Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 7 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 3m·held·Nov 30, 2023
View original

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Electric Bat Cast Episode 7: Fifth anniversary recap, sponsor features, and operator advice on coin jams and tournaments.

Summary

Electric Bat Cast Episode 7 covers the hosts' return after travel and illness, discussing their fifth anniversary bash tournament (100 attendees, streamed by Aimless Pinball), sponsor updates (Marco Specialties, Game Room Goodies, Stern Insider Connected), and listener questions about coin jams, tournament formats for mixed-skill communities, and flipper coil stop maintenance. The hosts emphasize inclusive tournament design that builds casual players into competitive ones rather than segregating skill levels.

Key Claims

  • Electric Bat arcade has the largest single-location pinball league in the world

    medium confidence · Host stated during discussion of tournament inclusivity philosophy; unverified but presented as fact

  • Lit Pinball Bar in Minneapolis runs separate IFPA-sanctioned competitive tournaments and recreational leagues on the same day

    high confidence · Host directly referenced recent conversation with Lit Pinball Bar staff about tournament structure

  • Canadian quarters commonly jam coin mechanisms because they get stuck in magnets and back up subsequent coins

    high confidence · Hosts identified as root cause of coin jams from operational experience; practical maintenance issue

  • Stern Insider Connected app now available on Apple App Store and Android Store with push notification capability in development

    high confidence · Hosts confirmed recent app release and discussed upcoming push notification feature for operators

  • Marco Specialties stocks higher-quality coil stops from a different manufacturer than standard Stern parts

    medium confidence · Host recommendation based on operational experience, not independently verified

  • Electric Bat's tournament entry fee of $30 for their fifth anniversary bash is significantly lower than typical major tournaments

    high confidence · Host explicitly contrasted $30 fee against typical major tournaments costing hundreds

  • Electric Bat's inclusive tournament philosophy has converted casual players into competitive state-level finalists

    high confidence · Host provided specific examples of casual players now making finals regularly after exposure to competitive play

  • The hosts were recognized on the street in Austin, Texas by pinball community members, demonstrating growth in pinball's mainstream recognition

    medium confidence · Host anecdote about being identified 1,500 miles from home; presented as evidence of growing pinball market awareness

Notable Quotes

  • “If your attitude is such that you can't accommodate somebody learning to play pinball, I think the problem is with you.”

    Kale (Electric Bat co-host) @ ~1:21:00 — Core philosophy statement on inclusivity in pinball tournaments; defines operator perspective on skill segregation

  • “We have found that casuals who become competitive players then start caring about whopper points, so they come in and practice more.”

    Rachel or Kale @ ~1:18:00 — Business logic explaining why inclusive tournaments drive higher engagement and machine play time

  • “I'm bullish on this market. I think it's great. There are more people growing. And the more accommodating you can be, the more it's going to continue to grow.”

    Kale @ ~1:14:00 — Positive market sentiment on pinball growth trajectory and operator strategy for sustainable expansion

  • “Don't use Canadian quarters. Put tokens in one at a time... if you have to like push it in like to try and force it, spoiler you're not getting credit for that.”

    Rachel or Kale @ ~56:00 — Practical operator guidance on preventing coin jams and player frustration with credit registration

  • “We replace the two lower flippers at the same time because whenever they start getting... condensed you want your two flippers to be equal right.”

    Kale or Rachel @ ~1:30:00 — Maintenance best practice for flipper parity and performance consistency

Entities

Electric Bat ArcadeorganizationAimless PinballorganizationLit Pinball BarorganizationMarco SpecialtiescompanyGame Room GoodiescompanyStern Insider Connectedproduct/serviceKalepersonRachelperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Insider Connected app recently launched on Apple App Store and Android with push notification capability in development pipeline for operator alerts

    high · Hosts confirmed recent app release and discussed upcoming push notification feature for real-time tech alerts on machines

  • ?

    community_signal: Electric Bat Arcade successfully hosted 100-person, three-day fifth anniversary tournament with out-of-state attendance (Alaska, Minnesota, California); event streamed professionally by Aimless Pinball

    high · Detailed tournament recap with specific attendee count, geographic diversity, and streaming partnership confirmation

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Growing mainstream recognition of pinball community; arcade operators recognized by strangers in Austin, Texas 1,500 miles from their base

    medium · Host anecdote about being identified on street in Austin; presented as evidence of market growth awareness

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball market characterized by more manufacturers than ever; hosts express bullish outlook on industry growth and mainstream accessibility

    medium · Host statement: 'There are more pinball manufacturers than ever' and 'I'm bullish on this market. I think it's great.'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Inclusive tournament design philosophy at Electric Bat converts casual players into competitive state-level finalists; largest single-location pinball league in the world claimed

    high · Hosts provided specific examples of casual-to-competitive player progression; referenced recent conversation with Lit Pinball Bar about segregated tournament formats

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.191

0:00
hey oh man you know what it is good to be back welcome back how long has it been it's been a two maybe even three weeks a different microphone just testing out this i'm using the same kind of microphone you're using it's a it's a great mic it's great because i can i can turn my head i can talk people can hear you just the same people can hear me just the same let me know what you think all right we're out all right that's been the uh what is this it's like set the seventh episode which i think is really the eighth because remember the first one was just 0.9 that was your your idea uh but here we are we're we are uh glad to be back yes we've been we've been traveling uh we went to uh uh well we went to austin austin texas we went to tucson to spend some time with your parents for thanks thanksgiving yep see my parents and see the occult bookstore the occult bookstore is very cool we learned about summoning spirits all kinds of things the family trip to the occult bookstore on black friday that was good uh and then somewhere along the way we we we got a little sick yeah i might i have a little i have sniffles here so just uh bear with me i feel good though yes we're much much better it wasn't covet or anything crazy it's like allergies and what have you. We're doing well. Thank you for thinking about us.
1:24
Okay, so let's get into it. Let's do it. Man, this feels so good to be back. Yes. And people have been missing us. They're like, I need my Batcast because they listen to it while they work. Or on the holiday trips. Trips, commutes. Yeah. People do commutes. uh let's talk about let's open up with uh the the electric bat fifth anniversary bash man that was amazing three-day tournament i think i missed like two days of it you missed two days i was hurt and i was pretty sick yeah um i held down the fort yeah yeah uh mark of course and john Choppel and Chewy. Yeah. Thank you so much for your help. Thank you for the 100 people who attended. Yes. From all over the place. As far as Alaska? Yeah, people from Alaska.
2:18
Minnesota. Lots of California folks. First of all, I want to thank, we both want, it's not just me thanking, you want to thank too, Amy and Matt. Oh, yes. From Aimless Pinball. pinball. They came out here. And little Nico and Peter Parker, the dogs. Their dogs are so sweet. They lived in our office for a little bit. They had beds underneath the pinball machines in the workshop. That was great. It seemed like they were used to pinball machines. It didn't bother them. It was like old hat to the puppies. They brought in a bunch of equipment and they streamed the entire event. You can go watch the VOD on Twitch. it's twitch.tv slash aimless pinball and be sure to follow those folks they did a great job they did a fantastic job they did a lot of hard work and brought in a bunch of expensive equipment to pull this off so go follow them aimless pinball on twitch and sub hook those guys up free with an amazon prime if you have amazon prime almost everybody does right? We're connected to the machine.
Mark Pearson
person
Greg Davisperson
Chewyperson
Amy and Mattperson
Scott Solomonperson
IFPAorganization
Pinball Party podcastmedia
  • ?

