Double Super Jet Pod! I need a rapper. I need a roof. I want targets I can hit. I need to shoot. I need a double Super Jet Pod for my life. That's right! And now, the Hall & Oates of pinball podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Whoop, boom, shakalaka. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball? If you thought we were done at 50, we're back. It's 51. What's going on? Joining me tonight is Nick Lane. Nick Lane and Skip Natty. What? Skip Natty on the Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball show. What? Code Gaming, what? Code Gaming, what? I'm here. Special guest. You guys, I had you guys hanging on by a thread all week by, who was going to be the special guest? I didn't skip Maddie. It's Flash. I'm actually Flash. If you didn't know, I play guitar. It's great. There you go. Nick, what's up? Howdy. How's your month and a week or so since our last show? It seems like forever, and it also seems like yesterday, so I don't know. Yeah, time really doesn't matter anymore. No, it does not. Why don't we get right into thanking some partners? That's what everybody tunes in for, right? Skip, now do you want to do the partners? Definitely not. You can't do any worse than Jay did. I mean, that's true. Probably not. You want me to do them? Do them. Okay. All right. We'll start off with our premier partner sponsor of the season, Penn Stadium. PinStadium Lights. Go to pinstadium.com to get lighting for your pinball machine. Save 10% with coupon code BUFFALO. Also sponsoring our grand prize tonight, which we'll be giving away for our awesome competition that people submitted prizes and entries for. So thank you to everybody for that. DoubleDangerPinball, ddpinball.com. Save 15% with coupon code BUFFALO. Merch, swag, everything awesome, cool, and wearable in pinball you can get from Double Danger Pinball. The Mod Couple, modcouplepinball.com, for all your cool mod needs for your newest and latest and greatest pinball machines. I have a whole bunch of their stuff in a bunch of my games, and I love it. So check out themodcouplepinball.com. Flip N Out Pinball, where you can go get a new pinball machine. Talk to Zach Menne at Flip N Out Pinball. Flippinoutpinball.com. He'll get you hooked up. Pinside.com, exclusive sponsor of the podcast, pinside.com, where you go to figure out how to fix weird issues on your pinball machines, with other owners and talk to other owners and threads about this really weird, stupid thing where you have to take off like 9,000 pieces of a game to get to one rubber. I had to do that this week. That's awesome and super fun. But Pinside will help you out there, so go check them out. Jersey Jack Pinball, jerseyjackpinball.com, makers of the most beautiful pinball machines in all of the universe, Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean, Willy Wonka, and Dialed In, and whatever's coming up next because it's going to be awesome anyway, JerseyJackPinball.com. PinballRaffle.org, PinballEDU, our friend Joe Saeed over there, runs a raffle just about every month. Go ahead and get an entry and win yourself a brand-new pinball machine to support a great cause while you're at it, PinballRaffle.org. Community Beer Works, CommunityBeerWorks.com, home of the best beer in Buffalo and the Buffalo Fry Cities area. I don't know what you guys call it. Close enough, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, all right. Buffalo metropolitan area. Communitybeerworks.com. Cometpinball.com. Makers of the best LEDs in all of the pinball industry. Check out our friends at cometpinball.com. Pinball Mix. Pinballmix.com. Check out Pinball Mix if you want to get a new mix for your latest and greatest pinball machines in the stern variety or potentially some sort of awesome custom pinball mix for, I don't know, maybe say you have a Metallica and you really like this weird band from the 90s or something like that that nobody else likes. You can really get a cool mix for your pinball machine from pinballmix.com. And you get a free Easter egg with coupon code BUFFALO. And last but not least, Titan Pinball, titanpinball.com. Also, coupon code BUFFALO to save 10%. silicone rings for your pinball machines and the best freaking mats to stand on that Kevin left at my house and I'm very lucky to have it because it saves my feet each and every Wednesday yeah if uh if you have me over to your house I may bring a tight mat and forget it there and then you can just have it so invite me over but yeah not until we not until coronavirus is over please thank you Skip you nailed it uh thank you a thousand times better than Jay Parabellar but that you know That's, well, I mean, obviously. That's huge. It's really not that high. It's saying a lot. Because Jay's pretty amazing. All right. Let's jump right into, you know, if there's anything happening right now, it's just like tons of pinball news. So why don't we talk about pinball news? Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. Show hunt. It's on fire. It's on fire. We're going to start off with Legends of Valhalla. Legends of Valhalla. Skip, Andy, you played that game, didn't you? I played it over at Adam Gasek's house. We streamed it here on Buffalo Pinball on our Twitch channel, and it's uploaded to YouTube. An amazingly cool, awesome short-run game by the folks at Riot Pinball, and I just had an absolute blast playing it. Yeah, so there's six of these machines that have been made. Adam Gasek, who you may remember from our time at Domino's headquarters, He was the dude at Domino's that made the Domino's pinball machine happen. And so we got connected up with him there. And he lives near Skip, and he got one of these games, and he said, hey, Skip, want to come over and stream it. So Skip was one of the lucky ones to go and check it out. What are your hot takes on this game? What did you think of it being one of the only ones in the world to have played this game so far? Yeah, so the cool thing about Legends of Valhalla is that obviously, you know, not a whole lot of people had seen it before. I hadn't really seen it except for a few pictures from Adam and some of the stuff that's been on the pin side thread from the folks making the game just to see the progress. So I'd been keeping an eye on it. I really, really enjoyed just the layout, the feel of the game. you could tell that these guys hadn't, you know, this wasn't their first rodeo, right? Obviously they had done Wrath of Olympus, and although I hadn't had a chance to play that, you can imagine the kind of experience that comes with making a game a second time, right? You're making another game, and you've learned, okay, this is how the shot geometry should feel or something like that. This is the kind of feel I'm going for. You could tell they totally got that, right? The kinetic, quote-unquote kinetic satisfaction, which everybody talks about and raves about, is definitely there in this pinball machine. There's tuck shots. There's easy shots. There's a little bit of something for everybody. There's a whole bunch of stuff available to you at the start of the game, too, right? So you don't have to just choose to do one thing. You can kind of go in all these different directions. And you could tell that the code was only just going to get better. So I had a lot of fun. So talk to us about, like, the rules that, like, how do you approach that game? What are you trying to do? Those sorts of things. When you step up to it, how would you play it? Yeah, so you start off essentially with four modes ready to go right off the bat. And, again, this was, I don't know, what, a month and a half ago or so now, a month ago. So I think things may have changed, and they've been making some improvements based on some of the stuff that we gave them feedback on. But essentially you get a set of modes ready to go right at the start. You can shoot three different shots to start a mode, which I thought was really interesting and neat. They didn't make you have to shoot one scoop or make you have to shoot one loop or something like that. It was shoot any of these three things, and you can go ahead and start a mode. But along with that, there's things like collecting weapons, and those weapons actually enable you to open up different tiers of modes as you play throughout the game as well. So if you really wanted to, say, just play an early mode or something like that and get that done and then try to build up your weapons, you can play the more valuable stuff later in the game. You can totally do that. there is a main multiball where the balls actually lock up in the ship mech, which is in the upper right-hand part of the game, which I thought that side ramp to the ship was a cool freaking shot. I mean, the ramp entrance is huge, right? So let's not mistake the fact that the ramps, the three ramps in the game, all have gigantic, they're gaping wide. So basically, like, people with beginner skill sets, intermediate skill sets, or advanced skill sets are all going to jump up to this game. I think have fun with it just because they're like, yeah, I can shoot this thing that looks really cool, right? Yeah, I can tell from you guys streaming it, it was just like you were nailing it, especially that side ramp. You'd figure, because side ramps tend to be tough to hit, and you guys were just nailing it. The flippers seemed really powerful and easy to make the shots, right? Yeah, wide open. And the ramp shots themselves were wide open. But then, like, you get into some of the lighter modes and some of the tougher stuff, and you're having to shoot, you know, like the inner loop on the side of the shift where you're having to shoot the left loop, which was pretty tight as well. So the game mixed that up really, really well, and if you wanted to actually progress and do some, you know, actually make some progress and play all sorts of parts of the game, it mixed it up really, really well. And I thought while the scoring was interesting in some scenarios and some of the choices in terms of how to start the multiball, the main multiball, and light your locks, We gave them feedback on that stuff right away, and they said, okay, we're going to go ahead and make this change. So they've already made the change, right? So there's a set of three stand-up targets on the far right side, which you should really be able to hit from the upper flipper on the left. But only one of them was your light lock shot. And we were having – we spent a whole game, all four of us, spent a whole game trying to hit this one target, right, to start this multiball to get these locks lit. Not a one of us could do it, which I think said a lot, right? Yeah. So they took that into account and immediately said, okay, we're going to go ahead and change that rule so that the first time around, you can hit any of those three targets and it'll light your locks. So people can enjoy that ship mech, the locking ball ship mech, right away, right? You don't have to be a master at the game and have spent hundreds of hours on it shooting all these shots to jump into it and just get to the really cool thing that people want to do. So I thought that was awesome. And that's like the cool feedback and awesome responsiveness you want to hear from somebody like that who understands the pains and growing pains of somebody who's brand new to the game versus somebody who's been in front of it forever. So I thought they did a phenomenal job. Yeah, I was just listening to a podcast about video game and playtesting, and they were talking about how playtesters, when they play a game, they've played it so much that the game ends up getting way too hard because they can play it from memory, right? It's like they know how to play it. They're the experts at playing this game. So to them, the game seems too easy. But for somebody just stepping up to the game who hasn't played it a thousand times, you need to make it accessible, even to a great player, right? You got this cool toy in there. You want them to be able to check it out, right? Yep, that's exactly what they did, too. And, you know, video games do it. There's some video games that are on the market today that do a great job of that, right? So they'll change things and consistently change, quote, unquote, the metagame of the game in order to make it both accessible to new players and to advanced or people who have been with the game forever. And that's the thing that I love about what they did with this game. It just really made me feel appreciated as somebody who had the chance to be able to show that off and give them the feedback that they needed there. That's awesome. So what were your thoughts on, like, the other aspects of the game, the art, the sound, the light show, things like that? you know, from standing there in front of the game, you know, I've got these pictures here that I'm showing. They're Adam's cell phone pics, so they're not that great. But how did it look and sound in person? Yeah, the art in person is really, really good. The play field art is very – you can tell that stuff's hand-drawn, and the process to do that is obviously not an easy one. And there's no way I could do any of that, I know for sure. So I'm super impressed. As somebody who would love to, you know, be able to sketch something out on a piece of paper, but then put it in front of somebody as an actual working, you know, living thing like this pinball machine is. The art's fantastic. The music's really cool and integrated well. One of the things I made note of immediately was I'd like some more directional information as the game is going along, right? So I think they've taken some of that feedback into account as well. You just need more help, right, if you're starting off. And they were 100% receptive to that. But art was great. Really, really cool. Sounds were awesome. Yeah, I mean, I could see that game going into production for a company. I would buy that game over 100 different production games that have come out in the last decade, right? I mean, it's crazy. Exactly. Nick, did you get to see the stream? What did you think of the game if you did? I did not, but I was curious based on what Skip was saying. Is the game too easy for somebody who's experienced? I don't think so, because the game offers you both a really good mix of tough and easy shots. Easy shots can do some things earlier on in the game, and you'll see that. But then as we opened up the later tier modes, you'd see that it was more focused on some of the tougher stuff. And if you really wanted to blow it up, one of the things that I did was I ended up getting like 20-some million, which was totally unbalanced in the sense of everything else that had happened, on essentially one shot. because I made a hurry up, but to do that, I had to hit that inner loop on the side of the boat a whole handful of times in order to even light that as a possibility. So you're making a very difficult shot in order to be able to do that. So they give you that good mix, and I think the ability to be able to hit some of the ramps easily as comboable shots in the game, but then have to make the tougher shots to really, like, deep dive is a really, really cool mix. Cool. Yeah. All right. Well, that sounds like an awesome game, and hopefully they'll get more of those out