Huh, a Purple Heart from Korea. You gotta be wounded to get one of these. Um, oh yeah, yeah, I was shot in the butt. Five bucks. Excuse me, young man. Um, what's the price on these dishes? Um, five bucks. Yeah, five bucks. But this looks like fine china. Um, five bucks. Take it or leave it. Uh, this table is like twenty dollars. Hey, what about the four chairs? Uh, they're eight. Uh, how much for the set? Uh, uh, fifteen. Here you go. Hey, Bevo. I'm like ripping these people off. Yeah, me too. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Fill Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. I made it. Yeah, yeah. I'm here. You showed up. Congratulations. Yeah, you know, I got threatened by the letter from the lawyers saying I still got to be here two more episodes. Two more episodes. It's in your contract, bitch. It is in the contract, bitch. I didn't agree with it. And this is episode 122, the sixth flash, which is what, Bruce? Test the display interrupter generator. This actually tests both U11 and U12. If U11 is to be replaced, then no sixth flash. Replace the U12. Clearly not reading it off of PinWiki at all. No, I'm not. I'm not. Clearly not reading it off of someone else's guides. Yes. There you go. All right. It's not his guides either. There's another guide. But we're not alone this week, Bruce. Yes, we have guests. Plural. And who are our guests? They are the stealers of all of our good knowledge, the takers of all of our bits, the masterminds of Australia. I give you Ryan C. and Martin R. How you doing, boys? G'day, lads. Yeah, you know what? We did steal everything, and that's why we got the worst award in the twerpies. We need to go over that because I want to know who does second worst and the third worst. I was hoping we were going to be worst, but maybe we're second worst. It doesn't matter. We were worst. We expected it to be worst. I think it does. I think we need to talk about that right now. We're going to go right into the twerpies. Who was the second worst? since you're not on your show, you can bust balls and do whatever you want now. It was you, it was Pinball Profile, that's all you need to know. Fuck yeah. How did you get Petey? That was another thing. That was a major coup, wasn't it? You must have shipped over like 20 magazines of Playboy, just for him. He doesn't know how to use the internet yet. Exactly, it was just spank. Could there have been anybody else to do it, though? No, no. I think now that he's done that, maybe, maybe he should do the Twippies. He should be at Texas. He should be brought in. You know, Jeff's a positive guy, and I don't think the hate that Mr. Pinty P.D. permeates really fits in with the positivity of the Twippies. Plus, by the time the Twippies are announced at Texas in March, Stern will already have released probably, what, three new games by then, and everyone will forget everything that happened last year. Pinside Petey might even have a girlfriend or, you know, get some pubes by then or something. You know, like, it's a while away, right? Oh, my. Oh, my. I have a question about the turkeys. What's with all the Thunderbirds hate? I mean, there is no way that many people actually even play the game. Yeah, I agree. Well, I think it's, like, it's the opposite of what's going on with Charlie Emery. You know, Charlie Emery, like, you know, the most kind of like lost guy in pinball possibly. He has like, just screams the aura of nice guy. And unfortunately, Mike has painted the picture of himself of being the opposite of that. So people want Stooky to succeed. And if they have some shortcomings, it's like, well, that's okay because Charlie is a nice guy and they'll fix it up. Whereas when you have someone as polarizing as Mike running the show, it's the opposite. that people are actually kind of rooting for him to fail because of what's come out of his mouth in the last couple of years. Yeah, and that's probably the conundrum there, is that he's sort of saying, you know, if I could take me or leave me, just judge me on my game. And then when you look at the game, you realise it's not great either. So what have you got left? You've got somebody that has, you know, pretty much come out of the gates offending a lot of people. You know, he started with the U.S. saying he doesn't want to, you know, deal with the U.S. market. And, you know, this was years ago, sort of lifted off all the reasons why he hates dealing with the U.S. It's hard not to be offended by that. So he's like, well, just judge me on the basis of my game. Well, the game is shit. That's pretty much what's happened. So this is some late-breaking news that just happened a couple of hours ago. to get rated on Pinside, which is obviously the only way to judge the success of the game. Oh, yes, definitely. Oh, for sure. No other way. So you need 15 ratings to get rated, and then once a week, which is literally like two or three hours before we start recording our episode every week, Robin updates the database and things shift around. So Thunderbirds, well, you guys can guess if you want where it's going to be. is going to debut in the top 100, 200, 300, or somewhere on the last page, which is like 300 to 350 or something. I'm thinking 350. Is this like prices, right? Yes, sure. 351. It goes up to 359, by the way. Okay, okay. So it's going to debut between Hyperball, which is 357 and Bugs Bunny birthday ball at 358. That's the rating that it currently has. So when it gets updated, by the time this airs, it'll be rated as the third worst game of all time according to Pinside. Really? Yeah, look, Pinside ratings, it's hard to really sort of validate those ratings because it really is an opinion piece. It's not very objective. I would have expected it to be objectively a lot higher than that. But, you know, I'd like to see the comments. That's what I want to see. That's what I want to... That's what I'm living for right there. Is hard body really that bad? No, actually, hard body is not that bad at all. No, it's not. Hard body is way better than some of these other games that are right around it. Hyperball, I mean, Bruce, you're the only person I know who knows how to play it. Yeah. Yeah. Raven's there, and Raven is pretty bad. Oh, Raven is bad. I will definitely agree with that one. I played Charlie's Angels the other day during that Super Envy tournament that you ran, Marty. Yeah. And the layout of that is very, very weird. You've basically got rollovers that are kind of just in the middle of the play field that control the entire bonus or something. I don't know. Wait, wait, don't talk about tournament play. Don't talk about tournament play. You're breaking the rule. Yeah. Yeah, right. Go blow. Yeah. So, you know, it's amongst other company like Orbiter One, which is going to appear in this podcast a little bit later as well. To the innovation that is Orbiter One. Mm-hmm. Compared to some of the valleys back then, but we'll get to that a little later. Perhaps we'll get to that shortly. Yes, we will. But, you know, with the twerpies, you had a big response, which was really cool. Sure. And it was really nice to see that you guys actually did some, you know, a nice piece on it, and it worked out really well. And it was close until the end, and then Mike just pushed it over the edge and took the worst pinball machine. But as we all have said now, not many of those people who voted were actually basing it on gameplay that they'd actually played. If we removed Homepins, Thunderbirds, and Supreme, then I guess the results probably would have been a lot more interesting. Yeah. Maybe a bit more offensive to some, but it's almost like they were the go-to for most of the votes. The thing with Supreme is me and Bruce have both played the Spider-Man Home Edition, which is what Supreme is. So we were kind of basing our opinions on that. I mean, it was a good pin. And it actually plays pretty good. It surprisingly well. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I'd rather own that than some of the Gottliebs out there, you know. So guess what, you know. It's a bit of a weird year, isn't it? It's the year of, you know, this pin is not for you. It's also, you know, I guess the year of an extra amount of hate towards the pins that aren't for you. Because Supreme, as I said, didn't even appear on the Stern website. It wasn't even advertised by them. It's literally just the contract manufacturing game, and people just got so upset. And you can see that by, you know, six months later on the tour, it has still won almost half the awards. No doubt. But, like, who's getting upset by it? The people who bought it like it. I don't get it. I don't get the hate for that one. It's the money. It was the money grab. That's what people... Yeah. But who's money grabbing? Stern isn't money grabbing. It's the company who money grabs the ring. That's their business model. That is their business model. But everyone associates it with who sold the game. Like, I bet you if Spooky did something like that, I guarantee you would get a little negative feedback from it. Hmm, maybe. You're saying, what, because it's Stern, people want to take down the big guys because they can afford the criticism? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. And it never can seem like they can criticize Spooky, but, you know, it seems like Stern has always been the whipping boy. Like, you know, it just takes the hits and keeps on getting beat up. Well, look, I think it was a series of events. What's been happening over the last couple of years is obviously prices are increasing. And people are sort of talking about, like, obviously, when they went to Spike and everything got a little bit lighter, people are going, well, you know, what's in this machine? What am I actually getting for my money? So as the LEs went up in price, people sort of started seeing the features sort of coming off a bit. There was always that, already there, there was people sort of questioning the value for money. Then Supreme came out and just went, are you really fucking taking the piss here? I think that's kind of what it was about. Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question, Martin. You said you might be selling one of your two games, which one is possibly Iron Maiden. You got the LE. Do you think it was worth the value that you paid for it? And you know what? It's interesting because if you looked at the feature list and you looked at the bill of materials, you would say, you know, it's no more, no less than my Star Trek, which cost, you know, $10,500 versus $13,000 four years ago, or whatever it was. Yeah. But if you then sort of the X factor, which is the playability of the game and what goes into designing a really fun game with great rules, great art, great sounds. Absolutely, it was worth the money. Okay, well, that's good. That's what you, to me, I don't think it was. Sure. I really don't. Unfortunately, the best LE that has been out there is the one the three of us still own, and that is Star Trek LE. What? That's right. I own Star Trek. What are you talking about? Oh, that's right. You didn't get rid of it. You don't own Star Trek. I own Star Trek. No, LE. I own a game that probably has more crap on it than your LE does. I'm so confused. Didn't you sell it? No, he's talking about Next Generation. Yeah, you know the game with two cannons? You know the game with two cannons? You know the wide body? That doesn't work. Works fine. Mine works fine. Sure. Yeah. Catapult. Yeah. Well, look, you know, the cost of machines are going to go up every year anyway. It's inflation, right? That's just the way it is. I'm going to be the little pessimist right now. Right now the stock market's down almost 16%, and the NASDAQ's down 20%, and people are going to start thinking about not having so much excess money. And what do you think the first thing's going to happen? Pinball is going to get cut back on a lot of these people. And if they keep on raising the prices like they are, you're going to see a lot of companies in a lot of trouble. Yeah, I think Stern have taken the model that says, we're going to charge what we can. The market will always dictate whether a machine is priced right or not. The machines that they've had so far have been selling very well, I assume. I mean, we obviously don't get their sales numbers, but there will become a time when they do release a machine at a certain price point and people just don't buy it because that price is too much. But right now, it hasn't happened. I mean, has Beatles sold out? No. They only made half of them, right? They only made half of them, and my guy has three or four still sitting there. I can get one. Literally, if I went to his place tomorrow, I can get three or four. Yeah. The biggest disconnect for that one, really, we spoke about this when we interviewed Zach Sharp, is for that machine, I think people have accepted a price point for Stern machines, but they, again, I was saying before with Iron Maiden, there's an expected bill of materials as a minimum that you want to get. Now, obviously they talked about the fact that the Beatles license was the most expensive license in history. People don't put a value to that cost of license. Is the machine good? Is it jam-packed? And that's what people put a value on. True, but we had our little argument where basically Beatles actually has more mechs in it than Deadpool does. I mean, it doesn't ramp, but it literally has more mechs in it than Deadpool does. I guess the problem at the moment is that if you have an artist like Dirty Donnie or Zombie Yeti, the artwork is so packed that it creates the illusion that there is more on the play field than there actually is, whereas Christopher Franchi, with Batman and I guess with Beatles, maybe got him a little bit more packed, but he spaces things out in a certain way that doesn't... I don't want to use the word clutter, but it's not as intense and things aren't so close together that it doesn't create that illusion that I think Iron Maiden... Because Iron Maiden as well, like Iron Maiden Pro, what does that have over Deadpool? Actually, there's less. Yeah, probably. But the thing I have a problem with is, yes, you had the most expensive license with Beatles, but you also had the least amount of R&D. Well, no, I disagree there. You've got a layout. Yes, you've got a layout. You've got to copy a layout. But it's not like they got the original CAD drawings. It's not like they got the original schematics and mechanics and just went, right, let's slap a new license on it. No, they had Keith's machine. They had Keith's machine right in his office. Yeah. That's how they did it. That was one of the biggest perks about it. But it wasn't like they had a whole new design. It wasn't like they slapped Ghostbusters and said, okay, we're going to do something totally oddball and different in some ways. That's where they saved a lot of the money that they did put towards. Well, I still don't agree with that. I still don't agree with that. But I think the real parallel there is when you come to Primus. Because Primus, they did have everything. They already had all the materials. They had all the designs, all the schematics. All they had to do was stick new art on it, and out it came. That one was a bit of a disconnect, too. Oh, God, totally. That's the biggest cash for Stern just saying, hey, I can build you 100 machines because we have the parts for 100 machines. Here's the artist you guys