    operational_signal: Coin mechanism jams commonly caused by: Canadian quarters (magnet retention), multiple simultaneous insertions (player impatience), and foreign currency; affects operator efficiency

    high · Hosts identified three primary jam causes from arcade operations experience; provided specific technical explanation of coin chute design limitations

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Insider Connected developing push notification feature for operator alerts; app recently launched on iOS and Android platforms

    high · Hosts confirmed app availability on both app stores and discussed push notification implementation as upcoming capability

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern flipper coil stops experiencing accelerated wear on recent machines; Marco Specialties' third-party manufacturer supplies considered higher quality alternative

    medium · James Bond Premium owner reported coil stop failure; hosts acknowledged pattern and recommended Marco Specialties sourcing

    • 3:34
    We've got to keep this thing running. The United States and what have you. Keep the United States running. Everybody keep buying stuff. It's easy. They ship it right to your house. You don't have to go to Walmart anymore. You thought the Stern was a big sponsorship. Wait until your Bezos call. Yeah, right.
    3:53
    Yeah, so if you have an Amazon Prime account, you tie it to your Twitch account, and you can sub to each month you can sub subscribe you can subscribe sub could mean many different things subscribe that's very important thank you for that correction I don't want anybody to get confused it's very important what type of sub they are but you really need to go back and watch this stream at least the finals which is there are three streams one's 13 hours of pinball. But the last day, I think it was about like six hours. The stream is like six hours. And it goes into the finals when the big dogs are going at it and fighting. And what an incredible, incredible match.
    4:45
    I think at the end, you had Walt Wood. Yes. You had Greg Davis. Greg Davis, local pinball champ. uh roland was in that group the final four i think roland was in that roland was in that and then leslie leslie ruckman l rucko l rucko they all absolutely brought it um i don't i don't want to ruin the surprise if you don't know what's up go watch the stream those those those four cats just fight it out and they all they all absolutely brought it anybody could have won that thing and uh it very exciting i wish i could give away i want to i want to say who won and everything but you know if anybody hasn't watched it you know or i guess seen our social media or anything uh go check it out aimless pinball uh at twitch um also this has nothing to do with the electric bat five-year anniversary bash okay but um after that um and it was actually uh i think he came after one of our tournaments on Tuesday, so we weren't there. We always take the day after tournaments off. The tournament director from Lit Pinball Bar, that's in Minneapolis, right? It's in Minnesota. I think Minneapolis. Okay. And they built a great brand-new place. They brought us a bunch of cool swag. They did. Man, they spent some money on some merch. That's some cool stuff. Very cool stuff. Coin pouches. We got some cool hats. We want to do the coin pouches. I need to ask them where they got those made. Yeah, so we were looking at doing a different style, but now I'm kind of thinking that those look like tiny little money bags that you take to the bank. I like those. Yeah, very, very cool. Thank you so much for the merch. And our bartenders loved the can openers. They're bottle openers. Bottle openers. They really got it. But you can use the other side. The other side's for the can. Oh, yeah, yeah. The top top. But we're both correct. okay thank you for all that um and uh let's go ahead and and knock out our sponsors uh marco specialties everything pinball if i want to talk a little bit about uh marco and what what we want to get from marco oh because of something a listener sent us i'm excited about this let me hear it we were thinking about getting these anyway we being me because you and I both spend a lot of time under machines, turtling machines, getting under them and physically pushing them up with our backs, our old, aging backs.
    7:28
    There's a thing called a pin jack, and Scott Solomon, our wonderful listener Scott Solomon, said, Hey, guys, you're doing it wrong. You should be using this pin jack. And it was already something I was on the fence about. You can get them at Marco's Specialties. So, later this week, I'm going to put in our weekly Marco order, and I will be ordering some pinjacks. We need those. Cool. This last time when I was trying to level Freefall, one of the biggest games in the arcade, maybe the biggest game in the arcade,
    8:01
    it's enough of this. So, thank you, Scott, and thank you, Marco Specialties, for your sponsorship where you can get everything pinball, including a pinjack, which you squeeze little... I was about to ask you about this. You know, they didn't sell them when we were working there. Correct. So I've never used one. Right. But from the photos I've seen, it looks like a cock gun. You know what I'm saying? Like it ratchets. You know what I'm talking about? It's a ratcheting mechanism that lifts the leg or legs. I'm going to get two of them.
    8:35
    And then you can just screw or unscrew the leg levelers. Marco part LL2, LL3, if you need the 2-inch or the 3-inch. Yeah, they don't have the 4-inch. No, they don't have the 4-inch. We have to find those someplace else. But most people don't ever need a 4-inch. No. I mean, that's like an indisc and serious tournament. It's just to be mean. Really just to be mean. Okay. Yeah, so thank you, Marco Specialties. Thank you, listener Scott.
    9:06
    And thank you, soon in the future, Pinjack. And we'll tell you, once we get the pin jack, we're going to tell you all about it. We'll give you the reviews. We might even do like a little video of me under the machine doing stuff. I can't wait to see how this thing works.
    9:18
    And then thank you to Game Room Goodies. That's where we get all of our machines. If you need anything for your game room, check out Game Room Goodies, gameroomgoodies.com.
    9:28
    They have more than just pinball. They literally have everything for your game room from jukeboxes to ice hockey. They could probably even get you the crazy carpets. They could probably get you some kind of ice hockey thing. Oh, the crazy movie theater carpet. You know, like the black light stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think they carry it, but I'm sure they can get it. They can find it.
    9:49
    And then last but of course not least, Stern Insider Connected. Thank you for your continued support.
    9:57
    They sent us a Mandalorian topper, which is super cool. and the best part, I mean, this thing, I mean, it's glowing. It has a hologram. I mean, everybody has seen it, right? If you're listening to a pinball podcast, you're familiar with the Mandalorian topper. 100%. The best part is not only does it look so cool, it has gotten some people like back into Mando. People are revisiting Mando to check out the topper. See what it does. Watch the Beskar go up and down. Yep, yep. It is very cool. Thank you so much for that. I didn't know you could change the color settings on that until you showed me the other day. And I bet a lot of people don't. If you do have the Mandalorian topper, by default, it comes with like a blue light.