there. If not, we're all just going to go hang out at Adam's house. That's fine. He didn't invite us, but we're going to go over there. We got his address now. Yeah, exactly. I've been there. We went there before the Dominoes stream to grab a part. It was a panicked situation, but we made it. Fantastic. So in my slideshow here, we're seeing Legends of Valhalla, but we're also seeing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which you also got to play. So that's the other reason we really wanted you on here was to talk about TMNT because Nick and I have not had the chance to play it. So what did you think of playing Ninja Turtles? Yeah, so I'll preface this with saying, again, it was on early code, so this was right after the game originally came out, although they touted the code as full release right at the time, which is totally understandable. The game was essentially feature complete. um the shots are really fun it you know it felt like bored to me for sure um it's got a lot of his signature it's got that under the left flipper thing which like feels a lot like Munster's the Dragula shot or whatever um it's got the the classic like left and right ramp that you feel like um the right ramp feels like it would be the right loop on Tron and the left ramp feels like it would be the left, you know, like it's got his signature all over it. It's got that little inner loop behind the or underneath the Turtles van, which is a lot like Quora, right? Like it kind of feels like it's in the same spot. So I think the layout is really, really cool. The upper left flipper having multiple options was nice. I didn't get to play the premium or LE, which allows you the ability to turn the glider, right, which I thought would be really cool to control the path of the ball back, the flippers um but even on the pro i'd like the options that were available with the shots um i still am not really a huge fan of these long um stand-up targets on the sides that have kind of gone into um his most recent games and that's fine they're just kind of there and whatever but i will say the game did have an issue with um i thought there was a a little oddity in the fact that if you shoot the layer, which is under the left upper flipper, right, and that's how you start training, you want to be able to train your turtle up to higher levels so more powers become available to them or higher levels of scoring and certain things, right? You shot that, but then the up kicker or the post that stopped the ball was kind of further up the lane than I figured it would be. So it would actually gather momentum as the ball was coming back down through the return and in a lot of cases would just rattle in the two inlanes and then bounce on the left out lane on Adam's game, which I was like, why would you even do this? What sense does that make? But I assume just changing the leveling of the game or something like that could help fix that. Yeah, for sure. Other than that decision, the design was neat. The code at the time I played it just wasn't really there yet. The bonus was totally unbalanced, So I'm pretty sure they said in recent revisions they fixed that, which is nice. I'd love to play it again because it's shot interesting, and I'd like to see where it goes. Right. So what's the play time on that thing? Is it short, medium, long? My first game played pretty short because the return through the right loop to the upper left flipper was really fast. Like, I was not expecting how fast that thing was going to come through there. but once I got the timing of that and was able to actually make those shots from the side flipper the second game I played quite a while so um it could have and extra balls were like just like water at that point it was like okay let me just get these three extra balls real fast and I played through seven of the eight modes like you know just like that so um it didn't take me a whole lot of time to figure it out um and get the feel for it which is nice right if that's what you're looking for. But yeah, I would love to dive into it a little bit deeper for sure. Yeah, I know you played it early and you haven't spent much time. Do you get the sense that the code has depth to it? No, but I mean, you know, the training I think has a whole separate layer or like layer, not layer, layer of intricacy that some of those, some of Dwight Sullivan's other games don't necessarily have, which I'd like to explore a little bit more and figure out what the best way to attack, you know, how to layer that into the rest of the game is, right? Because it seems like it could be a pretty important piece. But in terms of, if you're just looking to play modes and a couple of multiballs, like you're going to get through eight modes and two multiballs, like pretty quick um the fact that it's got co-op is really neat uh and they're bringing that in but um the oddity i think with the co-op and this is just my opinion i guess is that if one player earns the like let's say the mini wizard mode right team up then all if you're playing a four player co-op game all four players start their ball that next ball after it's been earned with that available to them which i was like why would everybody want to play that i guess you're not making any more progress. You're all just kind of stuck at the same spot then. I don't know. Whatever. It was weird. But not my favorite part of the game. But the idea of having co-op available in more games I think is really fun. So you can bring, you know, if I'm playing and I'm a better player than so-and-so who I'm playing with, if they're cheering for me rather than rooting against me to lose the ball and just hurry up and get done so they can play, that's good for all of us. awesome yeah so i appreciate your thoughts on that um game game i assume the game looks as amazing in person as it does in the pictures right but art's really nice it's um i there's this i don't know if i'm like spoiled or whatever by zombie yeti but i like some of his other art packages a little bit more but this looks good i mean i have i feel like i have to pick some stuff out you know and just kind of focus on it with a lot of the art that he does because there's just so much there. Some of it kind of gets lost in the sea of amazingness. So it might just be that. But, I mean, he's a great artist, and he does amazingly fantastic work, and he could do every Eastern pinball machine from now until eternity, I'd be happy. I'm right there with you. Awesome. Well, Nick and I have talked about it as much as we can, so I don't – Nick, unless you have anything else to offer on Turtles, we'll move on to the next topic. No, I'm just ready to play it, you know, at this point. Yeah. I know. Who knows when the hell that'll be? That's the sad part. All right. So let's get into, I want to talk a little bit about a new game that I've got. And you can see it behind me over here. It's, I got a P3. And in it right now is Heist. I also have the play field for Cosmic Heart Racing. So we're going to talk a little bit about both of those. But we'll start with Heist. Heist is the newest release from Multimorphic. Multi-morphic, they, you know, a couple episodes back, we had Stephen Silver on, who was the creative director of Heist. It's their fourth play field, I want to say, for the P3 system. So if you're not familiar with the P3, we've talked about it a lot. You can go back and listen to our interview with Jerry for the specifics. But basically, in a nutshell, it's a pinball machine that you can play multiple pinball machines on. It has interactive play field at the bottom. It has the back third you can swap out for different games when the new playfields come out. You pop them in there, you get a whole new game for a fraction of the cost of buying a whole new machine. So Heist is easily their best game, and it is a great game all around. It stands on its own as a great pinball machine. I'll kind of go down some of our usual categories in this. So in the art, I think they nailed it. It's got a cool comic book style feel to it. Here, I'll take you back to the back glass art. So it's got this kind of cartoony comic book feel to it. Really good, really well done, professionally done. I don't know, it stands up there with some of the best art that's out there for pinball right now, I think. It's fun, fits the theme. The sound is also really good. The call-outs are, so you've got local professional voice actors to do all the different characters have their own unique voices. So the gist of the game is you're trying to assemble your crew to pull a heist on Mr. Big, who's that character in the back there. And each of the characters have their own personality. There's the hacker, there's the demolition man, there's the wheel man, a safecracker, mastermind, and the cat burglar. And so they all have their own unique modes, and you're trying to – so once you play their mode, if you play it successfully and you collect that character, they're ready to go on a heist with you. They can get captured by the cops who come by on that wall of scoops, and if you knock it into the wall of scoops in the back, the cops will take the character and put them in jail. Or if you fail the mode, they go in jail. You can break them out of jail by going into jailbreak multiball, and then you have to hit the shot associated with that character to break him out. So the more characters you have going into your heist, the more valuable the heist is. So there's a lot of risk-reward versus, like, do I want to just, like, do a heist and get there, or do I want to try to push it and add more characters to pull this off? I really like that aspect of it. It's had me coming back for one more game from that sense. from a toys perspective. It's got this amazing crane, which you can see here. You know, Skip Nandy's got a Batman in 66, and that crane is cute. This crane is awesome. This takes it to the next level. So not only can it pick up the ball off the ramp there on the right, you see the little green sign. There's a diverter there that will stop the ball. It can pick the ball up off of there and hang it over the screen and then lower it down, and you can knock it off. If it's got, for crane multiball, you can do like a missed multiball style, multiball start where you knock it off the crane and then you go into multiball. But the crane can also come down and be a bash toy. Let me see if I have a picture over here. So there's the front of it. That can lower down to the play field. It extends out across the screen that's in the play field, and it becomes a bash toy. So you can have some physical interactivity even over the screen, which is really awesome. And one of the coolest toys in pinball. I like it a lot. And it's actually got some personality, if that makes sense. During crane multiball, it kind of fights against you. It can throw the balls off the – pick up the balls off of the ramp and throw them down at you and things like that. So it's a really cool toy. Display is a little unique on this game because you have the display not only on the back, but you also got the big display in the play field. So what's cool about that is you have, like, this looping cityscape there, but it also will pop up and display information right in front of you. While I play this game and any of the P3 games, I don't find myself looking up at the backbox display while I play because everything is presented right there in front of me. So it'll pop up info on the upper part of the screen, but also in kind of the drain area, There's your traditional DMD-style information ready to go there, so it shows your progress towards multi-balls, how many donuts you've collected to bribe the cops, all sorts of stuff like that. So it's got your score and balls remaining, all that right there, so you know where you are at all times. It also will, like when you bash the crane, it does an explosion on the screen underneath it, So it kind of brings interactivity and some interesting elements, visual elements to the play field, as well as not just being on a display behind the game, which is cool. Lighting, it's got really neat light shows. So on the back third, let me see if I can up close here. Yeah, so here's the back third of the machine. There's RGB LEDs throughout this whole cityscape. So they'll light up differently. And so it looks like the buildings are all lit up differently. One of my favorite effects in the game is the multiball start for the police multiball. And there's, like, red and blue lights cycling around, and it looks like there are police lights on top of the car. Really cool, really cool visual effects that they pull off in this back part of the game. Gameplay we talked about a little bit. You know, you're trying to assemble your crew, pull off a heist. The final wizard mode isn't in there yet, but Jerry was on my stream two weeks ago talking about it, and it sounds really cool, and hopefully we're going to see it soon, but it's good to know that even more is coming for this game. Theme integration, I mean, it's a unique theme. So for everybody who talks about, oh, there's no unique themes in pinball anymore, they need to make a unique theme. No, there are. There's games like Heist and Dialed In and TNA, and this is another one. And, you know, while I think it can work against the machines, like people aren't going to see, like, Heist and go, oh, my God, I used to watch Heist when I was a kid. Like, I did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'm buying this instantly. I need to have an LE immediately. This is my dream theme. What it offers is the ability for them to create their own world and make something unique and interesting and just do whatever they want within that world. So if you play Dialed In, it kind of reminds me of that theme-wise from that perspective. You know, you've got the city you're exploring. You can do all sorts of cool stuff within the city. So I really like the theme in it. The theme of a heist is something that's familiar. So you're doing something that you're like, oh, I've seen Ocean's Eleven or I've seen crime movies like that. You kind of get it even from the start, even if you've never played heist before. It's like, okay, I understand what I'm trying to do here. And it even plays a little intro video at the start of the video, which if you have it in your home, you can turn it off. But on location, if you left that on when you stepped up to it and started a game, it would explain right away what you're doing in the game with a little brief intro video. So it's pretty cool. Last ability, to be determined, I've only had it for a month or so, but I can see this being a cool game that I would want to have around a long time. Like I said, it keeps me coming back for one more game, and that's a sign of a great game in my opinion. It shoots great. So not only does it do tons of cool stuff, it's a fun shooting game, and that's super important in pinball. I think, like Skip Nandy said, with Legends of Valhalla, the shots are open, and not all of them are easy, and some of them can be brutal, especially if you don't hit that inner loop. If you backhand the inner loop from the left on mine, it's pretty brutal. You have to hit it fast enough so it doesn't kill you. So there's some