wanted, and you guys used your own artist with it combined, and look. We sold you 100 machines, and now you can go sell them on your own. Have they sold out yet? Are they still available? No, they're still available. Well, that's the interesting thing then. Okay, so if Beatles doesn't sell out, if Primus doesn't sell out, the stock market is having a massive correction. Is Stern the only company that's in a position that they could actually lower the price back down a little bit, or do you think that they just are content with making less pins in 2015? No, they cannot make less pins. Well, not – okay, so that means they have to reduce the price. They have to adjust. They would have to adjust. And it might not be – Okay, adjust by giving more or by lowering the price? Either or. They have to actually say, look, this is what you're getting for your value, and, look, we put more stuff into it to entice the person to pay maybe $6,000, $7,000, $8,000. or, B, say, hey, if you want the same machine, you know, a different, like, say, the newest model coming out, not Munsters, but, you know, further down the road, hey, this is the newest one out. Hey, we have a ProLite, you know, almost like that maybe. And they might have to do that kind of thing where they're keeping – they need to keep that production line running. They have too much square footage now for it to be idle. When they were idle last time, it almost bankrupted them. They cannot be idle. Yeah, and I was there. And we were both there. I was there during the tour. Exactly. And it was... You guys had a tour, what, during, like, what, 2000? During Expo. During Expo. It was dead. What year? It was 2009. Was it the Wheel of Fortune? No. It was NBA. They had NBA for China. They had the playfields in the back for China. We were walking around, and the production floor was dead. How many people... Nobody. Nobody was working. Nobody was working on the floor. You saw machines, like, sitting on the floor, but no one was working. Yeah. That's how scary that was. Me and my father, when we were done with that tour, we were like, oh, boy. It was really a downer. I was like, man, this is really bad. I think Pinball is in a better place now, so I don't think we're heading that way. It is. It is, but anything can happen. What a great year for Deep Root to reveal all their pins, right? Well, who knows when they're going to reveal them. That's another thing. Who knows when they're going to reveal them since they delayed now for, you know, it could be almost nine months from now. You don't know. I mean, if they really plan on dumping that many pinball machines on the market, surely that has to have some massive effect on the whole industry. What is that? If they undercut, then they're really going to throw the market into a little tizzy. How much is going to be undercut? How low does it have to be to be an effective undercut, in your opinion? I'm saying $4,100, $4,200. If they can undercut them by $1,000, oh, boy. And if they have no distributor network, that's the other thing we don't know. We don't know if they're going to have a distributor network, if they're going to sell direct. Don't forget, they can cut a piece of the pie out. Well, we've seen how it's worked with Jack. Jack's just, that's like, you know, the both way. You can't do both ways. You have to do one or the other. You either have to sell direct or sell through distributorships. You can't do both like what Jack did. And he's still done. I can't see how they're going to do it in other countries. And I know U.S. is the biggest market in the world by far. But if we're taking, you know, close to 10% of the world's pins at the moment, And how are we going to buy direct? Well, no, what they could do is do distributorships in other countries and do direct in the U.S. Okay, so you buy Alice in Wonderland, Bruce, and then you have a problem with your machine. You're going to have to call. I will have to call directly to DeepRoot. Okay. This is kind of a spooky model, right? Well, you did it already right now. I don't call my distributor when I have a problem. I call Stern. I do. when you have a problem with your JJP, who do you call? You're going to call JJP. And then they're going to say to you, go through your distributor to get this part. Or sometimes, if it's a small part, they're going to say, we'll ship this to you right away. Well, this is similar to the Spooky model. Spooky, you buy the machine direct. For us and other countries, there is the distributor model. And if there was a problem with my TNA, I would go to the distributor, or I had the option to go to Spooky for initial tech support. but parts and replacement, maybe the local distributor has got some replacement parts, but usually it's direct to the manufacturer. But there's a massive problem with that, Marty, is that if somebody wants an Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle or a TNA, they have to order one and wait a certain amount of time, and there has to be like 10 people that want one, and then they get room in a shipment and it gets down. It's like it's that I want it now. I want to ring up my distributor because I just got a bonus at work, and I've got $10,000 to spend. And you can laugh about it, but that's literally what happens with these higher-end collectors. Like, I'm bored. I want a new pin. It doesn't exist for Spooky. You can't go and buy one new. But if they do do that model, I think that's the way they're going to have to do it. Distributorships in other countries and direct to the U.S. Because not being disrespectful to any other country, most of the money is going to come from the U.S. Yeah, sure. And, you know, they're going to look at it as, guess what, they're going to want the biggest piece of the pie. When you have distributor shifts, you're splitting and you're increasing costs. And it seems like his model is he wants to keep the costs down. Yeah. Well, we always say good luck to him. We haven't seen anything yet, right? No, of course not. That's the worst thing about this. You know, we're not, who knows when we're going to see it. Jeff has. We should hack Jeff's e-mail. Where's the damn hack? Where's Steve? Steve, I need to email you something. I've got to send you this worm. Yeah, that's it. Back on the twerpies, obviously, Supreme and Thunderbirds had a poor showing. But some of the games that had the inverse to that, so the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice Cooper, Deadpool, Iron Maiden, all did well. Would you agree with those things doing well? I think the only vote against Iron Maiden was probably from Zach. Probably. But, no, they did really well. And, honestly, I'm looking forward to the Twippies because it's really going to be a slugfest. I think I know who's going to win, top game, but it's going to be tight. It's really weird because I guess the people that vote for, you know, the Twippies and the Swoopies probably have a very large presence on websites like Pinside, whereas on a forum like Tilt Forums, and we know how big Pimberg is. We know it can sell 800 tickets in a matter of minutes. So there's a decent chunk of people that are just into tournaments, but I think those people don't care for... Like, you don't go on Tilt Forums, you don't see a topic like, hey, what's the worst thing you've ever played? And hey, you know, check out this R2-D2 tupper. Like, people, like, just don't care at all about that stuff. No. So, you know, how much do those people and the people that really appreciate tournament gear, pinball machines, are they going to be the same people that vote for the Twippies? Some will. I think some will, but not all. No, but that's why I enjoy Tilt Forum more than... Well, who do we think is going to win Game of the Year? Not who would we vote for, but who do we think is going to win? I think it's Iron Maiden is literally cannot lose it if it loses it then it's rigged I mean I think second would be Pirates of the Caribbean but it's just I think people got a bit tired of waiting for a year and that's that's let up a bit of the shine off the pinball machine but I'm going over someone's house to play it tonight if the machine came out in January and didn't have so many issues I think Pirates would have would neck and neck with it Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think don't underestimate Deadpool, mainly because it's in more hands of people than Pirates is. Are you saying for the second position, Marty, or do you think for Iron Maiden? For second position. Okay. I reckon for me the one to sucker punch is Iron Maiden Deadpool. I think it's too clunky. I think people see that. Sure. It's half clunky, half not clunky. It depends on which one you play. I played one on site yesterday, and I had like a 10-minute ball one, and I got like 400 million or something. I'm like, oh, this game actually shoots really well. But that's the first time I've played one that didn't feel like all the shots were clunky. It's just so weird. It's just it really depends on how the machine is set up with that one. And do you take points off for that? How many Iron Maidens have you played where the auto launcher shoots perfectly under that upper left flipper into the ball? Very few. like, you know, like 1 in 20 or something. Yeah, I'm still playing with mine, and I've had mine for almost nine months. I still, once in a while, have to go in there and tweak again. It's annoying. It really is. But it doesn't ruin the game. It does in some ways. When you're in multiball... That's the moment. That's the moment. That's like, you know, multiball's just about to start, so I'm going to release all three balls in one, and then it'll go and hit a switch, and then it says, oh, well, fuck it. Like, fuck this whole intro that was choreographed. Let's just start multiball. Or just hits the post, not going up the thing, and then maybe you're holding a ball or something. It just, it can ruin your, it gives you a bad taste. It really does. I'm just now in the mode, whenever I go into multiball, it's like, quick, hold up left flipper and manually plunge the ball. That's how I do it. Okay, that's your fix. That's your fix. Go for it. The problem with Deadpool is that that ramp shot can be unfair, I think is probably the word. When you can absolutely nail that shot and it clunks, you're like, well, I'm going to get rewarded for not hitting that shot cleanly? How does it work? I know. I don't mind the ramp shot. I hate the right orbit. The right orbit is the clunkiest shot in that game. What, when it accidentally ends up in the shooter lane? Yeah, and a shooter laner just hangs up and just stops and comes rolling back down. I've been on four of them, four different machines, and you make that right orbit, and you're like, what's going to happen? Is it going to shoot down a shooter rain? Is it going to clunk up there, or is it actually going to make it all the way around? That's not the kind of game I want to play, where four different machines are doing the same thing. What do you think, Ron? The one I played, it's funny. The one that was the Rock Fantasy, or the one that's the Rock Fantasy, the first day, the launch party, the main ramp slash loop shot worked fine. Subsequent times I've been there, it has not worked as consistently. And, I mean, it does feel clunky. Like, even when you hit the left ramp and it hits that, like, the whole habit trail kind of moves a little bit. If you know what I mean. It's kind of like that one ramp on Batman 66. Batman, yeah. You put that flap there or whatever, and it's hitting it, and all that. Like, ugh, that doesn't look very good. Appealing. Not appealing at all. It's weird, because I don't think that, like, when we had George Gomez on our show, I don't think he ever listened to our podcast except for maybe the week before. He was like, let me listen to these guys and make sure they're not complete idiots. and he mentioned on our podcast that I think I mentioned something like the apex of some of his shots like in Lord of the Rings and Monster Bash it's really unsatisfying to me if you just don't hit that shot and it goes like it's like three-fourths the way through the ramp and then it rolls all the way back and it's on so many of his pins but it's like I never thought of it that way I just think of it like I want to give people a long time to think about what they're doing before the ball gets to the flipper but do you know what I mean And there's maybe a whole group of people out there like Ron, like you get OCD when something rattles or shakes. And for me, it's the same. But I guess we probably represent a pretty small part of the pinball buying community, and it's not important to everyone else, right? No, I know what you're talking about. When you play Monster Bash, you hit the left ramp or you hit the left ramp on Lord of the Rings, and it's almost reaching the apex to get further down. So it goes to your flipper and it just stops. and then you can have another ball right behind you doing the same thing and it's just like, you sit there like, really? Really? If I get a rejection, I want it to be like at the start of the ramp, so I'm not, because, you know, you kind of like, you almost like hold your breath, like, do I make the ramp? And then it's that slow roll back. If it bothers you, just play some Dialed In and it'll all be better. Or play some Star Trek LE for those who have one, if you want that experience. or Thunderbirds where... No, no, no. If you just time it absolutely right, it goes almost up to the ramp and then stops at the top of the ramp. It just stops? It just stops. It just stops. It does it. It's like one of those carnival-like things where you want to get the thing to just stop. You should get bonus points for that. That was the old ramp money. It's now been replaced. And just before the Australian shipment as well, because Aussies still don't have their Thunderbirds. Ah, jeez. Wait a minute. Isn't it made by an Australian guy? Well, it's made by a Chinese guy. Wow. Well, he might as well be. I mean, we've effectively just owned him, is what I'm saying. So have you revoked his citizenship? I would just be happy for him to stay where he is. Maybe Bruce, his second game, which is apparently a Chinese original theme, maybe that'll be Dragon Fist. Maybe he's making bootleg Dragon Fist in China. Maybe that'll be his redemption. No, you're going to make Black Belt instead. Or, what is it, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, maybe? There you go. Yeah. That'd be a cool pin. He'd be, like, floating. He could use magnets and the balls would float around. It'd be like a world under glass. Okay. Thank you for sucking everything out of everything here. I know, all of us. Yes. We went from the pole. You guys are like quitting podcasting or something like that? Is that the rumor that I've heard recently with you guys? Are we quitting, Ron? We're not quitting. We're cutting down. Yes. As in not every week. Yes. Okay. But then, okay, so then when you're not doing it every week, is it going to be like, hey, Bruce, do you want to do an episode? No, I'm busy at the bar. And Bruce will be like, oh, hey, I'm free. Do you want to talk about the months since we just came out? And Ron's like, ah, no, I've got work and this and this and that. I think it will still be Mondays, of course, because that's the only free day I have. So I think it will just be we'll talk. Like me and Ron just don't talk on like the