    10:50
    But if you go into the settings, I think there's like three or four like presets. You chose sunset? I chose sunset, which is very cool. One of the guys from like Lin's Arcade suggested that. sunset on hot sunset man it looks very cool and i think it like fits more with the machine i don't know that's just my opinion yeah but it looks cool yeah uh yeah like the the the the sunset on tatooine uh you know that's the kind of feel i get yeah um also with with insider connected of course you have leaderboards um people love the leaderboards every time people come into the uh the bar, the arcade, they look at the leaderboard. Including myself. Yeah. You're like, which one can I get on? Oh, Ty beat me. Now I have to beat him.
    11:40
    Also, check out, and they just talked about this on their, they did post on social media about this, time-sensitive quests. Yes. You got a couple of weeks, you maybe have a month to get all kinds of cool badges. this gets people into the bar to you know play it play a bunch more pinball to try to get these people love collecting things yeah you know it doesn't matter what it is even you know this is a digital version of of your baseball cards or pogs or whatever people used to do yeah digital pogs that's what we're going for here but there's stuff like on elvira house of horrors you know you can get the one on christmas there's correct just single day ones and then there's the ones that they're putting out right like that whole foo fighters um i think that's right and i think that's completed now yeah and they're the the new ones they have they have they have a cool one for bond where i think you can collect all the villains oh i didn't even know yeah i just before we recorded i they they i saw one of their posts and that's very cool um another important part uh for For operators, for the insider connected, you can remotely check tech alerts. And we use this. We do use this, especially for Flagstaff. I was about to say. Because we have games that are two and a half hours away. Mm-hmm. And if we don't need to make a two and a half hour drive, then, you know, to go and see, hey, I wonder if everything's working. Right. Or call up there and hope that a bartender can tell you. So this makes it so much nicer. And especially if you're an operator who doesn't have an arcade, who's operating pinball machines. Oh, like in somebody else's bar or pizza. Right. Kale's Pizzeria. Kale's Pizza Palace. That's what it is. Kale's Pizza Palace. And it would be called that. Yeah. Kale's Pizza Palace.
    13:32
    You have three or four locations with a couple of machines here and there. Man, this is a must. Yeah. You can know if you've got to go check this EOS switch. and now with uh you know they've just released the stern insider app which you can find on the apple app store is it apple app store mac app store it's probably apple uh and then also in the android store so you can just have that shortcut right people really wanted that didn't they yes and i'm excited about this because this allows whenever they implement a push notifications so we could get a push notification.
    14:07
    Kale just beat me. Well, that, but also for operators, hey. Oh, yeah, this is broken. This just broke, boom. And that, man, that really said, okay, man, we need to go check this out. That really puts it in the front of the mind. Yeah, yeah. Very good.
    14:27
    Okay. Well, that was a nice little list of things. Yep. I'm done with my paper notes. I'm moving to the electronic notes. I'm moving on to my electronic notes and see what we have going on here. We talked about the pin jack at Marco's Specialties. Here we have a question from Chewy. I think it's from the Discord. Okay. Do you mind opening up with that? No. Let's open up with Chewy. Chewy is our close personal friend and helps us out at the arcade. all around fantastic human being he's a jack of all trades he really is he's an amazing guy here's his question oh Chewy operates all of our Japanese rhythm games he does so much more to help us out but that's his main gig at the arcade and his world famous bounty knockout tournament let's run over who that was this last weekend we had Chewy's world famous bounty knockout tournament Here we go. We don't need to mention all of the top three, but let's just say, is there anyone who got first, second, or third that comes to mind to you, would you say?
    15:42
    You got third? I got third. You were hanging with the big dogs You were a big dog but you were a little dog right But you can call me Big Dog Bess now You Big Dog Bess You were hanging with the big dogs
    15:58
    It was Mark. Everybody knows Mark. Mark the Shark. Mark the Shark Pearson. And then you have Greg. Greg Davis. Greg has been absolutely bringing it. He has been playing better and better and better. Well, I think when I first moved here, you said he was one of the best guys in the nation. Yes, he's great. And he's showing it. He is. Okay, good job. You did a fantastic job. I'm glad you brought that up. Thank you for bringing that up. I knew that you'd want to compliment me publicly on my superior performance. At Chewy's World Famous. Yes. Okay, what's his question?
    16:43
    huh i was wondering where that noise is coming from is it you i bet they're like why is he looking at her all weird yeah why is he poking on all of her stuff it's it's something it's something for me i don't know if something's loose or anything but but we're good okay we'll fix it in post okay are you doing now i'm gonna hold still okay or with the show thank you for You know, we don't edit any of this stuff. Can you hear it? I heard it during the last episode. No. It's like when you're moving your cord. See that? Okay. You're making for some great radio here.
    17:22
    First question. What are the top three things you find is the root cause of coin jams? We have to come up with three things. well one of them is canadian quarters because canadian quarters get stuck in the magnet and then they back up everything that comes in after them so are there canadian mechs there must be yeah i don't know canadian friends let us know how that works and if you're close to the border how does that work if you're if you're operating close to canada are your mechs getting jammed all the time do you just take the little magnet piece out how does that work um people a lot of people especially maybe later on in the evening more and more drinks in try and just like jam in all the tokens at once instead of like one two three they try and push in i mean you know just not being patient and this is important for there are a lot of players that that listen to this yeah If you put two tokens in and they don't register, just stop.
    18:34
    Because I'm not bullshitting. We have found like $8 worth of tokens in MEX. People just like push it in. They think they keep jamming them in and jamming them in. And I know there are operators listening right now go, thank you for saying something about this.
    18:53
    Yeah. And it's not easy to unjam them. You have to take things apart sometimes if it gets real bad. Yeah. And we've also seen some things that I can only assume are from a younger group where people will try and put in two dimes and a nickel. Yes. That doesn't jam the machine. It makes perfect sense math-wise. Yeah. They got the right amount. And it would be interesting if it worked like that, huh?