decision-making you have to do when it comes to making the shot. It's like, am I going to try to backhand it because it's easier and maybe take some tilt warnings, or do I want to post-pass it over and try to take a forehand on it that might be a little more difficult? So it does make you kind of make some decisions as far as the shot-making you want to do. It also has the upper flipper, which is, you know, as Nick Lane knows, I love me a third flipper, so sign me up for a cross-playfield shot anytime. That's super easy to hit, like, the first time on the skill shot, but to hit repeat shots, it's very tough. It gets going real fast, real quick. It kind of reminds me of the ever-flipper shot on Jurassic Park a little bit. In that way, once you get a move in, it's hard to repeat it. So that keeps it challenging, too. Cool innovation. You know, the P3 is packed with innovation. I think not only, you know, some of the elastability comes built into the machine itself. You've got the ability to put different games in it and even play multiple games on one play field. So even if you only have heist, you're going to have the ability to play different games like Barnyard and Rocks and things like that. They're going to be adding compatibility for those games in there, too. So really awesome. You get a lot of mileage out of a P3. Yeah, so I don't know. Skip and Nick, you know, you guys haven't played this game. You've maybe seen me play it. What are your thoughts on the game? Did you have any questions about it? Go ahead, Nick. No questions. No questions. Okay, I will say, I've watched a lot of heists, right? And I love the idea of what heist is, I think. Original themes in pinball are super cool. I love the world that they've created. The cityscape in the back half for the last third of the module itself is so cool. And the reticulating and articulating crane is, like, one of the coolest toys ever, probably. I think that thing is freaking awesome. They've done a great job. It's funny because my brain immediately, when I see stuff like this, my brain immediately goes to, well, how can I break this game? Right So I put Kevin up to this idea of trying to get all the characters in jail and then trying to bust them all out and see what would happen what the game would do to logically account for something like that and whether or not that would be unbalanced scoring-wise versus actually trying to be successful right away. It's stuff like that. This game actually allows you this whole host of possibilities already just from watching it that I think is really interesting. and I want to play this game. I will say that much. Yeah. It's got a lot to offer. I wouldn't say it's like a complex rule set, but I find myself in positions where I have to make a lot of decisions. Like, do I want to push this? Do I want to try to stack a multiball in with it? So there's a lot of decision-making points. It's not just like, this is what you do the whole time. Do you find yourself playing certain characters more often than others because their modes are easier? Yeah, I don't find myself, because they're easier, I find myself typically starting the Cat Burglar a lot because the left ramp is easy to backhand. So a lot of times I'll find myself getting that as my first mode. I will typically go for maybe the Safe Cracker or the Wheelman because those are easier to complete. Wheelman, I would say, is the easiest mode to complete. So if you want to bring a character in and get that done real quick, go for Wheelman. Then after that, probably the easiest character is Safecracker, mode-wise, but he's tougher to start. So it's more dangerous to kind of get that going. And then from there, I find the rest of them are all pretty equal as far as difficulty and completing. But the good thing is, like, even if you don't find yourself completing the mode, you can still get them out of jail through the jailbreak multiball. So the one thing is, like, the mode timers, I find, I don't know, It would be cool if there was, like, a way to add more time to the modes or something like that. So I think about, like, dialed in when you're playing a mode, if you make a successful shot, if you're able to hit the scoop, you can add, like, five seconds to your mode timer. Something like that in the game would be cool to kind of skillfully give yourself a little more ways to add some time as you're playing it if you're kind of struggling to get the ball under control or if you're breaking a certain shot. You know what I mean? Yeah, I notice that a lot when watching you play it. It seems to be very time restrictive on being successful, which is a good thing for players who want that last ability and like, okay, I have to do this thing perfectly if I want to get to the end, right, or do all the stuff. But, yeah, something where you could have the ability to just go. And I think Jerry said recently, right, if you bring in a multiball, you'll add time to your mode timer, right, which is a really nice feature. but yeah like maybe let me hit this stand-up target or a couple like a combo or something like that to add some time would be a nice feature to add to something like that that gives you a little bit more flexibility just in case you're having a little bit of trouble and you're not like well all right i'm 15 seconds into this already and might as well just let it go and just hang out until i you know the mode timer runs out yeah because i've had that situation where it's like all right i have four more shots in this mode and there's 10 seconds left i'm just gonna hang on to it rather than risk it shooting some shots and maybe drain, right? Right. So, yeah, but like that 10-second timer thing, they just added it in the most recent code update, so they're still adding and tweaking things as they go, and they're very good about taking feedback, so good stuff. So that's Heist. The other game I got was Cosmic Kart Racing. So you may have seen us do the reveal of Cosmic Kart Racing a couple years ago, two years ago, I want to say, but I'm bringing it back up because they actually kind of reworked the whole game and added in an entire... So not only does it have brand new art, so you're seeing all new art here. They have alternate art packages for all their games now, so you can get the original art if you like it, or you can get the kind of comic book-y, cartoony-looking art that they have for this, and also Lexi Lightspeed. I'm a fan of the new art personally, but there's a cabinet there. And so they They've built in, so the original game of Cosmic Kart Racing was, think of it like Mario Kart in pinball form. You were going head-to-head, you were going through races, try to complete all the races and get to the end of all the races that you had to do. What they've done now is they had all that still in there. There's an arcade mode, but they've also added in a traditional three-ball pinball game. And in this game, you can do the races, but you start in, like, an outer, I don't know how to describe it. You start in the traditional three-ball world here that you can see on the screen. You're on a planet, and you're trying to upgrade your cart. You're trying to earn cash and make your cart faster so you can do better in the races. You can do multiball on the ramp. It's got that awesome magnetic multiball startup at the top. you can there's time trials you can do on the loops to upgrade your cars the red shots will give you playfield multipliers trying to think of all the stuff you can do mystery rewards from the side targets stuff like that so once you earn enough cash you can go to the shop, upgrade your cart or qualify and start your race it's $1000 to start your first race so basically if you do one job you can get right into your first race right away and that's pretty easy to win even without upgrading your cart. But successive modes and races, you're going to want to build up your cart. You can upgrade your engine, acceleration, and drag reduction, I think, are the three upgrades you can get. So kind of a cool way. So once you start your race, you kind of go into that original Cosmic Cart Racing mode where you're racing cars. So here's a screen grab of my screen because I wanted to be able to show you, like, the screen. and the bottom part of the screen, that's the backbox display. The top part of the screen, that's the back play field, and then on the right is the whole play field screen. So you can see kind of some of the shots and how they relate. Yeah, once you get into the race, you drop into the racing portion of the game, and you're hitting the green shots to accelerate and go faster, trying not to drain as harder in the three-ball game to complete the races, because if you drain without a shield, you're done. So once you're in the racing mode, you want to collect power-ups. You can get shields, you can get EMP strikes, or what's the other one? Boost. And you can play the EMP strikes against your opponents. They can put up blocks against you that block some of your shots. So think of them, again, like Mario Kart power-ups that you can play against your enemies or to give yourself an advantage. So I find myself going for things like the shields to prevent myself from draining, because if I drain, I'm done. It'll light. Let me see. I have a picture of the captive ball. So it'll light power-ups at the captive ball, which is this stand-up kind of tube that you hit, and then there's a captive ball behind it. And if you nail that, you can collect power-ups that way as well as on the inlanes. Yeah, so Cosmic Cart was fun. it's always a cool playfield layout. It's got an amazing light show. There's 900 individually controllable LEDs in the back part of the playfield. So here's how it looks with lights off and with lights on. It's got a ridiculous light show. And what's cool about it is because they're all controllable, they will light up corresponding to the shots you need to make. So when you're racing, say if you're the green racer, you can see which shots will give you a boost by which ones are green. So you can't always just keep hitting the same shots to get boost. They'll move around. And the green ones will be the ones you want if you're the green player. So it does a great job of communicating to the player which shots you need to hit to progress. Like I said, the magnets on the back part of the ramp there that grab the ball and accelerate them and hold them there for a multiball lock is really cool. It's like the most popular clip we've ever had on Twitch when Jerry was here and did that multiball start because it's just such a cool feature and never before seen something like that in pinball. So Cosmic Cart, you can also play it online, which is a first in pinball. We did that a couple of Saturdays ago. We had an online night where we played. I played with Steven. And then on Monday, last Monday, one of the Mondays when I screened the Cosmic Cart, we had a few folks on, GammaGoat, Steven, Jerry, and I all played. You can play four players online. And it's really neat, and it's a fun way to play some competitive pinball when you can't get together. So that really kind of pushed me over the edge towards getting those two things, the online play and the addition of the three-ball, a traditional three-ball multiball game, really kind of pushed me over the edge to get this and add it to the collection. So, Skip, what are your thoughts on this? I know you've been watching it. Yeah, it's been mostly. like, I just want to, every time you play this game, I just want to get in there and just shoot the thing, because I've never shot it, like, even when it first released, right, never had a chance to play, the only P3 game I ever had a chance to play was Lexi, and that was fun, I enjoyed it, um, but the light show, yeah, I mean, you can just see it on the stream, the light show is amazing, the shots look like they're, they just look really, really cool, and flowy, and fun, um, And I would love this idea of some sort of, like, Grand Prix of cosmic art, right? Like, where you accumulate circuit points or something like that. At the end of the season, you're the circuit champion. I just think that would be so freaking cool to get people involved in a way to do something like that. But the game looks fantastic, and to have the ability to play it online, if P3 goes the direction I'd love to see it go, which is, you know, get some more traction and people start putting this thing in their homes, it's going to be pretty awesome. You know, I mean, like, can you imagine just picking up a game and playing it against, you know, Nick right now or something like that? That would be freaking cool. You can listen to Nick swear at the pinball machine like you're in the same room. If there's one thing we've learned is that Nick Lane loves online competition on separate pinball machines because they totally play exactly the same no matter what game you're playing, right, Nick? You know me so well. Nick, any thoughts on Cosmic Cart? Listen, if you say it's good, then that means a lot to me. You know, it's high praise for the game. I trust your judgment, so I look forward to playing it at some point. Yeah, and I neglected to mention it's got hot jams in it now from Stiggy Sour, who's a Buffalo native, so Buffalo ties to the game. So check it out. I've got videos of both Heist and Cosmic Cart Racing on the YouTube channel, both direct audio and video feeds. It looks and sounds great. And if you want to see me take it out of a box, you can do that too. That's the best part. I know. It has the most views out of anything. People don't want to see how a game plays. They want to see it come out of a box. Correct, yes. That's exactly how it works. That's internet, ladies and gentlemen, internet. All right. So that's your, like, roundup of four games, first impressions, in a month when not much is happening. So I think we did all right. We did pretty good. Moving on to additional pinball news, big moves at Jersey Jack Pinball. They just hired Jim Patla as the COO. So Jim has done tons of games. He's got a great, like, a 40-year history in pinball. If you want to hear from him, check out Jersey Jack Pinball's got a podcast now, and you can hear from him directly. Him and Ken Cromwell do a little interview action. You can learn all about his history and you'll hear a whole lot about Centaur, a great classic game from him, and why it only has three colors on it. So if you've ever wondered why it's black and white, you can hear from him. And red. And red. I said three colors. But everybody just says, that's a black and white game. But it's also got red. I've looked through the whole month in news on This Week in Pinball, and there's really not a lot. But the other thing I saw was that Color DMV, they are releasing a whole new platform of their displays. So they're running on a DMV for you. So they're doing the original Data East small, you know, those tiny little DMVs on games like Batman, the original TMNT, Checkpoint, Star Trek, and Hook. They're going to support that now. and the first game they're supporting is Batman. It looks pretty cool. I mean, the displays on those games are pretty basic, but if you're a huge fan of Data East Batman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because I've never