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Don’s Pinball Podcast is live!

Don's Pinball Podcast Live Streams (YouTube)·video·analyzed·Feb 23, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

Don plays Dune and Avatar at Orono Arcade, discusses pitch setup and introduces "Four Horsemen" investment-grade modern pinball concept.

Summary

Don's livestream from Old Orchard Beach, Maine captures casual gameplay observations and personal travel commentary. Key pinball content includes positive impressions of Dune's evolved code, technical discussion of optimal pitch settings (7 degrees recommended by designer David), comparison with Avatar CE, and introduction of "The Four Horsemen" — a concept identifying Evil Dead, Beetlejuice, Winchester's Mystery House, and Pokemon LE as the four modern machines with secondary market value exceeding MSRP.

Key Claims

  • Dune's code feels fully evolved and much better than earlier versions

    high confidence · Don, speaking from Orono Arcade after playing Dune

  • Dune designer recommends 7 degrees of tilt as optimal, but game plays adequately at 0 degrees (flat) if operator doesn't know better

    high confidence · Don, citing text exchange with David (Dune designer)

  • At 0 degrees pitch, Dune plays floaty compared to optimal; pitch would improve gameplay by approximately 20%

    high confidence · Don, comparing direct gameplay experience with technical guidance

  • Avatar CE plays better than Dune from a gameplay perspective due to four flippers, lower playfield, and bold asset/lighting design

    medium confidence · Don, subjective gameplay opinion based on spinner/multiball experience at Orono Arcade

  • Evil Dead, Beetlejuice, Winchester's Mystery House, and Pokemon LE are the 'Four Horsemen' — modern machines with secondary market value exceeding MSRP

    medium confidence · Don, self-coined concept defining investment-grade modern pinball machines

  • Harry Potter is not a 'horseman' because it is still in production and available at MSRP

    medium confidence · Don, clarifying exclusion criteria for his Four Horsemen framework

Notable Quotes

  • “I played some Dune, and like the code feels fully evolved now. It feels like there's a much better game there. I really dug it.”

    Don@ 6:12 — Positive sentiment shift on Dune post-code updates; reverses earlier criticism

  • “The designer of the game recommends 7 degrees of tilt to be optimal and all the way flat it'd be between 6 and 6.5, it'd be very floaty.”

    Don@ 11:29 — Technical insight from designer communication; normalizes pitch expectations for Dune operators

  • “Avatar, absolutely. Lower playfields, four flippers. I got to give the edge to Avatar. But Dune is very fun.”

    Don @ ~mid-stream — Direct gameplay comparison; establishes Avatar CE as superior from competitive play perspective

  • “The Four Horsemen, right? We got Evil Dead, Beetlejuice, both from Spooky Pinball LLC, Winchester's Mystery House, and the fourth horseman is Pokemon LE.”

    Don@ 17:18 — Introduces investment framework for modern pinball; identifies scarcity-driven secondary market tier

  • “I work at Spooky Pinball LLC. Like, I, you know, I'm not trying to flex or anything, but I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”

    Don@ 12:08 — Establishes Don's role/proximity at Spooky Pinball; signals insider status in community

Entities

DonpersonDavidpersonSpooky Pinball LLCcompanyOrono ArcadevenueStern Pinball Inc.companyDunegameAvatar CEgame

Signals

  • ?

    code_update: Dune's code has undergone meaningful improvements that enhance gameplay experience; Don explicitly notes 'fully evolved' status and redeemed perception

    high · Don: 'the code feels fully evolved now. It feels like there's a much better game there. I really dug it.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Dune machines in field may be configured sub-optimally (flat pitch) due to manufacturer messaging or operator misunderstanding; game designed to play acceptably flat but optimally at 7 degrees

    high · Don: operator insisted machine must be flat per company spec; David (designer) confirmed game plays 'pretty okay' flat but is 20% better with proper pitch

  • ?

