like, I hope it's working. Yeah, like the greatest part is the fact that you want, It is the Delta upgrades. It keeps all your settings are exactly the same. All those high scores are there. And it just goes right in. So it keeps the settings so I don't have to, like, save the settings and then reload them or anything? Yeah, for Deltas. If you have to do a full install, you do. Yeah, I would love to know what the deal is with them when it comes to their, quote-unquote, default settings that are not, like... I mean, when you're dialed in, you must have seen that. that, like, all the flippers are set wicked low and the theater's not set up properly. Yeah, the magnets are not set up, and it's in a weird place, which they moved. It was under, like, it was in a diagnostics. Under magnets. Yeah, diagnostics. But now it has its own setting. The other weird thing I didn't understand is if you go into their menus, they have a deal where if something is just the regular color, that means it's a default. If it's, like, red, that means it was changed from the default. Green is default. At least it is for the object. Green is the fault. Red is the fault. Red is changed. You would do a full upgrade, like the full one, not a delta. So this blows away all the settings. You put it on. You go into the menu, and there's stuff that's red. Like, how is this possible? Yeah, that's the weird thing, because also, like, the same reason that you, out of the box, none of your stuff came as the default, because the default never seemingly gets changed to what they actually want it to be. Yeah. So you never actually keep it on most of all the green settings because none of them are working at the time. Which is weird. It is weird. I had to pretty much up all three flippers, up the launcher, up the kicker into the launch, into the shooter lane. Because a lot of times I was barely making it in or not making it in. I would have to try a couple times. So I had to up all those. I had to, of course, screw up the magnet, which everyone does, to get it to fling it right.
    70:25
    I mean, but once you get all that set, then you're an old-time dream. But you have to sell all that stuff, and it's kind of annoying. And the problem is if you've got people who have no idea what they just, you know, the location or something, they just chuck it and set it up, and it's not playing right. Dialed in does not come out of the box. Dialed in enough, yes.
    70:45
    Stern growth. Did you know Stern is growing? Do you know, according to Zach Sharp, sales are up 40% from last year to this year, meaning 2017, from 2016. which is up 40% from the year prior.
    70:58
    In other words, they're doing really good, which is good for everyone. Yes. It is. Very happy. And that he is crushing it over there, the changes that he's brought in since he's been hired. You mean like the stern of the union? Yes. You mean letting people know what the hell they're actually doing or working on? Yep. What a concept. Wow. And putting out little releases for code instead of waiting for the big one. they're just crushing it IFPA State Championship Series we already talked about that it never drains in Southern California we talked about that new pinball event in the UK Pinfest! Wait a minute there's another thing called Pinfest there's one in Australia called Pinfest there's one in this country called Pinfest who did it first?
    71:48
    probably the one here I would assume actually one thing we didn't talk about the states as if either are you guys planning on going if you win? No. I already bought my ticket, man! Tell this again. Yeah, that's again. We're actually planning to go for Pinmasters, but we haven't booked it. I believe it's, I want to say, the beginning of March? Yes. All right, so it's not the same... Not a conflict like last time. Not a conflict like, okay. Because that was the one, like the one year, of course, I made it to the finals,
    72:19
    it was like, it was the same weekend as Texas, which I had already bought everything to go to. So it's like it wasn't even in the cards. Also, before they used to be, when finals happened and when the actual nationals was, it was like less than a month apart. So you really got screwed on flights. But thankfully it's a bigger gap now.
    72:41
    Excellent. I have some news. You have a piece of news? Which I forgot to say. Piece of news. that announced today that Yacht Rock's coming back to Buffalo August 17th through the 19th. Oh, really? Yacht Rock. That might be better known as the Buffalo Summer Pinball Open, possibly. Yes, it is.
    73:03
    But it's going to be at the Stanch Geach Yacht Club. Oh, I actually saw that on Facebook. It's moved this year, so I do plan on going. You guys have got to come to Pinmasters this year. What are the dates? Yeah, that's a good point, I probably shouldn't talk about that yet Because we're not final, but Let's say April Yeah, we're planning on May, June, August We're planning for Stomp West soon Oh, we are? We are Okay, well, Bruce is planning, and he's planning to tell Ron about it soon Yes, it'll be in March sometime You'll have to bring out George Live on the air You'll have to bring out George and your new George and Bob? there. George and Bob. I can bring out George and Bob. Oh my. We'll stream it too and we might have to challenge the Buffalo guys to come out and get it all in one swoop.