day before we do a podcast. Like, hey, what are you doing? Hey, let's do the podcast. We talk during the whole week. You know, just like probably you and Marty do, you know. We do? No, Jesus fucking Christ. I mean, I'll find out, like, we're going live. Oh, by the way, it's going to be Ryan and Marty with us this week. Like, what? Okay, we're live. No, it's not that bad. I have proof of that. If I have to take a picture of it, you know. All right, you gave me, what, two days to notice? Two days, exactly. Okay, all right. That's better than what you're telling me. It's two minutes. well if I had to ask you if we had any guests when would you have told me I would have told you when the same day I was actually planning on emailing you oh okay sure geez Louise or not emailing you but messaging you yeah if we really really honest guys you know that we been wanting to come on this show for probably a couple of months now Oh, yeah, of course. You called us out. I called you guys out. And we've got a fight on our hands. This isn't a fight. This is like bringing a baseball bat to a boxing match. Because we're just going to be a... A baseball bat to a boxing match. I think it's typically bringing a knife to a gunfight. No, we go extreme here. We're bringing a baseball bat to a boxing match. That's more extreme than a gun. Yeah, because that's really bad. I think a really good boxing guy could easily beat a guy with a baseball bat. Yeah, I agree. You think so? Yeah, just one block and knock out and that's it. Like, done. One knee shot. He's down on the ground and you start wailing him in the head. Ah. That's fun. Good on you, Bruce. All right. All right. Well, we have someone who is, like, talking shit on Sterns and saying valleys are better. So what's up with that? Yeah, what is up with that? Okay. So the premise of my statement was that, you know, Ryan, how many Stern electronics machines do you own now? Six. Five. Six. Okay. How many valleys do you own? Early valleys. Zero. Okay. Right. So this is the premise of what I was saying to Brian, is that he has bought all these Stern machines based on listening to you guys and talking to you guys and drinking the Kool-Aid, effectively, which says Sterns are the best machines, right? But that's it. And so on our podcast, I can't remember, it was months ago, I said, well, effectively, I called it out and said, look, I think you've bought into this a bit too much because they're good machines, but they're actually really not that good compared to a lot of other machines that were released at the time. And I call that Bally. And I said Bally to Ryan because I just felt Ryan would actually like Bally machines more than Stern machines. My favourite machines from that era are actually Williams games. That sort of was my starting era of pinball, was really playing lots of Williams games. But, you know, knowing that I was going to be on this show, I may have done a bit of research. Ooh. So you have some flyers in front of you that you're going to read from? I do. No, I'm just going to give you some first, some high-level numbers, okay? So we're really talking about the years 78 to 82, right? For Bally's, Stern, and Williams. So Bally released, and look, I take a lot of this information from IPDB, and the filters I've used are 78 to 82, and anything that was a prototype game or a non-pinball, like a flippless game, I took them out. Okay, now I'm going to say one thing before you say anything. If you're going by production numbers, you win. No, no, no. Okay. No, no, no. I've got a lot more to go on than just production numbers. All right? So here's some high-level numbers. So, Bally made 40 machines during that period. Williams, 35. Stern, 29. Sure, why not? Bally, 288,000, thereabouts. Williams was about 160,000, and Stern was just over 72,000. So, what are you talking about? Per machine sold, Bally was just over 7,000, Williams just under 5,000, and Stern around 2,500. Yeah. Okay. So what it's really saying is, right now, I think Sterns are popular because there's not that many of them. And people have really, you know, they've bought their Valleys, they've bought their Williams. Those machines these days are so hard to get for a good price, right? You know, you look at a Centaur. Here in Australia, you're talking $6,000, $7,000, right? You might as well get a Stern Pro. But average rating for these machines on IPDB 7.4 for Bally 7.3 for Williams 7.2 for Stern That's on average, right? Yeah But we should then actually have a look at the top rated games for each of those And I'll just put out some names there So for Bally, you've got Flash Gordon, Sensor, Matahari, Xenon, Paragon, 8-Ball Deluxe, Fathom an MBO. So those ratings are from 8 to 7.8. The lowest is 7.8, the highest is 8. Williams, this is a bit of an anomaly. You've actually got Joust. So, take Joust out. You've got Black Knight, Firepower, Sorcerer, Space Shuttle and Jungle Lord. Right? So that's from 7.9 down to a 7.7. Stern starts at 7.7 for their highest rated game, being Memory Lane. Okay, now I have a problem with this. No, no, the reason why is because you just actually solidified part of that argument. Sure. Saying that there is less of these machines, so more people have never played these machines. Sure. Would you go with that agreement also? Yeah, but people still put up the same amount of reviews on IPDB. Oh, just like the great reviews on Pinside. Well, also, you said 78 to 82, right? Yes. Sorceress from like 85. That's how that got in there. I think your data is flawed. No, it could have been. But it doesn't rate that high, so it doesn't really matter. And Mata Hari is a terrible game, so we just don't even consider that. I would actually rather play a Viking than a Mata Hari. Fair enough. I kind of would agree with you on that as well. I'm a bit cool on that. But just on that as well. So what I'm really saying is that if you were to look at the top-rated machines and I've gone to like a top 20, 21, you know, your sterns are really starting at the 17, 18 mark and it's dominated by valleys, right? But that's one part of the argument. The second part of the argument really will be when we, you know, if we want to do a face-off where we go valley versus stern. But also, I would like to do a special face-off for us today in honor of the twerpies. Ah, okay. I would like us to go against each other on the worst machines of each manufacturer. Well, that's easy for this. Oh, God. Because it would be Mystic versus Orbiter One. Actually, I would consider... Wait a minute. Mystic's an awesome game. I love Mystic. Mystic is actually better than... I would actually consider X as an... Oh, well, you go 84. I'm talking... Okay, speak easy. Terrible game. So you want to go 82. That's a terrible game. And they rate it a 7.3. I think Mystic is way better than Speakeasy. Yeah, I'm just going by the ratings. I know, but I'm going by the terrible ratings that you're going by. If I was going to go head-to-head, I would pick definitely. And guess what? I own three of Speakeasys. So I have perfect knowledge of this turd. Why are you buying so many turds? But would you say it's better than Orbiter One or worse than Orbiter One? Actually, I like Orbiter One in some ways. Speaking is terrible. The stupid wheel in the middle is terrible. Hey, I like wheels. It's terrible. Titoff has a wheel. And there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of agree with you. But your third worst rated machines are Orbiter One, Nugent, and Freefall. and your worst three are Dolly Parton which is terrible Mystic which is a good game so I disagree with that one completely and Rolling Stone is not that great it's better than a couple of the others it's certainly better than Orbiter One and it's certainly better than Nugent or Freefall I wonder if Nugent is getting that because of the theme Yeah, that could be too, because... I don't think it's that bad a game at all. I don't think it is, actually, either. There's actually worse... It's actually okay. Look, here's the thing. This was part of what I was saying to Ryan. This isn't binary. This isn't, oh, just because I say Bally's a good, Stern's a crap. They're not. I actually love Stern games from this era, and I actually love them for something that Ryan doesn't like. And it's why when he saw that Magic came up, and I know that he spoke to you guys about Magic and whether you would or not. I think Ron hates it. Bruce doesn't mind it. I loved the sound package from these games, even though they're great. No, I know. It is what Ryan hates about them. But the sound palette that they used, for me, just every time I hear it, I'm back there in the moment. That's what it reminds me of. Now, I'm going to bring up another point. You brought up that sterns were not as common. So many people have not seen them in their wild and when they're growing up with it. Don't forget, my first machine I played was 8-Ball. You know, Ryan's first machine he remembers is, of course, Shrek's Sparrow, where he worked one out, you know. So, you know, don't forget, nostalgia does play, I think, into a lot of these older games with the ratings. And I don't agree with the rating. I think it should go certain games against certain games. and... Marty, why don't we do the top three then? They can choose the top three Sterns of that era. We can choose the top three Ballys. And then we can put it on both Facebook pages as like, if you owned a three-game collection, would you rather own these three games or these three games? And we can combine the results together and see who wins. Yeah, let's do it. I like this. There's no order. It's just your top three. No order of which one's your best, your worst, or your second worst. Sure. Ron, I think you You know, I think we own all three, don't we, of our picks, right? What are our picks? We own, I think, all three of our good picks. What do you think, right? Sure. Quicksilver, Stars, and... Stargazer. Yeah, Stargazer. Actually, I don't know about the... Yeah, what would you think, Ron? Would you go with those three? Stars, Quicksilver, definitely. Ah, yeah. Stargazer, yeah. I think those would be the top three. Or Meteor's in there, too. Yeah, I would agree. Meteor also. Yeah. Go Meteor instead of Stargazer, because, you know... No, I like Stargazer. No, because Stargazer's a freaking kick-ass free spinner game. I would do with those three. And your probably three would be Centaur, 8-Ball Deluxe, and maybe Fathom. Ryan? What's your opinion? It's up to you. I'm going to be arguing against the Sterns, so I know more about them. And I know their flaws, so you go for the positives. and you can't see it. What? Yeah. Well, I would say... I've got some information on Stargazer that's going to blow your mind that you guys probably don't even know about the game that you own. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I would say Centaur, April Deluxe, and Paragon. Okay. What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, go for it. I mean, some of the misses there that we haven't represented that are top-rated, you've got Flash Gordon, Mata Hari, Xenon, Fathom, and Embryon. So we've got a lot to pick from. And some of our misses would be Yo-Yo, Cheetah, definitely Cheetah, definitely Meteor. Actually, I don't mind Pinball. Pinball's great. Regular-spin Pinball. I like Pinball. Pinball is a great hobby to have. Big game. You know, there's a lot of Nineball. Sea Witch. Don't forget Sea Witch. Sea Witch, you know. So we have a lot of, yep. So there's a lot of games even for us that people don't think of always. Yeah, I mean, you know, we've got Space Invaders, but, you know, we're not going to bring that in. And we have Farfall, not Farfall, but what's the one that, Freefall and whatever. Freefall. Yeah, Freefall's terrible. All right, how are we going to do this? You guys can... We're bringing a bat to a boxing match. Oh, yeah, baby. Bring in a baseball. All right, you guys talk about one of your games, and then we have a small amount of time to talk about how bad that game is and point out its flaws. So you guys can go first since you're so well-versed in certain electronic games. Which one would you like to go with first, Ron? I'll let you take the first one, Ron. Stars. Good boy. Stars is awesome. There you go. Where's my flyer? Where's my flyer? Where's the flyer? Where's the flyer? Stars, simplistic brutality. Watch it screw you over and over again, and you'll keep playing over and over. a masterpiece by the genius that is Steve Kirk, one of the greatest pinball designers of all time. When your first name is Steve, you're guaranteed to be a good pinball designer. Steve Kirk, Steve Ritchie, Steve Kordick. I need I say more. Two banks that drop targets, two spinners. Awesome rule set, trying to get all those stars lined up to crush that spinner. Or you can just build your bonus. The, you know, Scott, who we have on all the time, who's changed the rules to a lot of games. You know what he did to stars? nothing, because it was perfect. Okay, stars. The flaws in the game. The flaws in the game are that you have to collect five stars. One of them you can't even shoot with your flipper. You have to rely on a random pop-up hit which just sometimes ruins the game, right? Talk about score balancing. The drop targets. Yes, there's six drop targets and they control the value of that left spinner, but it's one of those shit rules. It's like they almost got there with the rules like they did with Meteor, but they fucked it up because, you know, get the drop target bank down, then it resets that spinner back to 200 points. So there's only one valuable spinner in the game. That second one is wasted, and it's only valuable when you get the stars up. And when you get the stars up, you're not going for the spinner. You're trying to hit the special. It could have been an EM. It's that simplistic, and it's a fun game to play in tournaments. That's about it. For lols. It's a fun game for lols. That's it. Shirts and giggles. Yeah. Do you mean the drop targets where it wants you to complete ones but not hit other ones? The awesomeness of that rule set somehow is escaping. Well, it's not awesome because you need to hit them down to advance your bonus, which is 19,000. 