    collector_signal: Four modern pinball machines (Evil Dead, Beetlejuice, Winchester's Mystery House, Pokemon LE) are experiencing secondary market premiums; framed as investment-grade tier distinct from in-production titles

    medium · Don: 'The Four Horsemen...these are games that if you've got them at MSRP, you're not losing money...available...their value is higher than what they originally sold for'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Don's perception of Dune has shifted positively post-code updates; previously critical, now views game favorably after playing evolved version

    high · Don: 'Dune has redeemed itself in my mind' (contextual); contrasts with earlier negative commentary implied by 'redeemed'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Avatar CE's four-flipper, lower-playfield design with bold lighting/assets outperforms Dune from competitive play perspective; multiball mechanics (Eclipse spinner jackpots) rated superior

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.054

0:00
Entertainment at this small town. Old Orchard Beach, Maine. There's the Atlantic Ocean, I believe they call it.
0:09
Cool little place. I've been here once before. Bill's Pizza's over there. Rocco's Pizza's right here. Some stuff looks like it's open. I thought, why not enjoy a little coastal seaside town a half hour before I need to go to the airport. So that's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take you with me. Ooh, they got fried pickles. Fried pickles look fun. Fried dough if you've never had it. Of course, I mean it's delicious. It's fried dough. This right here is the reason that I've been here before, particularly for that SDC hurricane that's down there. I think that's the model. I think it's a hurricane. We'll go down and take a look at it. Of course, it is, it's March, it's 40 degrees. It's pretty warm. The snow is just about melting. You can see it in little spots and things. But that's why, for instance, I can't go and get some donuts right now from this place. This is called Palace Playland at Old Orchard Beach.
1:10
This is like, it's a lot better than, than Jersey Shore. It's not as big, of course, but I mean, you've got all the trappings, you know, you've got, you got rides, a little amusement park, a little coaster, some pizza shops, some slice shops, fried food, right on the beach. But it also has this kind of like New England charm feel.
1:32
Reminds me of the Hotel Bell Rock at Europa Park, if you've ever been there, which if you haven't, greatest theme park in the world.
Evil Dead
game
Beetlejuicegame
Winchester's Mystery Housegame
Pokemon LEgame
Harry Pottergame
John Wickgame
Old Orchard Beachvenue
Benton, Wisconsinvenue

medium · Don: 'From a gameplay perspective, we were four flippers. Avatar, absolutely...I got to give the edge to Avatar'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Regional arcade landscape in Maine includes Orono Arcade (strong machine selection), Fun Town (51 machines, closed off-season), and Ice Ice Baby Arcade in New Hampshire; limited accessibility due to seasonal closure patterns

    medium · Don: 'Fun Town...has a large arcade as well, also not open today...Orono Arcade...Cool place...I really like Avatar CE'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Don has direct communication channels with at least one game designer (David/Dune) and knowledge of manufacturer leadership at multiple companies (Stern, Barrels of Fun, Spooky); establishes credibility in community

    high · Don: 'I know the guy that...I know the two guys that own the company...I texted David'

  • ?

    content_signal: Don's Pinball Podcast expanding into travel vlogging format combining personal lifestyle content (beach walks, food) with pinball arcade gameplay; audience engagement through live chat and location-based storytelling

    medium · Entire livestream structure: Don narrating beach visit, then pivoting to arcade gameplay, with invitations for chat engagement ('What's up, Cengiz?')

  • ?

    community_signal: Don framing spring/summer as 'pinball boy summer' inflection point; coordinating multiplayer sessions with community members (Albert, Cengiz); seasonal competitive preparation underway

    medium · Don: 'It's spring. It's a time of transition...We're gonna have the best pinball summer. It's gonna be pinball boy summer, man'