    73:55
    So, okay. That was the news. You want to talk about Hobbit more or you want to go into our challenge? Let's get to talk about Hobbit.
    74:05
    Come on, Hobbit's fun. I'm curious what you guys, what you're guys, I know that you guys have always been anti-Hobbit for the those part, I believe. It's just the drag. Those stupid pop-up toys. Trolls. Well, it's each, no, it's each an animal. It's each a different animal. Yeah, they're each different, technically. But it is a pain in the ass blocking shots.
    74:27
    Yeah. It's almost as bad as Scolari Brothers. Almost. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's too far. Almost. You see what I said? Almost. That is too far. It's not even close. Yeah. One kills you and doesn't go down, the other ones work. Yeah, but they work, but they're always popping up in front of you. Yeah, but they suck, too. It's a very dry... To get anywhere on a game, it's not chopping wood. It's chopping a forest down just to get something good on it. It's a lot of work. It's just a lot of work, and a lot of fork, and a lot... Smokey the Bear is crying because you just killed all five of them. Yeah, exactly. I find that most people just have no idea how to play it either because the game really gives zero shit without explaining it to you. For me, it's all about how the shots feel. I played Wizard of Oz. I never really liked how the shots felt. I played Hobbit. I didn't really like how the shots felt. I played Dialed In. I played the prototype. I played it the night it was revealed and it's like, okay, this is different. This actually feels good. Yeah, that's a wide-body thing, I think. I feel, for me personally, that all wide-bodies feel weak. I wouldn't say, because I play Pirates. And that shot a hell of a lot better than Hobbit or Wizard of Oz, in my opinion. But why? What would cause that?
    75:48
    It's probably the mini-loop. That caught my attention. Maybe, because they all pretty much shoot the same. They feel weird because the shots are much lower on the flippers than you're used to shooting almost on any other game.
    76:03
    It's tough to make a wide-by that shoots good. You know, it really is. I still say, like, one of my favorites, Demoman, is really not a wide body. Yeah. It's a conventional size. Because the two things on the left are what? The car crash, which you never want to hit, and the eyeball. And the car crash is a whole, like, if you shot that game out, that's a whole, like, there's, like, two cars, and it's a cool-looking thing, but you never even can see it. It's totally useless. It's worthless in the rules. So, really, the game is that whole left side is cut off. and that's why it plays so good because it's really conventional size game. And you never shoot the right orbit either.
    76:39
    Uh, well, except for a jackpot. Yeah, minus that. Minus that, yes, you don't shoot the right orbit. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, like a lot of people, a lot of people say that it's the play field on the Hobbit that's the problem and I don't personally think that the play field's bad on the Hobbit. Alright, what's the upper right flipper for?
    76:58
    See, like, okay, so, it's for, so whenever it's in the bumpers, right, If it comes out, there's a lane above the vertical up kicker on the right. If it comes through that lane, and if you hit, there's two shots to light for the upper flipper to hit. If you hit the captive ball, it relights your kickback. And then if you've hit enough pop bumpers to fill a barrel, it lights one of the drop targets to kick over the barrel to get, like, extra ball or hold bonus or some of these other different awards. So that's what that is standardly used for. But it also has one of the coolest, I think, one of the coolest endings to a multiball in existence, in my opinion. And that uses the upper right flipper. Have you ever killed Smog?