    19:19
    Maybe there are some old types. Like rolled up dollar bills. Yeah, yeah. I just like... He wants three things. Well, that was three, but... Oh, that was three? So the... Just jamming them. Yeah. I mean, I think the number one... Foreign money. The number one cause of coin jams is people like trying to put in basically two at the same time. And I don't mean necessarily two side by side or three side by side like an Oreo cookie, but like kind of one overlapping the tail end of the other one. And they just, you know, the little chute, if you've never opened this up, is only so wide. And it's not wide enough to accommodate multiple. So, yes. You are correct. Side note on this, players, and players tell your friends, on some of the classic machines, when you drop a coin in, it may not like chime or let you know you dropped something in until you drop two or three, whether it's 50 cents or 75 cents, and then it will go. Yeah, it will say, oh, you have a credit. You have a full credit. So that will throw people off sometimes. And on some WPC, some 90s games even, it's just an audio cue. But if you're in a loud bar or there's music playing and you can't hear that little, I'm thinking of Creature from the Black Lagoon that has the girl going, oh right then if you can't hear that then you think that you have not gotten credit for any of your tokens or quarters correct and then you go up and say it ate my money right um which it didn't and along the same vein be sure you press the start button to start your game she's laughing but people do this all the time we all the time we get hey i just put three dollars in this machine and it's not. And it took my money. It took my money. And we go to the machine and it has like six credits in there. Yeah. And we're like all you have to do is hit the start button. Just hit this little button. Right.
    21:25
    Yeah. So please pass the word. Don't use Canadian quarters. Don't use Canadian quarters. Put tokens in one at a time. We did get 100 yen, which I think we made a profit on that. Yeah. All we have to do is get to Japan. no foreign money hit the start button and don't don't just keep feeding tokens or quarters in a machine anywhere not just arcade if you have to like push it in like to try and force it put your foot on it uh spoiler you're not getting credit for that okay thank you chewy um what's next i think we covered all of chewy stuff um oh here we go hugh jorgen hugh jorgen you thought it was gonna be like a joke name huh is that like hugh jorgen this is hugh jorgen oh he got me he got you it is a joke name ladies and gentlemen this is a question from hugh jorgen i love this pinball oh boy this is how we are hey guys love the back cast got a question about tournaments we have a reasonably small pinball community but slowly building good job we have probably a 50 50 combo of players that like the competitive points play and just like to flip for fun what sort of tournament do you find best to keep both sides happy if we had bigger numbers we could cater differently uh differently formats uh for each but not quite there just yet this is a really great question and you you did things differently like my i only know about competitive play ifpa sanctioned from from when you got me in you know first playing competitively in south carolina we never played any just for fun tournaments um and i didn't even realize until pretty recently when i talked to lit pinball bar they actually separated they have two tournaments uh sometimes on the same day where they have your hardcore competitive players playing in ifpa sanctioned tournaments for for whopper points and money that's the and money and then they have the rec league right and they had to do this and and i've i've heard this from it's not just them from from plenty places the lots of times the hardcore competitive players do not want to play with casuals you you don't do you don't run your arcade like that everybody Everybody plays together. And it's been working, and it's made the casuals so much better. It's almost scary. Yeah. We have people who I would have considered very casual players a year ago now making finals regularly.
    24:25
    Right. But before we get into your opinion of the whole thing, just so everybody's on the same page, I think because there are some operators who probably don't even know about the IFPA and understand what these sanctioned tournaments mean or how to do them. So just surface level, you have to, if you want to do a tournament, you have to submit it. Is it 30 days in advance to the IFPA? It has to be on the schedule 30 days in advance. So, yes, 30 days ahead of time, you go to IFPA Pinball. and you know i i often like i will submit all of chewy's bounty tournaments for the whole year at the beginning of the year so there's no like you don't have to do it 30 days specifically in advance just that's the cutoff um get it on the calendar you tell them your format tell it asks you some questions you may need to to google some stuff some research do your due diligence because there are many we're not going to get into that right now but there are many formats uh many styles um you find you're you're the main body of your tournament and then finals and then you you try to maximize points we're not going to get into the weeds with all that no um just get it on the ifpa calendar people want to play for points right and the the points are called whopper points so if you ever hear anybody talk about whopper points that's what people the competitive players care about um so what so to to answer this question how do you how do you deal with that well i deal i mean i think well well i guess we know how you deal with it you don't do rec leagues i don't switch up and because i i feel pretty strongly against it because everybody the difference between um okay i should back up if you're playing for a 20 entry fee i certainly can sympathize with new players not wanting to pay $20 to lose it every time to some other players.
    26:32
    But that's a good point because you've always been about lowering the barrier to entry. Always. This five-year anniversary tournament, $30. Yeah. And usually big tournaments like that are going to cost you... Many hundreds. Right, right. Yeah, and that was... Yes. So I think lower the barrier to entry. I think teach new players the basics of tournament play, meaning if you have extra balls on, you can't play them. And that's just for us, you know, to keep it. That's not an official rule.
    27:08
    Don't play out of turn. Don't play other people's balls. Just some very basic pinball etiquette. So you're basically telling people don't have rec leagues. Let's all have. Everybody should have a great time together. Yeah, I'm down with that. And if your attitude is such that you can't accommodate somebody learning to play pinball, I think the problem is with you.
    27:33
    Right? I mean, be open. You want more people in this hobby. You want to make friends. Everybody should have a great time getting to know all kinds of different players. I think that's my opinion about the best way to do it. And you have proven it. You've turned, I've seen you turn casuals into incredible players that make state finals.
    27:58
