AHHHHH ROCK N' ROOOOCK! WOOOOOO! AHHHHH! Whoa! That was cool! Yes! That guy is cool! Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Good morning. Good morning? Is it morning? No, it's not. Well, we'll get to that. Hey, welcome to episode 50, the big 5-0. This is Silent Movie. Yes. Now, Mel Brooks went a total different way. He went from black and white, which he got, you know, at the beginning when the studio said, you want to do a black and white movie? He's like, yep. This movie was all silent. Except for one word. One word. Which was by a mime. Which said in itself is hilarious. Yes. But a great movie. 1976, a lot of big stars in it again. Definitely one of Mel Brooks's. And today is Mel Brooks's 91st birthday. Happy birthday, Mel. Earth Day, Mel. We're loving you. But we have a guest. Yes, we have a guest. This is the biggie. The big one. The ultimate pin guest. Episode 5-0. The winner of our contest. Yes, he was. Ron, I'm going to let you announce it today. Let me announce it? Yep. You usually throw it on me. I'm throwing it on you. I'm sure the team's all up today. Okay. The winner of our contest, our guest for this episode, Ryan C. from Australia. Oh, g'day. G'day, lads. How you going, mate? I love it. How you doing, sir? I'm bloody excited to be here, mate. I woke up early for you guys and just happy to talk to you didgeridoo guys. So what time is it right now in the United States? It is 6 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, PM 605. It's not Eastern Standard Time. Eastern Daylight Time. Or just say Eastern. It's negative five of Greenwich. How's that? That's wrong, too. It's negative four of Greenwich. Computer right now says negative five. Your computer is wrong. God almighty. What time is it there? What is the day? It's Friday the 30th, so we're one day ahead. I'm talking to you from the future. and it's 8 a.m., which I know isn't early for some. People wake up a lot earlier, but for me, it's about an hour and a half earlier than I usually wake up. So I'm doing this for you guys. Woo-hoo! We are honored. The ultimate fan. So, Ryan, what got you in this great hobby? I just love steel balls. Basically, my dad used to be an operator of jukeboxes jukeboxes back in the late 80s and 90s. And he kind of had them in pubs and hotels around Australia. And he wanted to make some more money, so he decided to get into pinballs as well. So I was really lucky. I was a 10-year-old that he used to kind of drag along on his route, and I used to help him kind of do collections and things like that. And then when pinballs would break down, he would bring them into our garage and I'd sit there and watch him kind of solder stuff to fix machines. And then he used to say, here, Brian, playtest them. And I'd sit there for hours and hours just playing his machines. And it was all the good stuff. It was the 90s Bally Williams collections, so Twilight Zone, Addams Family, Getaway, Fishtails, Indiana Jones, all that stuff. And that kind of got embedded into me, and it was like a pinball sleeper agent. and then he sold his business and sold his machines and I kind of forgot that pinball ever existed. And I made friends with someone about three and a half years ago and he invited me over to his house and he had this awesome collection. He had like one wall of Sterns, one wall of the Ballet Williams stuff and I saw Indiana Jones there in the corner, which was one of my favourites. And yeah, I started playing it and fast forward three years later, I've got 14 machines now, and I keep on buying more. Yeah, so that's the shortened version of the story. That's what always happens, though. When you buy one, then you want two, then you want three, then you're saying, how much space do I have to make in my house to get the most possible games and make myself happy? Yeah, it's crazy. It's only ever intended to. I still remember the conversation I had with my wife. I said, oh, hey, you know, there's a guy I know. He has pinball machines. They're awesome, blah, blah, blah. I used to have that pinball machine when I was young, and, you know, we've got that tiny little space in that spare room, you know. It's so small, but I think if you move things a little bit, we can fit one pinball machine. And my wife was like, yeah, cool, as long as it's one, and how much does it cost? And I totally got the price wrong as well. I low-balled it by about $3,000. but when it was time to sell, he offered it to me first and he was laughing at me. He says, you know, they multiply, they get lonely, they need some friends and I just laughed it off. I seriously thought I could just buy one and that's it and then, you know, after a year I'd get bored of it and sell it but instead of that, yeah, I have 14 pinball machines. 13 or 14, I'm losing count. What is your list of your games right now? All right, so I've got... And these, yeah, these are pretty new-ish machines, and I've bought and sold about 30 of them. I'm trying to go through a list. Like, I think Bruce said you want to go through the list of everything. So I'm still going through my list of Sterns and Bally Williams. So I've got the Hobbit. I've got Wizard of Oz. I've got Tron LE. I've got Metallica LE. I've got Spider-Man. I've got Attack from Mars, Getaway, Fishtails, Lord of the Rings, Simpsons Pinball Party, ACDC Premium, Star Trek LE, Walking Dead Pro. How much is that? Thirteen. Okay, I've got 13 machines then. Nice. Three of them are actually on-site at the moment. I thought I'd try the whole on-site business. And, yeah, it came out of kind of frustration of the Hobbit kind of code being in limbo. I know you guys don't like the machine for various reasons, but I don't mind the layout. I think the software more than makes up for it. But then the software is kind of like it's in this limbo state where there's no Valinor equivalent. So once you get to the third Arkenstone mode, it just loops back to the first. And I don't like playing games without endings. So I didn't want to sell it. I didn't want it sitting there doing nothing. So I put it on site and people love it, man. People love the Hobbit on site. They're attracted to that big screen. It's sitting there on site with about, I think, 16 other pinball machines and it's the top earner. Are you running 2.0 on it right now? I did. I updated to 2.0 last week, and I vomited a little bit in my mouth when I saw the attract mode light show. It went from being this really classic kind of like it really suited the play field to kind of just viewing the Wizard of Oz kind of skittles stuff all over it. But I don't care. It's so weird when you put a machine on site, your perspective on what makes a good pinball machine totally changes. Yeah. So I think my journey through pinball is kind of constantly evolving. Even though I was into it when I was a kid, I'm only three years in really. And yeah, my opinions on why things are done and what's good and what's bad, And, like, because of me putting a pinball machine on site now, it's totally changing. Have you seen – now, I used to op a long, long time ago, mostly vids. I added a couple pins. But do you see the good and the bad of it? You know, keeping it clean is definitely a hard thing, especially on a location machine. It's – dirt collects everywhere. Yeah, this place is in the city, and it's next – we have trams here, which are kind of like trains that run through the normal streets, and they pick up a lot of dust. And this place is kind of on a... It's an absolute nightmare to put machines in. I don't know how the guy convinced me to do it. It's literally behind a... They have, like, you walk into a bar, and there's a bookshelf that you push, and you push the bookshelf, and it reveals this, like, little winding stairs, and you have to carry the machine up there. Luckily, the Hobbit breaks off into three parts, so we didn't break our back bringing it up. And you can't use a stair climber because there's a point in the stairs where it's so narrow, it twists. You have to put it on its back and then kind of slide it across with some cardboard. But, yeah, it's a miracle that we got him up there without breaking the machine or breaking our back. I actually went last night. I know you guys are tournament guys, So they had a little, a novice tournament there. So I said, hey, I'll go there and I'll have something to talk about. So I went there last night and I looked at the, because the Hobbit has white rubbers and, because I had a Hobbit for a while and I put probably the same amount of plays in, you know, close to a year, oh, maybe like six or seven months on my machine. It's had the same amount of plays in a month and a half. And the rubbers are black. I don't know how it happens and how the dirt gets in there but luckily nothing's broken so far. As I said, I'm still really fresh into it. I'm still probably like a month and a bit in but I keep on putting more machines there because I'm thinking well, is it a fluke that the Hobbit's making money? Let's put the Walking Dead there. Oh shit, the Walking Dead's making money. I wonder if Spider-Man will make money as well. And now I'm like okay, well they're the Sterns. I wonder if people are still playing the Ballywilliam stuff there. So So they keep on taking, they've got some EMs there, and they don't make much money. So they keep on taking stuff out, and as long as I'm happy to put stuff in, they're happy to let me put them in. That's cool. So how easy are games to come by in Australia? Are you talking about new games or secondhand? Not either. So the new game thing is a bit weird because you guys, you know, I can see on Pinsize, I know you guys love Pinsize, And everyone talks about the street price. You're like, oh, hey, you know, the MSRP is this, but you know you can really get it for that. When you see a price in Australia from a distributor, unless it's a game like WWE where, like, you know, they'll do a deal for you, the price they show is the price you get because there's one distributor. There's a company called AMD, and he is like the master distributor for CERN and there's two other guys that sub-distribute for him. But basically, they just kind of buy it off him. They get a certain allocation of the alleys and stuff like that. So we pay a bit more for new pins than you guys do. The second-hand stuff, we don't have... Well, I mean, Craigslist exists in Australia, but no one uses it. because a company called Gumtree kind of got in before they really tried to start pushing it. So Gumtree is our Craigslist equivalent. Everyone calls it Scumtree because it's literally just full of scammers and stuff like that. Holy shit, there was a... Sorry, I'm just going to deviate from answering your question. There was a scammer the other day on Gumtree, and I hate scammers, right? Everyone does, but I was trying to make a point of trying to get as much information from this guy as possible so I can at least report it to the police or something. and he put up a picture of, I think it was a black rose, and it looked absolutely mint, and it was like $2,000, which $2,000 Australian dollars, about $1,500 US. And it looked like a Tredicover store because it was like he just, you know, you know that, guys, after a certain amount of time, you know that garage that people take photos in front of. It's the same garage every time. So I tried to string him along. I got his details and I reported it. And literally, so I was all, you know, it was all nice and fresh in my memory. A day later, right, a cactus canyon comes up and it says $4,500, you know, in the family for 10 years, has hardly been, you know, used since then. And I go, oh, this guy's fucking going on again. And the number looked the same. I rang the number anyway, you know, just in case, hey. and the number is, you know, it kind of dialed out like it was like a fake number or something. I messaged the guy and their response. So I posted on like the Australian forum, it's called Aussie Arcade, and I said, just watch out guys, you know, this guy's obviously a scammer, been dealing with someone else for the last couple of days. And everyone's like, yeah, scammer, blah, blah, blah. You know, the price is too low and he's using, he's borrowing pictures from, you know, of Treasure Cove. And then the ad disappeared. I think enough people reported it as a scam. Later on that night, because I started selling mirror blades as well for pinball machines because hardly anyone was doing it in Australia. I get a message from some guy on Facebook like, hey, you know, I need a couple of mirror blades. Do you have mirror blades to suit Cactus Canyon? I'm like, yeah. He goes, yeah, I just picked it up today. I'm laughing. You know, I got a really good price. And I'm like, are you fucking serious? And he's showing me a picture he it was like a deceased estate and these people like just walked into their dad's house saw his machines there and the first one they decided to sell was um this cactus canyon for four and a half thousand dollars so i'm going to go to google quickly and tell you how much that is in uh us dollars four thousand eighty two usd so that is three thousand four hundred US dollars for a Cactus Canyon and I should you know that this thing has, it's like it's been taken out of the box like detail wise absolutely perfect it says a couple of shitty switches so that was absolutely my fault for assuming that that was a scam but someone picked up a very nice and cheap Cactus