    77:45
    No, I have not. So in Smog, which I think is probably one of the shining things in this, is that Smog has many different levels in it. But once you get to the final level, the sequence is you have to hit the man targets. Then you have to hit the right ramp to load the wind lance, which goes into the kickback. and then the kickback shoots it up to the upper right flipper and all of the drops go up in front of Smog except for one to expose one of the stand-ups behind it and if you hit that stand-up, much like in the movie and how Smog dies, you kill Smog and then the entire game goes black and it goes through the kill sequence, which is quite amazing. So, I mean, the upper right flipper is used for stuff. I mean, I went into it with the same opinion. I looked at the playfield and said, what's the point of this flipper? but the game does use it you know but again it's not overly overt at telling you what to do with it which I think is the main problem I'll have to put a spoiler alert now that we know that the dragon dies yeah that happens in what like the first five minutes of the second film oh okay alright it's time for face off are you ready Bruce I'm going to lose already. Now, see, you ruined the whole thing with this terrible attitude of yours. No, no, I'll tell you exactly why.
    79:10
    Guess who does the software for all three of my games? Oh, you're going to start this again. Oh, God, it's killing me. So, wait a minute, you only have three games? I only have three games. All right, so I have more of a choice on what I can pick.
    79:24
    I'm sorry, Bruce. Oh, my. The only thing I don't know is who goes first here. What are the usual Bruce rules now? It would be whoever won last time. You got to pick the manufacturer last time. The first pick. So I don't know if that's anything. You have more games, so you pick first. Yeah, that's only fair. So what do I go for? What do I go for here? I played only one of these. Oh, okay. So you'll have to consult with IPDB.org. Oh, I got it open. Oh, so do I.
    79:58
    All right. You told me to do prep. Come on. Yeah, I got... Well, I actually have played all these at some point. Really? Well, here's a funny story. And this is not 1988. This is 1989. Big House. I don't know if anyone's familiar with that game.
    80:14
    You familiar with it, Bruce? Yes, I am. The prison one. The prisoners are dogs and all that. They're dogs, yes. Yeah. Well, when I was writing to this tournament with Tim Balls, he has, you know, I have this idea of what they should do with Walking Dead in the prison. When you hit the prison, like when multiball starts, you should have spotlights come on like I'm in the prison, like you're escaping.
    80:38
    And I'm like, you know they already did that in Big House, right? It's like, what? What's Big House? You're in prison. And they literally have roving spotlights that when you escape prison, they turn on because you're escaping. It's actually a pretty cool effect. I actually like it. It's got the corkscrew thing that brings the ball up. But whatever. Time to pick my first game. And it's going to be TX Sector.
    81:02
    We're going to go right to TX Sector. Just some of the greatest back glass artwork ever. Way ahead of its time. So ahead of its time, you really can't understand what it is. But one trick pony. Interesting you went right for that. Right. Right for the. I'm going right for that. Just killer artwork. be just great layout. The 2-2 spinners that spin, building up your levels to lock the ball. The balls like seemingly just appear and transport over to other areas of the play field and a really cool effect, really cool lighting. Has chaser lights that go along the ramp that look cool. A perennial Papa favorite. great, addicting gameplay, and one of the catchiest 80s soundtracks in any game. And a great review video. I give you TX Sector. I would go on to describe the designer, but I can't do that. Oh, my.
    82:08
    Since my machine's not built by a pedophile, I go there. When was that? Wow. I'm going with a perennial favorite from Data East, Time Machine, where you can actually listen to the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s music all in this machine. You get a real chime box in the machine also. You get great music, great sounds, great shots, including a million-point shot,
    82:42
    not no one-trick pony with spinners only. You actually have rules in this game Not saying who did them but they have rules And the great artwork done by Kevin O and Margaret Hudson Great music by David Thiel
    82:55
    Time Machine rocks. The only problem is those ramps do get a little tight on one side, but it is a fun game. You can sing along with it anytime you want. It even has Pac-Man on it. Come on, and Howdy Doody.
    83:09
    Who doesn't love a game with Pac-Man and Howdy Doody on it? I yield the floor with Time Machine. It's actually a pretty close one. And to be fair, Time Machine is also kind of a two-shot pony, same as TX Sector, because, I mean, you're not really shooting the left ramp. You're just shooting the right ramp as much as you can, and then shoot the one left ramp to just get that million. Yep. And there's really no other shots on the game either.