    And we have a very large league of really cool, crazy different types of people. The largest single location league in the world, actually. So your philosophy obviously works. There's some pudding there. you know i gotta have to stop because i know you didn't want me to mention this because you thought it was gauche but it just it i thought it was very exciting while we were in austin a couple stopped us on the street uh and she did she thought i was bragging too much but i think it's important that a couple stopped us it's like are you guys electric bat we're like yeah we were like caught off guard we're in a crowd in austin yeah and uh the the reason i did want to mention this And Jason and I talked about this on the latest Pinball Party podcast, which was released yesterday. Go check that thing out.
    28:54
    It just shows the growth of pinball. Like, who stops arcade owners? That's true. It's very weird. 1,500 miles away from home.
    29:06
    I'm bullish on this market. I think it's great. There are more people growing. And the more accommodating you can be. the more it's going to continue to grow. Right. There are more pinball manufacturers than ever.
    29:20
    Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. Who would have thought we would be here? But here we are. Here we are.
    29:28
    But now if – so you're saying just don't even do the rec leads. Like teach the casual players the etiquette and make them be a part of this wonderful thing that's going on. Yeah, and if you're a great player. Help a casual player get over that hump, that initial hump between when you think pinball is fun and your objective is to stop it from going in between the flippers to that point where you learn that there is strategy involved and that you can really kind of start to aim the ball. And just once you reach that point, then they'll be very interested in practicing on their own and they'll get better and they're going to make you a better player. We have found that. I was about to. This is very important. As an operator, you want people playing these machines. We've seen casuals who become competitive players. Then they start caring about whopper points, so they come in and practice more. Yeah. So there's a reason for all of this stuff, and you've thought about it. Yeah, as an operator and as a player, you know, you want that. Great.
    30:34
    Thank you, Mr. Jorgen. Hugh Jorgen. Mr. Hugh Jorgen. Hugh Jorgen and his... Gail would love to meet you. That was from Discord, right? I'm not even sure. I think so. I think it is from Discord. Yeah, I think it was a Discord name. And if you want to be a part of it, join our Discord. If you go to our website, go to the podcast tab, there is a link where you can join our Discord. Also, a lot of help with running tournaments. There's an IFPA Discord, which is absolutely great. Wonderful discussion about running tournaments. and you can ask them questions. Very granular, nuts and bolts type stuff. Right. So if you have not run a tournament,
    31:23
    I would look at that for a few weeks before you decide to do it and ask them questions. Because, I mean, there are like, what, I don't know, 50 to 100 people that would jump in and answer. And they're all very knowledgeable. Yeah. Okay. now we are going to get into another question from the mailbag i you know I didn even I didn even read this one yet This is interesting. Okay. About the James Bond. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, you must have put this in here. Well, I have a question for your next episode on the back cast. And this is, this is the next episode. I have a James Bond premium. and recently my right flipper started sticking. Upon further inspection, I found the coil stop to be shot. I then inspected the rest, and they need to be changed as well. I have heard this seems to be a common problem with sterns in recent years. Any recommendations on good quality stops, and how often do you change your stops? You must order boxes of them. Yes, we do. Yes. I know exactly what to do. Order your coil stops from Marco Specialties. they use a different manufacturer and they are rock solid.
    32:43
    Just order I don't know how many machines you have. If this is your only machine, man, those are three flippers. Is it a premium? Just get a couple. Get some. I don't mean There's a flipper mech on that diverter. It must have a coil stop. Get four. Sure. And how often do we replace them? We replace them if there are a pair of lower flippers, regardless if it's a two-flipper, three-flipper, four-flipper game. the two that are together at the bottom we like to replace those at the same time because whenever they start getting when things start mushrooming and and condensing or whatever you want your two flippers to be equal right you don't want whenever you flip the game you don't want one flipper to go up higher than the other um you don't want them to one to feel kind of mushy so we rebuild flippers in pairs yeah um and usually the thing that makes us rebuild them sometimes it'll be something feeling funny and stiff but a lot of times the the the weak link is the link and it might not be a full flipper rebuild i mean once you get enough experience you can tell which parts need to be right but often we do the the plunger and link the coil stop and the coil sleeve That's a cool sleeve, right.
    34:15
    Springs last for a long time. Yeah. Okay. And that was a question from Heavy Metal Poet. Oh. Yeah. Jorgen.
    34:28
    Hugh Jorgensen. This is from, it looks like Facebook. You did like a screen grab from Chris Kotek. Okay. for the next earnings report how do arcades stack up to pinball we don't have to wait for the next i can talk about that right now you know not like not even close they are not even close the one game that is close is the alien shooter game the big shooter that that does as well as a good a well-earning pinball machine yeah um the rhythm games the japanese rhythm games some of those do like a mid-earning pinball machine all of the classics i guess miss pac-man gallagher does well as well as a mid-level pinball machine anything else like not even on the radar well below even a poor earning pinball machine. Right. And what we've noticed, the highest earning video games are your shooters, which are anything that you just grab a gun and shoot at the screen. And drivers, sit-down drivers.
    35:48
    We don't have any right now. Yeah, they take up a lot of space. We don't like fixing them. Don't like moving them. Yeah, we like pinball. Great question. Yeah. They don't stack up. Not at all. Now, in a different venue, would they?
    36:05
    Or is it because we're more pinball-centric? No. Any operator that can tell me otherwise, please do.
    36:16
    I don't think so. Aside from the classics. But when I say classics, I don't even mean Donkey Kong. I mean like Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong and Joust, Centipede. Those still are a tier below.
    36:36
    Those don't earn as well as you think. We have a Q-Bert up in Flagstaff, for example. Q-Berts right now I think are going for thousands of dollars. Really? Yeah. I'm going to have to sell that thing. Well, it would make much better financial sense. Like we could barely buy a dinner off what that thing earns. Oh, wow. I mean, it just doesn't earn. There's a couple of people that like to come in and play it. So now collectors want a Q-Bert. Q-Bert has always been a pretty collectible game. It's a Gottlieb, and it has a knocker in it. It does, which you're a big fan of. I hate knockers.
    37:11