Canyon that he'll probably flip like, they go for like 15,000 Australian dollars here so So, yeah, nice little mistake from Ryan to be from Australia. That's the way it goes. I know what you mean by the famous garage door. Yeah. Of the old Treasure Cove guys. The white door. Yeah, the pictures in front of that same garage door, and then you would see the pictures show up in other listings that weren't theirs, so you would know they're scams. Yeah, so this is like a perfect storm of what happened leading up to that. for me that absolutely, you know, just kind of brushes glass. As I said, I still did call just in case, but I don't, I must have listed his wrong number or something, but yeah, buying, buying, buying. So go back to your original question, sorry. Yeah, people, pins go really quick now. I mean, even three years ago, you could literally, if there was a pin for sale in a different state, you could go on like Aussie Arcade, which is, as I said, like the equivalent of Pinside in Australia, but they do arcades and pinballs. And you could say, hey, there's a machine in Sydney. It's 10 hours away. Can someone go check it out? And people would stack pictures and stuff. Now people have alerts set up like me on Gumtree and eBay, and as soon as something comes up, if it's a decent price, it'll be gone in 10 minutes. People ring up. They offer more than what's listed. The Australian community, like per capita, I think, is really quite, it's like a feeding frenzy when good machines come out. We got an allocation of 80 Star Wars LEs, which is about one-tenth of the world's stock, and they sold out. So go figure, there's a lot of pinheads here per capita compared to the US and Canada. Now, the parts. Now, didn't a bunch of the parts go over to Australia? If I remember, like the Bally Williams parts, it's part of a buyout deal. I'm not sure who the vendor was, but I was thinking, does that make it... Wayne. Oh, Wayne. Yes, right, Wayne. Does it make it any easier to get parts for those over there now that a lot of those are actually there? For example, like my whodunit Translight I got from Wayne was from Australia because he had them. Yeah, so Wayne lives about half an hour from me, so I know Wayne pretty well. He's a funny character. But I think he bought the license to everything, and that was years ago, right? That was like 15, 20 years ago. Yeah, that was years ago. So I think all those parts are gone, but there's a big place here called Pinball Spare Parts Australia, and they're kind of the pinball life equivalent, and I think they actually buy a lot of stuff off pinball life as well because they have the same kind of... Well, I mean, everything has the same part numbers, but they have the same kind of like pictures and descriptions. They kind of like steal off their website, I think. But I think most of the time there's a lot of people, you know, a lot of people just order stuff, you know, from the U.S. because it might be cheaper or something. When Gene actually was in trouble, he sold parts to that place you were just talking about in Australia. And they brought down a container of parts. Yeah. Of Williams parts. but they have a lot of Williams and Capcom stuff also. Yeah, that's what I was actually thinking of. Yeah, he has a lot of stuff that... I was there one day and we were talking about Alvira and he just walks at the back and he comes out and he's got the Alvira Translight. I can't remember if it was Alvira and the Party Monsters or Skate Stiff, but she's just sitting there with her tits just out. And he's like, yeah, this is the prototype Translight original. I've just got it sitting here. and that must have been something that you got from Williams back in the day. Nice. Oh, my. So it is winter for you right now. Yeah, it's freezing. Freezing, 55 degrees. Come on. Or 6 degrees or 7 degrees Celsius. Come on. Yeah, we've got to get our Celsius conversions going here. Well, right now, actually, I mapped out from Melbourne to my house, It is 10,196 miles or 2.7 million kilometers, I think it says. That's for our European, Australian, and Canadian friends. Basically, Bruce, the rest of the world. Yeah, everyone except the U.S. Everyone except the U.S. Robert Englunds. They do miles per hour also. Do you know how annoying it is buying shifters and screwdrivers and certain things for pinball nuts? You walk into a hardware store and you pretty much have to bring it with you because everything's in millimeters here, but you have to use the imperial method. So, yeah, damn you guys. Yes, we're still stubborn. Love it. We're paying the answers. Yes, we are. Typical Americans. Yes. since you're now in winter, it's really like Christmas for you right now. Because you go six months, like for our, you know, this is mid-summer for us, you know, so it's like Christmas for you. Yeah, but it's really... Well, they do have the little, you know, Christmas in winter stuff here, because, yeah, when it's Christmas, you guys are used to it snowing and it being cold, and that's part of tradition, but we go to the beach when it's Christmas. So when it is actually cold here, and as I said, we complain when it's 55 Fahrenheit. That's cold for us. You guys deal with it a lot worse. But yeah, all the shopping centres do the winter wonderland thing, whatever they can do to earn a bit more money. But it kind of sucks because all of you guys are bored during your winter, and that's when all the big movies come out, all the big video games come, out, I don't know, at pinballs, like they release them whenever they can. But over here, that's when it's like sunny outside and no one cares. Everyone's outside doing their thing. So, yeah, we have to sacrifice our summer just to be in sync with you guys. Aha. Let's see. Do you guys have basements in Australia? No. I was actually going to discuss that. I mean, if we want to put, I mean, some people do, but I know it's really common in, you know, in suburbia in the U.S., but over here, pretty much no one does it. So if you want a games room, you pretty much have to build a games room from, you know, off the plan. So I've got them. I've destroyed, like, a living area and just got rid of so much crap just to fit my pinball machines. Priorities. I like that. That's a good thing. so I know a couple of months ago Ryan actually emailed me with a picture from a stars from that same bubble tree or bubble tree you said it was bubble gum whatever you want to gum tree gum tree that was it bubble gum, bum tree you know, bumble dwarf you know what the hell what do you want to call it but he sent me the picture like I just came up, should I go for it? I'm like, yes, go for it. But he said it was probably already gone, and it was. Well, I was first. I rang the guy up. There was a Starz for $500 Australian, and that's about $350 U.S. And it was in Queensland, so it would cost me about $300 to get it down here, which is no big deal. There's a courier guy that literally makes a living of just driving down the east, yeah, east coast of Australia, back and forth twice a month. And he started off with one little van that could do four pinball machines, but the hobby's grown so much, he has a little mini truck now, and he does it twice a month. And he used to be the best restorer in Australia. He's called Prowler, right? That's his modding name. And his restorations are flawless. And then the reason why he was delivering the machines, he didn't trust any courier company to deliver them. and he's making so much money off delivering machines. He just said, well, I don't need to restore machines anymore. So he's literally just a career guy now. And yeah, so yeah, there was a machine up there. I rang the guy. He wasn't a pinball guy. He said he used to own a fish and chip shop back in the 80s and it was on site there. And when he closed down the fish and chip shop, he offered to buy the machine for a couple of hundred bucks off the operator and he said it's been sitting in his shed ever since and he's hardly played it. I mean, that's what everyone always says, but I think Bruce saw the photos and it literally, it was like he went to take the photo and then when he was about to take it, he just like decided to have an epileptic fit with his hands. They were the worst freaking photos ever. So I just, I called him up, you know, I just said, hey, it looks, you know, it looks decent. He described it to me. I said, can you just quickly like just send me some more photos? And he's like, what do you mean, mate? Like, you know, what kind of photos do you want? he's this old you know old riggity guy on a farm so i took photos of ghostbusters so the only useful thing that ghostbusters did for me was provide a canvas to take photos of and uh so i said i'm going to take a photo of one of my pinball machines can you just do the same for yours and uh five minutes passed he didn't respond 10 minutes passed i said this this guy's old i don't want to give him i don't want to be one of those guys that just like is on his back um so i rang him after an hour and I said, yeah, how'd you go? And he's like, sorry, mate, it's sold. Someone came and picked it up. And I'm like, ah. And he promised me as well. He was like, you know, don't worry, I won't sell it out, you know, behind you, mate. I'll take photos for you. So when, yeah, when machines are that cheap, you have to, you can't, yeah. And a similar thing happened to Getaway. There's a Getaway locally and I learnt my lesson. And I said, while I was on the phone to him, we agreed to a price. And I said, I can come tomorrow, but I need you to remove the listing immediately, like right now when we're on the phone. And he did that for me. And then when I went to pick it up, it was there. But if you don't do that, then someone will offer more. Someone will offer, hey, I'm around the corner. I'll come now in five minutes. And, you know, these people aren't pinball people, so they don't care. It's money. So, yeah, I was looking forward to expanding my collection into something, well, that's a lot cheaper, obviously, because, like, tasting pinballs is too expensive. And, yeah, you guys have been talking about Star Wars so much that I want to see what all the fuss is about, because they're pretty rare down here, I think. No, rarely rare. Best game ever. Best game ever. Well, it is. It's not like Star Wars, which is the worst game ever, according to Pins. Yes. I've pre-ordered Star Wars as well, so you can add me to the list of whinges that think it's the worst game ever. All right. Which model did you order? Well, if I'm going to order any model, obviously it's going to be the LE. If you're ordering the Pro or the Premium, you wouldn't order. You would just sit there and wait. But this is the market we're in at the moment, which sucks, is that if you want an LE, you have to pay before you play. That's the only way that they kind of have marketed towards, and they know that. And I did the same thing for, what's the game that came out? Batman, Batman 66, and I emailed you guys about it. And they didn't show anything. They didn't even show a picture of the pin, and it sold out. And that was expensive. I mean, that was $14,500 Australian dollars, including tax. And, yeah, I'm the only person. I think it was $14,000 that came down to Australia, and I'm the only person who cancelled my order after I saw the gameplay. I just was like, no, this is not for me. And all the other people hung on to it. So I'm fully prepared to cancel my Star Wars order. It's literally just I have to put money down. And they make you pay half, right? So I've got $6,250 down on the credit card just to reserve a position. Wow. Yeah. It sucks, man, but what do you do, you know? Come to America and spend a couple weeks. It's with that same distributor, I'm assuming. Well, yeah, there is actually like a local distributor. As I said, he's like a sub-distributor. Sub-distributor. But everyone in Melbourne, well, not everyone, most of the people get it off AMD because they're the master distributor. They're the ones that get all the parts. They're so easy to deal with. So, yeah, and the guy's name is actually Bruce. So everyone calls him Brucey Baby, just like you, Bruce. Oh, my. Oh, my. So Ryan will be awaiting the deadflip stream to see whether or not he's going to cancel. I've just stopped looking. I've stopped looking at the Pinside thread. I've stopped looking at the A&D thread. I keep on getting notifications that Stern is going online and showing, you know, and everyone's like, oh, hey, did you see the footage at the factory? They show a little snippet of Ali. And I was like no I haven seen anything because it like 3 o in the morning and then you wake up and they removed the video So it almost like they want me to cancel the order It just I know you guys think I whinging but yeah what other industry does this You reveal a product, and then you kind of withhold the information because you sell out. You don't need to. It's – I don't know. Someday, I hope – this is not like an evil thing, but I hope it catches up to them in a way they have a decent competitor that can release pinball machines in a timely manner. I mean, I guess JGP is the closest, but releasing one pinball machine a year, if they get to that, isn't going to put a dent in the bottom line for CERN, I think. Tell Spooky releases more a year. I mean, at least different models. I mean, they do. You want Rob Zombie version 2? Think about