heard anything but amazing praise for those games, and you want to drop another $300 or $400 on it, now you can do it. Get yourself some colored dots. They look great. That's right. Never smear your dots either, people. Thank you. Thank you. Can you have a talk with Nick about smearing your dots? Don't smear your dots, Nick. It just doesn't look good. It says I smear my dots. Oh, no. You and Tuna. Who said I smear my dots? I said it. I've seen it. I've seen it on Metallica. Metallica's got smeary dots. Have you seen it with non-smeared dots on Metallica? Yeah. I used to have it. It looks way better with the smeared dots on that game. Now, Iron Man, no way. Not in the digitized ones, but Metallica works fine. You guys are wrong. Next question. Objectively incorrect. I see it in good company with Tuna and his dots. You know he's not messing around with that. Oh, I know. We've had the smeared dots conversation many a time. He's not changing his mind. I'm going to skip it. Dots XL for life. It should be the only setting on color DMDs. Throw the rest right in the garbage. That's the objective truth. I'm sorry. All right, moving on. Another, it's news, I guess. They announced the soundtrack for Heavy Metal Pinball, the machine that nobody can wait for, or everybody can't wait for, or nobody really wants. Yeah, so let's talk about the music on it, because that's the thing they announced. So it's got a bunch of original, old-school rock and roll heavy metal. Skip, I'm looking for your hot takes on this. as a rock and roll fan, as a metal fan. Would you call yourself a metal fan? Yeah, man. I mean, I love prog metal. I love heavy metal. Not the property, the IP, like the actual genre of music. Yeah, sign me up. Okay. All right. So let's get your takes on this. So we've got the first sign, Blue Oyster Cult, veteran of the psychic wars. Whatever. Next. Continue. Sound switch, taking a ride, parentheses, heavy metal. No idea. No idea. Never heard it. uh halloween world of fantasy okay cool halloween all right okay uh dragon force the cosmic power of the infinite shred machine yeah i mean if it's a dragon force song that's not through the fire and the flames you can sign me up okay there you go uh justice uh their song heavy metal because you need more songs called heavy metal i guess i mean we might as well just call them all heavy metal why not uh the night flight orchestra with their song midnight flyer no idea okay Cheap Trick, I Must Be Dreamin'. I don't know that song by name, but I like Cheap Trick, so maybe it's cool. They don't really strike me as metal. No, not really. Okay, they're more just rock and roll, right? Yeah. If you need more heavy metal, you have Sebastian Bach featuring Brendon Small with heavy metal. Why not? Sure. I mean, this pinball machine, it's going to take you five minutes to play the whole game. Why does it need all these songs? I don't get it. They paid $8,000 for it. Would they, like, Google heavy metal into Spotify and just took, like, the first, like, 10, 20 songs and threw it in there? I think so. And then they also got Brendon Small and Sebastian Bach to record a song for it, I think. Not to be outdone, Blind Guardian playing the song At the Edge of Time. I'm down with Blind Guardian. They're awesome. Okay. You like them? I don't know them. Yep. Okay. Ed Guy playing a song called Space Police. No idea. Amorphous with the song The Sky is Mine. And last but not least, Primal Fear with the song Light Years From Home. That's fantastic. It sounds like, man, can't we just get some Jan Terry in this pinball machine? It would just be much better. Let's get Journey to Mars from Jan Terry. I'll take that. Facts be your love. Jan Terry, ladies and gentlemen. So there you go. If you're buying a heavy metal, you can now get your soundtrack. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. And do they have a company in vinyl as well? Well, not yet, but they will. Soon. It'll be soon. It'll be only $29.95 if you've already spent $8,000 on a re-skinned version of Star Wars Home. Sweet. I'm down. Let's do it. All right. Are you guys ready to talk about our contest winners? Definitely. So, Nicolene, lay it out there. Set us up for this. What was the gist of the contest? Yeah, so if you had your head in the sand last month or so, Buffalo Pinball, we threw out a contest where we encouraged our fans to recreate, reimagine, replicate, whatever, our famous intro video. So those are basically the parameters. You know, go crazy. And we got some awesome submissions, better than I can even have hope for. I think everyone was unique in its own way. We've got the full spectrum from some avant-garde to just a basic acoustic song to full-fledged reimagining the sounds in the pinball machine to produce music. So it was really cool. And what I liked about it is I think the timing was good, being on lockdown and being away from doing a lot of the social activities that we like, especially surrounding pinball. And I think our fans took to it. So it was really fun watching them come in and seeing each one. Kevin would usually jump on it first and send it to the bro chat, and we'd all look at it. So we really enjoyed it. What we're going to do, we're going to announce the winner. Kevin's going to play them all. But we're going to – the bros pick the winner, the overall winner for the Penn Stadium lighting kit, which we're going to hype up in a second. But we also have additional prizes to give away. So for those people and submissions that weren't the bro pick, we're going to put up a poll through our website, and we're going to let our viewers vote on their choice for their favorite one. Yeah. And you'll have a week to do so. So voting will be cut off on next Thursday, which is 20th, let's say, 1159 p.m. So. Boom. Got until the end of that day. Eastern time. Time zone. Time zone. Kevin's so trained and so on. And we talked about that on Monday. It's good to talk about times. I know. I know. I don't want to make you mess up. Yeah. So after the show tonight, the web page is going to go up with the voting and it's going to have all the entries. But right now we're going to go ahead and announce the winner. And let me throw it over to. Do we want to. Are you going to play them all? Yeah, I'm going to play. I'm going to play the winner first and we'll talk about it and then we'll get into the. You should build up to it, though. You should do in the dramatic fashion. Unless you have it queued up. It's queued up and ready to go. So if you want to build it up, go ahead. No, no, no, no. I was going to, like, build up to the winner, but that's okay. We can start with the winner. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. The whole narrowing it down. Gotcha. Because I know Gorin's at the edge of his seat right now. I don't know if you want the pin stadium lighting kit. Which, by the way, Kevin, can you give a plug for what we're giving away? I can, if I get this out of the way. So the grand prize winner is going to get a set of the brand-new Neopin stadiums, which is – New. New hot stuff. Yeah. So Scott stepped up, and the original prize was going to be the standard pin stadiums. He just released these. They're the Neo pin stadiums. They're basically the pin stadiums with the diffuser on it. So if you've seen pin stadiums and they have the white striping effects, especially on, like, metal ramps, they really stand out on there. This eliminates that. It's a highly requested feature. They previously offered a version with a white that had the diffusers on it, but this is for full-spectrum RGB and white, like their standard pin stadiums with the diffuser on it. It looks great. So it's got all the standard features. It's your phone interactivity. You can even get them with the Fusion, which is the crazy flashers and things like that. So Neopin Stadium is going to go to the grand prize winner, which we're ready to announce right here. And let me queue it up. And here we go. Let us begin. Double Super Jet Fight! I want to know That's right That's right That's right Even his dogs make a cameo at the end there. So let's break that down a little bit for the folks who are listening. Nick, tell a little bit about what was going on in that video Well, the only thing I saw in that video was Goran was on the spinner with Karen haircut So, Martha and I were watching that while eating breakfast one day And that was just the best thing in the world It really made your day So, what he did, he took So, if you're listening to the beginning The sounds you were hearing He recorded sounds of the pinball machine That laid the beat of the song And then he recorded his own audio, obviously. He printed out a giant Skip Natty scoop, and all of us were on the drop targets. And so I asked him, I was like, did you do that digitally, or did you actually cut out paper and stick it all over your games? And he said he was arts and crafts time. He stuck stuff on his game, on the drop targets and everything to make that happen. So I was thinking of Nick. It's something he would never, ever do. Never, ever do. No stickers on games. Right. The Kuzmine Games. So he's got the Scoop Natty on there. So he's got a whole recording studio at his house. This is a contest. He was ready, and he's been waiting his whole life for a competition like this, and he really nailed it. So congratulations, Kyle Bassa. We'll hook you up with the information for Penn Stadium to get those sent out to you. So congratulations, and job well done. We loved it. You made our day. so with that said that's the winner we picked you guys get to all pick from these following entries the first one up I'm going to present them in alphabetical order and the first one up is going to be from attack7777 in chat he's a club DJ so he remixed his in his own unique style so let's jump over there and check that out There you go. So his dog Banks made an appearance there. I like the visuals he had to go along with that. When the laughing guy from the Twitch chat comes up there, the LUL guy, always makes me laugh. And if you're not bobbing your head when the beat drops there at the end and the clubbers are partying, then you're not doing it right. He advises if you really want to get the most out of that, you should listen to it on a stereo with something with a subwoofer. And if you want to see some dogs, there you go. He's got his dog, Banks, in there. So that's Attack. All right. Up next, let's see. I forget who is next. So let's jump over into it. YouTube. Oh, this is GammaGoat playing... He turned his into a pinball machine. Hey, this is GammaGoat, and welcome to the world premiere of Double Super Jackpot, the pinball game. Double! A jackpot! I need a friend. I need a clue. I'm a comic artist. I need a clue. I need a double-duper-double-up. Thanks for watching, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the green vomit at the end from the from the scoops so how amazing is that he made a pinball machine, oops, hang on hang on there Kyle, you can hang on so yeah he he turned his P3 into a pinball machine for the bros, how cool is that so the cool thing about the P3 is it's got a software development kit you can use and I think he's a a programmer by trade. Yeah. He's been tinkering with that. And so that's him on the vocals. I checked with him doing the death metal screams. And so he programmed it. So when he hit a ramp, it said, I need a ramp. When he hit a loop, it said, I need a loop. And then he got the double super jackpot on the side ramp shot. So he nailed it. So, yeah, the creativity is just crazy. I mean, that's just so amazing. I was just blown away when I saw that. Yeah. So amazingly done, Ian. Good job. All right. So now we're going to move on to Kyle. Kyle's a little quiet, so if you're listening at home, turn it up a little bit here, and then turn it back down afterwards. All right, so here we go. I'm still protected right in my life. That's right. Because me ain't carrying the blame. Don't cry. Nail it. Sorry, that was Glenn. Glenn Waechter. Hang on. Goran's jumping ahead of himself here. So, Glenn, my favorite part of that was when the, The dog was laying on the couch behind him, and he's rocking the hell out to this song, jamming on his guitar, and the dog just yawns. The biggest yawn. Could not care less about what's going on. But Glenn, really nearly. Glenn Waechter, thanks so much. And you've got to watch the video of that and see him do the jump kick. Should we give a warning before you play Gorans? So, you know, NSFW, right? NSFL, not safe for life. All right. I've been warned. Yeah. What's wrong with mine, Gorin says, in all caps. Oh, come on. His fucking caps lock is super broken. It's really broken. All right. Let's jump back over there. Watch Gorin's. I need a ramp I need a loop I need a target I can hit I need a scoop I need a roll I don't want to go in my life That's right I think our little game ends here Thank you, Smaug Can I just I want to call out Gorn a little bit because he didn't get the lyrics right. He said, I need targets, and it's like, I want targets I can hit. I want. Yeah, he's new to the series, though. He's never seen them before. All right. Goran, get the lyrics right. I did enjoy his face bouncing around the screen. It's very well done. In classic Goran style. It makes all that, and he's like, that's Pete Goran right there. Yeah, absolutely. It's what you would want from a Goran submission. Thank you, Goran. Not to disappoint. Well done. All right. Let's see who's next here. Oh, up next is a acapella version of Double Super Jackpot. Get your tissues ready because you're going to need them for this one. I need a ram. I need a loon. I want targets I can hit. I need a double super jackpot in my house. That is right. Oh, I'm screwing it up. Oh, God. Stupid controls. Why do they move around? All right. So that was Habermania, who you may know from hanging out on Switch. He helps us out with our video editing on YouTube, clips out our reviews and stuff for us, and a very emotional rendition of Double Super Jackpot, right, Nick? Well, he's flying under the radar tonight with a different name. I thought he was. No, he's Habermania. He's there. Oh, he's back. Okay. I thought I saw something different for him. Okay. So very nice Very nice See what I love about this contest is we got some incredible variety right Like I didn predict like what we would get in and it amazing because everybody did something unique and different Yeah, I wondered if people saw the other submissions and were like, I have to do something different than that, or if they were just like, this is what I'm going to do, and they all ended up doing something very different, which either way is cool. So, all right, next up is, let's see, who do we got next? Let's jump over here. Oh, next is NuoVad. You may know him better as Small Town Pinball on Twitch. So let's hear from NuoVad. NuoVad. Hey, bro, do you even talk? There's reviews, roast your snack time, the martys are hot I need some double-marker hot hands in my life I need the awesome bros of pinball in my life Thank you, everyone! We love you! Woo! We love you too, NuoVad. Excellent job. So that one really stuck it on the heartstrings too, I think. But I like that he kind of took a different approach where he took the promo