    • 1:39
    I mean, aside from Disneyland, probably my favorite. What's up, Genghis? How you doing? Genghis is doing 5 a.m. walks in Denmark. Don's doing 3 p.m. jaunts out here on the beaches of Maine. We're gonna walk down to the ocean. We'll take a look at the pier. I haven't been here in like six years. Last time I was here, I didn't get a mile-long frank, but I probably would if they were open. Haven't seen any cheese curds. Oh dude, look at this. We're at the beach, but look, sand, snow. Sand, snow. Don't eat the yellow either. But look at this! Not open yet for the season, but bang! I want to go... oh, is that a fun house? It is a fun house! I want to go play in there. Now there is a proper amusement park called Fun Town not far from here. They have a large arcade as well, also not open today. A couple of pinball spots. The biggest one in the area. It's got like 51 machines but doesn't open until my flight has already departed. So I went to Orono Arcade again today. I played some Dune. I have some thoughts. We'll make this pinball themed, I guess. But how can we rant about pinball and Pokemon ball guides and such when we've got a beach? We've got a beach right now. If you go about 2,000 miles down this coast that way, There's probably people in bikinis, but here we're pretty bundled up. It's like 40 degrees and very windy. You know what, I'm from Wisconsin, I'm flying. I'm from the town of Benton. Look at the amusement park in the background. The coolest thing is I get to say that I'm from Benton, Wisconsin now. People ask me like where I'm from. Super cool. Home of spooky pinball. Who else is here? I don't know how to get the comments to show up here. I'm not sure if I'm going to show up here. Whatever, I'll just keep ranting. You guys type, it pops up. Um, yeah, we're at the beach. Look at this pier! Must be low tide. You know we're going out there. Jump in the water. Yeah, I'm going to go feel it, man. Jenga's for you, buddy. My Jenga's lies across this ocean, over on the North Sea. This being the Atlantic, in particular. Oh, dude, I can get shells! One of my favorite things to do. This one. I'm getting this one. This is my favorite thing to do when I travel is to bring shells back for the girls. We'll see what the shell activity is like out here. Alright, waves are crashing out that way, that's where we're gonna go. I'll take you with me. Oh, dude, there's huge clamshells! Son of a butt, look at those. These guys are huge That a nice clamshell Now is this actually from the ocean or is this from the restaurant where it was just thrown over like trash Hard to say Oh man, nothing I love than going under a stinky pier. You know, it's so weird to be walking around and there's snow on the ground and I'm also hearing seagulls. Very strange. Only in New England, right? And probably every other place on this latitude of the earth. I got my green kicks on today. We'll be ready for St. Patrick's Day. Alright, we're gonna touch the water. I came all the way here. We gotta touch it. I can't get my kicks too wet.
    5:14
    Let's wait for a good wave. This one's coming. Right over here. I feel it. Come here, you. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's titanic frigid cold. Holy garbage. The salt water freezes at a much lower temperature. We're gonna talk about pinball here in a second, damn it. But I'm here in Maine. I'm here at the beach in Maine. Oh, it's a shhh, freaking, it's a quahog, quahog over there. Alright, under the pier at Old Orchard Beach in Maine for Don's Adventure Channel. Look at this, man. Yeah, I got a rope swing right here. That looks like maybe some cataphyte came and went all in touching. Oh, dude, it's seriously cold.
    6:03
    Alright, let's get to the pinball content. We're gonna be here, okay? It's really windy. I played me some Dune today. Holy shit, I gotta get out of the front of here. It's windy. I played some Dune, and like the code feels fully evolved now. It feels like there's a much better game there. I really dug it. I really dug it. I was at a Rono Arcade in Rono Bay, up by Bangor, about two and a half hours north of this place.
    6:29
    Look at how cool, man! I want to splash around. I want to splash around and play. And here was something cool, which I hadn't seen before. This is the moment that I was like, alright, alright. I think Dune has redeemed itself in my mind. I want to play in these pile pools, dude. It looks so fun. I want to build a sandcastle. My hands are freaking numb. That little paint box, right? This is not Canada. This is Maine, sir. Canada's back over that way. Regardless, here in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, freezing on a seacoast. The pain box where the ball comes down the left out lane, locks into that pain box, and then typically you go into that mode where you gotta hold the button down with your hand. I hate it. I don't like playing one-handed. Anyway, this time the ball just went in there, it spit out another ball, and I kept playing like a ball locked in there. I hadn't seen this before. Then I had a ball that drained out that left out lane, and right as it was going down, boom, that first ball ejected. From the bottom level down!