19,000 times three isn't enough compared to what the special is. There's your unbalanced rules right there. They have it there, so you don't want to complete them, so you can match the spinner, or you can get the two outer ones to make the center one worth 7,000, which was so awesome even I didn't know that rule existed until someone pointed it out to me. That's how awesome Stars is. 7,000. These old games are all about score balancing, right? You don't want one thing to be worth way more than anything else. And on Stars, nothing carries over, so it's a complete one-ball game. So you can be that close to hitting the special, and then it's worth nothing on the next ball. So you can play a better game than someone else. He could get stuck at the top and get 1,000 per pop-up hit, and he's going to win. We have one argument against your argument. In 1977, 78, Mata Hari and all those other games, your bonus never carried over either. That's all right. We're not choosing Mata Hari. I know. I'm just saying you're bringing up the time. We're doing exactly time for time. Okay. Marty, choose a game. I'm going to choose Centaur, right? it's an easy one for me because if you think about the features that this machine had, like 1981, it had 5 ball, multiball and not just any old multiball, it had this trap door that came up, you didn't know where those balls came from there they are, great rules, and again you were talking about targets that you want to hit where you don't hit others well what about the orbs targets if you hit those in order, bang you're straight into multiball those targets on the right you need to hit those in order to be able to permanently light the release target up the top right you've also got the option of going for release via the left captive ball with in-lane targets behind that i mean that right there is just the genius mech on top of that you then got this fantastic artwork from paul faris black and white hand-drawn it when the machines turned off black and white, turn the power on, all of a sudden there's a burst of colour. The way the colours have been designed with, you know, blue down the bottom, then orange, then red, then green up the top, it is just an absolute masterpiece of design. Talk about gameplay, solid belly layout of the time, great flipper feel, but another little special thing that this has got is the ability to save your ball from the out lane with a clever a nudge to get it back into the flippers. So I give you Centaur, one of the best things ever made. Okay, Bruce, you own this one. Yes, I own this turd. I sold it as soon as I finished restoring it. First, way overrated. This thing is a mechanical nightmare when it gets to 40 years old. The shooters, and they don't make parts for it anymore either. So if your arm is wasted on the throw mechanism, oh, my God, try to find one. I had three people trying to find one for me until I had to finally make my own part for this. Terrible game for that. Second, all of them, I think, didn't have the color pop. Like, everyone's used to the CPR playfields that are white. Most of these turds were beige. Out of the factory, even when you take off the post, they were beige. They were not black and white. They were beige and black. Terrible color matching back then. Bally superiority with the drop targets if you can hit them softly because guess what you're going to get with a Bally you're going to get the Bally brick more than any other manufacturer Bally made a ton of great targets but they could not stop the brick terrible then let's go with great flippers let's make the best flipper back from 1978 to 81 and then oh let's change this design and make a linear flipper, which is junk. Bushings, no feel to the flipper, not being able to tap pass. They ruined a perfectly good flipper design and put it in Centaur. No fun. Two ball. You can have ten balls in this fucking game. It is a terrible fucking game when it comes to playability. And if you make it easy for people with the adjustable rules, you can save your bonus or not save your bonus. Yeah, that's what I want to do. Never be able to catch up to you if I've gotten maxed out the bonus on the first ball. I might as well just go to the next game and play that game after that because I can't catch up to you. Bad rules, bad mechanism. Well, have a good first ball, for God's sake. Oh, exactly. That's just easy to do sometimes. Did I say eight ball? Yeah, exactly. But yes, oh, God, those linear flippers are the worst. Bally Brick, the worst. Yeah, I hit the O. I hit the B. Oh, no, didn't hit the B. Let's try again. No, oh, way down the middle. Shit, that's it. My game's done. My ball's done. What was the first game to use the linear flippers on? A little trivia. It was mentioned. I can't remember. Rolling Stones. Oh, there you go. There you go. There you go. Enough reasons. But, yeah. So, you guys get to choose now the second STEM game. What would you like, Ron? You want me to? Okay. Oh, yeah. I'm better at bashing shit. Yeah, you are, man. It's so mean. You are so mean. I'm going to go Quicksilver. Quicksilver, possibly one of the greatest solid state games ever made. If you love green, this is the game for you. If you like penises? If you like floating green penises, yes, this game is for you. Quicksilver, it has two spinners. Bo and Karen's love this game. Need I say more? He did a tutorial on it. It was so great. It has some of the greatest spinner sounds you'll ever hear. You will see this at shows that people will hook subwoofers up to it just to feel the full pulsing awesomeness of a hit spinner on this game. It's incredible. It has that target bank that's right in your face that you can sweep. You can also, with the left flipper, crush that target bank, and the ball will go right into the spinner and crush the spinner and go up to the top. One of the greatest shots in solid-state pinball, that's not just me saying that. Keith Elwin said that on our show. One of the greatest shots. You want to hit something on the right side? We've got another three-bank for you, and we've got another spinner for you. And we've got a saucer on the left. Four-bank. No, four-bank. Is it a four bank? I thought it was a three bank. Four on the left and then three on the right. Yeah, I thought it was three on the right. Three on the right, yes. And then you have a saucer on the left. You can hit it in there and increase the value of your drop targets in that center bank. We have the lanes up top. Just great sound package. It's fast. It's furious. And it fights back. I'm sorry. I'm doing the F-14 Tomcat. And you don't limit yourself with multipliers either. Yes, yes. Like Bally's, they limit themselves at 5x multipliers. No, no, no, no. We don't do that, Stern. No, we don't do that. We just keep going. We just keep going, yep. I give you Quicksilver. So good, they're remaking their playfields, by the way. That's how great it is. It's a decent game, Quicksilver. I will agree with you on the sounds. Very nice sound package. Take away those sounds, and what are you left with? Yes, you've got some satisfying shots that you can bank off the drop targets into the spinner, But a large percentage of the game scoring-wise is collecting Quicksilver letters because that controls your bonus, and the bonus on this game is absolutely huge. Now, almost all of the letters are in the top lanes, but you can't rotate them like you can on an awesome game like Center. And you rely on pop-up hits for like six of them. Like there's so many letters that are up the top. I think the only one you can really aim for is like the K on the right. and yes, you can spot a letter by by scooping the target bank but yeah, pretty pretty unbalanced compared to a game like Sea Witch where you're forced to shoot in all areas of the playfield. With this, it's more shoot up the top and aim for luck or just wail on that floor bank. Now wait, yes? You can actually get the right orbit, you know, the right loop and it goes into the shots a little easier too on Quicksilver. Just maybe you're not good enough to hit the right orbit. I don't know. I think he's not good enough to shatch the inlanes and just hit the spinners too. Exactly. Because you don't even have to go for Quicksilver letters if you don't want to. It gives you multiple ways you can attack the game. But continue on. Stern had an unhealthy obsession with green games in that period. You know, you've got Big Game, you've got Cheetah, and you've got Quicksilver, where it's just way too much green. But the back glass, you would agree that the back glass is beautiful, guys. Am I right? I love penises on my back glasses. Not the penises, just the image of that woman, you know, the alien-type creature emerging out of the Quicksilver. It's a nice original art piece by Doug Watson. Totally original, isn't it? What would you guys think if I showed you proof that Doug Watson absolutely committed copyright infringement and blatantly ripped off French artist Philippe Trouba. Yeah, I don't know about this. This has been known for a long time. This has been known for years. Oh, yeah, he ripped that off. He also ripped off, they ripped off the electronic box. Original idea. And Williams, and guess what? Williams ripped off other people. Yeah, we're talking ballet here, not Williams. I'm just saying, other manufacturers did it also. Bruce, he's right. He's talking ballet. Space Invaders Backlash. Hmm. Oh, yes. That's okay. That's not in our top three. That's not in our top three. He licensed that from Gaga, so it was meant to be. Okay. So there we go. Quicksilver, absolute rebuff. Decent light and sounds, but take that away. And, yeah, just not as good as the next game that Marty's just about to drop on you guys. Wait a sec. The number one game coming out, you know, this past year, who's going to win the Twippy? The Twippy winner, Keith Elwin? Yeah, and what's he going to have? What does he have in his office right now? Oh, because he works for Stern. Like, seriously, like he's going to have a fucking spooky pinball machine there or a fucking Josie Jack pinball machine. I mean, fuck me. I don't think he has a bally there, though. You know, he has... No, that's right, because he works for Stern. Oh, he's going to have a bally machine in there. What a shit point to make. That's what the one is right as all. And he's running Scott's ROMs in it, too. Just thought I'd say that, yeah. my second game oh shall we go with Paragon Ryan me wow you're right he really did rip off the art there he even has the bubbles that look like penises and stuff too yeah I can start on Paragon if you like Ryan and if you want to you start on it and I'll finish it off okay so yet another beautiful machine to look at from the artist of Paul Faris What I love about Paragon, it is the first wide body that Bally did. And, you know, people sort of like or dislike wide bodies. What's really good about this is that they've been able to utilise every part of the play field. Sure, people do go the in-lane drops on the left, but you can still go the spinner. You can try and knock off your Paragon letters or build the bonus up on the top left hole as well. But it is a very challenging game. and this is sort of known as a real shooter's game or a tournament player's game. They love this because the rules are fairly balanced. The game is tough, but it's quite manageable. Encourages the tap pass from the left, obviously, to be able to get those inlanes. Has a great sound package. Has that pop bumper beast lair of Doom area on the left, which is freaking awesome. If you can master that, you are a great player. Ryan. And that's the great thing about Paragon is that it's so iconic that people know it's the beast layer. People don't call it, oh, that pop bumper on the left. You know, like every other game, it's just like it's a physical object. But people know it as a beast layer because it's so iconic. It's so often. But, I mean, you know, with the right nudges, you can get that ball back. Shooting for the in-lane drops, I know a lot of belly games have that, and it might get kind of worn out. But is there anything more satisfying than the first two shots? They'll advance your bonus a little bit, but you have to survive those two shots for it to really mean something worthwhile. If you use that little mini flipper to cradle that ball back on the right, we can start the process again. And when you get all the drop standards at 3x, getting that ball up there where you get the 5x bonus, and by then you should be at the super bonus 20,000, which will carry over from ball to ball, It's just the most satisfying ball-in-a-saucer type moment, and then you've got one chance to get it in there for the special. As Marty said, you can shoot around all around the place. There's points everywhere to be had. Obviously, some more dangerous than others, but Paragon is just a game that will go down in history as one of the most iconic games of that period because it's got everything. Art, rules, sounds, layout, everything. Okay. And we know that you love Paragon, so go for it. Oh, no, no, it wasn't easy, because guess what? Where did my Paragon go? It went bye-bye. For a stern. Yes, we've established your shit-tasting machines already. No, we have not. Nope. I got rid of my Paragon because it's not that much fun. It's too brutal. They made it too brutal for people. You like stars, Bruce. Come on. Wait, and we're going to go with now the Dennis Theory. it's a wide body. Wide bodies suck. They really do. And you like Demolition Man. No, but that's a newer stuff. This is the old Bally. The Bally's, you know, they're just terrible. You know, there's no good wide bodies. Right, Ron? You are absolutely correct. Did you know that in Paragon, when you hit the inline drop targets and you're trying to get in that saucer, they moved where the saucer was from where it was originally supposed to be but they left the curved plastic in there so you can get rejects where it doesn't go in the saucer because of it did you know that? that's an operator adjustment you can easily fix that do you expect operators to go in and remove that plastic piece? they weren't going to do that do they fix the Iron Maidens out there? no they don't, so don't even go there with that The only reason why you know the name of the V-Slayer, because they had to label it. You know, guess what? Future Spa has a pop bumper on the bottom that kills you most of the time also. They didn't label it, so that's why you don't know what that name is for that one. Just not a fun game. It really isn't. It's too brutal. The split flippers, that's not fun. Who wants to get boned on split flippers? Stern never wins one. Sir never did split flippers, did they? No, except for... And when they did do split flippers, they actually put stuff behind it so you didn't get boned. So did they do split flippers or not? You're saying they didn't, but you're saying they did. Did they or not? When they did, they actually put something... Big game, they put stuff behind it so you didn't get screwed. Yeah, easy mode. Oh, easy mode. God. It's actually an enjoyable game. Not Paragon. Most people... In a tournament, most people are not going, hey, let me pick Paragon over this game. They're going to say, fuck no, I ain't picking Paragon. Screw that. It's not a fun game. Okay, there's a lot of old games that don't have a staging moment, right? Like something happens and you have time to react and really get excited. And Paragon has that when you get up into that left past the inline drop. No, you said right. You said if. Yeah, okay, rubber fire. during the Texas Pinball Festival. He had enough time to look at the camera and do the chop. And that was an epic moment because that's what he felt. That's what you feel like in Paragon when you get it up there. It's like you're working to survive and you do it and it feels fucking amazing. None of the Stern games you have allow you to do that. You can get it in the left saucer but that just means you might be able to capitalize on it. It doesn't mean you have capitalized on it. So if you sweep the four drop targets in Quicksilver, and it's going up to the top. You don't have time to look and go, fuck yeah! Take your hands off the flippers, and the ball could have already drained, where in Paragon, at least you can stop, enjoy the countdown, and celebrate the moment. But you're saying Paragon's a slow game, then? No, I'm just saying there's saved moments that await. Oh, God. Alright, next game for you guys. Last game for you guys, actually. Yes, it is. Ron? Okay, what do I pick here? I mean, he said he had something ready for Stargazer, so should I pick something else? No, no. Go for