video we did for the channel, the Twitch channel, and then he wrote new lyrics to it based on the Double Super Jackpot song, right? So I'm digging it. I appreciate the creativity, as I'm saying, for all of these. I like the remix. Very good, man. Very well done. put into it. It was a little pandering. I liked it. He knew. He's showing the love for the channel. I was mostly impressed that he remembered who Rob Metzler was. That's deep cuts. That's how you know you're legit. I thought when Martha first played it for me, I thought at the end, instead of hard hands, he said Martha with the hot pants. I was like, hot pants? What the fuck? Stop checking out Martha's hot pants. Awesome. All right, so that brings us to the end of the official runner-up entries. We did have a few extra entries, a couple from bros themselves. So the first one, I saw somebody in chat wanted a warning before the Jay Fairbrother one came on. So this is your fair warning if you don't want to hear Jay. But you're going to want to hear this. It's hilarious and amazing. So Jay really nailed it. So it's exactly what you'd want from a Jay submission. Not eligible to win, but in it for the fun of it. Hello and welcome to today's thrilling entertainment. Today I'll be performing for you, Buffalo Pinball's Double Super Jackpot in the styling by Mr. David Matthews. I'm trying to say, I'm trying to say, don't go, don't go too far. They're not, they're not mine. The shrug at the end is very Jamie Fairbrother. And I love that that's the, at the end, subscribe to Buffalo Pinball on Twitch and YouTube. He really did it. Thank you, Jay. He did it. You know, after all these years. I like how Kyle Bostom said it's probably the only song he knows. When I saw that comment, I was like, is it the only song that Jay knows or the only song that Dave Matthews knows? All? It's catchy, though. It's catchy. Martha was in the chat. She said it gets stuck in your head. It's true. It does get stuck in my head. I don't have the volume on right now while you're doing this, and I had it playing in my head. So for better or for worse, there you go. In my life. All right. So Martha herself also submitted one. She said this is what happens when Nick leaves her alone unsupervised. So let's check this out. I need a new пос I need two I need three I need a new Let's dance I need a nice Has Martha had that Casio keyboard since she was like six or what? Probably. Like, that fucking microphone is the bane of my existence. It's a karaoke microphone, and when she got it, it was just a rough several months in this household. She's been running around doing karaoke all over the place, I bet, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a safe bet. What else are you going to do in a pandemic when you're home with Nick? No, well, this is pre-pandemic time. Okay. So it's been going on even before that. Oh, yeah. It was coming in. All right. So the last submission we had was so Evan Bingham actually submitted one. And so I've been reaching out to folks to get higher quality versions of their videos so I could put them on the page for everybody to vote. And he's like, don't submit that garbage. So he re-recorded one and gave it to me. He said, I said, it's too late. You're past the deadline. You can't submit it for an entry. He said, just play it on the show. And I was like, all right, cool. So here's Evan Bingham with his rendition of Double Super Jackpot. I need a ramp. I need a loop. It's a target that I can hit. Oh, I need the loop. I need a double super jackpot. My life. Super smooth. You need your tissues for that one, too. So there you go. Thank you to everybody who submitted their entries. Amazed with all the talent and creativity out there. Who knew we had so many musicians, especially Jay Fairbrother out there. Well, Jay originally said he could do like ten versions of this. and weeks later when he didn't produce a single one we're like can we just get one maybe so we harassed him all up to the time he finally posted it so I'm going to go, if you're watching live I'm going to go ahead and publish this so you can go right now to buffalopinball.com it'll be the top post on the homepage of the website and you can see all the videos again you can vote for your favorites again congratulations to Kyle Bossa on winning the Neopin stadiums But lots of other prizes to give away. Let's give a rundown for the awesome other companies who gave us prizes. So Comet Pinball is giving away LEDs and one of their shirts that Nick can't get enough of, right? The shirts. Hype up the shirts a little bit, Nick. Oh, yeah. I regret the fact, now that you bring it up, that I'm not wearing the new one from him tonight. What did you get? Did you get the It's Lit shirt or whatever? No. Well, I've got the It's Lit, of course. He does a good job of hooking me up. If you notice, you might have heard that I like the shirts. But I got the black version of the original OG Comet shirt. Oh, nice. Flipping out pinball, we were talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before. They're donating a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles banner. So everybody loves those promotional banners that Stern does. He's got one of those for Ninja Turtles. Multimorphic is donating a T-shirt and a Heist Translate. So you can get an awesome piece of wall art there and some sweet threads to wear. Pinball Photos Pinball Photos makes cool stuff like these coasters that I have but they also just came out with these new Gumball Lava iPhone cases so those are really cool, they like glow and they look like they have lava in them and they have Twilight Zone-ish art on them, so they're really cool donating one of those and finally Titan Pinball donated a Universal Ring Kit so awesome set of prizes there for all sorts of different things you can use on your pinball machines or wear or hang in your game room so thank you to all those folks for stepping up and donating prizes and helping us celebrate 50 episodes of ready even talk pinball um it's been a great run and we're going to keep it going thank you guys for your creativity as well yeah i you know i was sitting here in amazement the whole time and kevin sent me because i don't i'm not a facebooker right so i'm not on there and just listening to everybody's submissions it's blown away absolutely blown away you should all be very very proud exactly even goring even goring especially goring wow goring uh nick lane's vr partner goring that's right getting some shade all right so we were uh so we were talking about things to do for the podcast and we're like there's not going a lot going on in pinball and what else could we do we could we talk about maybe doing a review and i have this thought for a segment at the beginning of the year we were turning a decade over into the 2020s let's take a look back at the 2010s and what's going what happened in pinball what was the the decade in review well how did pinball change over the course of the of the decade and uh you know we had scott D'Athensian in January to talk about Rick and Morty because that was the hot thing then. And then COVID hit and all this stuff happened and we never got to it. So what better time to kind of dig it out and go through it now? We got Skip on here to offer his perspective on his picks as well. So what we decided to do was go through the decade and kind of apply the categories we use for our reviews to all the games of the decade. So we went on Pinside, and we looked at their listing of the games from 2010 to 2019, the end of 2019. And all the games that were in there, minus like Homebrews and no remakes. We're not including MMRs and AFMRs and all that. Those are games that came out in the 90s. They're just rerunning those. So new games that came out, mass production games, and that's what we're going to go through. That's what they kept. I know, you know, second only to pulling things out of a box is creating a list of top things. That's what I know about the Internet. That's right. Lists and taking things out of boxes. So here you go. It doesn't hold a candle to taking shit out of a box, though. That's it. That's where it's at. Yes. It is an objective listing. Totally not subjective at all. The things we pick are the best. There's no subjectivity in pinball. I don't know if you know that. We're going to get a robot on the show to subjectively pick these. Yeah, Skip Natty's really good at that. I'm the best. I love it. If you want to talk about objectivity versus subjectivity, hit up Skip on Wednesday nights and he'll run you through it. That and, yeah, that's really the best topic that comes up pretty much every Wednesday. Thanks to Chris the Pinter, usually. He really loves turning that one right in there. Yeah, he does. And he's doing it tonight, too. So thanks, Chris. I proposed doing a bonus content for our subscribers or followers, well, subscribers on Twitch, where the first bonus content will be Goran's Topper Talk for a good one hour. Then a second bonus content could be Goran's Top Toppers. The Top Toppers. It's two hours long of Goran talking about the Top Toppers. Yeah. If you guys want Topper Talk, you can jump into our Discord. We have a whole Topper channel. Look at him. There's a whole Topper channel, and it's Goran's home base, really, on the Internet right in there. All right, so let's get to it. We're going to start with the first category that we cover when we cover pinball machines in our reviews, and the first one is the best art. Let's start with Skip Natty. Who's got the best art? Oh, man. So this one was a tough one for me because I think we already kind of hit on the fact that Zombie Yeti is kind of like my dude when it comes to pinball art. So I went back and I looked at everything, and the one that jumps out to me, and this may be a theme thing more than anything, but because I understand the theme integration of it, is the Iron Maiden premium art. The Power Slave art on that game is the coolest freaking thing that was done in the last decade. He did such an amazing job with that pinball machine. That game just, oh man, it screams awesome. So I'm down with that. Nick, what was your pick for best art? The best art for me was Aerosmith. I mean, I'm not an Aerosmith fan, so the fact that I really like that art and thought it was impressive says a lot. You know, we got the Dirty Donnie art style, right? Metallica was good. I think the Aerosmith package is even better, more visually appealing. So that was my pick. Nice. And I'm like, Skip, I was like, okay, which Dirty Donnie game am I going to pick? Or which Zombie Eddie, sorry, am I going to pick? I was like, Ghostbusters was good. I liked Iron Maiden but my pick was Deadpool just because I think I don't know he really kind of nailed the Marvel style and that appeals to me more than like a Iron Maiden package so there's a ton going on on there it's very red but I think if you take some of those red LEDs out and put some regular color LEDs in there it makes it even better so Deadpool was my pick So three sterns out the gate. Did you have any runners-up, any consolation prizes? I wanted to say Deadpool as well. I mean, that was in the running. I think with Aerosmith, rock theme, it just seems like a really badass kind of pinball art style artwork. So I guess I lean more towards Dirty Donnie than Zombie Yeti. But I've got a Deadpool, and I think the art on it is fantastic. So that would have been my runner-up. Skip any second. You bet, dude. Deadpool was right up there. But Dark Horse, I thought, that doesn't get a lot of love for its art package, but is a really great art package, is Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. I think that game has amazing art. For all of its other faults, that game's art is awesome. I love it. Yeah, as soon as you said Dark Horse, I knew where you were going with that because I think you're right on the money. It doesn't come to mind often, but when I look at it, I can definitely appreciate the art on it. I wanted to give some recognition to Metallica because that really kind of brought back the hand-drawn art to pinball that we had been missing for so long. When that game came out, people lost their minds. They were like, finally, yes, fresh art, hand-drawn, looks amazing. So I think that game showed Stern that it was worth investing in art. And so then you got people brought in like Zombie Yeti and Christopher Franchi and all the folks who have been bringing their own unique art to Pinball since then. And you've seen it go out to the other manufacturers as well, like Spooky. I also want to – here's one that I thought was a dark horse that nobody really talks about either is X-Men. X-Men's got really cool comic book art, but it doesn't – I don't know if it was originally, like, created for the machine or if they just had license to use a lot of original Marvel art, but I think that game's got really cool art and does a great job of doing what it needs to do. So give a nod to X-Men. It gets the job done, you'd say? It gets the job done, plus. It does the job, and it does it well. All right, let's move on to Best Sound. So we started with Skip last time. Let's start with Nick this time. What's your pick for Best Sound? Okay, this is where, you know, we're going to get into, we all know where we're going to go. I don't know. I mean, here it comes. Here it comes. All I've got to say, best sound is Pirates for me. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah. Skip, best sound for you? Total Nuclear Annihilation. By far and away the best music in any pinball machine ever, in my opinion. My humble opinion. So the music's great and fantastic, but even when you incorporate sound. So I look at the entire sound package. You could say the sound effects are, you'd wrap the sound effects in that game into that and everything else or speech and all that. Yeah, I mean, I would. I mean, it fits. It all fits. It all makes sense. The game feels like Retrowave personified as a pinball machine, right? Which is, it's just, I love Pirate's sound. Like the whole audio package is actually on my honorable mention list when I was going through this, right? Pirates is amazing, and David Thiel is a masterpiece worker of pinball audio. But, yeah, TNA blows me away every time I used to play it. Yeah. What other pinball soundtrack would you actually put on to listen to outside of playing the machine, right? So TNA was a runner-up for me, but my pick is Hobbit. Hobbit feels like you're playing a movie from the audio perspective, Like, especially when you hook a subwoofer up to it and Smaug is talking to you and is shaking the walls. They have, like, so much audio, especially when you get to those later wizard modes. It's got, I don't know, it's got music that makes you feel different when you're playing. You know, there's, like, these really soft buildups, and then you get to the later parts of the wizard modes, and it really takes off. So really kind of, like, environmental feeling audio package on that. Um, sound package, uh, beyond the music is great. You've got the, the call-outs from not Gandalf, who everybody says, how'd they get Gandalf to do the call-outs? No, they just got a really, really good voice actor that really nailed it. So it's very convincing. Fits the theme. You have little clips in there from the movie as well. Um, all around amazing package. So Hobbit number one for me. Um, in addition to TNA, I wanted to give a nod to Tron because much like TNA, it's got an amazing soundtrack. It's got that Daft Punk music in there. So, you know, de-res, it'll get you every time. So give a nod to Tron as well. But I think overall, experience-wise, Hobbit does it for me. TNA was my runner-up. And you know what? Maybe even Deadpool would have been a number one, too, or should be in the mix somewhere. Because I appreciate there's a good variety of music in there. They kind of threw a lot at the wall, and it works. You know, the voice acting is, I think it works. But they just did a really good – they put a lot of effort into the sound package of that game, and it definitely shows. What other pinball machine can you have a ska song playing while you're playing, right? That's right. And they also did the retro thing as well with the sound effects, so another cool kind of nod and touch. Again, I've said this before, but they obviously had a lot of fun making that game. Yeah, I agree. Great sound package in that game as well. All right, best toys. I'll go first since I haven't gone first yet. My pick was Jersey Jack Pirates. And it's just got so much interactivity with the ball on the play field, from the giant rocking ship upper play field to the cannon that you can fire across to the other side. And it's got the whirlpool that will trap the ball and, you know, all these diverters and things like that. So it was an easy pick for me, Pirates of the Caribbean. Who wants to go next? Yeah, I'll go. I'm right there with you. I 100% agree. I was wondering if, you know, if you, I don't know when you guys do your reviews, if you count, like, upper playfields of toys. I guess I would, right, in terms of the Black Pearl and the cannon and the target, the whole idea of the target ship that has a hole in it that has a target inside of it. Not just the ship itself as a target, but there's a target inside the target. I mean, the game's insanely amazing, and I can't think of a game that has more jam-packed into it than J.J.P. Pirates. It's so good. I didn't even mention the treasure chest that you can lock balls into. There's so much going on. I think I know where Nick's going to go with this, but lay it on us. Of course, Pirates. I mean, there's, like, nothing even that gets close to the level of Pirates. And absolutely, the upper play field is a toy. It's interactive. It moves around, right? It's not just a static thing. Otherwise, it would just be an upper play field. But it's the upper play field ship, right, that it moves. So, yeah, I mean, it was just a no-brainer to picking that. You know, I struggle to think what's a runner-up to it. I went with Sparky as my runner. Not Sparky, but the Aerosmith toy, whatever he is. Oh, yeah, that one's cool. Oh, Jaggy. Jaggy, yeah. I thought it was cool throwing it in the air, catching the box, and strutting. Like, cool trick for sure. Skip, did you have any runner-ups? Yeah, I said Jurassic Park. I mean, the Raptor pen is cool. The helicopter blades actually add something to the game in the premium LE, which is nice. But the dinosaur head, dude, that's one of the coolest things. I mean, had Pirates not happened, it'd be Jurassic Park for sure because the T-Rex picking that ball up and throwing it all around and holding it and doing whatever it wants to to that ball is the coolest thing I experience in pinball outside of Pirates whenever I play. Yeah, I had Jurassic Park as a runner-up as well. I also had two other ones. Black Knight sort of Rage, the Black Knight on it is really cool. and it interacts with the ball in a number of ways. It's choreographed with the audio. I think one of the downsides of Jurassic Park is it's not on the pro. The coolest toy is not on the pro, so that holds it back from being the best best. And also, huge shout-out to Alien, if it ever worked, the tongue that came out and picked up the ball. Awesome concept, poor execution, but I did get to do it a couple times, so we'll give a little nod to Highway Pinball there. all right um skip natty lay it on us for best display oh man this one was far and away an easy clear winner for me and it's the hobbit the hobbit has the best display especially once you mix it mix in the sound package and that is in my top audio packages as well but the hobbit display is the coolest darn thing in all it's like watching the movie and i could i tell kevin this all the time when he's streaming Hobbit, I watch the screen. Like, I watch the video display. I don't watch the pinball machine. I watch the video display and I listen to the audio, and I feel like I'm right there playing it, and it is just the coolest watchable pinball experience you'll ever have. So, Hobbit for sure. Well, I'll tag team on that, and I'll say Hobbit as well. I pick that as my top pick. And, you know, for display work, J.P. Dwin is number one in my book. I think he nails it. And what's interesting is that he does a different take on it every time, so it's not just like a standard thing. Willy Wonka's got a very interesting different display dialed in as well. Pirates, obviously, they all have their own unique take, but I think Hobbit was the one that he really nailed it on. It does a great job of balancing all those video clips in addition to providing a usable heads-up display that makes sense at all times. You can look up and get the information you need whenever you need. Between that and the book, too, while you're playing the modes, Hobbit nails it Nick what do you think? I'm going to be different and just say Pirates I don't disagree with you guys on Hobbit but I don't know I like the way the display looks it needs another JGP to win it's not to like yeah I agree nicely done, any runners up Nick? I had dialed in as a runner up, thought that was good Jersey Jack sort of just dominates when it comes to displays, it's hard to hold a candle. I mean, CERN is in some ways catching up. They're not going to be at the level that Jersey Jack is with games like Hobbit and Pirates and Dialed In. But, you know, I think for CERN games, I think they did a really good job, again, with Deadpool. I think that's their best display. When we were talking about toys, Scribble said he would put P3 as a runner-up. I would have put Heist as a runner-up, or actually I would have probably put Heist as a winner, but it didn't come out until this year, so it was not eligible to win. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Skip, any runner-ups for best display? Yeah, I mean, Nick already said it. JP DeWin does an amazing job, and I had a hard time ranking the other displays that he's done, but I picked Wonka because I see it a lot. I mean, I obviously have Pirates and Wizard of Oz as well, But Wonka is the perfect mix to me of whimsy and rules displayability and information. And it takes me back to experiences in the movie but plays on them. And it doesn't just overtly throw it in your face, which I think is kind of neat and different. I really like what they did with that game. And I think the display for Willy Wonka is pretty fantastic. Awesome. Well, I gave a runner-up to Jurassic Park because I think what they did with that screen is really good. So they don't have the video assets, but what they did was they created all of this 3D-rendered graphics of dinosaurs eating people off the toilet for the extra ball and the dinosaur roaring when he roars and the gates opening on Jurassic Park. So I really think that was actually one of the things that helped push me over the edge to buy this game because not only was it, the art was great, the toys are really good, but it's also got really good display. So I think Stern's really been stepping up between that and Black Knight. And actually Deadpool's really good too. So they're kind of finding their footing as far as these LCD screens and having the artist behind those. I'd also, you know, throwing back to Skip's Dark Horse earlier, I'd give some nod to Alice Cooper. I think they did a really good job with that. the comic books flipping pages to kind of make your way through the different areas of the Nightmare Castle and things like that. I think they did a great job with that. So the visual assets on Hellscooper are really good. Yeah, really well done. You know, it begs me – I beg the question all the time, seeing stuff like that and stuff like Jurassic Park, where they've done this great job with video assets, but it's in such a contained, smaller space than what, you know, J.J.P. has to work with. What if you took that and expanded it into a J.J.P. style cabinet and they had all that real estate? What could they really do? Oh, man. I mean, I would love to see something like that. I think that would be amazing. Yeah. I think the smaller size is restricting because I don't find myself on Jurassic Park finding the information I need or noticing it as much, I would say. Like I notice the cool displays and animations, but as far as like giving me information as a player, I typically get that from what's on the play field. That's a nod to, you know, good insert layout and lighting and things like that. But as far as like multipliers and things like that, I think they're kind of harder to pick out just because the screen's smaller. Yeah, Jurassic Park's a perfect example of the fact that I kind of have to squint at the screen. Because I don't have the paddock bounties memorized perfectly yet, right? But if you're trying to structure the way that you're playing the game and the direction you want to go in terms of how you progress through the island, building up or taking different bounties based on which dinosaurs you choose is actually a very important part of the scoring of that game, right? But I have to look in a very small upper portion of a smaller screen in order to do that, and it's a little bit – I'm blind, basically. It's not as easy for me, right? So it'd be nice to have it in a wider fashion. But it is what it is, and they do a great job with what they have. Yeah. And the one knock against Alice Cooper is the positioning of the scores versus where it is on the screen. So there's, like, the screen is recessed, and then if you're tall like me, you're looking at the screen and you can't see the scores because it's getting cut off by, like, the angle that you're looking at it. So I think if the scores were at the bottom, that would resolve that. So just, like, UI stuff like that is just, like, one minor nitpick, but it's one thing that's like, did nobody look at this when you're signing up? Because if you're standing back watching somebody play, you can't see what the scores are. Yeah, Aerosmith is the perfect example of that, where you can't even read the scores from far away, right? It's microscopic, yeah. Who thought of that, I guess? I don't know. It's white on white. Yeah, it makes sense for scores that I want to read from 20 feet away. I don't really, whatever. I mean, but yeah, little nitpicky stuff. It's getting better. All right, best lighting. Nick, you can take the lead on this one. Pirates. Number one. And then dialed in for number two. I will go second. I pick TNA for number one because I just think like Skip was talking about earlier with the music it just fits the theme. It pulls you in. It makes you feel like you're in that environment. It fits the music as well. Just does a great job, especially when you watch somebody stream it from that overhead angle and all the like swirling lights and things like that I think Scott Benici really nailed it on that my runner-ups were dialed in and actually cosmic kart racing I think that I know not a lot of people have played that but we played it I've been playing it more recently it's got like 900 LEDs that you can program and it does it uses the lights to it does a great job using the lights to show you what you need to do in the game so not only is it cool and flashy, but Cosmic Heart Racing also looks amazing, and it's fun, and it directs you how to play the game. So those are my picks. All right. Skip, what do you think? Yeah, Dialed In was my pick for sure. It was the first time as a player I noticed how awesome a light show was, right? Not a lot of times as a player do I step up to a game and get entranced in the lighting of the game. That was the first one that did it. So although TNA and IT are pretty comparable, in my opinion, in terms of their impact on the gameplay and how awesome they are just to watch um because dialed in's impact on me when i actually play the game was very noticeable as compared to other like if you ask me from my experience playing like tmnt you know from a month ago right well how was the light show if the lights were lit i don't know i couldn't tell you right they did the thing um but like dialed in is very prescriptive it makes all the sense it's it's got everything that i need as a player, and it does it in a way that really establishes what the game is trying to tell you, which I love. So, yeah, Dialed In and then TNA Second. Awesome. So, a lot of crossover there, but you can see this was a tough category because we all had different number one picks, but some of our runners-up overlapped a little bit. All right, gameplay. I'll go first on this one. I picked Dialed In because when I think gameplay, I think of a game that I just have fun shooting, and dialed in is that game for me. Not only does it have cool diverters and toys, like the theater is really neat, the way it interacts with the ball, but it's just like that left ramp is super fun to shoot, the loop through the middle. You can just get combos going on it, and they feel amazing when you're hitting them. It's got some challenging shots too, like the right orbit I find can be challenging, but the left orbit is tricky, but the Crazy Bob Scoop can come out and grab the ball there for you. So, for me, it was dialed in. Skip, what did you think? Yeah, I'm going to start sounding like Nick. It's Pirates, for sure. So, it's innovative, interesting, different. I mean who puts six lanes at the bottom of a pinball machine anymore right Like that freaking awesome And having this awesome separation between things that you used to see in pinball with the in-lane, out-lane configuration and mixing in all this new tech and the ability for me to look left or right across the play field and think that there are just all these different things for me to hit at any one time that could take me in a different direction in the game is the coolest thing. And the extra ball shot, Eric, you're a jerk, by the way. That shot is hard, but it is awesome and I love it. So it's Pirates, yeah. All right, Nick, lay it on us. So, of course, I like Skip's pick. It was very tempting to say Pirates. Maybe it's because I didn't want to just go and check all the boxes down on the category and say Pirates, maybe. But I actually, maybe thinking outside the box a little bit, for gameplay, I've got to say Iron Man. Iron Man is sort of a simplistic Eric layout in some ways. It's got some Walmart toys on it. And yet, that is a game I've played more than any other pinball machine. And that is the only pinball machine that can give me an adrenaline rush by playing it. It's just, it's fast. It's brutal. It's got smooth shots. It's got shots that God forbid you miss will come back at you. you actually feel like you're battling these villains just because the machine will throw the ball back at you. So to me, for a pinball machine to give me that kind of emotion by just shooting it and playing it, I got to give Iron Man for gameplay. New event, so it's nice that Martha lets you play her machine still. It is nice. I almost sold it. Thank God she bought it as a rescue. There you go. I would have regretted that, of course. I can't win. I did win, but, you know. Awesome. Any runners-up, Nick? I would say Pirates would be, you know, I think Skip did a really good description about sort of the uniqueness of Pirates and just how it works and, you know, like the looping shot up top, if you want to just get some flow going, you've got that. You know, other times you're trapping up and you're trying to make the difficult left ramp shot, which just seems like it shouldn't be difficult, but it is. You know, the scoop for the bayou, it's just got, I can go on and on. And, again, it's almost like not wanting to check it, but Iron Man takes the cake just because of the pure kind of adrenaline rush emotion that it gives me. Yeah, along those lines, I had Tron on my list. I think they kind of have similar gameplay styles, not surprisingly from Borg. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's like an amazing, you know, groundbreaking layout or anything like that, but it's just fun to shoot, challenging and interesting shots. And when you hit that disc and it just sends the ball flying, back towards it, especially when you upgrade the disc on it from the black rubber to blue or the clear. It really battles against you. So if you want a game like that, that's a great one. Yeah, I did actually, Tron did pop in my mind when I was trying to think about gameplay, so I get it. The other one I had on my list, if you just want flow for days, is Star Trek, Stern Star Trek. if you just want a game that you can kind of go on autopilot and have a great time. Watching Skip Natty play Star Trek was like, you just can't miss, right? I mean, yeah, that game is great if you want to never miss a shot. Like, if you want to feel like the best pinball player on earth, play Star Trek with, like, rubbers on the outlanes and, you know, not lightning flippers, and you'll feel like you're pretty good. It's nice for that. Awesome. Any runners-up for you? Jurassic Park. I think the Jurassic Park layout is, like, the perfect mix of stuff, you know, fully left to right. It uses the standard body layout and configuration in, like, the most unique and interesting way possible. With the upper flipper shot, the multiple upper flipper shots, and this really good mix of difficult and easy shots. And even the quote-unquote easy shots, aren't that easy? So that game can really hand it to you if you're not playing well. But if you are making your shots and you're locked in, that game feels really, really good to play. So it's super satisfying. Yeah. We have a write-in category here, Barnyard Game of the Decade. Not surprisingly from the folks at Multimorbic. Barnyard. P3 Multimorbic. Number one Barnyard-based game. You guys did it. You won. All right, best rules. This is one that I struggled with. I think Skip Maddy, I think you're up, right? Sure. I mean, I have no issue saying that the best rules I've ever played is JJPOTC. Pirates from Jersey Jack has – I can walk up to the game and play the game 22 different ways. You've already won, essentially, right? Like, the fact that I can choose all of these different options, it's a choose-your-own-adventure pinball machine. but the idea of stacking things in certain ways and there's points hidden in the game that you wouldn't really know if you weren't paying attention um and it's sneaky and um certain things coming together and and Keith P. Johnson's just the absolute master at that that guy um could write a master class on how to code a pinball machine because he is the he is the uh He's the guy, for sure. Awesome. Nick, what do you think? Yeah, hands down, Pirates. That game is in a league of its own, for sure. There's just, again, there's nothing like it. You know, there's a, you think of, like, Game of Thrones, where you can pick, like, I don't know, five or six houses, and then you have Pirates with, like, 23 characters, right? So it's the game with just infinite replayability, because you can just, you can spend so much time on one character and learning how to play with that, and then trying different strategies with another one. And so God bless Keith P. Johnson and the work that he poured into the rules. It cannot be easy doing that. You know, he could take the easy road and put out a game that could have deep rules, but he, like, takes that and times it by, like, five, and you've got Pirates. So I almost went Pirates, but then I thought about my good old friend The Walking Dead, and I feel like, to me, there's no other game that feels as satisfying when you get the stacks going to really blow it up than a game like when you get a good game of The Walking Dead going. You kind of put it all together, stack it up the way you want, make it happen, get a good blow-it-up score. But most of the time, it's going to kick your butt. You're going to be fighting against the ultimate kind of – to me, that's the ultimate game where you feel like you're fighting the machine. Then maybe Ghostbusters, but for different reasons. But Walking Dead, I don't know. And that's probably the ultimate game of it started out as a box of lights and now look at it. It's one of the most revered games. So I'm going to give the nods to Walking Dead. I love that game, and it's just a blast. That's my runner-up for what it's worth. You know, I own both games. And, yeah, Lyman pressured on that game, I think. To your point, right, you're building up the tension when you know that you've got certain things going on in the game, like the multipliers going and then the weapons multiplier shots on that. Blinking out today. I forget what they're called. Right. But yeah, you know when you just got things going and you're just like, man, I can't drain right now because I just got two X play field. I've got the X shot up to like 10. I've got the weapon shots that I'm getting because I built up and I had good modes. It builds up to a moment. Right. in that game that, yeah, you know, the rules in Pirates is super deep. Pirates doesn't have moments like Walking Dead does. I still give the nod to Pirates because of the depth of the characters, what's there, but I know what you're saying. Yeah, like think about how cool Horde is when you're playing that, and it's like you feel like the zombies are getting closer to you, and I've got to hit this shot or they're going to get me. And, again, they took that to the next level where you can continue to press your luck or you can try to cash it out and just get out of it and move on, right? So, you know, Lyman, you've got to love some Lyman rules. There's a reason why they got him working on the $10,000 games now. For sure. And in fairness, I mean, I love Lyman. I would buy his games if he was still making the regular line of games that he's relegated to, the boutique ones like Batman 66 and all of that. So, you know, maybe if I played and spent a lot of time on Batman 66, then that would have been entered into my thoughts on best rules or on Viber. but I just really haven't spent the time on those games. Cool. Skip, any runner-ups for you? Yeah, it was kind of a swaying pick between Jurassic Park and Willy Wonka. Jurassic Park, and this is maybe recency bias, I guess, but I went back through the list and I was like, you know, what other games do I have? I take this weird approach where I don't want the game to prescribe to me what to do at all times, right? I want to be able to prescribe what I want to the game and get the outcome I want because of the fact that I want to take the path I want through the game, right? The game needs to be able to give me the ability as the player to choose what makes the most sense for me at the time, right? If I'm not making this shot, I don't have to make that shot maybe. Maybe I can do something else. And Jurassic Park is the second best example behind Pirates to me of a game that allows me to do that, right? and the unbelievably idea, the deep idea of when dinosaurs ruled the earth as completing all of the mini wizard modes to be able to get to that sounds impossible to me just as a human player, somebody who is not a total amazing, awesome, just get locked in and kill it kind of guy. But that rule set is both great for progression and depth and has this, like, swath of availability of points in different ways that I think even as, like, if you're playing tournaments, if you were playing tournaments right now, you could appreciate the idea of, well, this person has this strategy and I have this strategy and they're both totally viable, right? And I love that about pinball machines. Yeah, it always feels like the shots you're shooting are worth shooting. For some reason, you're always kind of building towards something, and you can set them up to build towards even more if you play it right. So I had Jurassic Park on there as one of my runner-ups as well. Yeah, for all the reasons you stated and more, I love it. The other one I had on there was The Hobbit. Because strictly from an interesting variety of modes perspective, I've never played a game like Hobbit that has so many different ways to play the game based on what mode you're in and the level of difficulty. You know, it goes from I can play this mode where I complete one shot with the one ring, but it's not going to be worth anything when I get to my wizard mode, up to like riddles in the dark where I'm trying to figure out which shot on the play field I need to hit by shooting other shots and revealing the shot to me. So, and then you can stack in your mode multiballs and, you know, and then the rules in the three mini wizard modes are great. And then if you want to ever get to there and back again, that's out there for you as well. So I just, I love that game rules wise. so I can't say enough good things about it. Yeah, rules is so hard because it's made – rules is the one area where I feel like pinball has made the biggest leap in the last decade, really, right, or even in the last five years. Pinball rules have come a long way from where they were, say, at the beginning of the decade. Iron Man is very – it's a great game, but it's a very simple rule set, right? It's easy to understand, hard to master, whereas rule sets later in the decade are hard to understand, and hard to master, and, oh, my God, there's a million different things all happening all at the same time. And I kind of love that. So I like the ability to be able to make those kinds of decisions and be put in those scenarios. So that's where my mind goes. It's just recency. Sure. And it's great, especially as more and more people are buying these to put them in their homes. You want to have that depth of rules and breadth of rules so you can explore games in different ways. That's why games like Pirates and Jurassic Park are so, great. Yep. All right. Best theme integration. Nick, why don't you go? Best theme integration. Well, I didn't have this on my list because I messed up, must be. We added it later in the game. All right. Well, this is easy. Pirates. Fair enough. When were we talking about this? We had this conversation recently about Maybe when I was doing my live stream with the JGP crew, but how, like, in a chapter in Pirates, right, a movie chapter, the characters that you've got to hit, their shots, are based on the characters in that scene. I can't imagine you had to go and watch all of those movies and then make sure that in that scene it's that character. I don't know, man. And that's a level of integrating a theme that Tommy won other games in the last 10 years, did that level of detail. It's pretty amazing. Skip, what do you think? Not to mention the toys and everything else, but I think that is my, if I had to come up with one example of theme integration, it's that for sure. Yep. Cool. Skip, what do you think? And the powers. And by the way, the powers. I'm sorry, Skip. I'm sorry. I'm missing the best part. Go ahead, Nick. I love you. The reason why a lot of the characters have their powers, it relates to something about the character themselves from the movie. They're not just randomly chosen things. So, again, amazing. All right. Okay. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Okay. Skip. I said The Hobbit. The Hobbit is, yeah. There's just, like I said, it's like you feel like you're entranced in that universe. And not like I don't when I'm playing pirates, but I guess pirates I haven't seen. I own the pinball machine and I've only seen three of the movies and one of them I saw wasn't even that good. It might just be the fact that I love fantasy hobbitrydom, I guess, more than fantasy pirates stuff, but the Hobbit theme iteration is where it's at for me. Yeah, Hobbit was my pick, too, for all the reasons you noted. And, you know, the all-together package of what that game presents is just an experience. Like, for anybody who says, oh, theme integration really matters, this is your game, right? You watch this game. It's like playing the movies without sitting there and watching the movie on the screen like Guardians of the Galaxy or something like that. It takes the movie and puts it in a pinball machine and makes you feel like you're going through it, which is really cool as you play. Runner-ups for me were Tron because music, light show, makes you feel like you're in the rave dance party of Tron. Does a great job of that. And Ghostbusters was my other pick because just all around, you know, you got the call-outs. you got the music so the music isn't like the music but it makes you feel like the music a lot of the time and it's got the original song but the other like mode based songs are like nods to the original soundtrack the modes are based on the movie things like that so you know the amazing zombie art as well so Ghostbusters was my other pick Skip what do you think? Runner ups? Yeah I had Ghostbusters as well and then the third one down the list was Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz theme integration is just the coolest thing, man. It's not a theme I give two licks about, but it's a game that I own because it just grabs you and it brings you into that world. And it does it in a really fun, whimsical way. And even if you don't have a super huge connection to that movie, that game will just pull you in. I see that game pull people in at arcades all the time, right? because they're like, oh, Wizard of Oz, I know this property, or I know this thing. And it's just, I don't know, it's that feeling you get. Like if you connected with it as a kid or even as an older adult, it's just one of those whimsical things that everybody knows, and I love it too. Awesome. Nick, any runner-ups? For theme integration? Yeah. Considering I didn't have this on my list, I don't have a runner-up. Fair enough. Moving on. Best last ability. for me this is where Jersey Jack Pirates really shines