    8:05
    I'm going to have dinner, bro. I have two lemon drops for you. That's exactly what I need. I gotta fly in a couple hours, man. We'll make it happen. I'll make a special trip out. Dude, these shells are massive. That guy's a popper, man. This must be a heavily shelled area. Alright, so, um, also, I played Avatar CE, the game that I used to own. I put my score up there. They must reset the scores, like, every month or something, because every time I go there, I'm putting my name up on every machine. Cool place, Orono Arcade. I really like Avatar CE. I'm glad I owned it. Look at this, like, it's hard to see on this, but this is like coastal Maine looking right now. Like a lot of place to kind of ape this, you know, New England, Victoria kind of stuff, Yacht and Beach Club, Boston Harbor bullshit. This is the real thing right here Which is better Avatar or Dune from a plain perspective Avatar for sure Listen the day cycle I got into a multiball and I was ripping that spinner for the Eclipse jackpots And like the way that the, very subtly, the Eclipse comes on and then everything is day glow and then the Eclipse goes out, you gotta get those jackpots. Like all of the assets are just so big on that screen and the lighting is so big and bold that from a gameplay perspective, We were four flippers. Avatar, absolutely. Lower playfields, four flippers. I got to give the edge to Avatar. But Dune is very fun. Now, it would have helped if Dune was pitched a little bit more. This is funny. Get this. So I'm there playing and I noticed that Dune, the leg levelers are all the way to the floor. And I'm like, this feels really floaty. And I like I was like, should I go tell him? I was like, No, I'm not gonna. Whatever. It's not that important. And then the guy just And then he comes over and he's like, this is the only Dune in Maine. And I'm like thinking, well, yeah, I mean, they're still making them. There's not that many out there, but cool. And then he was like, the greatest pinball player in Maine just played this. And I'm like, well, why am I putting my scores up then? You know, whatever. And then I was like, oh, by the way, it just, it feels kind of floaty. Like, do you think the back leagues can come up anymore? He said, no, no, this company. Yeah, but Dune is Tim and the Shadow of Maine. I get it. He's like, this company swears that you need to put the leg levelers all the way flat and then it's perfect. And I'm like, I don't know, it's just it's kind of floaty. I think a little bit of pitch would probably help out. And he's like, no, no, this isn't a Stern. And I'm like, listen, I'm like, dude, come on. Like, I know the guy that I know the two guys that own the company, man. I'm just and I'm not trying to be that guy. I'm just like, I think it would play a little bit because I played Dune before. And I just need a little pitch. And I mentioned to the guy like, oh, I know a guy that works there, and I'd never heard that before, so that's weird, you know, but I want to trust but verify. So I texted David, I'm like, is this true that Dune should just be totally flat? And he's like, look, no. But we designed the game so that if you don't know any better, and you put it totally flat, it's still going to play pretty okay. And it did play pretty okay. Ok, I can just tell, it would just be 20% better with the right amount of pitch. So for everybody out there, the designer of the game recommends 7 degrees of tilt to be optimal and all the way flat it'd be between 6 and 6.5, it'd be very floaty. And I came off of Avatar and went over to Dune and was like this game's floaty. This game's floaty. And the guy just, he doesn't know any better I'm not gonna hold it against him or anything but like I was just trying to subtly suggest that, hey man, let's just go a couple centimeters, man, I really think I'm going to go out. And he's just like, no, stupid. This game, this isn't Stern. And I'm like, I know the guys that run Stern. I know the guys that own barrels. I work at Spooky. Like, I, you know, I'm not trying to flex or anything, but I know a thing or two about a thing or two. I don't know everything, but I do know that this feels pretty floaty. And I've played like 10 dunes. I was at the media day for cripes sakes. But I didn't reveal anything.
    12:26