Stargazer because it is the ultimate game. The spinners upon all spinners. Because the only game that they have three spinners on, they didn't pick. Stargazer. Incredible artwork. Three spinners. What's better than two spinners? Three spinners. Three spinners. I just got to keep saying that. Three spinners. With the awesome rules for the top spinner with that bank of targets there. Again, the CERN classic trying to not complete something. I wish someone would bring that back. Just, yeah. And the incredible sounds. Every shot on that feels good. On a properly adjusted flippers of a Stargazer, I may add, where you can't just trap everything. Just beautiful artwork. That's another game I've played where people have souped up the sound system just to hear that awesome spinner sound, which makes a different sound when it's lit, by the way. We all love that. Targets that don't brick. Sweepable targets. You can sweep a bank, go around like a mini loop and, like, it's just, oh. You can crush a spinner, goes around like a little mini loop and sweeps the free bank on top. I've seen it happen, man. And you can actually control your you can make your spinner shot worth more or not worth more Yep and you can sweep the center bank of targets You can sweep them just sweepable banks spinners great sound great art all classic The only reason they didn't make more of them is because, unfortunately, it was in the line before Flight 2000, which was a Harry Williams game, so it got the shaft. Otherwise, they would have made more of them. I give you Stargazer. Oh, and one more thing. Oh. every stern that we play is fast and brutal and fun. Yeah, they're all fast. Yeah. Stargazer, I think most people are obsessed. The thing that I wanted to, the little secret thing was the artwork on Quicksilver. It's not on Stargazer. So I googled it and no one has mentioned it ever on any forum or anything. No, I didn't do that. I didn't think that we knew. Yeah, Stargazer. Yeah, great art. Who doesn't love a girl with big boobs, you know, typical artwork of that era. Ryan, I have a question for you. I have a question for you. Yes. I know you like big boobs on a pinball machine. Did you fondle yourself with this one too? No. Okay. Because they weren't around. Oh. They weren't around when I was young. I mean, the bottom arrangement, it's just too weird. They should have kept with the Italian bottom, like every other game of that era that was any good. you know, having the slings kind of inbuilt and blocked off, it just makes it awkward. Yes, you've got three spinners, but, I mean, you can do the same with two, and, you know, only one of them really matters. It's super rare. As you said, Ron, they stopped making it, which just makes it more desirable. I mean, Centaur and Paragon, they make a shitload of units, and they command almost, you know, Centaur here and Fathom, the same price, and they make double of them. That's when you know it's a good game. Okay, now I have one question more for you, Ryan. What's the game you want most of all in the whole wide world? Dragon Fist. No, no, okay. That's another story. Okay, no, no. What's the game, Ryan, that you say you want to trade me? Stargazer, but that's just because I can't get it. It's not because I love the game. It's because I just want one I can't have. It's because the other six-turn machines that he's bought are not satisfying. Oh, they're very satisfying. Oh, there's no satisfying he owns two of one. No. Oh, yes, he does. Yes. Because one of them doesn't work, and those two will become one. So he's going to chuck it off of his house. He better not, because I told him. So I just want to add something to this as well, because, you know, you've all said great art, right? And I'm going to tell you why it's not. And we're going to go back memory lane. Do you remember, and I'm talking to Ron and Bruce, you know, you're too young for this, Ryan, but do you remember growing up you'd have what were called transfer albums, which were, you would get like this sheet of paper and you would have a pencil behind it and you would scrape off the sticker onto the book. Yes. That's what the art from Stargazer looks like. It looks like someone's just gone, well, here you go, you've got a blue playfield, now you've got these transfer stickers, get your pencil out and transfer them any old fucking place. No rhyme or reason. Do not have any balance on it at all. Just randomly stick them on the play field. There you go. A three-year-old could have done a better play field. Oh, wait until we get to your next game. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. And the other thing about Stargazer is they've had to have custom ROMs for this because it's broken. You can just sit there and backflip onto those little rollovers. No, you can't. No, you cannot. If you actually put the flipper where it's supposed to be. I said in a properly adjusted Stargazer. They're not properly adjusted. No, they're not. You and two other people have gone properly adjusted. Most of them aren't. But that's, guess what? When they're properly adjusted. It's broken and you've had to fix it. So, you know. If you're calling out St. John Paragon, I'm calling out Stargazer. If you notice, you're not supposed to be able to trap it. If you don't believe me, Roger Sharp said in his review for PlayMeter magazine when it first came out, The fact that it wasn't trappable, that proves that that's the way it was supposed to be. Well, it is trappable, therefore design fail. No, not design fail, it's actually operator fail. Fail, fail. Operator fail. Complete fail. What are you going with last, Money? Well, our last one was April Deluxe. I think we're going to get more votes if it goes to Fathom, if we really want to win. But no, okay. I think we're going to win anyway. Oh, God. well well let's go Fathom then and you can go Fathom Ryan no no no you go Fathom you go Fathom I can't see the fucking ball I'm Fathom totally thank you that's just my eyes I got crushed I have to say Ryan Ryan I have the same freaking problem in that game I lose the ball go 8 ball then Marty go 8 ball I am going to go 8 ball deluxe mainly because it doesn't matter what your argument's going to be. Sales equals quality. And this machine sold, you know, over 8,000 units. And to this day, you cannot buy one for a good price because they are still so sought after. And what's good about this machine is, first of all, the sound package. When you hit start and you hear it chalk up, it's just great. They really used whatever the... Talk and squawk, whatever the hell. It was the sound card in it. It's a really good effect on this. It's such an iconic sound, an iconic machine. Yeah, the art's a little bit plain, but I would argue it's still infinitely more detailed than S.T.A.R.S., which, let's face it, is a Gottlieb knockoff, just putting it out there. What I like about 8 Ball Deluxe is it gives you the option to play it multiple ways. Yes, you can go the targets on the right, and sure, you're going to get a badly brick, but that's all part of the fun. so you can try and get your balls down and then try and get it into the top scoop or at certain stages you'll think right, I've now got to get my multiplier up so you can go those inline drops or you can just keep going left orbit all day to just get your points up the top you as a player have the option to be able to play it whichever way you want that's a sign of a great machine I'm sorry, I'm still in shock over the Gottlieb Stars comment yeah, that's really cheesy I think you lost points for that one. How many Gottliebs have the single pop-up or like that one does? No, I'm just talking art. I think people... I'll actually put it up on the head-to-head page. I will do Star versus the Gottlieb of the era, and you will see the similarities. Okay. Okay. Would you like to add anything to 8-Ball to let's try them? No, 8-Ball was so good, they decided to make a better version. Yep. Correct. And you're right. It's such a good game, they made a better version. And then later on, they made a better version called 8-Ball Champ. Far superior to 8-Ball Galox. And then they made a better, better version. And then they made a better, better version. Gottlieb did it, and it's called Bad Girls. Yes, and they struck his shootout by Stern. That's how much people love this layout. Yes, love the layout. But unfortunately, only one company put a spinner in it. Spinners were fucking overrated. You guys go on and on. Oh, my God. Spinners. Wait a sec. What's the newest game that's out today? Oh, Beatles. And what did they do? They made it two spinners on that game, and they actually made it opto now. And you just rubbished Beatles, and now you're saying it's a good thing. No, I'm saying that's the only thing that's good about it is the optos. That's all I've said. Trust me, I don't like teal. JJP did it first anyway in the Hobbit. That's not something new. Well, wait a sec, wait a sec, wait a sec, wait a sec. How many people own Hobbits? It's not that. I don't know. More than will ever own the Beatles. How about that? Yeah. And more than will ever own Dialed In also. Exactly. Dialed In is also missing a spinner. Oh, yeah, it is. Left Orbit should be a spinner. Anyway. But Left Orbit on 8-Ball Deluxe should definitely be a spinner. You still have the same problems with the bad flippers, with linear flippers. You still have the valid bricks. you still have the problem with light sockets and all this other stuff. Oh, I'm kidding. And the bad artwork. The bad artwork in the middle. You thought Scratch's thing, let's just put a row of eight, the whole rack of balls right in the middle. Hey, great idea. And the Western theme, a little hokey. Very, you know. And, Ron, what would you like to add to this? You want to talk about your rule sets as the same issue as with 8-Ball. You have that huge ball one. Yep, you're screwed. You're probably going to win. And then the next time you're up, you're just going to be going for multipliers. Yep. It's the same strategy, the same thing every time. Yep. How about in quick silver when you get the $75,000 bonus thing in the middle? It only happens once. It disappears after that. On eight ball, you get your numbers on the bottom stuck. You cannot get past that. All you're going to go for is multipliers. The multipliers carry over? No, on the stern, you can change that. You can take it, turn them off, or turn them on. Okay. It's like, Ron, I'm fucking in it. No. It's fine. But, no, 8-Ball is not a great game, especially the limited edition cabinet. That is just the abomination of all abominations. Do you agree, Ron? I thought it was your favorite. What? It's not your favorite, Ron, so back away. All right. I think this segment's dragged on, like, probably enough, and we have the information we need for people to cast their vote in. So Paragon, 8-Ball, and Centaur versus Quicksilver, Stars, and Stargazer. Which are the three better games as a collection? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I just thought of something. How many games between Hyperball and Rapid Fire, how many games had to deal with those cabinets? Bally had the LEs. It's sent on LE. And 8-Ball Deluxe LE. And Mr. Ms. Pac-Man. Mr. Ms. Pac-Man. And then Williams had the... Oh, God. Defender. Defender. Starlight. Starlight. What else? It's like you wonder, how many of those freaking cabinets did they have to keep using? It's like the WWE armor of time. Snails. Oh, Time Fantasy. Yeah, Time Fantasy also. Terrible. I was just like, how many of those did they buy that they had that many? Like, oh, we've got to use these up. Well, that got me thinking about the, you know, the Guardians of the Galaxy LE. Like, surely they've made, pretend they made 200 WWE LEs. Maybe it was a lot less than that. And they were planning to make 400. So that means that they had maybe, say, 200 left over. And, I mean, if they buy Guardians of the Galaxy LE stock, they would have to still buy an extra 500. Surely, I don't know. Do they change the color of trim just to save 200 units worth of stock? I don't think so. You mean the Guardians of the Galaxy that the trim was basically from, wasn't it from WWE? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, like, they still have to over, it's not like they can just use that and that's it. They still have to order more, right? I think they're going to have an abundance of Groot hands left over also. Yeah. Because I don't know anyone who's preferring premium over the pro. It's pretty bad. Blocking the shots. Yeah. Blocking your whole view of the game. That's a joy. I think somebody actually made a third-party Grit Hands that looks similar, but it's just kind of out of the way. So you still get the same feel, just concede left and the right of it. It's one of those games where the pro is going to be the one everyone wants. It doesn't have any spinners, though. Someone will add them Where's the mod? Yeah That time-banging guy Should probably do it Hey Talking about spinners Leaf Weapon 3 I heard you talking about it The other day Yes Ron Why do you want it so bad? Because it's awesome It's a two-week game Get it for two weeks Play it Move it on I have somebody Who might be selling one, Ron It's in really nice shape So In Rochester Okay So If you're interested You're number two on the list Oh. No, no. At number one, the guy won't have the money, so you'll be really number one. Jesus. Okay. He said it. He goes, my neighbor really wants to buy this. Like, oh, so your neighbor's going to get first dibs? He goes, no, he has no money. I'm like, oh, okay. So my buddy has first dibs. He goes, yeah, I just got to say he's second because then he'll feel like he's not going to, you know, be mad at me. Oh, okay. Okay. Hopefully he doesn't listen to the podcast. No, no, no. How do you know? We're really popular. In Poland. In Poland. Yes. We're not as popular as you guys, though. No. We are now going to officially say, do not vote for us, for the Twippies. Well, I've been saying that, but Bruce will now actually say. We've been saying that for a while, too. We want you to vote for Head to Head and make them the number one podcast. Why don't we form a coalition against you-know-who? and it's just, if all votes for anyone but that person counts towards like a joint coalition, then we just turn around. So you're saying they're like North Korea? It's weird. I mean, you guys have worked hard for two years. We have as well, but we do it for fun. You know, it'd be nice, but like my wife said on the podcast, it's like, you know, getting validation from anonymous people on the internet. You know, it doesn't... I want it. It doesn't... Why not? Yeah. I don't because... I need it, man. I need people. I need comments. I need people to tell me I'm great. I need any validation. Please. Please. I need anonymous people that are hyper-negative. I need more than three viewers on my Twitch channel. Come on. Please someone watch me. Watch me. You had six today. I had six. You had eight. Yeah, you know what? Stream had the most viewers. the editing stream. What does that tell you? What does that tell you? It's kind of like when we posted... You guys, you're posting the podcast on YouTube. Are you getting any hits? Well, okay, you know what, Ron? When I was thinking about doing it, I was like, you know what? I went on your channel and I'm like, the only reason why these people aren't getting hits, like, look at this Lime and Sheets episode. Who