right for the reasons that you guys have attested to in rules you know just stepping up to it and having the sheer number of options before you even begin like what is my strategy going to be going into this game do I want to play to try to stack multi balls do I want to just kind of plow through the game with Norrington do I want to do a weird challenge and put a second ball on the upper play field and get half scoring through the rest of the ball. There's just so much to consider when going in and tackling this game, not to mention the number of different modes you can get once you're in it, the different ways you can stack it up. There's so many different multi-balls and modes. For me, Pirates of the Caribbean is uncontested in this category. Nick, why don't you go next? Pirates for sure. Not even I mean, that game is never going anywhere. It just continues to impress. It continues to keep being engaging. I would give Walking Dead, you know, the runner-up. I think it's good. There's a lot to it. You know, there's still things I haven't seen, so good for that. But, yeah, Pirates. Nick or Skip? Yeah, Pirates for sure. And then secondarily, I really like Wizard of Oz because of the far-off goal that it presents to me. But, yeah, it's POTC by a mile and then kind of everything else. Yeah, I had Jurassic Park in there too because it's got – it does a great job of giving you all these little goals along the way, but there's also that, again, the really far away thing that you can do at the end that I'll maybe get to once in my lifetime. So, and then there's also, like, the wide range of things you can do along the way, which is cool. Best innovation. I'll go first, and I'm going to say the battle P3 behind me. I think when you're talking about innovation in pinball in the 2010s, I don't think anything comes close to what they've thought up and accomplished with that game. And they redesigned everything, rethought of everything from how you maintain the game to how, you know, just the interactive play field, the walls and scoops. And it's just like you can play it online before anything else. So to me, that's no contest. The P3 platform is a win. Skip, what do you think? Yeah, that was really close for me. I said Wizard of Oz just because of the LCD innovation, right? Like, that took – Wizard of Oz, to me, was the beginning of the rebirth of pinball, and it brought about kind of this pinball renaissance that we're in, in my opinion. And the P3 is an amazing, amazing platform, and I can't wait to see what they do with it. It was very, very close, but Wizard of Oz was the most innovative for me for the time. Cool. Mick? I went with P3. I agree with everything Kevin said. Skip had a good point. You know, what Wizard of Oz did, at the time, it just took him all to the next level. But looking back in the last 10 years, I mean, Multimorphic just did something that went even beyond that. Yeah, I had LCD screens in general as, like, one of the big innovations. The other thing I had was RGB LEDs because the ability for an insert to change based on what's going on and provide even more guidance to the player on the play field, I think, is huge. So I've seen some pretty cool stuff come around in the past 10 years. So it's great to see all that. Skip, did you have any runner-ups? Yeah, P3 for sure. It was right there. It was so, so, so, so close. I mean, and here's a Dark Horse one that I wish I could see this in more games. Full Throttle from Highway when they put the LCD in the play field. Yeah. That helped me a lot, honestly. I've only played that game a few times, but I really like what they did there. And it speaks to everything that you said about P3, but P3 does that on a grander scale, obviously, right? But just doing that gave me all the information I needed as a player in a very easy-to-find place. And I like that game. I really do. That has nothing to do with being innovative, but I thought the LCD in the play field was cool. Nope. My power just flashed off. Not enough to die, though. Are we still there? I see you. Okay. If you see me, then we're still live. Okay. You saw that, though, right? Yeah. That was weird. All right. Hopefully we hang in there. We're almost done. Hang in there, Power. Ryder. What are you doing, buddy? All right. Game of the Decade. Let's go around the horn with this one. Nick, say it. Pirates. Skizzy. Pirates. Pirates. Next, runner-ups. I'll say, I said Jurassic Park and also Tron. Tron's a dream theme for me. It's a game that I've owned for a long time. I still have a blast playing it. It's a cool experience. Jurassic Park, we've talked about it a ton, but all great games. Skip runner-ups? Yeah, Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden. Okay. For sure. Maiden didn't get my vote in any of the other categories, which is funny, but as a full package, that game is absolutely freaking amazing, and I want to own one one day. It's fantastic. Awesome. Nick, beyond Pirates, what were your picks? Yeah, I'd say Walking Dead. The theme, the theme's great. I mean, it's a lineman cheats game, right? How many of you see he put out that are not these boutique, like, Richie Rich Kids games? He put out ACDC, this deck. Well, it's hard to say. It's hard because he worked on Iron Man. Yeah. But the ones that he sort of just did and took the lead on, yeah, ACDC, Metallica, Walking Dead, right? Those are the three that were just sort of like the normal sterns that he solely worked on. And, you know, he was a lead on with the team approach. And, yeah, man, I'm a huge Lyman fan. And I think that game is a great choice for a runner-up. Dick, if you ever feel like getting a Batman 66, I might know somebody who has one that might be willing to part with it. Yeah, you know what? I mean, I like George Gomez games. I don't like the Batman 66 theme. I mean, I don't like the Batman 66 as a theme whatsoever. It does nothing for me. and the gameplay on that game doesn't do much for me either I'm hearing a no okay alright I think I'm hearing a no it's a hard no alright and then so that was all the good stuff and then this morning I was like I was looking through the list so like I said we were going through the list on pin side and I was like let's talk about the biggest disappointment of the decade there's a lot of choices here too And I know what I'm going with, but I'm curious to hear what Nick picked as his disappointment of the decade. All right. All right, listen. And I'm going to turn off my games that were flashed in that power flash. This is easy for me. Biggest disappointment is the Big Lebowski, for sure. That really pissed me off, what happened with that. Like, I was super excited. This is like a dream theme for me. I had money down on it. I guess I've heard that before. I saw the writing on the wall really early on. I was able to get my money back. So this is really a bummer with what happened to them. Last I looked, they're starting to ship them out, but now the game went from being like $8,000. Now if I wanted it and if I could even get it, it would be like $15,000, which is just ridiculous. So it's a bummer, man. It's a bummer knowing that that game exists, and I'm glad to see that they're starting to make it and ship it out there. But it's still like every time I think about it, I'm disappointed because right now it's way too much money. I could have had it if they just didn't mess things up and did things right. I was in at eight. So, I don't know, man. I'm really – every time I talk about Big Lebowski, I'm just bummed about it. Yeah. That was my guess as to what you were going to pick, and probably the smartest decision you ever made was to get out of that game back when you had the chance, right? It would have been so painful to have that money tied up behind that game. Like, I'd be so bitter. It's just so much money. I don't care how much money you have. That's a lot. It's stupid to have somebody just walk away with that kind of money. You'd probably still be waiting for your game today, hoping that someday you might actually see it. It's so sad. I feel bad for everybody who got caught in that. Like, I was so close to that, so close to it. Skip, what do you think? Oh, man, this one was hard. There's been a lot of disappointment in the last decade, I've got to tell you. But for me, it was more about making a statement of where we're at as a society So, whoa, Nelly, Big Juicy Melons is the biggest disappointment of the 20 teens. What a freaking, are you freaking kidding me, dude? Whoa, Nelly, Big Juicy Melons. Get the frick out of my life with that stupid game and that stupid theme. It's just so stupid. We have moved beyond that. Pinball should not be there anymore. What the hell are you thinking? Go away. Bravo. And also, the game sucks. And it's overpraised. Not going for it. My number one pick was Zidware Pinball. Zidware, J-Pop, the whole promise of all these amazing boutique games, and then him just running off with everybody's money. And then getting hired by Deep Root, who still haven't produced anything. Weird, huh, how that works. J-Pop and Zidware, you're getting the whammy. That's nuts, though. When you think about they still haven't, he got hired, he still did not put anything out. Yeah. Like a whole decade. We're like into like 10 years now, a decade of just like him saying he's going to put something out and continuing to not put out a pinball machine. Yeah. That's amazing. I don't know what else to say. He ran off and stole a bunch of people's money and never made pinball machines. The only good thing is that we got Zombie Eddie out of it. He found Zombie Eddie to do Magic Girl and has gone on to do amazing pinball machines that actually got released in exchange for people's money for Stern. So, Zidware was my number one. I had two actual pinball machines as runners-up. The first one was Star Wars. That's what I was originally thinking when I was thinking of this category, but then I was like, no, Zidware is way worse. Because at least Star Wars, you can get a game for your money. It just might not be to the level that I would have wanted it to. And maybe Star Wars was a theme that had such high expectations that no matter what game came out, wouldn't have lived up to it. But I don't know. If J.J.P. did with Pirates, they could do that with Star Wars, then I think he would have had something there. But Star Wars is a theme I love. I just want a really amazing game for it someday. And the other one was Transformers for kind of much the same reason. It's not the Transformers everybody wanted. The game is a grind fest. um it shoots okay i mean it's it's a it's a gomez shooting game but the rules are abhorred the the the transformers are not the ones anybody wanted so um they don't transform i mean i think that's kind of a big thing you can call fucking transformers they don't transform do you remember the the promo video they made for that yeah yeah yeah where it was like the pinball machine transformed and did all this stuff and then like nothing transformed maybe they put some money into the actual toy in the game that you know you get something for it but yeah even if Yeah, a toy that transformed, though. It's not going to save chopping wood. Yeah. You don't like shooting Optimus Prime in the crotch? Come on, Nick. That's, like, the best part of the whole game. It's just that I don't like that. Okay. All right. Just checking. Kyle Boston said Stranger Things was a letdown. I just didn't want to pile on Stranger Things anymore, I think. I think, you know, everything's been said. They can be said about Stranger Things. But, yeah, that was a disappointment as well. That's actually on my kind of honorable mention of shitters, I guess. Star Wars, Stranger Things, and, yeah, the whole Big Lebowski fiasco. Yeah, those are all right up there. Yep. And Highway Pinball almost made that, but they, you know, I don't think they were really a disappointment more than just like they saw. The writing was on the wall with that one, man. Yeah, you had to see that one coming, yeah. Yep. So, all right, there you go. There's your decade in review. Big thanks to Skip Natty for joining us, for offering his perspective on TMNT and the other one. Pleasures of Valhalla. Pleasures of Valhalla. That's the one. The fun one. The good one, yeah. Again, Thunderbirds, not a disappointment because I had no expectation for that game at all. We knew that would be a disappointment. Yeah. If you were hyped for Thunderbirds, that was your own problem. All right. That's another month in the books of Birdie Even Talk Pinball. Before we wrap up, don't forget to give us a follow on social media if you want to stay in touch with us. Between podcasts, we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, all that fun stuff. You can email us if you're an emailer, talkpinball at gmail.com. You can tell Skip Natty how wrong he was with all of his objective opinions. Okay, I'm ready. You can follow us on Twitch if you want to see gameplay from all the crew, except for Nick during the summer, but maybe he'll make a grand return in the fall. But he does – oh, we talked about – we never did our game room updates earlier. I totally skipped over that. But I just put up a video today of – I've been doing all sorts of crap in my game room during the pandemic, and everything is actually working. So if you want to see a walkthrough of the game room and me talking about all my games, that's up on YouTube right now, and it's the new hot content. Nick promised his at least in the next six months or so. Yeah. As soon as he gets his house cleaned. Yeah. You can check that out. But if you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to us on Twitch. If you've got Amazon Prime, you can subscribe for no extra charge. Or you can PayPal us, buffalopinball at gmail.com. Or if you want to support us and not send any money, you can review us. Go on your favorite podcast app and drop a review. We want to be a five-star man like Rudy Supe. That's all for this month. Skip Natty, how was your Bro Do You Even Talk Pinball experience? You know what? It wasn't like pulling teeth, which is what I kind of expected originally. So I had a lot of fun. Nick, thanks for letting me do this. I appreciate you and your chaotic evil being. You know, you're a good guy. We love you. Thanks for having me. And, Kevin, you know, stay classy, my man. I'm going to try. Nick, have a great month, and don't forget to prepare your presentation for next month. You know what, Kev? I'll just say this. I might have to do it in person. This is, I'm just, it's not the same when we're just connected like this. I'm going to, yeah, it's going to be an in-person one. Oh, wow. Because I want to bring it 110%. I'm going to have to put the camera back and do it from six feet away. No, no, no. But, like, when we get back to normal. Okay. We've got to wait. When we get back to normal, it's going to happen. Okay. You're going to put the effort into it. It might be a while. That's a real cliffhanger. It's going to be before John, what's-his-face releases a pinball machine. Johnny J-Pop. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I can guarantee that. All right. Fair enough. All right, guys. have a good month and we will see you on Twitch in the meantime bye guys peace