    I didn't like, you know, don't you know who I am? No, I never do that. So I had a good time. The guy was super nice. You know, I had like the best game ever on John Wick and then my last ball got ball trapped on a bolt nut above the pop bumper up on a little shelf ...
    13:13
    His or her day. So that was fun. That's what I did. That's my Dune story for today. I had a great time on Dune. Avatar CE had fallen to about 12,000 and it's kind of holding right in there, that 12 to 13. It's a great game. It's beautiful. The assets are great You probably you know I think Elton John plays faster than it but there there some clever bits to Avatar that I really appreciate A lot of clever ball pass that you kind of discover That right upper flipper can do a lot sending the ball around different loops and stuff
    13:48
    So, you know, what am I going to do with the, you know, I got like, I don't know, 60 tokens left in my little cup. So what am I gonna do with them? So I just left them in a hole. I figure some kid will dig that. I would have dug that for sure. So here we are, snow, dune. How about that? This was fun. I have to, I got about 10 minutes, I had to head to the airport, fly to Chicago. The reason that I came down here was that I could get a direct flight from Portland, Maine directly to Chicago, no transfers. So we slept in a bit today, I played some pinball, we came to Old Orchard Beach, I ate a pizza, cargo pizza in Portland, Maine, great place. I'm going to go to the main place. It's my second time going there. It was awesome. I'll go back. And then yeah, this is as far north in Maine as I had ever been before. And so now I came down and now I've done all of Maine top to bottom. And I can honestly say Lewiston, Maine is one of the worst towns I've been in.
    14:48
    So what do you guys think? I hope you watched Portlandia when you were there. Albert, that's the wrong Portland. But I have seen most of Portlandia and it is one of my favorite shows because if you know a certain type of people, all those archetypes come from reality, very much so. Look at this place. I feel like I'm at Disney at the Yacht and Beach Club. Right on the beach here. And look at this place. Classic old amusement park. Creepy clown on the sign. I'm not even hungry, but I think I'm going to go grab a celebratory slice and then I'm going to get my butt to the airport. Because my flight board's in three, four, five, two hours. My flight board's in two hours. I should probably get there. Don told me you're the Pokemon master. Oh, Albert. Hey, Albert, it's Genghis. Let's all get together. Let's talk. I'm home for a couple of days. Do you guys have any time? Albert, how are your mornings? I want to talk about Pokemon cards. I want to talk about pinball machines. I'll even let you two talk about tournaments if you want. This place is so cool, man. It's just like I remember. The pier. Come July, this place is going to come alive, man. Ooh, lobster. I want a frozen banana. What's... oh, can you... What's hard ice cream? Does that have liquor in it? Or is it just like not soft serve?
    16:27
    Give me a please can I have a nut bar? I want a frozen banana and a nut bar right now. I have a new job that can make myself free for a few hours. Cool, dude.
    16:38
    Albert, we'll chat man. I need to hit you up. We're gonna rally pinball. We're going it's it's spring. It's a time of transition. And I want to get ready. So we're gonna have the best pinball summer. It's gonna be pinball boy summer, man. We should do it. All the pinball boys, this will be our summer. We'll play some games. I'm about to have the Four Horsemen soon. The Four Horsemen of Pinball, real quick, land with this. The Four Horsemen of Pinball, right now, these are the modern pinball machines that are all available... Well, they're not available, but their value is higher than what they originally sold for. These are games that if you've got them at MSRP, you're not losing money. The Four Horsemen, right? We got Evil Dead, Beetlejuice, both from Spooky Pinball, Winchester's Mystery House, and the fourth horseman is Pokemon LE. And somehow, by hell or high water, the four horsemen are coming home. My hope is that they stay for a long time. But those right now, those are the four games. We'll see if... I don't think... Harry Potter's not a fifth. Harry Potter's not a horseman, because Harry Potter's still being made, still available at MSRP. The Games that are unavailable at MSRP, going for more money, and modern are those four. Hey look, it's us, Albert, it's me and you. Look at, we're touching our tips right here, man. Look at that. What a symbol of brothership. Pinball Boy Summer's coming. I'm gonna go get a slice. Y'all be good, we'll talk. How do I... Oh god, now I gotta do this thing where I can awkwardly put my phone right in the frame.