wouldn't want to search for Lime and Sheets somewhere and say, Lime and Sheets interview? This would be the only one. But I'm like, ah, you just wrote, like, slam tilt podcast. You didn't write, like, pinball. I'm like, that's the reason why it's not getting hit. And then I posted them all up. It just took forever with my upload speed. And sure enough, like, three or four listens to the episode. So I haven't done the last month's work because I'm too lazy. And no one will notice. No one will notice. No, no one's been like, hey, Ryan, I really need to listen on YouTube. No, no one cares. It was like when we added it recently to Spotify. We've still got no listens. Yeah, I thought of Spotify, but does Spotify give me some blurb about, like, having... You were saying you don't have any copyrighted material on your show. So I'm thinking of all my Beavis and Butthead clips and... Yeah, I actually applied for the Spotify one, and I think it got rejected, and then Marty just did it, and it worked. I'm not sure... Damn, blow jobs. Blow jobs. Oh. Oh, wow. Wow. Even Bruce was shocked with that. Yeah, wow. So, we have any mail in the ball bag? Mail in the ball bag. Yeah, we weren't there to hear you say that. Good Lord. I did forget to mention one thing, though. Remember the email we had about, or no, it was you, saying you bring in that turd, the Indiana Jones, the guy's house? and it, like, wouldn't work. Yep. We had Gene Exwong, who had a suggestion. Yep. Burn it? No. He said the guy could have had solar power. He's seen that happen. No, he doesn't. He doesn't. Oh. Oh, well. Nope. Just putting that out there. Do we have any other, um, let's see. We have one. We have one from Gene. Yeah, read the one from Gene. I'll read that right now. Give me two seconds. One, two. Shut up. Shut up. Are you taking too long? I'll take it too long. This is from Austin. He says, hello again. I purchased another classic Stern Stingray, and it made me curious about alternate ROMs again. Is there a website where I can view the alternate versions that Scott has made? The only alternates I can find for any of the games are free-fly ROMs. I would also like to say thank you to you and Bruce for so many hours of entertainment that you have provided me. Many pinball road trips have been filled with your banter. You guys are the best. unknown player number, Austin. Thank you, Austin. I emailed Austin Scott's website. Also, Soren, I believe most of his ROMs are located at VP Universe. It's actually used mostly for pin name, but I believe they're there. So if you're looking for his versions. And if anyone wants the Scott, it's out there on the internet, so maybe I'll just put it in the show notes, but he has, I mean, they're not available for download, but I'm sure you can just contact him if you wanted them. But he has, like, all the, like, what's different with his, the rule set for his rounds. Hey, what have I got on my quick silver? Because every time I play, the high score that it shows is, like, some weird, like, non-existent number. It's, like, two, zero, and then, like, there's, like, no digit on, like, the third one. Your RAM is bad. You've got to blank out the RAM. Yep. Well, I mean, every time I play the game, it gives me free credits at the end. Yeah, because you're... You know what I mean? Do you have the original board in there or not? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that means your battery's probably bad. It's not saving the high score. And probably the RAM is probably, you know, has a problem. So you have to zero that out. Okay. I mean, it's not doing anything bad. It's stopping me from having to put in manual credits, right? Yeah, exactly. That's all. You know, it is. I don't care about high scores. Genex Wong said, manual kickbacks rock. Was thinking you don't have to have a separate flipper button from the last show. If the outlane switch could be activated by that flipper, or both, in case you have, like, a shot drain super fast and could manually fire it as it rolled up the opposite outlane. Okay. Idea. What do you guys think? Manual kickback. Bring it back? Devil's Dare style? I've never played a game with it, but it definitely would be interesting. Devil's Dare is the only one I've played that bad. It's the only one. The more and more comps I run, the more and more I hate kind of kickback. I just think it just shouldn't exist almost at all, unless it involves a lot of skill. In getaway, Hobbit's the worst. Hobbit has a kickback on the left and then a softball kickback on the right that saves your ball. If you lose the ball, you lose the ball. There's one EM that a guy picked up locally around here, and there's actually a third flipper in the drain. and it actually activates when you do certain things and you can actually kick the ball, flip the ball out of the outlay, out of the out drain, you know, the drain hole, and you can actually get it back into the play field. It's called the out hole, Bruce. Check your out hole. Yeah, yeah. Where does Bruce come up with these terms? I don't know. It's great. It's great. People are going to miss him, Bruce. They are. I know they are. I don't think once a month is enough. I agree, but, you know. You should start your own podcast with just Bruce's and just... Oh, gosh. There you go. No, I like Ron too much. Aw. So... He can do the editing. He can do the editing. Exactly. No. No. I bought two games this week. Okay, what'd you buy now? I bought my first Williams System 4. Flash. Nope. Hold on. Tri-Zone. Nope. Damn. Okay, I give up. Hot Tip. Oh, okay. Good pick. Hot Tip is always a good pick. I mean, the electric mechanical is preferred, but... Of course, but I'll take a solid state. Is that the one that Greg Pavarelli has? He had, yes. Did you buy it off? No, no, no, no, no. I bought it off of Eric Russell CMY, which I actually bought originally and I sold it to him. It wasn't working and he fixed it and then he sold it back to me. So the game is in EM and Soul State format? Yes. Yes. It's that early. And then next week these guys don't even know what I picked up but Ron does. I'm getting under the Gamertron, guys. Hooray. Wow. Marty sounds so excited. Artie, what the hell? Is Gamertron the one that's the kit game, like it was made by somebody else? Yeah. Okay. And it's like a narrow body version of a wide body? A narrow body of a narrow version of Flight 2000. It's the superior version of Flight 2000. Okay. So I don't get it. Why was it a kit version? I've heard you guys talk about it a million times on the podcast, but I still don't understand why. Who made it? Okay. So, Gary Stern, right, he goes out of business. With Stern Electronics. With Stern Electronics. They go out of business in, like, 83. So, you know, he's always around pinball. So he starts another company. Because Bally was making too many awesome games. Yeah. So he starts his own company called, what was the name of it, Bruce? It's right on there. Pinstar. Pinstar. And they sold kits. So you could put this kit in your old Bally game, like your old Lost World or one of those games. Mata Hari and all the bad valleys. You could put it in there and it had a whole instruction thing on how to hook the thing up and boom. So no artwork or anything. It did come with artwork. It came with two arrows. One for each side of the body with a trailing, almost like a comet. How would you say it? I don't know if you guys would know it but at NBC, back in the 80s, they had a star going, the more you know, and it would be a star going through the sky, and then we have a tail, like a comet tail behind it. It actually looks like that a little bit. Okay, yeah, I can see it now, pin star. And the back glass. And the back glass. Okay. Maybe this is what Deep Root is doing. Maybe Deep Root wants to convert, like, every, like, Adam's family or something into a magical or something. Maybe that's how they're going to reduce the price. Maybe. Hey, you think about it. Pinball kits. Well, you guys got to play Magic Girl. Was it awesome? That's it. Does it play at all? Does the flippers work? Yeah, look, it flips, but really, all you're doing is hitting it up the middle, because that's the only thing that actually interacts with it. Yeah. Basically, I guess it's enough of a pinball machine theme to maybe get out of his legal obligations to those people who pre-order the machines, so... uh maybe a bit of a legal legal loophole so he didn't get sued but like even like sometimes you don't know what works on a pinball machine until you play one that's broken and as i said like the spinner sound just keeps on playing when you hit the spinner usually when it plays the new sound every spin it chocks off the old one right so you don't get that like looping thing the spinner sound is maybe like two seconds long and when you hit the spinner it just plays on top of each other Plus you get this horrible, disgusting sound that comes out of it. I don't know. It's a collector's art piece. That's about it. Yeah. It's a world under glass. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we sort of talked about it the last couple of weeks ago. There was a Magic Girl that sold recently, and I don't know, you know, if Deep Root are going to have that and it's going to be working, it will be an amazing game because what you can see in this world under fattened glass, whatever you want to call it, looks amazing. The problem with this Magic Girl, because someone actually asked the question, you know, if someone was with software, could they actually make it a good game? Well, not if it's missing, actually, some of the mechanical parts to make it work, which it is. There's about three or four major mechs that stop this machine from actually working, like ball going from the bottom up to the top playfield. It can't happen because there's actually a missing piece. so I would love to see this made and if Deep Root can do it regardless of what we think about whether they're going to be viable or not I'm wheeling them on because I want to be able to play a fully working magic girl to be able to say that I have played an amazing machine You guys can play it at Indy's don't they have one there at the Museum of California something blah blah blah Do they? They can do it now Really? Okay It's a reason to go to Indy Indy, what? Oh my. Kyle the Goggler. Kyle Dingalow. Kyle the Goggler. Wow. What? Do you not listen to our show? Oh. Yeah, I don't recall that. I don't recall that either. Is that one of the things you edited out and you didn't realize you edited out? No. When Pins Like Petey was interviewing Kyle at Expo. Oh. Oh my. Oh my. So either of you going to Indic? I don't think I am. I think my two events for next year are TPF, almost completely confirmed, and Pinberg if I get tickets. Good boy. Okay. I don't think I'm going to anything, but, Ryan, you're going to TPF, aren't you? TPF, yes, and also INDISC. No Pinberg for me if I get tickets, but I'm in. So two games this week you bought Bruce. Yes. I'm going to top that, and I sold three games this week. Which turd valleys did you sell? I sold Adam's Family. There you go. One. Someone played it with the mini flippers that I had on there for my side comp, and fell in love with how brutal it was, and decided to buy it. I sold my Lethal Weapon 3, and it's probably the most fun game I've ever sold, but it's just a ridiculous game. It is. Right? Isn't this awesome? It's fun to say, ah, look at this, you have a Timber Machine. Like, the software doesn't make sense. You know what I mean? That doesn't deserve a spot in my room just because of that. It's good to play at a friend's house. It's good to laugh at on location. You know like the CNC music stack? Everybody dance now. You don't want to hear that constantly? If there was a custom ROM that somehow got rid of some of the flashing lights in my face for, like, no freaking reason at all, like every Data Race game, maybe it would survive a little bit longer, but there's certain things that are missing on that game software-wise that... You don't like Ball 3 when multiball is just ready and the GI just, like, goes off and on? Hey, you know what? I figured it out. It's not Ball 3 that is always ready. It's every ball that you drain, I'm pretty sure, will spot you a drop target bank. So if you hit the drop target bank down once in ball one, then you drain, multiball will be ready on ball two because you drain the ball and it spots a drop target bank for you. You mean the banks that aren't labeled in any way that they actually spot locks? Yes. Yeah. Yes. So if you drain twice, that means it's spotting you two, and that's what's required for the first multiball. So that's why it's ready. it's not actually ball three that triggers it. It's each ball draining triggers a complete Tiger Bane completion. So I figured that out by accident. I was like, hey, it's available at the start of ball two, and I don't really know what I've done. You don't like hitting the orbits and then shooting the guy? I do, but it's just like a, it's fun, but I also feel, I feel like I'm like unnecessarily wearing down the pinball machine with the, because it has that real feel, right? Because it shoots the auto lane plunger. I feel like I'm wearing down that mech six times faster than I should for six million points. I don't know. It's a weird mechanic. Do you find that in Data East when they have the launchers? There seems to be a delay from when you hit the trigger to when it actually fires it. To me. That's what I was saying the other day on the podcast. When I get the skill shot, it's not instant like on Congo. When you get the skill shot, it's like, bam. I mean, when you actually pull the trigger. Like, if I'm on Terminator 2, I pull the trigger, it instantly fires. On a lot of the Dead East games, I feel I have to time where I'm pulling the trigger early. But, like, it's weird. Yeah, there could be a delay with, like, every signal going through that machine. Everything seems like it's on a bit of a delay, like the slow-mo machine. But it's cheap over there. I mean, it's like a $3,000, $4,000 to-mall machine here. So, yeah. And the third game? The third game was Stern Magic. I should have listened to you, Bruce, when you told me not to buy it. And it's mainly because of the sound. The sounds, to me, it's just I would rather listen to stars with the chimes. Nothing. Nothing or the chimes. Well, it's an MPU-100 game. It doesn't have sounds. It just has the do-do-do-do-do-do-do, like, just the terrible, yeah. You've got to go meteor and after. Yep. And the layout is not horrible, but the collect bonus saucer and I know art is objective, but subjective, sorry. Someone walked up to it during my conference like, oh, my God, look at this beautiful paper machine, the art of the era. I've never seen this before. But when I look at it, I don't see the inserts. I just see just this confusing mess of art. So I kind of, okay, it's not gone yet. I stole someone, but I need to fix that little reset issue, which is on the warranty and everything with the guy that I bought it off. So as soon as that's fixed, it's gone. There we go. Three games in a week. Downsizing. Downsizing. So how many games do you have now? I still have like 25 or something. Too many. That's funny. Well, since we're getting to the end of the year, what would you say are the highlights of the year for you guys? Everyone go over, like, what are their highlights of this year that is almost over? For me, it's