it. I mean, Rob Zombie, Jetsons, and what was the other one? I don't know. So, I mean, that's at least three different models. I had an America's Most Long-Term here. I'm so sorry. I liked it, but, you know, there was something about it that I couldn't put. Do you know what it is? You guys are doing the same thing sometimes. It's clunky. It's very clunky. I didn't think the quality was that nice. The shots were okay. I actually didn't mind the shots, but that ramp shot. one out of a hundred TV made it. Yeah. You can tweak it a little bit. You can put a little bit of felt right at the end of that orbit that'll kind of stop it from hitting the edge of the bridge that jumps up. I mean, you can tweak any game to kind of... Okay, you can try and polish the turds if you want, so to speak. But how much can you polish it? But no, I got out of that all right. I didn't lose too much money. But after that, I kind of took a step back and I said, yeah, as much as I can, you really need to play a game before you buy it. Yes. If you have the opportunity, you know. As I said, Stern isn't making it easy with their whole limited edition offering. Does Stern have any, like, trade show? Is there any, like, thing you can go to in Australia to play any of these things other than that distributor's showroom? I would assume they have some of those games there. Yeah, that's the thing. There really isn't a show. I mean, okay, there was one about three years ago. Just when I was getting into pinball, someone decided to do, a really big collector here decided to do a show in Sydney. And it was huge. And people came from all around Australia. And it wasn't like, I mean, you guys, people bring their machines, all the local collectors kind of, you know, get together and they bring a couple of machines down for everyone to play and they get free entry. This was literally three collectors. It had a combined total of like 250 machines or something. I'm probably just guessing the number, but it was huge. All the big vendors came down and it was a big thing, but he nearly killed himself doing it. It was such a hard thing for him to organise that he hasn't done it again. So there's something called Pinfest, which is quite small. It's like there's about 70 machines, but I've never been to that because I'd rather save my money and come down to Expo. Because, Bruce, even though we're, would you say 17,000 kilometers or 10,000 miles? 10,000 miles, yes. 10,000 miles. We've actually rubbed shoulders together, and we didn't even know. I was at Expo last year. I was not. I was not. Oh, you weren't? Ah, okay. Ron was. Ron has been there. Okay. Yeah. So I just started listening to your podcast then. So if I started from the start, I probably would have tried to hunt run down. But, yeah, that was good. That was fun. I wish we could do that in Australia because, yeah, you guys get to kind of play the new offerings. And, you know, as I said, if we want to play it, we have to buy it. And maybe that's why there's more pinballs being sold to the cavity here is that we don't get to play them before we buy them. So we're just buying them all blindly. If you want an Expo-like show, if that's kind of what you're looking for, I would suggest giving Texas a try. Yeah, I'm skipping Expo this year, and I've met a guy over there, and I'm not sure if you know him. He seems that when I was with him and I was walking through Expo, we couldn't walk about the five steps without someone saying hi. Do you guys know a guy called Charles Thomas? Does that ring a bell? No? Okay. I'm going to hang out. He lives in New York. He's about 10 minutes from the Sunshine Laundromat, I think, so he doesn't have too many pins. But he's not really a competition guy. He's more of a collector. And, yeah, he's already booked a room in TPF, and he's saved a bed for me. Oh, my. Oh, my. So, yeah, I've pretty much confirmed myself for Texas next year, so we can get together. I can annoy the shit out of you guys and Tyson Kimball. Because Texas is kind of, I'd say, taken over for Expo in a lot of ways. There was a lot of debuts there. It's much bigger because it is Texas. Everything's bigger in Texas. More games. They have a lot of the same industry people show up there now. Yeah. I haven't been to Texas in years. Last time I think it was 2007 or 2008. So it's been 10 years. Is it true that everyone walks around with coffee cups with alcohol in them? Is that right? Oh, Allentown, definitely. Oh, Allentown. I remember... Allentown. Okay. Allentown, what they do is they, uh, mugs, coffee, you know, coffee containers, like, you know, the, everything, just drinking. Yeah. Because I think I saw a sign like that. I think it was like, is it Ed, Ed Van Der Veen or something that runs TPF? Yep. Yep. Yeah. I think I saw a sign, someone took a picture of a sign saying, uh, no alcohol in the, in the vendor area, no alcohol here, no alcohol there. but you are allowed coffee and then right under that it says we provide free coffee cups, like empty coffee cups. Yes! So it was literally like a... And you go to restaurants and they'll just say like concealed weapons not allowed. Yeah. I guess an unconcealed weapon would be allowed. Holy shit. When I was at Expo everyone was like, hey, let's go to Twin Peaks. And I just... It didn't click what Twin Peaks was. You know, I was just like, oh, Twin Peaks, it's about mountains or something. And then I walk in, and then I was like, oh, okay, Twin Peaks, I get it now. Yeah, well, there's, in Texas, there's a place called Wild Pitch. Think of, think of, it's, like, Twin Peaks is basically, it's a Hooters club. That's all it is. Yes. Wild Pitch is the space in between a strip club and Hooters. how is that shit legal in in the u.s i mean you walk in and literally they're in their underwear that is wow that that is that is it so who works there are they girls that have like an just like that last inch of self-esteem left and they're like no i'm not a stripper i'm just you know i'm just a waitress how does that work maybe that can be your next interview it's funny when you see some some people from the show coming and, like, you know, like, what one has their kid with them. Like, oh, this is going to be an interesting conversation with the kid. Oh, God. Yeah, if that happened in Australia, it would be open for a week before some woman's lobbyist group would close it down. So, how are you? First, I have to criticize you, sir. Ready for it? What the fuck are you buying 20 bags of LEDs for? What the fuck? Haven't you learned anything from this podcast? I just fucking love LEDs, Bruce. Oh, fuck. No, I'm actually selling LEDs as well. So for the first two years, I kind of refused to, I mean, I saw these kind of like little market opportunities in pinball because, you know, when people spend $12,000 on a pinball machine, like they're happy to spend an extra hundred bucks here and there. And, yeah, the LED offerings in Australia aren't as good as the U.S. and a lot of people buy them from Cointaker and Comet. I love Comet LEDs. And, you know, they either get like shitty clones of like the Comet ones with like cheap LEDs inside or there's the biggest store here, like the most we sell like the 10mm and they're called 10mm LEDs instead of the SMD ones. So with my normal business, I deal with China a lot. So I found a supplier after going through about 10 of them that were crap. And basically, I just do custom ordering. So I say, you've got one week. Here are the 80 different types of LEDs you can order. There's a minimum order quantity of 25 or 50 each. And I just get everyone saying, I want this many of this, this many of that. And I order directly, and I get them in. I ship them out, so I hold no stock. So I'm literally just doing it to help the community out. I'm making like five cents off each LED. It's not anything that's going to pay my kids through school, but maybe it'll evolve into something else. But I actually do like LEDs. And I was going to ask you guys, I mean, I understand the whole putting crazy colors in a pinball machine, especially an old one. And I agree that using harsh, cool white on an older machine sucks. It makes the machine look shit. and it makes it look dirtier as well because there's certain things you see when you brighten up the machine that you don't see normally. But what is the knock on, say, like a really nice warm white LED that will produce the same light as an incandescent bulb but just more of it, besides the fading technique? Because I know certain games have certain fading in and out that looks really nice that you can't get without the LED OCD boards. So explain yourself, Bruce and Ron. Oh, it's really easy for me. It's the appeal of the eye, the eye appeal. When I look at an older game, say a Bally or a Stern with incandescent bulbs, and I look right next to it and they kind of have an LED bulb, what I know and I remember as when I was growing up is an incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulb looks natural. It's not natural. Even cool white is not natural light. I'm sorry. It's not TVI. TVI what? Any LED. When I look at LEDs and I look at incandescents, I say, I don't care if the playfield's half worn on it. I'm still going, wow, that looks better. That looks a lot better. I like the look of that. I reckon you're probably obsessed with the symmetrical nature of the glass around it because there's certain flashes which I won't change, like my one in Tron and in ACDC, the two ones under the ramps. I refuse to change them because I like the way that circular dome looks. is pleasing to the eye. And maybe because you've been to Pimble for so long, that's what you're attracted to. You're attracted to that glass dome. I don't know. I like the look of it. Ron, maybe you have a different opinion. Slightly different opinion. I don't mind them in new games, because that's what they're designed with. Exactly. And they work fine. And I don't totally hate them in old games. Here's the issue. The issue with me was always the same thing. Number one, the ridiculous colors and just looking like shit. Number two, the fact they would, especially in the early days of LEDs, you would go to a show, especially, let's say, some of the earlier Texas shows, because mostly it's collectors bringing their high-end shit to the show. And they'd bring, like, a Terminator 2 there. And Bruce will probably remember this one. Oh, I remember it very, very vividly. It might have even been in Texas, I think. It was. They'd bring a Terminator 2, and it got all the LEDs in it. and you start playing it, and you are blinded. You start payback time, and we completely lost track of the ball. We literally walked away because we couldn't see the ball, and I thought I was going to have a seizure. It's like putting makeup on a hooker. They really overdo it. There's your title. There's your title. They put makeup on a hooker. I don't think so. It's like, you know, they're putting all the makeup on, heavy makeup and everything like that. It's like they're covering up what is good about the machine, the plastic. Are you saying, Bruce, that you love the natural look of hookahs? You need the natural look of a pinball machine. They're like, you know, it's like, you know, terrible. How do you guys play? Do you guys play with the lights on in your room, or do you guys play with just the lights off and just the pinball machines providing the illumination for the room? I play in low light, but I'm old. So I can't play in total darkness, or I will lose the ball anyway. Well, that's the thing. I mean, if you get, like, if you get... I'm going to send you guys down some LEDs. I don't give a shit. I'm going to post them to 10,000 miles to upstate New York. I'm going to send you some... It's probably something that you can just get off comment anyway, but this will be for free. I'm going to send you some dual SMD warm white LEDs, and it produces the same color as incandescence but brighter. So it looks like my Lord of the Rings looks like it's kind of like glowing gold. Not in a bad way. Well, it might be for you guys, but I'll give you some. Try it out in the sling area of one of your older machines, and you won't need to use your lights anymore because you can keep track of the ball. It's just a brighter, incandescent feel to it. So I'm going to convert you guys. Well, Bruce at least. No, you won't convert me. I'm the one that takes the bulbs out of the game. Unlike Bruce, I actually have at least one game I've experimented on with the LEDs, with warm white. That's actually all I use is the warm white. I get the ones, like the cheap ones from Pinball Life. They actually work good with the OCD board, and I try and experiment with my Demoman. because the demo man with the incandescence on it, it's pretty dark, especially in the back of the play field. It's tough to see stuff. Like where they could have used light, they have flashers instead, so it's not on all the time, so it's hard to see stuff back there. Some games are just, like the Williams games, you wonder, how the hell do they just, like No Good Gophers, I was helping my friend LED that the other day, and even after we put the brightest cool white LEDs in there, it's like, why is there only one bulb in the slingshot, and those, how do you guys fix this? You guys probably know. Like, like fishtails and no good gophers, they have that in the rails that go to the, like the inlanes that go to the flipper. They have that metallic bit with like a cutout, like it has a cutout for the LEDs. And it looks like a dot. Yeah, it looks so shitty. How do you get rid of that? Yes, it does. Yeah. Can you get plastic replacements for that? I've never seen it. I've never seen them. Hey, if someone's listening. New mock opportunity. There you go. There's your opportunity. I know exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, so it'll look like a dot. And if you put an LED in there, it'll look even more like a dot. It'll look like Metallica with the ball arch lighting, where they put LEDs under there, and you just see these two spots where they have the light. Yeah, I put LEDs in the demo. Oh, man, I didn't do it for the feature lights. I just did it for the GI with the OCD board in there, and it looks fine. I have no issues with it. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. I did it in my Stars back glass. I just put some in there. Now, back glasses, I will say, are a little different. And that back glass is shot anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Certain back glasses, yes, they do need it. But anywhere, even in a GI. GI, nope. If you look at my games, most of them, if they're not factory, I think downstairs I have 500 bulbs of 47s and 500 555s always. So, Bruce, did you take all the LEDs out of your Star Trek and your ACDC and replace them all? No, no, they came factory. Oh, okay. Whatever came factory. Wow, has anyone actually ever done that? Has anyone taken the bulbs out of a brand new Stern and put incandescents in there? It would look quite weird, wouldn't it? They would probably look like shit. Probably look like shit. Because now they're programmed for LEDs, so it's like the opposite. So you'd have major issues. Well, plus I don't know how you would do that now because now they're all the stupid light boards. The GI you could do. Some of the pros. I think Star Trek Pro doesn't have. I'm not sure. But, yeah, okay. So, Ron, you are an LED on the fence guy then, you sounded like. I prefer the incandescence on most of the older games, but I'm not going to. I played at Texas again. I played Classic Stearns where guys put, like, LED spotlights in. That lit up the place a lot better than it would have been lit up. I'm not totally anti-LED. I think it was a Stargazer. Looked pretty good. They put like little smiley... Sounds like Bruce deals in absolutes, right? Oh, yes, he does. Yes, he does. He definitely doesn't like LEDs, and he definitely doesn't like Lanny D. Jim Raff. Yes. Yep, too given, too straightforward. I love Bruce. Guess what? I also don't like Lanny D. Jim Raff. Woo-hoo! So, see, you're halfway there. Not as a human being, as a software engineer. Programmer, he's terrible. Just in case he's listening. Just in case he's listening. Yeah, you may remember now. We might hear from him soon. That will be our guest this week, Lonnie Ross. Lonnie Ross. And the entire show is just, how did you program? Why did you do this? Why did you do that? Oh, man, I bought Kiss Pinball Machine like six months after it came out, thinking I was the smartest guy ever. I was like, holy shit, this guy is dumping his pinball machine because the code's pretty average, and I'm buying it at the right time. And I just waited and waited and waited, and goddammit. I think Stern has to triple their software department because the amount of games they've got coming out, and the amount of games that are still brewing now, code-wise, they're going to fall further behind, I reckon, than they ever have, because I caught wind of some of the new titles, and there's so many of them. I'm not sure how far they're spread across, but I don't know how they could keep up. Did you know what time it is? What time is it? It's time for Game You Like, Game You Hate. Good. I cannot wait to hear what the Australian... Now, do you have any... First, before we go into that, do you have any collectors down there that have actually some of the older collectible games like The Empire Strikes Back or shark. I've got a friend who lives about three hours away who has an Empire Strikes Back, but I've never been to his house. He pre-ordered an alien pinball machine and he said, hey guys, when I get it, that's when I'll have my inaugural meet and that never happens. Well, I don't think it ever will. Damn you, Andrew Highway, you lying bastard. Yeah, no. Um, it's, uh, I'm not sure if it's just my friend's circle, but it's most of the people I know, like, and these are, these are kind of like non, non, uh, tournament guys and more kind of collector guys. Um, none of them have like many sold states. Now they do have sold states. They're, uh, you know, Funhouse and, uh, you know, High Speed and, and kind of the, you know, some System 11 games. But, um, I don't know, you know, space is a, you know, space is a premium here. So sometimes they have a certain amount of games in their house and they have a garage out back where they dump some of their older ones. But, yeah, you definitely don't see them, you know, the EMs and the solid states on site. They don't exist here. So when you guys are talking about, you know, all the cool games that you were playing before the 1990s, I feel a little bit left out. So I'll be giving you a game I hate that's from the 90s onwards. Okay. let's go for it. Would you like to go first or would you like us to go first? You guys can go. I'll go first. Game I love is my Tron. Holy shit. I bought this machine without ever playing it and I bought it because it was an Ali and everyone was telling me this is a good price, you have to go and you have to buy it. And I hated the game for a year and I put it up for sale once and then I was true, I changed my mind. And I always thought this and Iron Man are easily the two most overrated games ever. Like, people are obsessed with them, and I don't get it. And I finally, I put a shaker on it, I put some alternative sound firmware on it, I put, like, a big, fat external sub, and I'm obsessed with it. I've got that big, you know, decent-sized collection, and I can just play Tron and Star Trek all day long, and I only need two machines. And it's mostly Tron, because I'm only ever ten minutes away from getting into Portal. And I set my machine up pretty hard. It really speaks slow. Outlanes are pretty maxed out. I always clean it so it's just lightning fast. And I've only been to Portal once, and that's not because, I mean, a bit of that is that I'm not like the world's best pinball player. But I'm obsessed with the aesthetics and the sound of that pinball machine. Sound is a big factor. Like you might have noticed with all of my emails about call-outs and how disappointed I am with certain call-outs and how much I love others. The sound effects, like when you get Super Spinner or Super Pops and you have the Switch Frenzy going on Zeus and the GI pulses, I'm just like, nothing else exists in the world when I'm playing that game. I'm in the zone. It draws me in like nothing else. And that was a Lonnie D. Ropp game, but I think Lyman fixed it up. Lyman polished it at the end. It's a good combo. So Lonnie D. Rupp plus someone else is almost, I think, a better situation than maybe, well, I don't want to say it, you know, because it's like Dwight, because he's made some good games, but like someone on their own. I think sometimes it works better when you get Lonnie to start a game so it's kind of like nice and simple, and then you get someone else to put a twist on it that gives it that extra kind of, you know, that last 10%. Whereas if you have someone, I don't know, you guys probably don't agree with me, but yeah, I love Tron. uh game i hate right there's a lot of games there's a lot a lot of games that are are worse than this game but um it's the one that i can talk about the most and you guys have talked about it a lot it's it's ghostbusters it's uh it's it's the biggest turd uh that is unpolished but i think you can it can be polished but it won't be i think it can be saved but i as i said i think they they They're stretched too much as it is. And all the stuff that you guys have said has already been discussed, the software flaws, the purgatory of not getting a skill shot, the fact that you have to spend money to stop the ball from jumping over the lanes. I won't talk about that. This is the other stuff that I hate that you guys haven't discussed. I don't like how Dwight has bastardized the word super jackpot. Super jackpot is meant to be something special, and you start off the game and you can hit a shot and it's one million points. And one million points in certain games might be something, but in Ghostbusters, it's nothing. And Triple Super Jackpot, you know, he screams it out and you can feel like... I can visualise Ernie Hudson's, like, veins just, like, popping on the side of his neck because he's just screaming it with such, like, you know, such vigour. And then it's three million points. And with a game that you can blow up and have, like, a one billion point skill shot, three million points is nothing. So I don't like it. They've changed the meaning of Super Jackpot for that game. I think that's kind of like a sacred thing that should be reserved for something more meaningful. I also don't like video modes in newer games. The Game of Thrones one was just laughable, and they kept it in there. And did you guys see what was on the Star Wars playfield? There's an insert that says video mode. It's there. It's inserted into the pinball machine, and they've stamped it and they've clear-coded it, so it's definitely going to be there. It's Dwight Sullivan, man. Dwight likes his video modes, period. He's trying to bring back the 90s. You can tell, right, with the score reel from Whodunit and the pops, which is kind of cool. I mean, I'd probably rather that than the pops doing nothing and just hitting super pops at one stage. So I do enjoy that, but I don't know. I think the video modes, it's a 90s thing. I think it should stay in the 90s. And the other thing I don't like is the light show. You know, I'm picking at straws here, but the LEDs they use are fucking blinding. They're so bright. There's the two clear inserts next to the magnet slings, and they use dual. I took them out to have a look. They use dual SMD LEDs under there with a clear cap. Like, you can't get brighter than that. Like, a clear cap doesn't disperse light. It literally just goes straight up, and they're using dual SMD LEDs. It's so bright. And it's just, I like bright games. I mean, I love Star Trek and I love the light show in it, but for some reason in Ghostbusters, it almost, like, gives you a headache. And this is the other thing. When you get an extra ball, right, if you get an extra ball and you have one ball in play in that left scoop, or the little mini scoop, whatever it is, I don't mind the long animation that you can't skip. I mean, that's the fanfare of it. But it has the exact same animation and light show when you're in multiball, right? So you're trying to track the ball in multiball, right? You've got like three or four balls in play, and the ball just randomly goes into the extra ball hole. And I don't know. I feel like that light show should be shortened down to like one second or, you know. A lot of games do that, right? Like a lot of games have like a different animation or a different fanfare for getting extra ball or replay if you're in the middle of like a mode or multiball because it's like, hey, you're doing something important. I'm not going to like, you know, annoy the shit out of you. but in Ghostbusters, it just goes fucking mental and I'm just like, I don't care about the extra ball. I need to concentrate on my balls. So yeah, fuck Ghostbusters. I fucking hate it. I hate it so much right now. It was a dream thing for me, right? Like there's certain games that you just say, like you know, Ryan took about Beavis and Buttheads, right? Dream things fucking suck because it can do nothing but disappoint you. You know, you have a certain like, you know, dream and vision in your head about what your dream theme will encompass. And Ghostbusters, it hit like 70% of that, but the other 30% is just absolute trash. I fucking hate it. I don't want to ever play it again. I saw it the other day. I didn't even want to look at it. Wow. There we go. Wow. I have to say, along the lines of your extra ball thing, the one thing I wish they would change is the fact that when you're in a mode, If you start multiball, it keeps playing the mode music instead of the multiball music. It's so stupid. That's going to be a bug, right? Is that a bug? It's done that in every version I've seen. It should play the multiball music, the multiball music, which is cool as hell. I love the multiball music. I think it should trump the mode music or whatever you're in, but it doesn't for whatever reason. Yeah. It has some really good sound. I'll admit that. I mean, like, when you get the Gozerium, like, I don't know. As I said, 70% of the pin is amazing. The other 30% destroys the 70% of the pin. That's amazing. It can be saved. There's certain things that they can do, but, yeah, I couldn't leave it in my house. It was just burning up. I just wanted to start and get out of there, and, yeah, I didn't enjoy playing it. All right. Welcome to the club. People just listen to me. As I said, I just want to say, as I said, it's better than a lot of other games there, including some recent Sterns