    83:35
    But, yeah, this is a tough one, because I do really like them both. TX Factor definitely has better music but which one could I play the more probably Time Machine I have to go with Time Machine I think I could enjoy that much longer than TX Factor I'm never gonna win that was a surprise TX Factor oh man I don't think I should have went for TX Factor so early I would have went for Time Machine too Yeah. Damn. That was a mistake. That was a strategic mistake. That's why I love this game. It's their strategy. We're going to pick three games, folks. And that was the one game I played. I made a major strategic error.
    84:24
    Okay, so Torpedo Alley is my second game. This is truly a spinner game. Artwork done by Kevin O'Connor, Margaret Hudson again, David Field did the music again. it's a submarine battleship kind of game with a cool little centerpiece that shows, like if you're looking through the periscope on a submarine, it's got a left-out kick lane. It's got a lot of ramps in it, a lot of weird feeds from these ramps, so it's not like your normal game. And when you actually hit a certain combo in the game, the spinner lights up for big freaking points. Not no 10,000 like the Scott Leaps do. This goes, you can actually blow out the scores on this game really easy. Double Air Backglass, cute game, fun game.
    85:14
    That is Torpedo Alley, and it's favored by The One, the one love section. That's what I saw it in play on this video. That's why I even knew that this game existed.
    85:27
    And it had a two- or three-ball multi-ball, which one of the earlier games did not have much of. innovation. Okay.
    85:38
    Black Knight has two and three ball multiball, and it was made in 1980. But that's 80. So they forgot about it for a while. The mid-80s, they did actually forget about it. Okay, they forgot about it. So for my next game, I will introduce this game by saying, what's one of the greatest games ever made? Eight Ball Deluxe. So, how can you improve on that? Easy. Flip it around. and add multiball, and you get bad girls.
    86:08
    That's it? It's 8-Ball Deluxe. It's got the targets this time on the left instead of on the right. You get your pool balls. Similar rules, but it has multiball. And a killer soundtrack. The artwork is typical 80s cheese, I would say, artwork, but it fits the time. an awesome photorealistic back glass because everyone loves those the speakers on the top so they're pointed right at your head for the optimum sound quality for this awesome 80s soundtrack that you will hear and a favorite of the Buffalo Pinball guys Bad Girls I yield the floor so one thing I have to ask on Bad Girls is what is in the window that's there I know Genesis, what's inside of there? It displays your pool balls that you have. Yes, like on a pool table. It's a display. It doesn't have the Genesis guy in there or anything like that. Interesting. That's a weird way to just do the same thing you do with inserts. It's innovative. It's new.
    87:19
    No, because they just had enough of those windows, and they had to just keep on using them. Yeah, I think that's more probably what it was.
    87:26
    And I imagine that I'm sure that that plays wonderful games with the ball. No, it doesn't. This is Gottlieb. Oh, it's got a post, too, guys. It's all adjustable. Those windows were always adjustable with spacers so you can get it to sit flush. You can actually remove it. Unlike certain games like, I don't know, ACDC, where it's just part of the huge insert. Not now. Yeah. Well, isn't that right? The Vault Edition, they made it so it was removable. Yeah, the Vault one has that one. See, Bruce? So you didn't get that one either. That's on my radar. I would love to get one of those. Also, you notice that it does have a center post that says, kiss it. Yep. What did I say more?
    88:06
    I've never been able to play one of these. Chuck tried to restore one, and this is one of the few games that defeated him. And he gave up on it and sold it. So I haven't actually had a chance to play one. I've heard it's good. On the same side, I've not had a chance to play a Tornado Alley as well. Chuck is currently in the process of restoring one. He did a fine job at it. Yeah, I have not seen it yet. He hasn't posted any pictures about it. He did post a couple, actually. He did? Yes, he did. I'll have to check that out. Tornado Alley or Torpedo Alley? Torpedo Alley, sorry.
    88:43
    Even though I'm staring right at it, yeah. But, unfortunately, to mention, I've really not seen much Bad Girls, but I have seen the one, Show Me Everything There Needs to be Seen, about Torpedo Alley. And it was played, I believe, in last year's Indisc. And it looks really fun. I think I got to go Torpedo Alley.
    89:05
    Are you kidding me? What are you? So it's over already? It's over already. We're going for the sweep now. Go ahead, pull up your third game, Ron.