easy. Pimberg. Pimberg, absolutely. For me, I guess it was the transition of getting more into tournaments and tournament directing. I get a great deal of satisfaction out of running a well-tuned tournament more than playing sometimes. Like, I ran a fruit brand together the other day, and I didn't play it at all, and that was more satisfying to me than a lot of other stuff that I've done this year, pinball-wise. So I don't know. I like doing it, and I don't know why. For me, it's a successful bar for one year now. Yeah, well done. Thank you. Where is the stuff of Orson Welles? That's my line! 135 West Commercial Street in East Rochester, New York, 14445. Well, speaking of which, did you ever end up getting the T-shirt that I sent you? Yes. I got it. Finally. And it's actually, oh, I actually have it right here. I have it right here. It's right at my hands right now. And it's got decided art. It says, Head to Head Pinball Podcast Australia, Dream Monster on the back. And on the front it says, Head to Head Pinball. That's our old logo. You guys haven't seen that new logo that Christopher Franchi done. holy shit well we're not it's amazing I guess not you know I guess we're not worthy I can't wait to see it either you're not going to get it wow let's see did I win anything this year? you won 20 bucks at Rock Fantasy last week yeah I did yeah yeah what did I do? I'm just thinking of pinball highlights hanging out with me at TPF and teaching me about all the games I've never played there you go and just drawing me on joust yeah probably but most of my highlights involve like not being around here either going to western New York or going to Rock Fantasy or going somewhere else Because there nothing here Sorry, I didn't have a bigger thing. Beatles! I love the Beatles. I would have got one for my dad if it wasn't so expensive. Wow. You're not worthy enough, Dad. Sorry. That was just said to me. That was just the whole... Nope, sorry. You're not worthy. $8,000? Nope. Wait a second. $5,500? Yes. Yep. And you get it a lot cheaper than $8,000. Exactly. Ron, you said if it was a little bit more than a pro, you'd buy it for your dad. Yep. Guess what, mate? What? If you don't buy Lisa Weapon 3 and you kind of add that on top of a pro price, boom. You're there. Ron Hallett Sr. gets a Beagle's Tumor Machine, and he loves you even more than he does now. Right now, he has Metallica in his living room, so he's very happy. How do you get happier with Beatles? I don't know. He had Sea Witch there before. I know, but the music alone. The six orbits. The loops. The target behind the drop targets. He also has this thing called the stereo system where he can play any Beatles song he wants at any time. But he can't play pinball and go, beep, beep, beep, beep. Actually, have either of you guys played Beatles yet? No. No, they're not here. They're literally coming down with the Munsters at the end of January. Wait, what? Munsters and X-Keys? What? Apparently. We couldn't get Zach Schaaf to admit it on our last episode, but I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's coming. Well, you mean even after the picture from the factory that showed it? Yeah. Three pictures. Are you guys getting on? Did you guys get Gary Stern for the last episode? No. Did you get Timples? No. I'm going to announce what we're doing for the last show. Ron doesn't even know. Ron knows a little bit. What are we doing for the last show? You think I would know this being, you know. Brian, Eddie. Brian, Eddie. You got all upset with me. Cluster Fuck 2. We are going to this week put out a post someone we're going to be on, and all the friends of the show will be able to join us and talk about the love for us. Ron's just like, fuck this. Look, I do, I pity you, Ron, knowing me being the editing person. I can only imagine. When the first Cluster Buck came out, it said something like, all chaos, no editing, or something like that on there. Oh, he edited it. That was probably one of the most heavily edited episodes I ever did, so that was just a blatant lie. Wasn't Pub Rally drunk on it or something? He was drunk, and we actually had Levy on, too. So we had Levy. We had a lot of people on. Yes, we did. So guess what? I can't wait. I can't wait either. That's a good way to send the Slam Tilt Podcast off. The reason why you don't want to do it as often is because of the editing, so let's finish it off by making the heaviest edited podcast. The heaviest edited process, yeah. Hey, love you, Ron. Yeah, I'm sure you do. You are my brother, come on. Yes, Bruce, yes. But you don't love Kiss anymore for some reason. Why is that? Why won't you watch our last tour? Because it sucks and it's going to be probably not your last tour. He can't even go. No. What do you mean? This is Barney from Simpsons. Wow, that's bad. Yeah, no, perfect. Stephen Killer one's the best. Oh, no, no. You know what? I'll do Stephen because, you know, we're famous rock fantasy. God, it's so bad. I know. It's so bad it's good. Yeah, like Lisa Wilson. That's the only reason why Lisa Wilson's good. It's so bad. No, it's awesome. I never heard you attempt Barney from The Simpsons, though. Ah, what do you mean? You sound more like Yoda. I like Yoda. Yoda good. Yoda good. Move the multiplier and lock it in for 40x. Oh, fuck no. What? Hey, Homer, you trying to tell me? There you go. That's how you do Barney. Wow. I do Krusty, but I told it's a bad impression. Yeah, very bad. Yes. What? That's crusty. Okay. See, I think that your impressions are absolutely spot on. Certainly family guy. When I hear your, when you do Gene Simmons, I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound like Gene Simmons, but I don't know what Gene Simmons sounds like, so I have to assure him that that's what he sounds like. That was really bad, that crusty. Wow Keep going Try it again Do it again Go You know What was it Oh no The one Like one of the first episodes He was in Yeah Who's your favorite clown In the whole world Christy And what would you do If I was ever cancelled We'd kill ourselves Actual line from I love that line God I love that That's why I love Everyone wants Stewie Yes everyone wants me to do Stewie because it's Stewie. Everyone at work wants me to do Stewie all the time. It's the best. He's spot on. It's easier to make jokes, too. It just flows out easier. I agree. Oh, my. Oh, my. No, we should never get him on. Damn it. You guys hear Jeff... Jeff Parsons tried, but he couldn't get it word and edge-wise because George wouldn't stop talking. I wouldn't stop talking. These are... No. He can give you Gary Busey if he wants. What? Yeah. What? What? I guess he's deaf now. What? What? That's all he said the whole interview. Yeah. No, I asked Jeff for the full interview, and he linked me to it. It wasn't actually that bad. But it was like, he has a book called Bruce-isms, which remind me of Bruce-isms. Jesus. He stole it from us. He stole it from me. There's really no news. I mean, we did such a short time in between the, because we recorded on Tuesday, and really nothing has happened. Monsters. When are we going to see it? When are we going to see Monsters? Second week of January. Second week of January. Isn't it going to be at CES? I don't know. When is CES? I think it's like the first or second week of January. What is CES? I don't know what the initials mean. Consumer Electronics. Something electronic storage. That's right. Just a bunch of toppers, really. You know, like, he's the main topper. He's the R2-D2 topper. Spent half a grand. Is that ever going to come out? It's out. Oh, it is? It's out now, and it's terrible looking. What do you mean it's terrible looking? It's R2-D2's head, and it turns. How could it possibly be terrible looking? For $500, it's terrible. It only activates at 40x. Oh, okay. Is that true? it only activates at 40x? I don't know. I don't know about that. I wouldn't doubt it in this freaking, you know, money grab. Do you guys think we can ever get Dwight Sullivan on the show? Mr. Flasher? No. I reckon I can get him on the show. I'll be nice to him. You guys can. Oh, yeah. I will ask him. He said that he's coming on the show. Did he? Did he? Wow. You must be, like, impotent. Mm-hmm. What? What? He's impotent. We're impotent. Yes, see? You must be impotent. Impotent. Okay. He can't even say it after I say that. I'm lying. I'm lying. He's not. The best thing was when I was at Expo, he was literally sitting right behind me. And you just laugh at him saying, why did you do these flashbacks? Or turn around. Hi, I'm Ron from the Slamto Podcast. Would you like to be on our show? That's what Jeff does. Ron needs to be. See, if Bruce was there, we would have had him on. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, Ron, you know what, though? There's games like Dirty Harry. When you're in multiball, the middle row of lights just dance up and down for, like, no reason at all. Don't you hate games that do that? Like, oh, we're going to get you excited. Look, strobing lights for no reason. Just to confuse you. You forgot about the fact that Dirty Harry has, like, depending on when you start multiball, sometimes the lights don't go out. It does, like, a different intro for no reason. just depending on when you start it. It's like the game gets confused. Or Clint Eastwood will cut himself off in mid-sentence to say another quote. He was like the 1990 version of Alice Cooper with his kind of non-enthusiastic. Well, that's how he talks, though. He doesn't, do you ever see any of his movies? He doesn't yell. I know, but like listen to Chris Grennan when he talks in our show, and he probably did, like, you know, the same when he did Joshua Clay's Top Cast. Like, if you're in a pinball machine, you've got to get excited because that's what pinball machines are, right? Listen, Punk, I don't get excited about anybody. Yeah, what's he supposed to say? You know, jackpot or something like that? Yeah. It's like Batman or something. Jackpot, jackpot. Oh, we can't all be in pinball machines, you know, like Marty. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Not at all. You know it. That should have been your highlight of the year, Marty. Exactly. Starting a podcast and being in a production Timber Machine. That podcast was last year. Yeah. If it was a good game that he was in, it would be better. Wow. Did you guys know that the right ramp on Houdini, the machine doesn't know if you've made it until the ball lands in the left in lane? Yes. Because there's no optos, no switches, there's nothing. It's just the ramp. Yep. Did you know there's too many shots on that side? Yes You know it's tighter than fuck? It's like tight but makeable Yeah One every ten shots maybe Go fuck off Go fuck off! Go fuck off! They fixed it They fixed it with With Octopus Fest anyway so It plays well I reckon, you know what? There are so many good games out there that shoot just absolutely amazingly like, you know, most of Demolition Man and, like, The Shadow and stuff like that. That, you know, making kidded pinball machines, that could work, right? No, it couldn't, because the artwork wouldn't work out, would it? You'd have to get a whole place filled overlay. Okay, let's go through the different kit experimentations and how many times they've worked. Dead Silence. There you go. Pinball 2000 was going to be the kit thing. Is it like P3 going to be the kit thing? Yep. What about Taito doing all their re-things? Yes. Got to know. Some are funny, like their firepower. And so is Highway, their kit. Yeah, their kit. So I'm seeing a trend here with the kit thing. If you're going to go for a kit model, you may not want to go with a kit model just because everyone who's tried it has just not worked. Is it because everyone in pinball has enough money that they don't need the kit? I think it's because, and they said this, I think, in the documentary about Pinball 2000, it really didn't save you. It wasn't that much cheaper doing the kit than was the whole game. It wasn't the big savings that it needed to be to make a kit practical, and that's always the issue. Yeah. Because besides the play field, all you've got is a fucking box and a backbox, right? Yep. And obviously, Pinch UK's obviously had the TV as well, but machines these days, I guess that's what they're trying with Highway, because it has, well, when it first came out, it didn't even have a screen in the back. So what were they thinking? Yeah, that's when I saw them having issues to me when they kept changing, like, first, yes, it had nothing in the back. Then people complained, okay, we're going to put a screen. It's like a little screen, and then it was a bigger screen, but then it didn't really show anything that wasn't already in the screen on the play field. Yep. I've played so many games, not crazy amounts, but I still totally ignore the LCD screen in the middle of the play field because I'm just hardwired to look up. And it'd be good if it was some different information, but it's literally just mirroring the LCD in the back, so there's no point. All right. What are we looking forward to in the upcoming year in the world of pinball? manual kickbacks. It will never happen. Unless Deeper does it. Or Tim, Mr. Sexton. Stern don't even have normal kickbacks anymore. They've coded them all out of the games. They've just done, like, a live... Yeah, because they can't make a kickback that works. They've never been able to. What's wrong with ours? Mine never worked fine. Mine never worked fine either. Mine never not worked. You forget. No, it works. It's just weak. Like, it bleh. No, mine's perfect. Inconsistent, and a lot of it had to do with they had to change stuff in code. Like, why do you have to change stuff in code to get your effing kickback to work? Yep. No, mine works fine. Ugh. Avi's stock was superior. Yeah, Avi's stock was different. It was superior. We've got the good shipment. Maybe it's the voltage. Maybe it's the voltage. I know. It's just horribly inconsistent, and it's like, this is the kickback. This isn't like a new concept. Why is this so hard? It sucks. What I'm looking forward to... Everyone wants more stuff in a demo machine. They want more mechs, this, this, and that. I'm almost the opposite. I just want machines that shoot really, really well. I want a Steve Ritchie... Okay, I want a flow game that isn't a Steve Ritchie game, if that makes sense. I want a Demolition Man. Shots that lead to other shots. Demo Man 2. Yeah, Demo Man 2. He said deep root. Yeah. You do like it, Nordman. I want a multiball where every shot is lit and the jackpot sound is the same for every shot. That's what I want. I want a combo of saloon screens. I'm looking forward to two things. I'm really keen to see monsters, particularly the Premium and Ellie. my dream for that machine is that they make it with an under play field that's worth playing ok now I have a question for you when was the last game you enjoyed a lower play field with Black Hole Black Hole or Haunted House they all suck so go ahead I like them really there's not that many I don't think they've been able to really crack it I think the So ACDC was some sort of attempt, but no. I said before, I really like Black Hole and I really like Haunted House, but since then, nothing really has grabbed my attention for lower playfield. Nope, I have one better than you. Crawl. Crawl, jeez. Have you played Crawl? Yes, I have. Yeah, I've never even seen it, but I know all about it. Crawl's lower playfield is good. Yeah. Because it's almost like a three-quarter size play field, isn't it? Exactly. And it's miniature. You know, they have the magnifying, you know, the glass that changes it. That plays really well. Yeah, I can. Never played it. Oh, wait, Ron. Never played a game? I told this story a zillion times. It broke literally five minutes before I got to the party where it was. So I got to see it sitting there. Yeah, yeah. Bite me. What's the best upper play field in Timberland? I didn't say Black Knight Cabot France that is a joke by the way just yeah for me it's for me it's Whitewater because it's you hit the shot or you don't hit the shot and then you get to start again there's basically two shots that's it that's all I need I don't want the ball to be up there for long just you said you make the shot or you don't and that's it Solar Fire so you're going you're going by level okay I love that upper play field That upper play field in that game with the drop targets and the pattern, and you have to get it in a certain amount sweeping them, or you get the loop on the side or the lock area, you know, it is, you know, afterwards they did Grand Lizard. I think the tightness of Solar Fire makes it more fun. Grand Lizard doesn't have an upper play field. Well, it doesn't. I know, but it's pseudo-native. I know, but it's not. Everyone says it does. It does not have an upper play field. No, it doesn't. It's got an upper section. Yes, yes. But I'd go with Solar Fire, because it does have an overplay field, and it's great. Um, Black Knight is good. I think we all know the best one is Split Second. Oh. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. No, definitely Solar Fire. But, I mean, upper playfields block so much of the play field. Like, Whitewater, it's there. You don't really feel like it's blocking anything, right? Well, yeah, I do. I do too. And if you want to go with upper playfields that are pretty good that don't block, I would actually say the Big Lebowski. Yeah, not bad. Which is, if we're going to be honest, it's Elvis reversed. Yeah, true. And maybe a little bit of whitewater. Okay, my favorite upper playfield, Flash Gordon. The only thing I don't like about Flash, it's very tough, but I don't like the hole in the middle. That's what I don't like about the Flash. I played one last night. It was mine, an old one. And that, you know, going down to the kick-out just doesn't do it for me. Technically, the kick-out's not in the upper playfield, though. I know, but it goes, you know, it goes. But then it pops it back up. It depends on what order it's going through. The first one always goes down. Yeah, I know. So it alternates between down and up. But you still get it to go back up there. Once in a while. But it's a flipper, and it's only one flipper. If it had two flippers, more fuss. Yeah, I know what you mean. But the reason why I like Flash Gordon more than others, and I've sort of been on record saying I love, well, I loved machines with upper playfields, but I've always felt that the ball is up there too long. A bit like WrestleMania. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I like about Flash Gordon is you get it up there. If you've usually got one or two shots, if you do anything more than that, you are an instant hero. so it's not it's not too easy it's actually quite a challenge so that's why I like that one that Eric CNY yesterday Russell was an instant hero because he kept up there for about 30 seconds well there you go that's hero chemistry right there he killed me and it's worth good points oh it is definitely Black Knight yeah Black Knight Steve Ritchie come on no I still think he ripped it off for me the upper playfield on a flash score that was my idea but I think it's definitely a little better Ron are you in if Steve Ritchie produces a original theme in 2019 you mean when he produces an original theme in 2019 yes when it comes out it's coming are you in the market for that I'll never say never that's all I'll say because you don't have many modern games do like I think you only have ACDC now and was it Spider-Man and that's it ACDC Spider-Man Black Knight That's not a modern game ACDC Metallica Which is at my dad's house Terminator 3 Yeah That's pretty much it At this point Yeah Yep I don't know What am I saying Dialed in Not modern That sucks In Bruce's favorite game Dual Nuclear Annihilation He loves it That's not fucking good at all I think I'll stream that next Do it That's what I'm looking forward to In the upcoming year Is No editing and more streaming. Boo. Yep, I just got an email. I'm now an affiliate. Awesome, well done. Yep, we're going to be overhauling, basically overhauling the whole overlay and stuff I'm using. Yep, I did that about three or four weeks ago. Yeah, because I'm looking at some of the other ones, and mine really sucks, and there's nothing. Plus, if I want to actually have like a bit cup or something, things like that. I was starting to research, like, Streamlabs, Stream Elements, all those things to figure out what I want to go with. To fit what Carl uses, he uses XSplit. He wants to use OBS. He's going to go OBS going forward. So once he goes to OBS, then I can rip everything off from him. I started XSplit, went to OBS, and I've just gone, well, I go OBS on my laptop when I've got my portable set up because it runs a lot better on a laptop. It's a pretty lean program, OBS. But XSplit was what I ran for when I did the Melbourne Silver Bowl tournament at Flipout where I needed to split stream four different machines because it was on a desktop machine. So XSplit ran really well. But it's a bit of a challenge program. But it's really good for real-time editing is what I find the difference. XSplit is it's much easier to use. OBS has its quirks, and you set it up. Once you've set it up, that's it. You don't really mess with it. Well, I have the, I'll call it the Carl rig, basically based on his mobile rig, so I can wheel it around to any game down in my basement. Now I just got to get all the wireless stuff so I can just move stuff quickly. So when we have Stomp, we can actually film games quickly. I just don't know where I'm going to put like an announcer's booth or anything because I literally have no room anymore. How many songs have you done? Two. Well, well, I actually, yeah, three. You're good. Yeah. Stop West. Just do them all in one day like me and just don't do it in three years. 14 hours of comps is good. We were too ambitious with the head-to-head thing, honestly. The heads-up thing, I should say. trying to do that at the same time when the same people are in both tournaments. It just... It was too much. It was too much. It was cool having the two stars. Now Bruce wants to have, like, what, three dragon fists in the same tournament. I think so. Or we do two Gammatrons. Can you turn that annoying sound off in dragon fists in the background? Is that a dislish option? No, I don't think so. No. If you leave the ball sitting in the shoe lane, it just gets higher and higher and higher. Why? Is that a bug or is that just... That's just the way it works. There's one in Australia. I think there's just one. They didn't come down here. I talked to the guy and I'm like, Salicy Dragonfish just for shits and giggles. He's never selling it. I'll fit in everything. When there's only one in the country, then pretty much... He's not even in the state. See, you could do that. Melbourne, yeah. Melbourne, Silver League, you could say. Only Dragon Fist in Australia. Boom. Instant viewers, right? At least 12. At least 12. Yeah. I mean, how many viewers do you typically get, Marty? 20, 20 to 25. It's gone up recently. Ever since Flipout, I can get up to 30. Marty's the only person streaming in Australia pretty much He has no competition Still, I'd love to get 30 Yeah, look, the flip out We had That's sort of when it tells me the peak amount of people So if it says that I had 25 to 30 people Usually that means probably about 50 to 60 people have watched it Flip out, when I did that, was about 200 So that was good Nice That was a big time It was You've got to start streaming tournaments run. Local tournaments. Rock Fantasy every week. Yeah, Rock Fantasy. We'll do it all the way right now. Shut up. So when we stream tournaments, we do get more viewers. The problem we have is the non-mobleness of the rig. We end up on a game where no one's playing it. Or we put it on the charity game, like Stars or something like that. But there'll be long periods where no one's playing it. I'd like to have a tournament where I have a unit where I could just roll it to a game and get, like, foursomes of, you know, matches that matter every round. Oh, my. Yeah, and that's kind of why I went. I didn't want to go the mobile route because I had envisaged that I would be doing the commentating and not wanting to go over back and forth. So that's kind of why I went the bigger route, which was to buy the full HDMI switcher in the desktop with, I don't know, 16 cameras, about that? Yeah. Your rig, Marty, will never be mobile, so you'll never be able to come to a comp and just change it from one to another. You'll have to set it up on a certain machine. No, but that's why I've got my laptop. Wednesday every month, Marty, you've got to come to Pinwall Paradise and stream. You tried once and then you never did it. The nice thing about Carl's rig, I noticed is like he didn't like when I, my mobile rig, when I move it, it's like you put it like, okay, how does it look? Okay, move it here, move it here, move it here. With his rig, I mean, because he's using, he's using like HDI cameras, HDMI cameras with the viewfinder. So he's just looking right at it. It's like, okay, it's centered. Okay, that's good. Okay, that's good. And that's it. Like he never even, he never called over once to say it doesn't look good. He just walked over, hit a button. Boom, it's on. That's right. And so I'm using those camcorders as well, which are the Sony, what are they, HRC405 or something, whatever they are. I think they're HDRCX305, 405, whatever they are. So you've got the viewfinder, so you can see exactly how it's lined up, as opposed to using webcams. Yeah, which is so much better. I actually have it on my phone. CX405. Yes, that's the one. Yeah. The official rig of Carl D'Python Anghelo. Well, Bruce, Bruce, you just sent me a thing that said you have to go soon. Yeah. Is he gone? Is he gone? Is he muted? No, I'm here. I'm just saying I got to get going soon. I got people upstairs. Same. I need to have some lunch. Oh, wow. Lunch. Oh, guys, happy Festivus. Thank you for the rest of it. It's Festivus there today. It is? Yeah, Festivus is the 23rd of December. That's a natural holiday? Fuck yeah. From Seinfeld. Seinfeld thing. Yes. When are you guys releasing this episode? That's up the run. I don't know. Probably Wednesday night. Okay. I don't know why you're asking. No, no, no. Is that right? No, no, no. I'm thinking about the vote that we have to put on Facebook. We have to somehow sync it up, and I guess I'll talk to Ron about that since Bruce can't get the International Times. Wow. Well, Bruce is our Facebook poster, though. Yes, I have the Facebook post to say, you're fucked with me, buddy. Hi, guys. It was awesome. We're very sad that you are not shutting down, but still... Slowing down. Why? Slowing down. Well, it's just every... It was every Thursday. It was every Thursday at 2 p.m. or so. I knew that I would get to listen to your show, and a lot of people, including Jeff Sciola, say, you know, a big advocate of, you know, I just do it whenever you want, But I like the weekly thing because I knew it was something to look forward to every week. Same with you guys. I do the same thing with you guys. Yeah. Very sad that you guys are slowing down. Well, you never know. Anything could change. Anything can happen. Anything could change. Yeah. Anything could change. Fuck you, Bruce. So thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Marty. Thank you, guys. No worries. Thank you. Episode 122 of the Other Slam Tilt Podcast. We can be reached at slantopodcast at gmail.com. Look for us on Facebook, Twitter. Well, just go to slantopodcast.com. Look in the upper right-hand corner. Links to all the crap is there. How's the website hosting going, Ron? It's great. I love the website hosting. It's wonderful. How's it going for Jeff T. Hollis? He's having problems. I don't think he knows how to use the Internet very well. He's having issues with the WordPress and actually building the site. Yeah. When he was asking for help, I was like, hey, just ask Ron. Ron did the same thing. You know, I'll give you the same deal as Ron, but I'm not going to help you out. Hey, fuck off! Well, you remember, you gave me the info, and then I didn't use it for, like, two weeks, and the password had expired. And we went through all that. Yeah, I remember. The funny thing was, like, I think you prepped me. You were like, oh, hey, you know, I think I might take you up on the offer next time Podcast Garden, like, breaks or something. And then it was literally when I was in New York after the TPF, and you messaged me and was like, I need it now. Like, Podcast Garden fucking sucks. It's like it broke, like, a week after you said you might need it. Yeah. And I see they broke again recently. Went to the site, just saw, like, sequel errors on the top. Like, ah, what a wonderful site. Yeah, this flipping podcast is off. I think the only people left is Mrs. Finn. Mrs. Finn is, I think. Oh, Riptide. Riptide is still on there. I think Steve is also. Oh, no. No, Steve. Steve has another service. Yeah. So shout-out to all the other podcasts. Instead of just naming you all, I'm just going to say shout-out to all the other podcasts. I will mention Riptide Pinball Podcast did release their latest episode. It did come out. Hi, Steve. Oh, congratulations to Mrs. Penn on 50. Congrats, Mrs. Penn. Not turning 50, but getting 50. Wow. Wow. Okay. I'm getting two emails, one from her and one from Petey. Pinball star amusements. Go to him for all your non-stern needs. You can buy a Thunderbirds that we've talked so highly of. Buy the third worst game of all time. Yes. What did you say, Mike, before we started recording? 1K before Christmas. Mike Pupo, Flipper Fidelity is the house systems in your pinball machines, he's also a Stern distributor, thanks everybody say goodbye Bruce pinball lifter oh yeah, thanks for reminding us hey Bruce break my back, not my brain what the fuck was that, Marhan Ryan I'm practicing my Bruce-isms I've got to steal that. You got that one down well. Use your brain, not your back. Come on, Pinball Lifter. Where can I get it? www.pinballlifter.com. Use your brain, not your back. Come on, buy my product. And go to your bar, which is where? Little Ball Saloon, 135 West Commercial Street, East Rochester, New York. We have 26 pinball machines. We have bowling. We have darts. We have pool. We have foosball. We have arcade games. games. We got stands. We should have bellies. And good food. Okay. And we have great cerns and no bellies. No, actually, we have hot doggin'. Hot doggin's there. We actually also have blackjack. Like I said, good bellies. Yep, good bellies. Not those ones you picked, guys. I think we can edit all this stuff out and we make ourselves look really good. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Marty and Ryan. Thank you. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.