    You hate knockers. You hate the Ghostbusters scream. No, I like the Ghostbusters. It's funny. And what about the bell on fire? The bell on fire is the worst. Valley fire, right? Is that a Valley or Williams? I don't know. I can't remember that. But that is the single worst introduction of any hardware into pinball. You can clip the wires if we ever get one. It's the worst. Thanks. I think you answered Mr. Kotex's question. Thank you for the question. And this is from our boy Keegan. Keegan Crandall, local player and huge supporter of pinball. Yeah. Great guy. I think he's even like getting into, he's trying to build his own machine. He's doing something. We've hooked him up with a few parts here. I don't know if he's building a pinball machine or a time machine, but he's got something going on. He needs to build. I think I've told people this, I want to build a machine. We need a stall ball machine. Yeah. It would be simpler to design. You just need a few stops, a few scoops, and then it shoots the ball back at you. You don't have to deal with scoring. Don't have to deal with scoring. And we have some programmers that could figure all that stuff out at the bat. He's got a few questions. This is good. Okay. Hey, guys, got some questions for the next podcast. His enthusiasm, you can feel it in his sentences. I love it.
    38:34
    What other arcades do you guys visit? My favorite arcades are Logan and Wedgehead. Oh, I've never been to Wedgehead, and I'm glad you brought up Wedgehead. They have a cool new podcast. Oh, yes. Yeah, I heard one episode of it. I've been listening to it. Yeah? Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that's another fun podcast. Go check out those. They've been very active. I think they drop a podcast like every week. And it's very cool because it is from an operator's perspective, but they also talk about pinball history. They talk about designers. They're very knowledgeable, it sounds like. Very knowledgeable. They go on the whole episodes about pinball designers.
    39:18
    So it's cool. So check out, I think it's called the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. Search it on your favorite app. But I have not been to the arcade. I've seen photos and videos. It looks amazing. You've been. Yes. And I think the reason I like those two the most, and those are the ones that we've been to. There's, of course, tons that we haven't been to. Those feel the most like the bat to me. They're just like my style of they just have the same sort of feel. is so i feel like they're like sister arcade stuff yeah those are great my the the one arcade that i always looked forward to visiting and uh i might get a little choked up the the pinball museum and banning oh well that was hands down that was my favorite arcade and I don't think there will never be anything like that again. Well, they're trying to build that past times into something. That would be cool. But if you didn't get a chance to go to the Pinball Museum in Banning, it was only opened three times a year. But it literally had every machine that was ever created. There were a few that they didn't have, a few very rare titles, but not only pinball but arcade games also there was i think 1200 machines between pinball and arcade games yes and um it was very very cool they threw a party for us when we got married yes they uh john weeks made or had somebody make a pinball uh cake and i'll have to find photos of this thing it was crazy we had a gigantic cake shaped like a pinball machine it was like mostly fondant And it said, like, Stern, Bally.
    41:13
    The person that made it, I think, didn't, like, oh, this is. Didn't do it professionally. Right. But that's what made it so good. Yes, it was made with love. The head of the cake machine. It was a giant Rice Krispie treat. It was the biggest Rice Krispie treat. Covered in fondant. And at the end of the night, we're running around the arcade with a giant block of fondant and Rice Krispie treat and eating this thing. And thank you so much, John Weeks, for doing that for us. He's the sweetest guy. Now it's a pot farm. Yep. Congratulations to that also.
    41:50
    Here's another question from Keegan. Do we have any machines at home? Not anymore. Nope. We pulled every single pinball machine from our house because we basically live at the arcade anyway. If we're here, we're probably not playing pinball.
    42:05
    What do we have there instead? Oh, we have a cold plunge. We moved three machines, Adam's family, roller games, and what else did we have? There was a fishtails, but that was moved.
    42:20
    I don't even remember. It's all there now. We put in a cold punch, which I love. And, you know, when we had machines here, we just really didn't play them. We played roller games a good bit. But not as much as you would think we would. I mean, if you spend 12 hours at an arcade, you don't tend to come home and play more pinball. So no machines at home. Next question. If GTF, Galactic Tank Force, still isn't working, and it's not. Spoiler, not working. If you could trade GTF for anything straight up, what would it be? Cash. We would like cash. I would take a machine that works. yeah unfortunately galactic tank force does not work we've pulled it off the floor and yeah it's it's not yeah that was that is a very sad story because that is a beautiful machine we we would love it to work yeah um you know they they did david fix did call me and apologize apologize That's about as far as it went. He offered a lot of help to make it work, but then none of that came. And it's been three weeks or so since he said that. I don't really think they know how or they're struggling. Yeah.
    43:48
    So we wish that it worked. Yeah, it does. Franchi, you did a beautiful job. It's not on you. Yeah. Yeah, but I would steer. If you are an operator, I'd probably steer clear of the Galactic Tank Force.
    44:05
    But if you're a gambling person, try it out. Next question. Thoughts on Pinball Brothers and the Alien Machine.
    44:14
    You talked about this with Pinball Party Jason. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit. We did see the new, I would say new machine, but it's really just new artwork at Expo. where they're adding Sigourney Weaver, they finally got the proper licensing. Well, I say they got the proper licensing, but the artwork we saw. Said contingent on license or approval or something like that. They got to send a couple of emails and sign some stuff. And I think the machine's fun.
    44:46
    I think it looks cool. But every one we've played has not been 100%. Katie and Olivia have one and like every time you start out with points I mean it's not a complete deal breaker but you know when you're playing tournaments it's sometimes confusing and people are like what do we do we're getting points here you know some old you know old ballet machines will do that every once in a while you have a little a malfunction with a switch but this is a brand new machine really shouldn't be doing that and they are extremely knowledgeable people and they haven't been able to fix it that's what I was going to say if Katie and Olivia I mean, they build pinball machines from scratch. They're some of the most qualified pinball tech people out there. Right. And this is just in their home, so it's not getting beat up on the streets.
    45:37
    The ones that I've seen in public, rarely. There was one at Starfighters, and Kevin was struggling to keep that thing running. So I think it's a beautiful machine. I don't really know a whole lot about the company. It might be cool for your house, but I won't. I wouldn't operate it. Yeah, I'm not going to operate it. And, yeah, it's a great theme, and it looks cool. Yep, yep.
    46:03
    And then he's thanking us for everything we do. On top of having the best arcade ever and podcast ever, warm regards, Keegan Crandall, a.k.a. Kegels. Love Kegels. Yep. Kegels. Thank you, Keegan. Very good stuff.
    46:27
    Now we have Baloney Joe. Is that Baloney Joe? Is that what that says? That says Baloney Joe. You got Hugh Jorgen and Baloney Joe. Hanging out together. Hanging out.
    46:41
    Oh, pinball. Well played. He has a question for the podcast, which he loves, by the way. What's up with all the banana stuff? um so if if you are on our discord uh there's a lot of banana talk and that that's meaning a literal banana that has nothing to do with pinball um if i recall or huge organs uh yeah yeah yeah baloney joe uh if i recall correctly this all started with roland i believe it roland is always eating bananas, which is great. You should eat bananas. Fruit is so important. Potassium. Potassium, fiber, all that good stuff. It's very portable. It comes in its own packaging. Man, it is the perfect fruit. Right.
    47:30
    The only thing that's missing is protein. You've got to have some protein. Yeah, supplement some protein. Peanut butter. You can just eat oh yes on an English muffin Toasted English muffin a little almond butter Excuse me You know almonds The Almond Brothers? No, you know, that makes the butter. So anyway, you put your bananas on there, then you have some protein and fiber and all that good stuff.
    47:56
    Okay. But it really was just an innocent eating bananas. But you know what's funny is in the bells and chimes, the thing that you sign if you win, and has been for years, has been Antonio the three-foot banana. So there's something in the air.
    48:17
    But I think everybody loves bananas. There's banana flippers. Banana flippers. I think it's deeper than we think. Yes. But the discussion started on our discord where Roland posted a photo of a banana and he likes them pretty ripe. He likes them like I like with brown dots on a lot of brown dots. But right. And I came in and I said, that's gross. I like mine hard and tangy. Yeah. You like yours. Yeah. Just a little green.
    48:47
    You like yours about two days before I like mine. Yeah. Right. Right. And then that opened a discussion and everybody started talking about bananas. And then when you leave a little emote on Discord, there's a banana. So people would, you know, hey, instead of a thumbs up, you get a banana. That's all. It came from a discussion about how ripe do you like your banana? Yep.
    49:13
    Very good. Thank you, Bologna Joe. And here we have, oh, our favorite, Gutter Ghoul. Oh, gutter ghoul. Gutter ghoul, a local favorite, a great, great player.
    49:29
    Friend of the people. Are there any hard lines when it comes to customer placating? As in things that customers request regularly that you know are either unprofitable, unfeasible, or just unreasonable. I'm sorry, was I shaking too much? Yes. Yeah, I had a little thing going on.
    49:50
    And also to follow up, what has been super successful for curating happy clientele? I don't know. I honestly don't think about it too much.
    50:04
    Is that a terrible thing to say? Well, recently one of our players came up to us and was like, hey, guys, I just have one comment.
    50:16
    Could we get some more seating in here? Oh, yeah, very politely. Yeah, and we looked around like, you know what, it probably would be better with some more seating, but we're not going to address it until we do the construction because we're going to put in a new bar and some bathrooms. And then I think from there, once we see how much room we have to work with, that's when we're going to bring in some seating because right now we just have four high tops. Isn't that what you call those? Yes, with seats around them and then some stools at the little tiki bar. and we have always thought that whenever we were expanded we had thought about more seating we just didn't anticipate all of this back and forth with the city we didn't think it was going to take a year for them to get us back our plans anyway so yeah that was something and that's something that of course I would consider I guess I was thinking about in terms of games or something like sometimes people ask us to move games around. They want all of the classics in one room, all of the moderns together. And that I very intentionally don't do. One, because it makes tournaments very crowded because we alternate classic rounds with modern rounds and you want those games all spread out. But also because I want somebody who thinks that they like one thing to maybe be playing next to somebody playing something different in it to catch their eye and be like, oh, you know what? That game I thought that I didn't want to play It turns out I do want to play.
    51:50
    That's the request that we get most probably commonly that I don't do. But, you know, I always tell people why also. We have had people request certain games and we have delivered. Of course, it's hard to always deliver on that, you know, because you've got to find a game and all that stuff. Many thousands of dollars. Sure. I remember when Roland first moved here, he talked about how much he liked Walking Dead. Mark happened to have a Walking Dead because we sent one up to Flagstaff. And so he brought another one in. So we surprised Roland with, you like Grateful Dead? Did I say Grateful Dead? I don't know that you like Grateful Dead. You like Grateful Dead? We built this machine for you. That would be a cool game, huh? No. I want a Grateful Dead machine. I'm not a huge fan, but I just think the game would be cool. You know? I would like a, no. Okay, so Walking Dead. We brought a Walking Dead in for Roland. And we have done that many times. For different people. Different people. We kind of surprised them. But everything had to line up perfectly. It's not like we were like, okay, let's search Pinside Marketplace for this game for somebody. It just happened to line up properly. Yeah. Another thing we've done is our friend James, one of our regular players, prefers Pepsi. Is it Pepsi? Real sugar Pepsi. With real sugar. Yeah. He doesn't want corn syrup. And so we buy. We go to the grocery store. Just for him. Yeah. So he can have his Pepsi with real sugar. So we do a lot of this stuff. Yeah. When I guess I was thinking about, I don't really think about it that much, that is completely not true. We do stuff almost every day. Absolutely. Specifically for specific people.
    53:35
    Certainly. Yes. We do all kinds of stuff. we're going to move on okay unless you no i'm starting to think about all the stuff we do keep going with it there's a there's a lot right because there's a lot of games there's places that yes okay uh thank you so much for guttural i think that oh no he has another one uh food and pinball how necessary is the service do doritos and coke work or do you need sliders and wings to keep people playing. What's your go-to pinball meal or snack? This can go either way. There are successful arcades that just offer snacks.
    54:23
    A local one we can think of is Starfighters, but it's a little bit different because they have limited hours. Right. You're not going to be there longer than four hours at a time. And I don't think they would benefit from adding a fryer in a kitchen. No way. It would probably hurt them because the overhead for a kitchen is just crazy. Yeah. Food costs are insane.
    54:44
    If you have an arcade that's open seven days a week, it's a huge benefit to even have something simple like a hot dog roller, like just something where people can get some hot food, even if it's just chips with the squeeze cheese. Yeah, I like that. Like with the pump. Yeah. You know? The pump cheese. Just something simple like that. And, of course, I know you don't mention that here. We're talking about food, but alcohol seems to be very important with pinball. They go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly, Laurel and Hardy, and chocolate and peanut butter. Okay. So what is your go-to pinball meal or snack? What do we like? Chips. I like chips. You like chips. Any particular chip? All chips. Mark always gets me. Mark will do a Chipotle run and he always gets me chips and guac. Oh, yeah. But I like, you know, sometimes we go next door to the smoke shop and get some weird Japanese. The import chips. They're like $20 a bag.
    55:48
    We splurge. You can't have that all the time. Pringles. Cool. That's it from Gutter Ghoul. Thank you so much for your questions, Gutter Ghoul. We love your continued support.
    56:01
    Here we have something from listener Tim. I think you just added this. I haven't even seen it. This is going to be the first time I'm reading this. Hello, Rachel and Kale. That's us. Oh, we didn't introduce ourselves from the get-go. Oh, hi. We've gotten too big. They know we're like Metallica now. They know who we are. They don't. We're not like Metallica. This is Rachel. I'm Kale. We run Electric Bat. Tempe, Arizona. Come on out anytime.
    56:25
    Really, anytime you show up, we'll be open. We might not be there, but we'll be open. This is from listener Tim. I absolutely love your show. Thank you, Tim. It's one of my favorites. I really enjoyed the episode where Big Brother asked numerous questions regarding machine operation. Big Brother is a good friend of mine, and we've been known to embark on pin trips everywhere together when he visits his Pennsylvania estate. He has an estate? I don't think he has an estate. He needs to take us. Why don't we get to go to the estate? for a listener to refresh the listener's mind big brother is the one who works in um the casino business casinos so he's the one who's given us the hot tips about what licensing has gone into slot machines this year that might potentially carry over into pinball machines so listener tim is a friend of Big Brother.
    57:26
    And then here I go. Okay. They hang out together. They play pinball. They do pin trips. However, there is an element of disunity between us. You like that?
    57:39
    That is severely impacting our friendship. Ooh. So we're going to sort things out. We're the Dear Abby. We are the pinball Dear Abby. his blindness to the true glory of the pinball machine rush is difficult to ignore can you please help him understand why rush is truly an amazing game our friendship needs healing please help we don't like rush either so you guys need to find something else to hang out and talk about wow so you could see if you're watching the the youtube version of this or spot if you can see my face you might have seen me thinking like how am i gonna uh put this in a delicate and polite way okay so let's clear this up um rush is a is a cool game that that works well um we just don't like playing it um not because i don't understand the rules and i haven't taken the time to learn it there was a short amount of time after we got it where we kind of did learn the rules and remember them right and me and you like we'll learn a game and then very quickly forget it because we're going through so many other games uh whenever we knew what we were aiming for we did well and it It was very fun, and we couldn't wait to go to the arcade and play Rush. And I imagine that's where listener Tim is.
    59:10
    And probably Big Brother is where we are, where he has either learned and forgot or hasn't spent the time to learn that rule set. And it's just, you know, Far Cry multiball. Right.
    59:26
    So we don't like playing the machine. We love having it in the arcade because it earns. It earns very much. diehard Rush fans that love dropping quarters and tokens into this thing. Yeah.
    59:40
    I think it's a great game for the arcade and we're not saying it's a bad game. We can't save your friendship, but what we can do, from experience, I know some of the best friendships are built on disagreeing on things. And so let's keep with that yeah and and uh you both uh discussing uh keep the pinball discussion alive on what you love about rush and what you hate about rush and um that's all i can say about that i don't know huh what do you think i think that i think that sums it up all right i think uh was that it i think that's we are how many how much time oh right at one hour yeah did you could you see that And that's why you were like, hey, that's our episode.
    60:32
    Okay, I'm going to put down my notes here. What do we have going on at the bat? Today is Tuesday, and I'm going to try my best to edit this. Do you think it's weird that I'm pulling out my gigantic chapstick? Yeah, you're about to wrap up the episode, and like right now you need to put on chapstick. Cool. We have pinball tournaments every Tuesday at 6.30, Arizona time. Come on out. Everybody is invited. All skill levels. All skill levels, and we mean it. Yeah. Come and learn to play with the best pinball players in the nation. Not me. Or me.
    61:13
    I'm just, like, kind of hanging out. Hanging around. Trying to beat, you know, one or two people here and there. uh also go check out uh aimless pinball on twitch and watch the recent streams from the electric bat arcade uh five-year anniversary bash that is quite just you if you haven't seen walt wood play pinball this is walt wood at his best and he really does some amazing things and it's they have some great commentary just stuff you didn't even know you could do with a pinball machine he He is single-handedly the Harlem Globetrotters of pinball. He certainly is. But not only is he, what he's doing is amazing, he's talking to the machine as he plays, and it's very entertaining. So check that out. Also, if you want to see Walt play, go to our YouTube channel. There's a video where he beats Jurassic Park and another one where he rolls BSD, Bram Stoker's Dracula.
    62:12
    The holidays are coming up. So if you don't know what to get your pinball buddies, head over to electricbatarcade.com. Go to the shop. We have a bunch of cool pinball-centric merch. We have a couple beanies left. A couple beanies. Those are the pin towels. Get those fast. The Electric Bat Arcade blood drip pin towels. Some lightweight hoodies that you specifically requested, and I love them. They're fantastic. Good deal. and then other than that go out to your local pinball arcade and drop some tokens and or quarters or swipe or however they do it shove a little bill support those guys special thank you to our sponsor Stern Insider Connected Marco Specialties and Game Room Goodies and we are out the bats are out We're going to do the special secret bat handshake. Thank you for joining me. And good luck at the tournament today. And with you also. And on to you. The bats are out. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. We will talk to you probably next week. Yeah, we'll be back on a regular schedule. All right. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Have a good one.