    89:18
    Ah, fuck you. Yeah, I made the strategic error. I should not have picked TX Factor. I was holding time to stack just for that machine That's why I was To be fair you don't have a lot of Guns You don't have a lot of bullets for your gun One of them doesn't even exist Doesn't exist A production of none So you only get five Big top whatever that is I was going to say Robo War But you know what I actually I haven't played I've probably played Robo War Like once or twice This other game I've actually played more, and I did like it. Let me try to get a decent play-through shot of it, make sure it's the game I'm thinking of.
    90:03
    Yeah, it is. Diamond Lady. Very fun game. Has a very unique... I think they only did this a couple times. The ball saver is a drop target right in between the flippers.
    90:19
    Very innovative. Lots of drop targets. And it just shoots really good. Really good shooting game. I remember playing this at a show over and over and over again. It wasn't broken? Unique shot. It was not broken, Bruce. It played wonderfully.
    90:37
    This was also one of the games that they tried their, what, Vitagraph or whatever the hell it is, play fields, that they did for a couple games and dropped it. Yeah. She says on the flyer, the Vitagraph, easy maintenance, wear-resistant play field surface. that didn't work out too well.
    90:54
    Actually, it has decent playfield artwork. Backlash is okay, I guess. Actually, the cabinet's got nice artwork. It's got your card, you know, the hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds on it.
    91:12
    It's tough to explain the game. It just is a really good shooting game. You can see the ramp in the upper left, the wire form that feeds in. I enjoyed it.
    91:24
    I guess I yield a four. Now I got the third one for me. Secret Service. Sometimes pinball designers can't make up their own perfect tee. If you look at this play field on Secret Service, oh my, it looks almost exactly like high speed. You have the upper right flipper, the feed from the saucer to feed your spinner on the left and spinner on the right, and then you have your typical Steve Ritchie loop to lock the balls, but it locks on the other side. If you look at this play field, it truly is high speed with a little changes on it. Doesn't it have high speed spinners on it? It does. Yep, the spade places, the hole, everything, the kicker hole, and the ramp. And the same decals. Yeah, the same decals.
    92:18
    You also have digital stereo. Ooh, back glass, yeah, it's pretty cheesy. And I don't understand ever what this game is. It's Secret Service, but you have James Bond on the back box head, which is kind of weird. Like, you know, the guy's dressed like James Bond in the back glass and also on the back box head. And also a hideous topper on the top of it with, like, light stuff. But it does play very good. This is a fun game. I think even Howard Levine actually had this, didn't he, Ron? I don't remember him having this, no. I thought he did. And the one also loves this game, too. Yep. I remember correctly. He does. Yep. He has a video on it, too. Yep.
    92:58
    I yield the floor with Secret Service. I actually like it, too. I do, actually, too. I've never really played it. I will say it is impressively ugly and gaudy, especially that lower play field. Oh, yeah. This hurts my eyes. And that back glass is disgusting. Like a lot of their games from this era. I don't know what they were thinking. But yeah, it is high speed, and high speed is good.
    93:25
    I did see the ones video on it. It did seem somewhat fun. Diamond Lady, though, I've never seen before.
    93:35
    It looks like it could be interesting. Also pretty ugly. and it does get points for that drop target saved on the middle. I'm trying to think of what game I played that actually had that in there.
    93:51
    There's two or three. I know I've played one game that had it, but I can't put my finger on which one it was.
    94:00
    I didn't see it going this way, but I think I have to go with Secret Service. Ah, clean sweep. This sucks.
    94:11
    Fatality. Excalibur actually looks a lot more interesting to me, honestly. Actually, it is kind of cool, but it's kind of bland also. I actually would have went with RoboWar. RoboWar is a fun game. I should have picked that because that was an indisc. So since the tournament people love it, it would have definitely won. It is a fun game. I have never played that. So.
    94:35
    Wow, that did not go as planned. You'll have to go to random.org. And we're going to put in from 1974 to 95.