as well. But my expectation of it was a lot higher, and not because Pinside said it's the best game ever. As I said, I didn't actually pre-order it. I was a bit worried about the Magnus. Magnus was a new thing, so I held off and I said, I want to play it first, and it sold out easily in Australia. I told you guys a story. I begged someone to lend it, do a little swap, and yeah. I do a lot of pinball swapping so buying and selling pinball well buying pinball is easy selling a pinball sucks as you probably know with Ghostbusters you have to get people wasting your time We call them tie here I don know if you call them that That's what we call them. Yeah, tie-kickers. Plus, with Ghostbusters, you have the whole deal like, is it one of the non-ghosting ones? I only want a non-ghosting one. Is it one of the ones the cabinet's falling apart? I want to make sure I don't get one of those. Yeah, it's a new thing every time, right? let's see what it is with Star Wars, you know. There'll be some issue. Does it have giant dimples on the magnet? Well, there's no magnet in there, is there? So, as I said, it's not that bad. It's just my expectations, yeah, kind of ruined the game for me. Oh, yeah. All right, Bruce, how about you? Game I like. We're doing all Williams today. So I'm going to give you a bad one that I like. Williams, Pinbot. Pinbot Stranded. Original, great game. Excellent game. Basic, easy, to the point. Good shots. Good flow. Fun game. Game I hate. Jackbot. Can't agree with you there, Bruce. I played Kevin's last night. I went over and helped him work on The Viking. And I'm playing it. And I go, hey, Kevin. I know you sold this. What did you think? He goes, yeah, after three or four weeks, it got old. Mine lasted two weeks. It just doesn't hold you. How does it not hold you? It's a casino run. That's it. Yeah, exactly. It's the only thing that's good about it. Jackpot just doesn't hold it for me. It just really just kills me. And I would disable the side button where everyone's getting their cheat in and that kind of stuff. The only thing that's good about Jackpot is Casino Run, and that's it. That's it. That's the only thing. Even though the shots are the same, I like the simplicity of Pinbot. All right. And don't even get me going on the Bride of Pinbot. That's just the worst one. How about Bride of Pinbot 3.0? Oh, God. Are you a pre-order customer for that, Bruce? Oh, yes. I love Dutch. Dutch is my favorite company of all time. Nuts. How many shit companies are there? There's like four shit shows in pinball that are still going. You've got Kevin Kulik. Yeah, that's done. That's dead. Oh, my gosh. There's four of them. It's just like to be a new person in pinball, can you imagine stumbling across like, oh, yeah, there's like four companies that have gone bankrupt and holding millions of dollars of customers. It's so shit. And there's going to be a couple more soon, too. There will be. You reckon? Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't think Lexi Lightspeed is going to sell anything. they still haven't shipped anything have they? I think this could be another gimmick I hate to say it not being mean but every time I see him on location it looks like the same old stuff and when he wants 10k for it nope well 10k a couple of years ago was pretty crazy but with the prices creeping up you know it's not it's not crazy but who buys it like 30 people and then that's it who's going to develop a game for 30 people got it So Ron, game you like, game you hate. All right. Game I, let's see, which one to do? I'll do game I hate first. Ghostbusters. No. You can say it because I would have said this our last episode, but we actually didn't do our list. I'm going to try to save that. I'm actually going to try this game you like, game you hate for visitors so we can actually have something to talk about. That's a good idea. Yeah, that way I won't exhaust every freaking game, because I haven't even played the amount of games that I'm, you know, whatever. Okay, here's my hate. Rob Zombie. Nothing to get spooky, because out of all the manufacturers, they actually make games. And they actually make the games they say they're going to make and make the number of games they say they're going to make. So they're ahead of the game there. But the game itself, I just thought it sucked. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I am. You know, I like that they try different stuff on the play field. But I debate putting, like, slingshots everywhere and just having the ball fly all over the place and then having, like... It's the chicken, isn't it? It's the chicken. Fried chicken. It's a fucking fried chicken bucket. See? See? All right. But keeping with the same horror-like theme, a game I like, Stern Dracula. There you go. Now, actually, let's go... I'm going to... I know Ryan C. is going, Stern Dracula? What the fuck? Yeah. The problem is the U-shape on the top. It's so hard to get, just like Ali. But we know you hate Ali, but I like Dracula. I don't mind Dracula. I don't mind it. I just don't like that U-shape. It's so far away, and most flippers for Stern, older people, you know, most Stern Draculas are not up to snuff. So it's hard to get up to that loop. It's the only thing I don't like about the game. Other than that, I like the game. The artwork, the artwork, eh. The artwork's okay. The artwork's on the back glass. The back glass is fast. I've never seen a good back glass. I'm looking at the pinball now. It looks like a monkey or an ape in the middle. Is that the right game? I think I might be looking at the wrong game. Is that Chime Game, Ron, or is that a soundboard? No, that is the horrifically bad, terrible sound. Yeah. I don't know if it has a monkey because the artwork on the playfield is actually excellent. And the plastics are good, too. It's got skeletons and scary stuff and fire. It has cool pop-upers with skulls. The skulls are cool on the pop-upers. Did they reuse the Sea Witch for some reason? Yes, they did. So I have a question. Do you guys play the older games? Because don't take this too hard or anything. Like, you've played everything from the 90s onwards. You've played all the new games. Are you searching for something else with the older games? or is it just because you're tournament players and the rules are balanced in some of the games? Like, what's the appeal of the older games? Because I'm yet to see the magic and see the light about how I can, you know, not be bored to death playing a super old game. I know a lot of people are going to be, you know, listening to the podcast saying, this guy's crazy, he's nothing but pinball. But as in Ron, yeah. Ron, would you like to go or you want me to go first? Difficulty. Thank you. you can set up a game so hard. The thing to remember, most of these games were made during a time where they made a lot of pinball machines. There wasn't, like when they make a game now, it has to have some kind of like, we need something that anyone can get to, you know, immediately. We need some kind of hook, a bash toy, whatever. So some kind of thing like that. The older games are like, this game is designed to fuck you, basically. This game is designed to piss you off, to be brutally hard, and you're just going to deal with it. And you're going to play the shit out of this thing until you, you know, are satisfied. Is that the feeling you kind of get with Total Nuclear Annihilation? Is that like a, like, is that? That has an old, that has more like a mid-80s kind of goofy feel, which was kind of cool. I'm thinking more like, you know, Paragon, you're on the edge of your seat because you are always just one hit away from draining at all times. And the slightest mistake will lead to death. And even a good shot may lead to death. If you look at Papa last year, not last year, but the year before with Josh playing that Paragon. It was Pemberg, wasn't it? It was Pemberg. Yeah, when you watch that video and you watch him reacting to playing Paragon. It is so real. It's that intensity. The game, like, what I don't like about the newer games, and I own them, I play them a lot. It's, to get something really good on a game, you've got to play it for 30 minutes. The wizard mode. You know, you've got to get to that. You don't feel like you're getting, until you're getting a mini wizard mode or full wizard mode. You feel like, oh, I didn't get the full value of my game. On a Starz, Paragon, guess what? There's everything else? Well, no, it's like you're already on the edge of your seat just after flinging the ball. You're sitting there going, okay, which way is this ball going to go? Is it going to go out the side rail really fast on me? It's just the hardness and the challenge. And the good thing about the EMs, I know they're all solid states, is that you can rake them so hard and you make good flippers on them, you still hit everything good. on these plastic ramps or anything like that. Sometimes, oh, the flippers weren't good. The flippers were a little weak. I couldn't make the shot. Oh, you know, this. And you have to do so many hard things to make the game harder in tournament play or to make the game last longer. You know, think about it. If you go by Star Trek and the original rule set of Star Trek, the rules were just, ugh, okay. And people were selling them off and trading them off. Now, with the better rule set from Dwight, it made more people keep them, and it became the game more enjoyable. But you still have to play 20 minutes or 15 minutes to get Kobayashi Monroe. Another 20 minutes to get, you know, the next, you know, Wizard Mode. I saw Steve Bannon and Tim Sexton doing the games done quick. They got there in six minutes. What's going on? Yeah, I mean, but you're just hitting a shot and timing it out. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. But the thing is, you know, with Paragon, guess what? In Stars, me and Ron played 10 games in 15 minutes. Yeah. And just that good challenge where, you know, the game is you're playing against somebody else, so you're saying, I've got to beat this guy. But the game's also saying, fuck you, I'm going to beat you. Yeah. I will say if I had to play these back in the day on location, I wouldn't have liked them. Yeah, true. I agree. It's a different animal when you have it in your basement. and it's just like, oh, play another one, play another one, play another one. Yep. I agree. Don't you like, though, in the modern games that there's that kind of, like that comparison of juxtaposition versus, like, you know, normal play and then you're in a special mode, whereas you're kind of saying that you're in that special mode all the time, but then doesn't that, don't you lose the feeling that you get after a while if you're always kind of on the edge of your seat? Like, it just seems normal. Not in the old valleys and paragons and stars. you actually want to come back for more to bait that score. The games are too short to dissipate. Yeah, think about it. As I said, with any of these newer games if you don't get whored on Walking Dead are you disappointed? Yeah. You don't get the final. Now you've wasted 20 minutes not getting there. That's why Tron's so good because I can get to save simulation in like 5 minutes. Exactly. If you couldn't, or if you made it really hard, you'd be like, and then you played a game and you're like, oh, I almost made it. You're going to play another 20-minute game? That's why I'm a Lord of the Rings fan. I've been sitting there for six months being unplayed pretty much for this long. That's part of the problem with these games. But the good thing is also the rules are there to enjoy it. I have a Lord of the Rings downstairs. I play it once in a while. If I want a good long game, I'll play that. But anything else, if I want a short game where I just go have some fun, anyone at the Solid States, I'll just go there. I'll go through the whole row in 15, 20 minutes, and I have a smile on my face. Okay. I really will. I'll be like, boy, I had more fun playing six or seven games in that 20 minutes than going to the— And that's alone. That's you playing alone by yourself, like not versing anyone. Okay. And my wife will only play me in the Solid State games. Because you know it will kick my ass. She won't have to wait 15 minutes between balls. Yeah. And it's more enjoyable for her. Playing Wizard of Oz and any Keith P. Johnson game against my wife is just the recipe for how to make my wife not enjoy pinball. I say, oops, I accidentally drained. Just to keep her interested. You would have to, honestly. But, yeah, to me, there's two sides. I love the newer games, don't get me wrong. I love the deeper rule sets. I love everything about them. But a solid state, set up right. When you can take down four drop targets in one sweep shot, nice. Or five if it's Cheetah. If it's five or it's Cheetah. But, you know, you just don't get that with these newer games. They make them like they're targets. I want to sweep that target and make more points out of it. Or spinners, you know, with adding multipliers to your spinner. You know, today a spinner is just making sounds and giving you points. but stars hitting each each target stand up target adds to that spinner value so then when that spinner is fully lit it's a thousand points of spin and you just more strategy and you're you're working your way to make that game and don't forget the game's lasting you five minutes max yeah okay so it's that always thinking ahead and another interesting thing games of the early solid state era were all very different between the playfields. There's not much difference between a lot of the playfields that Stern makes now. No. Unless it's John Trudeau. John Trudeau will make different stuff. But if it's Borg, it's going to look like Metallica, Walking Dead, Kiss. Absolutely. Kiss' clone, Aerosmith. I mean. Tron is funhouse, right? Yes, we are. It is. And you have, you know, Steve Ritchie. I mean, World Poker Tour was the only game he's done in the last 10 or 15 years that's been any different. And it's the one that's, like, dropped the most in value, right? Yeah. But it's the one that's the sleeper hit for most of your, you know, tournament style. You guys all love it. Yes, I loved it. I was sad when I sold mine. But, like, the early solid state area, all the playfields, I mean, they're, like, especially the old sterns, they're almost all completely different. So this is the thing, like, you guys talk so passionately about it, but, like, I went over to someone's house, and he had a paragon, and I was playing, and, you know what I mean, like without someone explaining what you need to do, you know, or watching like a tutorial video online, you just get up to the game. Like I got no idea what I was doing. I was flapping around. Yeah, the ball wasn't going down. I got a score and that was it, you know. Okay, okay, okay. Texas, Texas, we will bring you around. You will meet us. We will bring you around to the old games. We will interview you the next week and we will convert you. Okay. Deal. That is the deal. I will actually make sure we will convert him because... You're going to save my money as well, right? I will save you a ton of money. There's no Paragon LEs there? No. There's no Super LE that I have to make a video for? The first LE you ever talk about is Black Knight. Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's probably the right... And that one was lame. Yeah, it was lame. They put a sticker. They put a sticker in the center that said LE, and the Baltross switches were leaf switches. In the original, they switched them to micro switches. Yes. But that's it. That's the only thing. If you look at it, same back glass, same art, same play field, same everything. So what's a better game, Black Knight or Black Knight 2000? Black Knight. Black Knight for play. Black Knight for play. for Stout and Light Show, Black Knight 2000. Close the way. Can't you, because I went over to a mate's house and he's got a Black Knight and he had the ball up in the upper play field forever. Like it just didn't, because he got his game set up. He didn't have it set up. Yeah, that's it. Didn't have it set up right. You say that a lot. I've been to shows where I've played it forever. Yeah. It needs to be brutal. It's the only way to keep that thing. And you need to set the multiball up hard. Yes. Okay. Where it's not just lit at the start of the ball. I'll tell him. But we will convert you, I promise you. You're going to walk past all these new games. You're going to be like, hey, what can we... No, no, no, no. Follow me. Another advantage is when you go to shows, all these new games you love will be completely mobbed, and those early solid states will be free. That's the only reason why you guys are obsessed with them, right? You just don't like lines. That's pretty much it. That's true. We don't like lines. That is a bonus. It is a big bonus. But, you know, it's just the way they... If you get a game that's set up right, I will flock to a Paragon before any... If the Star Wars brand new LE is there, and a Paragon is right next to it, I'll play the Paragon. I'd play the Star Wars. I'm not that crazy. As long as there's about 20 people in line. I want to play the new game. That would be a normal show. What would happen in a normal show? I'd go there early to try to get in line. I'd want to play at least once. Does Lenny DeRuff come to these trips? He goes to Expo. He's been to Expo a couple times. Well, he goes there to the banquet. So any other things for our 50th episode special guest? Special guest. Do you have anything you would like to plug? Yes. I'm asking. Ryan. You. Yes. Would you like to plug anything? Not really. The business stuff I do is all just on forums, so I don't really have a website set up or anything. Well, I guess Aussie Arcade, if there's any Australians listening that are somehow not part of the Australian community, come join us on Aussie Arcade. That's the one big thing with pinball I've noticed just in my short time in the hobby. there's a big divide between, like, tournament players and collectors that don't like tournaments. And there's no... Maybe for you guys it's the expos that kind of bring everyone together where everyone's in the same place. But because Australia doesn't have them, there's the tournament scene, and I know a bunch of those guys, and then there's the collector scene, and none of them... Like, if you invite a tournament guy to, like, a meet at someone's house, they'll say, well, is there an IPA tournament there? And you say, no. And they're like, okay, well, I don't want to waste my time coming. And if you tell a collector guy to come to a tournament, they'll say, I don't want to sit for half an hour waiting to play a game when I've got $100,000 worth of games in my house. So it'd be nice if there was something that could bring everyone together. For us, it actually is like, not Expo, but Allentown. Allentown for us is, everyone goes for a different reason. We have a big flea market outside, so some people go surf the flea market or surf for used games. Some guys are just going there to play the new games. Some guys are just going there for LEDs. Some guys are going there for new parts. And some women actually go there too. Exactly. And that's what Allentown is for us. And other shows like Pinnagogo for California and a couple other shows really do a well job. And we're going to go to one in two weeks for the Pintastic. And that's starting to become that way for a family thing and where you can buy games and sell games. and some people are going there for tournaments, and some people are going there for just buying new parts. So it does vary a little bit, and everyone's probably hoping that they'll play Star Wars. Maybe that'll be my next big thing. I'll take some crazy pills and try and organize the next Australian Expo. Yeah, no, that's probably not going to happen. I'm horrible at organizing. I've done the pinball arcade shows also with the Rochester Game Room show, and yeah, no thank you. I did three, and that was hard enough. Yeah, sounds like these. That's a thing I've noticed as well. A lot of people in pinball, everything is a labor of love. If you think about allocating your time towards how much money you're making, like the tournament guys, and they have the entry fees and stuff, they're making nothing. The amount of effort they have to put in, it's all for the love of pinball. And that's why I love this hobby so much is that people genuinely, you know, yes, people making money and, you know, now I'm making, like I'm doing a run of colored mirror blades. So you guys have a PDI in the U.S. that sell them like the gold and black ones. I found a company here that does just like insane colors, like vibrant kind of, this is probably like equivalent to the LED thing that you guys hate. But people like to dress their machine up and they want something unique and special. So I organize for like an Emerald City green and blue and black and gold and magenta and all that kind of stuff. And I've organized like a factory to laser cut them. But, yeah, people – I've totally lost the point of what I was saying. But, yeah, there's people making money, but everyone's doing it generally for the love of pinball and not to get rich and retire early. People love the hobby so much. and they're doing everything they can to make it survive even though it's so irrelevant. When I went to Expo, sorry, quick short story. When I went to Expo, it was so weird because you stay at the hotel and you're just in this world of pinball and your mind starts to play tricks on you. You start to think that pinball is everywhere and pinball is life and there's a thousand people that like pinball in this small place. And then I went into Chicago City for half the day and you kind of look around and I was wearing this Stern T-shirt the zombie Yeti one that I got from that awesome party. And, yeah, you look around and you're like, holy shit, like, all these people, like, don't know what pinball is. And there was, like, an Uber driver, and he was like, you know, what are you guys here for? And we were like, yeah, that's my American accent, by the way. What are you guys here for? And I was like, yeah, we're here for, like, a pinball experience. And he was like, pinball? They still make that? What the hell? I'm like, yeah, like, here in Chicago, this is, like, the birthplace, This is where pinball comes from. And he's like, what? I used to work for Bally in the 80s. I used to work for like, there's some like board set that starts with like sun something. And he used to make them. So he was involved in the pinball industry and he didn't know it still exists. He thought it totally died off. And he lives in Chicago. So it just proves like, you know, we live in this kind of like bubble where we all think that pinball is awesome for everybody, but it's just awesome for us and that's it. So I'm trying my hardest to get other people involved, and I succeeded and made someone buy two pinball machines that wasn't interested in pinball. So I'm doing my part to grow the hobby as much as I can. Well, Ron, how much money are we making from Stomp, Ron? We're making money from Stomp? Yeah, how much? You know, $10,000, $15,000, right? You know what, Bruce? You're so dedicated, you forgot how many Rochester Game Room shows you went to. Three. No, it was four. Four? It was four, Bruce. Two at the original location, one in the armory, and one in the mall. Oh, I forgot about the armory one. Well, the armory one was a disaster. He's so dedicated, he can't remember the ones he went to. The voltage was terrible there. Yeah, but roller games were good. Yeah, because it was dedicated. It was in the tournament area. Yeah, as far as I know, we're not making anything from Stomp. Nope. But we do it for... We do it for the love of it, man. It's going to be fun. Actually, it's a lot of fun. It's going to be fun, man. Maybe I should come to Stump instead of DPS. Oh, that would be awesome. International flavor. Yes, you get to George Stuck High. He'll be there. Well, I want to thank you for first contributing almost every week you have, Ryan. You really do contribute a lot to the show, and your comments have been really good. And I personally want to thank you for emailing us and asking, and we like you so much. We wanted you to be on. So thank you from Bruce. I don't know about Ron. Ron hasn't said anything yet. I'm sorry, Ron, for making you do the Aussie accent all the time. Ditto. I didn't mind it at all, you know. And we'll convert Bruce to use some LEDs yet. And we will convert you to solid state. In March. Deal. It's a deal. Okay, that is a good thing. So, Ryan, thank you for joining us. And then we'll go back to the second half of the show in a few seconds. Wish me and Ron got a record. Yay. Yay. Cool. Thanks again, Ryan. See you later, Ryan. Okay. So, again, that was Ryan C. from Australia. Good-bye. Good-bye, lads. Or good night. See you later. Luckily, it's four days later. No, you ruined everything. There goes my seamless editing. No, the problem is because I have to tell them what we got from Ryan C. We got something from Ryan C. We got something from Ryan C. What'd you get? We got us some gifts. He sent us some gifts, and I got it today. Actually, I got it yesterday, but I wasn't home. And it's going to mostly go all to you, actually, Ron. We got some LED soft white bulbs that he talked about in the interview. We got the stern splint for the targets. So to strengthen up the air stern targets so they don't bend and tweak. I might take one or two of them. There's a lot of them in the package. And then the next two things are for Stomp. At our Stomp, he sent us cookies. Actually, Australian cookies. He said, if you want to make friends at Stomp, put these cookies out. So I'm going to put it for one per person at Stomp because we've got a lot of people coming. They are Australian cookies. And then for you, the last thing is all you. He sent us a tube of Vegemite. He says, put it on toast with butter. Alright. So that's all you. Want to try that one out? Yes, we will. So we did get the package today and thank you Ryan C. for that package. The beautiful thing of editing, it's still the 50th episode. Beautiful! Beautiful! I keep thinking, I keep Man at Work in my head. All right, let's do some news. Okay. So we'll do some news, then we'll do some mail, then we'll have our contest winner. Yes. It's all spooky news in some funny ways. Oh. Speaking of. Take a video. Yeah. Yeah, so on our last podcast, I mentioned the whole mounting rail thing, slide rail. And they complained about it. And complained on, yeah, how you got to, it's just like the stern mounting system. You push it in and it stops and you got to lift up the back and all that. And in fairness, I really should have mentioned the other method, which