    94:49
    Okay. Because 96 is just like you have Capcom prototypes that didn't even come out, and you have like barbed wire. Oh, yeah. For God's sake. You think he's going to not say yes now? It's 88 again. Didn't we just do that, right? Do it again.
    95:06
    83. Okay, we did not do 83. Now, that's kind of lean years. Let's see if anyone was even around in 83. Well, Liam, Scott Lieb, and Bally. How do you pick the companies? Up top in IPDB. I mean, how do you guys pick what companies you go to? Well, that'll be next. So we'll have to do RAM.org again when I'm trying to find out which was around in 1983.
    95:31
    Okay, we have, well, Atari, which... There you go. Zachariah. Woo! Valley. Williams. Milstar. What the heck is that? Which is actually Gottlieb. That's Gottlieb. Woo, Game Plan. Famous one. Sharpshooter 2. Super Orbit. Only one. There's a lot of games in here.
    95:55
    I think it has to be Williams. Well, actually, I don't even know if... Yeah, Williams as Starfighter, which is none. Time Fantasy.
    96:06
    Jet... How do you even judge that? There are two. Bally and Gottlieb. I think those are our big three we go with.
    96:15
    What, Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb? Yep. Yeah. And Zachariah we could do because there actually is one, two, three. There's three good titles in Zachariah also. The Time Machine.
    96:28
    There is Pinball Champ. And there is Farfalla. Yeah. We could do those. All right. Okay. Four. So let's go to random.org. Let's put all the names in on the list. Since you lost, Ron, you get to either accept or pass the first one. Yep.
    96:44
    Okay, so it's Zach, Valley. So you're saying the Mil-Stars are included with Gottlieb? Yes. Yeah. They're Gottlieb. They're just, that's what they used. Like their premier, I think. Yeah, it was the transition between when Columbia sold or just said no more, and the employees continued the company. Okay, Ron. First one is Williams. Pass or take? All right. Let me take a look here.
    97:15
    I've got to look at some of these games. Got Joust, Firepower 2, Starfighter. Wait, they didn't even make any. Time Fantasy. Pass. Rat Race, there's ten of them. Rat Race is ten. Pass. The next one is Gottlieb. Good. I'll take that. All right, we'll take Williams. I was hoping for Bally. But Bally was third, and Zachariah was fourth. Really? Williams, huh? Yeah. So how does that work? Like, there's actually two rat races. One's Williams, and one's Gatling. Although the Gatling one didn't really... Gatling's different, yeah.
    97:51
    Gatling, crawl. Fire. There's some good games on this one. Not including Q-Bert. Which is awful. Yeah, you got... There's a lot of stinkers. You got a lot of games, though. Yeah.
    98:05
    All right. Oh, there's a crawl too? Really? Yeah, there was a That was not even a multi-level game That was just a And also for Gottlieb They'll have a lot of Because John Trudeau did like a lot of prototypes And he took pictures of everything Who? Yeah, that guy Oh, don't say that Yeah, the name I can't say He did Don't take pictures Takes pictures of everything Oh Oh, bye Right into that But he He did a lot of prototypes In games that were never made took pictures of them, and they're all on IPDB. So you'll see all these, like, never produce, never produce, never produce. What's the picture that he takes?
    98:44
    You're not going to let it go, are you? No. What is you guys supposed to be? I almost feel bad going into the next segment after that, but it's time for the mail ball back. Oh my, has it been spent?
    98:58
    We have two emails. I'm calling that Ron's going to win this. He was the same. I think so, too. Well, I said that last time. So who knows? That's what the judge is. Who knows? Okay. This one's from Benjamin. Hello, Benjamin. Hello, gents. I love the show and apparently composed this email a couple of times since episode 69. Oh, my. But never clicked send. I'm one of the people Steph mentioned with whom she discussed women-centric pinball themes, and I thought I had some good ideas. Here's a small but annotated list. I would be interested to hear your annotations.
    99:32
    Here we go. Thelma and Louise. It's the best I got. I don't remember the movie that well, but imagine the off-the-clip wizard mode. Possibly a fall off to a lower playfield. Okay.
    99:43
    Got nothing on that one. I guess so. I mean, it's a little dated, but a lot of their themes are dated, so... It was all my time.
    99:51
    Poor your time. It was like the 90s. Oh, I don't remember. Well, I guess before I would remember things, I suppose. Okay.
    100:00
    Handmaid's Tale. Could be dark, but empowering. Thankfully, this one is no longer too highbrow due to Hulu's producing a TV show. I was going to say that's new.
    100:10
    V for Vendetta. Could be excellent with a heavy focus on VV's character. Could even be licensed from the graphic novel to avoid needing to license Natalie Portman's likenesses and VOs. Okay. That would be cool.
    100:26
    Ah, yes, it would. Oh, God, I don't know. Like I said, Persopolis? would be cool, but maybe a bit harder to sell than the others mentioned, and maybe a bit more history lesson reminder of the Iranian revolution that people want in their pinball. What? Yes, exactly.
    100:48
    Lady Gaga was a great suggestion by whoever suggested it, and it could be a reskin of Centaur. Actually, that's right, because she used, for the album cover, she used the Centaur art. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, she basically did. giving her Centaurus record cover, but by the same token, I could see Madonna's share, Celine Dion, and our Britney Spears being profitable. More niche marketing. And I will always... Jesus Christ. That was terrible. Thank you. More niche marketing, but maybe less expensive to license ideas. See, Annie DeFranco or Garfunkel and Oates would be cooler and quirkier. You mean like Garfunkel and Oates? Yep. It's when Art Garfunkel and Oates from Hall & Oates got together, formed a new super group. Oh, my. There's got to be an Amy Schumer movie or show that can be licensed in Broad City could also be cool.
    101:44
    Those are a few off the top of my head, although admittedly over the course of a month or so. There are good options out here. I'm sure someone could come up with others. I was thinking of one that the head-to-head guys mentioned it, not in this context, but they mentioned Kill Bill. I mean, you have a woman that basically kills everything.
    102:03
    Yeah. And they could have, like, well, I think it's five people. Yeah, five people she goes to kill. They could have them, like, their inserts. And she goes through, and the final one is the wizard mode is killing Bill. Yeah, I could see that. I mean, out of that list, I think Lady Gaga is probably the only one that could be possible, band-wise at this point, because I think Madonna's pretty much done. Yeah. Popularity-wise, at least. whereas Lady Gaga has jumped back up. I mean, we saw a show that, which was amazing. So, I mean, I could see that. But the group that buys things, I don't know.
    102:39
    So we have one more from Scott. Oh, my. He says, hey, I made fun of Firepower at Flipper Hop before the airs. Yes, yes, you did. We know.
    102:51
    The stream was frustrating because of the chat delay. I can see why a lot of people have one reading and one playing talking. and that was it. That's all I can say. I know. And he keeps asking me about, like, how the flashers and the countdown sequence is supposed to go on firepower, and I just keep sending him links to YouTube videos. It's like, just go to YouTube.
    103:11
    There's plenty of videos out there that show the sequence. We empty the mailball bag. I don't know, do we... Ben. Yes, do we have any messages at the site or anything? Nope.
    103:23
    Side note for another theme that I think would be awesome would be Watchmen. based off the graphic novel. That'd be awesome. Is that the one where the one guy's, like, nude? Yes. The movie was okay. I'm a comic book guy. It just didn't really get to me. The graphic novel was awesome. I love that. That's probably one of the best. One of my favorites. How do you get into the art where the guy is nude? Well, you just make him a Ken doll. That's all. There you go. Oh, my.
    103:53
    I think it's time to pay some bills, Bruce. www.pinballlifter.com check out our lifters, tilters helpers, mods wheel kits check us out I think we are definitely going to be at Allentown this year so start planning ahead for that also www.thesilverballsaloon.com in East Rochester, New York my bar with pinball machines and arcade games we just got an Elvis in and we got a Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man Galaga Machine. Come check us out. We have every Sunday night we have trivia. And we're having a party at my place. I'm inviting everyone to come out February 3rd. And everyone's going, what's this party about? It's Saturday night. It is my 20th anniversary for cancer remission. So we're having a birthday party for me for my 20th year of remission. I didn't know that. Yep. Everyone come on out. We're going to have food. We're going to have the Jack Fire Girls coming out for two hours of Jack Fire shots for free.
    104:59
    Oh, my. That's right. So I'll be seeing this on the news. You should take Iron Man and put, like, a thing that says cancer on it, and you just bash him over and over. There you go. But are you coming out, Ron? You can. You have a room if you do want to come out and hang out with some cool kids. I think the upstate is the next weekend. It is the weekend. Oh, yes. take them on both weekends you got nothing better to do come on but yes so that's a cool thing we're going to have there we have and karaoke will be I think the 17th of February so next time for karaoke I know Ron's in for that too oh hell yeah also pinball star Joe Newhart he sells your JJP he sells your Chicago Gaming he also sells your Spooky Machines Come check him out. And your American Pinball. I forgot about American Pinball. So they did ship one Houdini. That game was damn good, man. It does look good. That is pretty. Pretty.
    106:04
    Sound calls are a little cringy. Yeah, they are a little cringy. The video, I like the little mini screen also. It looks good.
    106:12
    Mike Pupo, Flipper Fidelity, best sound system for your pinball machine. Come check him out. He also sells Stern pinball machines brand new in a box. He's out of Allentown. right outside of Allentown. Buy some machines from him. Tell the guys who we talk about, we sent you, we get no money from them. This is all because we like them. Joe, do you have anything to plug?
    106:35
    Pretty much, I guess, keep an eye out for Pin Master's announcement coming hopefully within the next few weeks once people pick some dates. Good. You guys got to come out. Yes. Well, Ron's closer, so I can stay at his house. That's a good thing. Yep. You guys could crash here. I'm centrally, we're centrally located Nice, so what state is this again? First one's going to be in Vermont I'm pretty confident that that date's going to be April 20th It's going to be April 14th And that's going to be up at the co-op up there Oh, yes Probably the next one's going to be New Hampshire At the Southern New Hampshire Pinball Club That's probably looking end of May, beginning of June Then there's going to be Maine Which is probably looking August Rhode Island. I don't know. And then finals will probably be the first week in December like last year because it worked out so well. Hi, Steve Daniels.
    107:30
    Man, once I mentioned that I didn't think that they could run one on Jeff's podcast, he immediately messaged me right away. We can do it. I said, okay. When you want to do it, give me a date right away. That man is great to work with.
    107:44
    That's dedication. Yep. He came out for my tournament, so I definitely have to come out for his. So we are the Slam Tilt Podcast. We'd like to also thank all the other podcasts out there, such as, this gets harder and harder, the Head to Head Podcast, the Pinball Players Podcast, Pinball Profile, Hi Jeff, This Flippin' Podcast, the Bro, Do You Even Podcast, Canadian Pinball Podcast, This Week in Pinball, although they're not a podcast. Hi Jeff. Hi Jeff, you can just say hi Jeff over and over and it works well we are the Slam Tilt Podcast we can be reached at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com that's slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com look for us on Facebook, we are also on Twitch the Hamatorian Tournament was this past weekend, the entire finals is out there in its entirety you can get to hear awesome commentary by yours truly or not. Are you going to be doing another stream this coming week? I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to be doing another stream. After streaming for four hours over the past weekend, I don't know if I feel like streaming. I'm in the one segment we forgot to do, which was repairs.
    109:09
    We'll combine it, but let's just say I'm starting on the cheetah. It's actually the playfield's out on a table now, and I'd kind of like to work on that as opposed to doing a stream. I want to get that done. I don't blame you. I've got a lot of repairs that I'm not going to worry about either because it's already two hours in and I'm exhausted. Yep. So like I said, we are on Facebook, we are on Twitch, we are on YouTube. Joe, thank you very much for coming on. Thanks to Joe for appearing on the World Famous Swamptail Podcast. Yes, he is world famous. It was a pleasure, boys. And Poland. The pleasure has all been ours. This is episode 74, Lethal Weapon. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Nicky D.
    109:58
    Hold my mind. Can you fool me? Can you fly? Hold my mind. You can fool me if you fly. Hold my mind. Oh my, my, I'm paroxysm to keep you alive.