is what they mentioned in their video. The jiggle method. Yeah, because I did, well, before I even get into that, Spooky made a video that said, they heard there was this podcast, and the podcast said that their mounting system was like stern and it sucked. And they're going to show you a secret. Yeah. So they showed on the sterns and on the Spookys, you slide the play field in and it'll stop at a certain point. You can't go any further. There's actually two methods you can use. You can either lift up the back of the playfield and slide it in. Or slam it. Or, well, if you're Bruce, you probably just slam the thing hard. Thank you very much. Or there's a certain way you can kind of press down on the rail so it goes over the hump and goes in. And I actually linked to their video from our Facebook page. Yep. And the funny thing is I actually demonstrate this in my Star Trek LE review video that I did. I actually did the exact same thing. I showed how to do that. So, in fairness, I probably should have brought that up when busting on it. Yes. But here's the catch. They're using the pinball life rails. They're the same ones pinball life sells to people who want to remove, like, the peg legs that Stern uses and replace them with actual slide rails. starting the very I guess earliest last year Stern started they went with a different slide rail, they're using different slide rails now, I know on my Metallica and on the Ghostbusters they had different slide rails they shorter they more like the Williams height which actually makes working on the game easier However the method that Spooky shows doesn work with those rails On Stern. On Stern. On the newer Sterns. On the Spooky, as long as you keep using the pinball life part, they'll still work. So I just thought that was interesting. I thought it was funny because people kept on emailing me saying, Hey, you know this? Hey, you know this? Hey, you know this? And I'm like, uh. I looked at it and went, okay, I knew about that too, but it's still just... And then, of course, after saying, you know, Rob Zombie sucks, they come up with a new code. Of course, 2.0. So now I can't say he sucks anymore. I have to play it again. Yeah, so hopefully another week Tim will find all the rules and the flaws, and then he'll be able to abuse it and use it again. Mr. Timballs. Mr. Timballs. Also, on July 7th, Deadflip is going to be playing Jetsons. Meet George Jetson. Jane, his wife. No, no, his boy Elroy, then Jane, his wife. Or no, then daughter Judy, then Jane, his wife. Wow, he leaves the wife for last. Well, don't you remember he goes in order? Whatever. So that's this Friday? Yes. Well, wait a minute. Now, this goes against your theory. Well, I think actually Star Wars, well, here's the weird thing. They announced yesterday or the day before that they're going to have Star Wars at Pentastic at the automated booth. So, there's going to be one of two things. Either Deadflip's going to video it beforehand, or Stern holding this back for this whole month and not letting Levy release it is stupid. Okay. People are like, Levy release it? What is he talking about? Well, about three weeks ago, Levy was in Robert Englunds. Yeah, at a trade show and went in reconnaissance and did some filming, and then Gary Stern told him not to release it. Yes. So if, and this hasn't been, you know, it hasn't been publicly filmed. It hasn't been released anywhere yet. So if it's going to be a fantastic, I mean. It's going to be. Yeah. Yeah, it's typically they have the dead flip footage is usually the first thing you see. It's usually before it's out. The only flaw in this whole thing, unless it's that automated, you can look at it, but you can't play a game. That, yeah, it's stupid. Well, you see weirder things at shows. Oh, come on. We've never seen where Stern brings games in that you can't play. Come on. Really? They never have done that? They've never done that. Only at last year's Expo. Oh, okay. So it's not a never. So we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, me and Ron will both be a pintastic, walking around, flaunting our stuff. Flaunting our stuff. That sounds like porn. Oh, my. But we will be there. We are going to get there Friday morning. I have to drop off one of the tournament games. So one of those games on the list that they've already released is yours Yes, which is Viking Ah, that's actually the one I would have guessed Well, since we're on that topic What is the Pintastic tournament list? I don't know, I don't want it in front of me Great preparation as always, Bruce Good job Like Preparation H Yeah, Preparation H I'm trying to remember how I read it If anyone wants to say hi to us at Pintastic Come up, say hi. You want to play us and challenge us? We're up for it. That's right. We have the challenge thingy. Do have the open challenge going on. What are the rules on that? Best of five. Best of five. Whoever loses picks the next game. And what's our record in that? 2-0. Ah, yes. Yes. Oh, my. That's what I thought. So the game list is bow and arrow. Okay, good EM. Demo man. Probably claw disabled, of course, as we talked about before. Dialed in. Okay. Scorpion. Medusa. Okay, good game. Dirty Mary. I love Dirty Sanchez. Dirty Sanchez rocks. Alien Poker. Good game. Harley Davidson, the ballet one. Live to ride. Ride to live, Harley Davidson. Viper. Oh, what a turn. That's a turn. Hoops. Okay. Viking. Okay. Gee, I wonder who that is. And 8-Ball Deluxe, Chinball. So only one newer game, and no new sterns. Yeah, I'm liking this lineup. I might actually be able to qualify. They're using the old Papa style entry-based, which is going to be painful. Yes. Although I did qualify last year, so. You qualified last year with me, and some guy took you out, I think. I was some dick. Yeah, dickhead. You'll have to go back in the audio and listen for that. Yeah. It's going to be another, what dickhead beat Ron in the Fantastic Tournament of the Spheres? All right, I think it's time for the mail ball bag. Mail ball bag, oh my. We have an email from Alex Huffman. Hi, Alex. From Ormanham, Alabama. All right, Alex writes, I heard a running interview that Robert Gagnon recently, well, let me try that again. I heard or read an interview with Robert Gagnon recently that he used to take glass off a game, repeatedly roll balls from the top of the play field and practice drop catches for hours on end. Do you all believe this type of deep practice is necessary to become a top player or even take your game to the next level? Is simply spending time casually playing pinball enough to elevate your game? If not, what are some other deep practice techniques that can be used? Oh man, I wish Timmy was here. Honestly, I don't do that. Yeah, we should. We should, but I don't feel – I guess what I've noticed is when I practice more, when I play more, I'm better. It continues on. Note, I've been playing for about three years. I'm an A Division player in our local league of 30 players and recently finished fourth for the season. There are two players in our league who are week in and week out the best players in the state. Chris Warren, who is an avid listener to this podcast. Yep, I know Chris. And Timothy Street. I was lucky enough to beat them for the Alabama State title, but I want to know if there is a way I can become more consistent with my game and compete every week, not just when I'm having a good day and they're having bad days. How do I get past the improvement plateau my skills seem to have settled on? Play, play, play more. Practice more. Play against better players. Yeah, play against better players. Watch better players. Practice situations. Yes. like because especially if you're doing a lot of head-to-head you don't necessarily need the highest score you might need um like situational like i need this much to beat this person i'm going to change my strategy or do the old um the old kaylee george technique where he would set his games to two ball just assume one house ball yep so you got to make two balls count what i also do is actually set a score beforehand, I'm acting like the player one. I'm player two, I mean. And the player one's already got, say, on Paragon, he's got 220,000. Okay, now I know what I've got to go up against. I've got to start battling my way. You know, I'm behind already. I always put myself behind the eight ball. I'm going to try to work my way out. And I guess if you own the game, you could take the glass off and do drills. Yeah, drills. You don't want to drill your play field. But that might work good with testing things like, or practicing like tap passing and that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. It would. That's about all I can think of. Yeah, I kind of agree. That might be a better question for Timmy. Timmy. Because he's gotten way better. I mean, I've already hit the plateau and we're going downhill. Yeah, so am I. Yeah, so let's see what we got next. We got rolling a C. You gave us the right answer. To answer for. Yep. That's the player number, which was, we can say it now, 31915. And the games that Josh hated, Twilight Zone and Demolition Man. Then we have one from Jeff. We'll save that for last. Yeah, Jeff's is a good one. That is going to be our finale. The ultimate finale. It is. Bruce actually gets to hear from one of his buddies. I do. That he loves so much. I do. The email from Stephen Thaxton. I guess it's the correct player number. Yep. Also Jim Mueller, same thing. Eric Russell. Eric Russell. Let's see which one. Did he say which one it is? I think this is Eric Russell 2. Eric S. Russell, yes, it is. Yep. It's his work account. And he made fun of us saying we both do way too good of a job of Herbert the Pervert imitation. That's wrong now. Oh, my. Oh, yeah. Would you like to play at my pinballs? Oh, yeah. No, no. Robert Blakeman answered all three, answered three correctly. Correctly. And the final one, I love this one. It's from the Pinball Princess, but this is like the shortest. This is actually an email. Yep. Which we had complaints about the pinball princesses making her emails way too long. Well, we can always split them up. Excellent. She says, happy 50th episode. Woo-hoo! If I haven't made it abundantly clear yet, I think it's super awesome that you guys are doing this. I'm so glad to see you hit this milestone. Really, you guys are great, and it makes me grin from ear to ear knowing my friends host such a cool podcast. I look forward to more excellent episodes, and I'll see you at Stomp. Love you guys. Steph. And she didn't even put her number up yet. No, that was the stuff. I really mean it. Thank you, Steph. Okay. So, we have gathered all the names of the players. The players. Of the listeners who have answered all the questions correct. And Bruce has put them in our favorite program, Random.org. Random.org. which is going to randomly select a player number. I keep saying player number. I'm so in tournament mode. A listener number. It is a number. It is a number. And I guess it is kind of a player number. They're playing a game. Yep. I have the number set. And tell us, what do they win? They win a pinball helper from pinballlifter.com. And a ceramic dalmatian, and they can take the rest on a gift certificate. Yes. and if it's inside the U.S., pinballlifter.com will actually ship this to you free. If it's outside the U.S., we'll have to figure something out. Since we do have a couple of Australian people. Right. You've gotten their names in. So I have the numbers in. The true random number generator is in. Between one and blah, blah, blah. I'm bringing it up here on the screen. Bruce has his cam going. I do. Yep. So we have, it's like, I'm KPMG. I'm the independent auditor. See, so I have now. Hopefully I don't give anyone the wrong envelope like the Oscars. Yes, I have the list up in front of me. I have them both in my hand. All right. Numbers. And I'm going to hit the generate button right now. 24. 24, which is? Stephen Taxon. So repeat that again. Stephen Taxon is our winner. Congratulations. We got a little more fanfare there. How's that? He's the one who actually answered the pinball premises number of 31915. It was one of the last numbers that we got, but it worked out. So I will be contacting Stephen, actually tonight. You get before you guys listen to this, though. And make sure. But we will get in touch with you, and we will actually talk to you about how to ship your pinball helper. So congratulations. Congratulations. And thank you everyone who participated. I spent two hours today inputting all the names and the lists and everything like that. So trust me, it was a big pain in the ass to get it ready for when we just did two seconds of fanfare. But I'm glad to see somebody gets a good, fun gift. Now, Ron, you see my video. Yep. Okay. I have now a thank you list. All right. I see four pages there, Bruce. Yes. So I have a lot of thank yous. Oh, my God. Is this like an Oscar acceptance speech? It is like the Oscar acceptance speech. Okay. First and foremost, I'd like to thank you, Ron, for getting us in this fucking stupid mess a year ago. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Ron had the crazy idea over a year ago to say, let's do a podcast. We did a podcast. He's like, oh, we'll do it. We'll see what happens. And 50 episodes later, we have a pretty good following, I would say. I'm very grateful. So I'd first like to thank Ron for that. I want to also thank Ron's parents for giving birth to him. No, not him. For being supportive of him and his pinball hobby, like my mom and dad have also. My dad's really been supportive of my pinball hobby. Of course, he owns some of the games downstairs, and he's also co-owner of pinballlifter.com. So he partially gave away a helper to you guys. Very cool. So now I want to thank some of our guests. Our first guest, Mr. Tim Sexton. You know, great guest. We've had him on. I think he's actually the most. So thanks, Tim. Steven Bowden from Abonis. He's been on twice, and we've talked about him almost every episode. Jeff Teolas from Pinball Profile. This is a special guy. At the end of this episode, you're going to hear he made us a thank you video, a thank you audio. So I was actually really surprised and really touched. So Jeff did a great job on this. You'll hear some funny humor and some of our past guests actually thanking us, which was really cool. And thank you, Jeff. It was really important. And, you know, we've both been helping each other out in our podcast, but thank you, Pinball Profile, again. Can't forget Scott C. People are asking about him again to come back on, so we're going to get Scott C. back on. And we will see him at Stomp, so you better come to Stomp. Everyone, Josh Sharpe, president of IFPA, thank you very much. You've been very helpful in two of our episodes. Raymond Davidson, first interview we get of the reigning world champion, we got him. Very cool. Eric Russell, we've got to thank all three of them. Zach, Zach's been on most of our episodes verbally, and he also helps me out big time with games. The Pinball Princess, we've had her on. Can't forget her emails. Excellent person to have on. Greg Pavarelli. Thank you, Greg. Came on once with Tim. And hopefully we get him on solo soon again. He was very good and had a lot of good feedback from him. Nick and Kevin from Buffalo Pinball. Great show we had with them. We still have the challenge out to them. We're going to be playing them soon. And we will be victorious. Hell yeah. Yeah. Mr. Chris Bucci. Can't forget Mr. Bucci. He's done great videos for Ghostbusters and all Big Bang Bar and all the other videos for his My Game Room video clips he does. Yeah, and his YouTube channel. And he's going to be coming back on because he has Star Wars on order, and he's going to make a video for that. Very cool. Jason Floyd. We've got Jason on. Nick Sell and the North American EM Pinball Tour. And we cannot forget our latest, our big winner guest, the 50th biggest fan guest, Ryan Slay. That's right, Ryan Slay. So did you go through all the episodes and just got all the names? Are you sure we didn't miss no one? I don't think so. All right. If I did, I fucked up. Now I want to thank some emailers. That's a really big emailers helping our show out. Our number one emailer. I had to go through all the e-mails. Yes, Ron has them all stored. Jim Mueller, he is our number one e-mailer. So thank you, Jim. Sean O'Shea has two big things. First, he's our number two e-mailer, and he is the creator of the Stomp Tournament name. Thank you, Sean. Ryan C. is our third biggest e-mailer. So thank you, Ryan C. and the funny thing is Scopsy is our fourth biggest emailer because usually we're going back and forth with comments or anything like that Ryan Cooper K-U-I-P-E-R is our fifth biggest emailer and then we'll just go down some of our bigger emails. If I do miss your name it wasn't because I missed it unpurposely. I just went through a lot of them we just say Eric Russell, Pinball Princess Frank Guida, the Pinball Princess father who also did our last show's ending music with the OVA. Soren, who did the software for Ron just now and has actually helped us with other things. Eric Orkinton, Jim Burrell, Tim Peters, John Cosson, another Aussie, he's on the show with Emily and Dr. John. He must talk about us. I haven't heard him talk about us yet. So John, you've got to talk about us. Jason from New Jersey, PM, Lonzo, Jeff C. He's from the Free State Pinball Association. Lucas Nelson. Derek, who he's the one that had the pinball in the apartment. He was worried about having the pinball set up in the apartment, and if there would be too loud. Jay Collins, who we played at Arcade Expo and beat him, and who ran the tournament. Steve Robert Blakeman. Gene Huang, who does the great orange photographs. Tim Peters. He's a big-time supporter on Facebook and also on a couple other things. Lee Wiligowski. I might have screwed that one up. Joey from Buffalo, big pin-sized supporter. Jermaine Moroli, blackjack rom guy who needs him for Papa. Todd Anderson. Aaron Nichols, the Brotherhood of Pinball on Facebook. We also beat him at Arcade Expo. We're not 2-0. We're actually 3-0. We beat Scott. Forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Brian from Mass Pinball, Sean McDermott, J.D. Swinkles, Pete from Long Island, Steven Daxton, and Mr. Keith Elwin, who gave us some nice roms. And we're going to get lots of emails after this on how people's names were butchered. Yeah. I take no responsibility in butchering of names. I do it all the time. don't forget to like us please and make comments on iTunes and I would like to thank Bruce, Diane, and Gail for doing this ridiculous thing and I'll thank my parents too what the hell hi mom, hi dad and I'd like to thank all the listeners who gave us a try and I'd also like to thank Nate Shivers from the from the Coast to Coast Pinball Podcast, which is kind of held up there as like the gold standard of pinball podcasts. Yep, which is back. Which is back. So I just thought that would be appropriate. Now he seems to be, he seemed to state that he's going to be doing them regularly again. Yes, which is cool. Welcome back, Nate. Welcome back. So let's see. We did the contest. You have anybody else you want to thank? Let's see. Do I have anyone else I want to thank? I've got one more person I have to thank, my wife, who's had to put up with all 50 episodes also. She's taken out a couple hours of her day. She's sitting right now in front of the TV doing something else while I'm doing this. Thank you, dear. Thank you for letting me have this ridiculous hobby at our house for how many years and how many people come over and all this other stuff. But don't forget, save that date, October 7th. What will happen October 7th? October 7th will be the best tournament in Finger Lakes, which is the fifth annual Finger Lakes Open pin golf. And don't forget Stomp in two weeks. Not even two weeks, actually. A week and a couple days. July 15th. People are making fun of your Stars tournament. People are making fun of it. Well, I have one more person. Okay. Mike Pupo. Yes. From Flipper Fidelity. Yes. Okay, why are they making fun of stars? They think the score's too high. They think it's too hard. So some people think the star score is too hard. Oh, wussies. So, Bruce, would you say you're better than Steven Bowden? Oh, God, no. Would you say you're better than Tim Balls? No, but yeah, I can hang with, but no. Okay, would you say you're better than Levy? I'm hungry, but he's better ranked than me. So why would any of these players have an issue beating your 330K score? Because it's the most intimidating game in the world, brother. Brother. The whole code is just, come on, dude. It's 400K or plus, brother. Come on. There's $100 on the line for that. And the thing is, it's going to be the single-game tournament game anyway. Exactly. So you're going to be putting money into it. anyway, and it's just kind of a bonus. If you can just blow up the game, boom, you get that. And, oh yeah, gotta thank Scott again, because he provided another ROM. This one for Black Knight. It makes the mystery so it's just 30k. Nice. I think it's a straight 30k, so you won't have a deal where someone gets 10k and the other person gets 50k. Okay, cool. And I saw Chuck Webster went this weekend and... Went to Rock Fantasy. And placed. Yep. In front of the show, Frank got second, and our own Steven Bowden got first. Of course he did. Of course he did. And Nick Zendejas got fourth. And the left flipper button on the Rob Zombie that fell off when I was playing it fell off two more times during the tournament. Ta-da! So I think someone just needs a tool and put that thing in tighter. Obviously, finger tight is not good enough there. I guess there's just so much energy being pushed in that machine to play better with it, right? It must be the subwoofer or something knocking it loose. Yeah, it's got to be. It could be. So I think that's about it with everything. I think so, too. So we got Funkum C as a Pintastic. Pintastic coming up and Stomp. Yep, and Stomp. And then I have a week off. I get to actually have a week where I can relax a little bit. and then Pinberg, and then another week off, and then Saratoga Pinball Show, and then Buffalo Pinball Show, which I've got to get two games ready for, and then League, Western New York Pinball League starts. Sign-up start up in two weeks. League, 30 people, 30 people in the league. People, damn, 30 people. Last year, we filled it up within four days, and we had people extra waiting on the sides. So without any further ado, this is sent to us from Jeff Teolis. Yes, from Pinball Profile. This is Pinball Profile's thank you to the Slam Tilt Podcast. 50 shows. What took you guys so long? Hey, Ron. Hey, Bruce. Congratulations on 50 podcasts of the Slam Tilt Podcast. It's Jeff Teolis from Pinball Profile. Thank you for the entertainment you've provided and for the help with my podcast, podcasts, getting it up on iTunes, being guests, plugging it, too kind. And I also love promoting Slam Tilt Podcasts as well because I think there's more than just 50 podcasts. It's a big deal. Let's break down the numbers. That is 50 different Beavis and Butthead clips, 124 yawns from Bruce, 162 times that Ron went, oh my, oh my, too many Eric Russells to count, 221 fails, zero. loveforgotleapsystem3, at least 20 horrible Australian accent attempts, Ryan, you can agree with me there, and 64,780 poetic words emailed from Stephanie, the pinball princess, and that's just her last one. You can tell you two are having fun, and so are your guests. I'll have you both on again as we get closer to the Buffalo Summer Pinball Open, and I'll see you at Pinburg, even maybe for a podcast pinball challenge with you and the bro guys. Ron, Bruce, keep it up. I love your honest, no-holds-barred show, and it's fun to listen to, and a few other people I've reached out to, want to say congrats as well. Hey, it's Greg Pavarelli. Shout out to the Slant Hill podcast. Congrats to Ron and Bruce on their 50th show. Keep up the good work, guys. Hey, this is Lonnie Ropp. Bruce, go fuck yourself. Hey, guys, this is Josh Sharpe from the International Flipper Pinball Association. I want to send a big congrats to Ron and Bruce and George Takai and whoever else helps you guys get your stuff done out there for 50 Slam Tilt Podcast episodes. I'm doing this through Jeff Teolis, who I'm sure is only doing this because he reached 50 episodes before you did. So congrats on not beating Jeff to 50, guys. Hopefully there'll be 50 more, and you can beat Jeff this time around. All congratulations messages from Josh are up to $1. Why, hello. My name is Ben Dover. I am the creator of the Bunghole Crane. And ever since you mentioned to me on your Slam Tilt podcast that you'd buy one, sales have gone through the roof. I mean, holy crap. What a shocker. Every time I sit down, I'm shooting another one out. We keep firing them out the back door as fast as we can. Amazon says it's their number two bestseller. Thank you, boys. Hey, this is Tim Balls. I'd like to wish you guys congratulations on 50 episodes. And, you know, one thing I just wanted to tell you guys, I can't stand these rules. You know what? I'll just save it for the podcast. But congratulations on 50 episodes, and here's to another 50 more. Hey, folks. This is Alex Jones. You know, the Globals are taking over, but luckily they haven't hit pinball yet. Congratulations on 50 episodes. Keep up the great work, guys. Keep fighting the good fight. Thank you. Alex Jones here. That's a butthead. Who the hell is this? Okay, guys, I've saved the best for last. Let's give him a call. George Takei here. George, hey, it's Jeff Teols from Pinball Profile. How have you been? I'm good, thanks. Hope the same for you and Brad. We've got to get together soon. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. Say, George, there's this podcast about pinball. It's called the Slam Tilt Podcast with Ron Howlett and Bruce Nightingale. I don't think I've heard of that. Well, anyway, they're celebrating 50 shows and even a tournament in your honor. It's called Stomp on July 15th. Any chance you might be able to come? You are stupid. George, come on. They're really big fans of yours. They even do impressions of you. You are a douchebag. You are always going to be a total douchebag. George? George? All right. Well, so much for that. Anyway, guys, happy 50th. So say goodbye, Bruce. Oh, who do I want to say goodbye to this time? God, who do I want to say goodbye to? I'm just going down the list. I see this person and this person and this person. I feel like I'm on Magic Garden, you know, and this person... No, it feels like it's one of those rock songs where they just can't end it. It's over. No, it's not. Goodbye, Tony Clark. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh my