Hello and welcome to episode 15 of the Pinball Studio Podcast. I'm your host, Fairling Martin, and today we've got the one and only Retro Ralph. And we're going to learn his story and how he found this crazy hobby we like to call pinball. But first off, let's mention the sponsors. Old Town Pinball. Do you need a newer used pinball machine? Just head over to OldTownPinball.com. Also, The Electric Playground. Time to level up your game room with the new shopper? Check out their website, teppinball.com. And last but not least, Spooky Pinball. Order your Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Looney Tunes, or Scooby-Doo today. Check out spookipinball.com to learn more. Anyway, welcome to the show, Retro Ralph. I'm just going to call you Ralph, though. Ralph, how's it going, buddy? Dude, it's going well. I'm digging this intro. This music's kind of bumping. I'm kind of cool with it. This is awesome rocking out over here. Hell yeah. Yeah, man, this is going to be fun. Yeah, I dig the song as well. It took me a while to figure out what song I wanted to use. I'm pretty sure I spent 60 million hours trying to figure out a theme song for the podcast, so I understand. Thanks for having me on, man. Yeah, yeah, it's great. I've wanted to have you on since I started this show. I always thought you'd be a really good guest. I hope so. I don't want to disappoint. Although I'm not on video, this is different for me. I'm just a voice in a box. No, it's a little odd. Yeah, I need to get into the whole video thing, but right now this is enough for me to handle. Hey, baby steps. Baby steps. But, yeah, anyway, we're going to jump into your story today, and we want to hear, like, how you got into the whole arcade scene, and then later on it kind of turned into more pinball. And, yeah, I mean, where did all of this start for you? Did you play arcades and pinball as a kid, or was this later on in life for you? No, so my – I've got to be careful to not go too far back because I can get into, like – Oh, you can go back as far as you want. Okay, so I have like a really, I had a really close, my grandfather is no longer with us, but I had a really close relationship with my grandfather. And he was like one of those, he was one of those grandparents that just invest so much in their grandchildren. And he always, it was really cool. It never felt forced, but he always, he always wanted to like take an interest in whatever I was interested in. So he would encourage me if there was like something that got me excited. he would always like double down on it. Right. And, um, he, I'll give you an example. He used to, he was, he was really into fighter jets. So he would take me, he took me one time, like he was always good about like, if he does something with me and I wasn't into it, he didn't force it, but he took me to an air show in, uh, shoot, it was in Rhode Island somewhere. I can't remember the name of the, the airfield, but, uh, and I was really into it because I mean, this was, I was seeing like an F-14 Tomcat. I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And, uh, and maybe it wouldn't have been an F-14 the first one I went to, but whatever. I was seeing these fighter jets, and I was really into it, and so he'd always do that. And then, you know, as kind of time went on, you know, Atari and Nintendo and all that stuff, he was the one that, when I got my first, you know, gaming system, he went down to the basement and helped me hook it up, you know, and he always then saw that I was interested in that. So when, you know, there was a local arcade called the Dream Machine in Lincoln, Rhode Island, and he would just take me there, and we would just hang out. You know, I was young, so it's not like I could be thrown in there by myself. Well, I guess I could have been, but, you know, he didn't just, like, let me roam until later. But we would go there, and it started with skee-ball. He was, like, really into skee-ball. And then we would just play all the arcade games, and he was just fun. Like, we would have fun playing them together. And that, so those memories always stuck with me that he was the one that we used to play our arcade games together. And then of course, like as console gaming took off later on, you know, later on I got more into that too, but, but it was always something we did together. And it was, so it was just, you know, it was kind of ingrained in me, which is probably everyone's story. They probably go to, you know, they were in arcades because of our age and those were like prevalent then and they were all over the place. So it was just really something that we did that was fun together. And then it kind of stuck with me. And then, of course, it morphed into way, way more stuff later. But it was always something I really enjoyed. Yeah, that's awesome. Did you play any pinball back then or was it just strictly like skeeball and arcade games? So the funny thing is about when I started YouTube, there was this guy that was in my high school. He probably won't listen to this, but actually, no, he will, because when he was he if I post it, he will definitely listen to it. But he's his name is Chad Dakota. So shout out to Chad if he's out there. But he was he was always in every class I had in school. and um chad reminded me because i had i was doing a podcast one time and he goes hey you know there was pinball at the dream machine i was like man that's crazy because i completely ignored it as a kid like never touched it i did it was weird but but i mean i was in an arcade with like a full size moving afterburner and all these other things we had the movable outrun like we had all these games that were would blow your mind as a kid so i i don't know why like pinball just wasn't And honestly, I completely overlooked it for the most part. The only time I ever didn't overlook it, and this is another grandparent story, my dad's parents, they had a pinball machine in their basement that was covered with crap. Like, I don't know what it would have been. It had to be an EM or something. And they were very weird. I have two very different sets of grandparents. My grandparents, like I was just talking to you about, he was all invested and wanted to do all the fun stuff with me. and then my dad's side of the family they were kind of like the grumpy grandparents like don't touch anything don't go in this room don't like step on the carpet but they're the ones with that had the cool pinball machine well I say it was cool I have no idea what it was because it was so long ago but I remember I would go down because I wasn't allowed to touch or look or do anything in their house but I remember I opened up the basement door and I went down there and I would always this is so sad actually when you think about it now I would look at it and I saw it covered with stuff and every now and then I'd get like ballsy and I'd maybe move something off of it but I was too scared to even ask them like can I play I think one day I I kind of got the I don't know I got the itch and I was like can I have they're like no you can't touch it like it's we don't even know it works it's probably broken and so so I never really got to it was kind of a shame because now I'm really curious like what that game was it probably had to be a I mean it had to be probably something from the 70s, so it's probably some EM game. Right. But I won't ever know. I'll never know. Yeah. I remember one of my dad's buddies had a pinball machine in his garage growing up, but I cannot remember even what it looked like. I just remember it in the corner, but yeah, I'll never know what that game is either. Yeah. So you asked if I ever, I'm going to jump around a little bit. Yeah. we'll jump around the timeline, but I promise we'll, we'll, I'll make it coherent. Some eventually we'll bring it all together. But, uh, when you say, did I ever touch pinball? So interestingly enough, my sister who's six years older than me went to Syracuse university in New York. And, uh, and, and my, my grandparents were a lot younger than in everything. And they were like, Hey, we're going to go in a van. We're going to rent a van and we're going to visit your sister. And of course, as like a, I probably had to be, because if she was in college, how old would I would have been, what I would have been. I mean, I know I was still really young, like maybe like 12 or 13, maybe. Would that make sense? Before driving age. Yeah, I probably would have been about 13. So we go in and I'm bummed because I'm like, I don't want to see my sister. I love my sister, but I don't want to go visit. I was thinking college boring. What am I going to do? And so the first five minutes were there. It's like, let me take you on a tour of the campus. and so there was a break room on in her dorm like on the bottom floor and in that break room there was nothing but a terminator 2 pinball machine that was the only thing that hell yeah that's a good i'm like okay so i'm like okay it's not a video game but it looks really cool it's terminator so that's amazing and i remember i just spent the whole entire i don't know what the hell anybody else did that whole trip i just stayed in there i was like and it was funny because there were other like college kids and like oh dude what can i jump in with you and play with you i'm like yeah cool and I was like I was like had my own little like arcade with a it was like a soda machine and that so I was like getting caffeinated and drink and playing Terminator 2 I had no idea what I was doing at that time but I knew I liked it but that was it like after that I really didn't touch pinball for that was like it really like in most of the arcades around my around my area that was probably when pinball was probably being like rather phased out by video games and then of course a little bit later street fighter was like really popular the mortal combat and then all those types of games so i got really into that and um i didn't touch a pinball machine again until way later and i will get it we can get into that part of it because it was one person specifically that got me into pinball like this whole resurgence thing that just happened is this in like the past like five years or yeah in the past five years because it would have been the first, how I got into pinball was the first pinball expo back from COVID. We still had to wear masks. It was when the game on the floor would have been Bond, I think. Okay. It would have been Bond and Godzilla would have came out during COVID, I think. So it was Godzilla and Bond were the games I remember being on the floor. And that's when it all went like, oh my gosh, it went crazy after that. Well, it was the start of it. It didn't go crazy yet, but that's when I was like, wow, this is way cooler than I thought. Yeah, the hobby was growing majorly around that time for sure. Yeah. But in between there, um, like how I kind of got into like this whole online thing, I wasn't really a big social media person at all, but I always kept an interest in arcade games and it was probably around, I was still living in Rhode Island, but I worked in Massachusetts and I got, um, introduced through someone I worked with. I worked at like a call center doing, it's funny, I did like outsourcing for Microsoft. The place didn't, the place didn't do, it wasn't Microsoft, but if you called Microsoft, you'd get us. The name of the company was called Stream International. I doubt they're still around. But a guy there was like, hey, have you ever played with, because we were talking about gaming and stuff. And he's like, have you ever played with MAME? And I'm like, I don't know what that is. Like, what is it? And he's like, it's an emulator and you can run like different games. And so I got obsessed with it. I was like, I built a PC and I, you know, I was always into like nerdy stuff though. I was always like a technical, take things apart as a kid. Like I would always take apart alarm clocks and whether or not that thing would go back together or not, sometimes it would, sometimes I would break it. But most of the time I could get it back working. I was just always curious about that stuff. And so when he introduced me to that, I started building all these things. And then I was like, well, this is cool and all, but I don't want to play these games like with a keyboard. Like I want to play them with real controls. And I want to say I did some investigation and it was a company called X arcade that had, uh, it could, I can't remember if I started with X arcade, my memory is not the best, but it was some kind of controller that you could hook up to a PC via like USB or whatever. Actually, it probably was serial cable at that point. It probably wasn't even a, I don't remember. It was either USB or serial connection. And then I got really into that. and I would focus on building the coolest collection of the games I always played with my grandfather or whatever. And then fast forward a little bit after that, I had bought a couple of arcade games. I had a Galaga and I had a Ms. Pac-Man. No, sorry, I have that in reverse. I had a Galaga cocktail cabinet, and the reason why I bought that was because as a kid, we used to always go to this Chinese restaurant, and it was always a busy... I didn't grow up in a big town. It was Lincoln, Rhode Island. It was a small little, like, suburb of Providence, Rhode Island. Okay. And in that town, that Chinese restaurant had a Galaga. And I just remember, like, I didn't... It's just funny as a kid how you, like, don't care about... The only thing that I cared about at that Chinese restaurant wasn't the food. It was... The game. It was... Yeah, it was that game and the fact that I could maybe beg my parents to do a poo-poo platter, which, you know... Oh, yeah, yeah. On the East Coast, too, right? Yep. Yeah, a lot of people don't know poo-poo platters. When I moved to the West Coast and I said poo-poo platter, it was weird. Like, a lot of people didn't know. Like, that's weird, dude. Like, what are you even talking about? Like, a mix of everything. Yeah, and that was awesome, right? Like, as a kid, you were like, I get these, like, I don't even know. They had the beet skewers and then the egg rolls. But anyway, I would always, like, eat as fast as I could, ask them for another quarter so I could go play some more Galaga. So I bought a Galaga cocktail cabinet because that was, like, something I thought was really cool as a kid. Oh, nice. That morphed into buying a Ms. Pac-Man, like a tall, upright Ms. Pac-Man. But the thing about it then is I didn't know. I was always scared to open it up then for some reason. And I don't know why, though, because I used to always open stuff up. I might have opened the back door and looked at it and been like, ooh, that tube that's glowing looks dangerous. And I just didn't. But luckily it never broke, but I never learned how to fix them. I had them for a little while. and then I kind of just like went back to the main thing and this was way later so there was companies that would bought that would make like um flat packed cabinets you know you could order it to your house and build it and so then I would build these main you know emulator things and I had so much fun with that because you know you anyone that would come over your house if they saw something that looked like an arcade cabinet and you could play Turtles or X-Men or any of the games that were really popular in our childhood, they would flip out. And so it was cool because it was like a conversation piece, but anyone that would come over and be like, oh man, does it play this? Does it play Mortal Kombat? Does it? And so that's kind of, so I was always into that. And then, um, and then this is this, a lot of people think I'm embarrassed by this. I'm not embarrassed by this. I had a, I then got into like, um, collecting, I don't know why, but I started buying arcade PCBs because they were really cheap. And I did that because I thought one day, I'm going to, I don't know why I kind of did it way, way backwards though, but I was buying them thinking, well, one day it'll be cool to have all these. Cause then I can like put them in the cabinet and I'll be playing the original hardware and this is going to be so cool. Uh, and then for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I had way too many of them. I had like all the ones you remember and like, I didn't know what I was doing either. So I was buying like lethal enforcers and then I'm going like, I don't know, how do you hook this up? Like, I don't know anything about this. So I had to learn. I'm like, Oh, it has a light going. okay cool now I need a CRT and then so I learned all this stuff as I went and back then the information wasn't quite as good like you could you could you know nowadays I could just ask chat GPT like hey how do I do this and they'd probably tell me everything I needed to know yeah um but then that's when uh I'm I'm skipping through some stuff but that's when like arcade one-up started and I had a buddy that I was taking my art this is so stupid because I was like I bought it and They're like, this thing's so short. Like, this is, why? Because they didn't have, like, the riser thing. And I'm like, who's bought it? I bought it. And I'm like, this is not that cool. That was the problem. Like, all the adults were buying them, and they were, like, two feet tall. Yeah, and back then, like, the risers were hard to get. So it's like I was playing this midget arcade, and I think this is like this with anything. I'm sure if I bought one of those, what are those, like, what are those pinball machines, the Zazzle or Zizzle or something? Oh, yeah. They're mechanical, but they're real shitty and short. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, like, I would say that I had the arcade equivalent of a Zizzle or whatever. Zizzle or Zazzle, I don't even know. I don't either. All right. Anyway. I don't know what you're talking about. I had the arcade equivalent. Yeah. But, like, I think it's funny how you can convince yourself that something is cool because you think something else is out of touch. And I'll give you an example of this. like my first couple of jobs in high school, I worked at this place called Olympia Sports, which was just like a, do you know Olympia Sports by chance? It's, they had it in New York. Okay. They're kind of like a dicks or like champ sports kind of thing. Right. Yeah. So I worked in one of those for a little while and I, you know, I started to make money. I mean, not, you know, not good money, but, but, you know, it was good for, I'd work extra hours and stuff. And I was also still into like console gaming and stuff, gaming and things like that, too. But I remember I got really into home theater for a while, like I got into Laserdiscs and all that stuff. And I remember back then I didn't have a lot of money. So I'd go to like Circuit City and I'd buy a receiver, which was probably not great. And I probably didn't have speakers that were great, but I thought it was the coolest. Like I convinced myself that I have like I have a home theater in my bedroom and this is awesome. And so I kind of did the same thing with arcade one-up, I was, like, convincing myself that it was cool, but I was, like, well, maybe I should leverage some of those, like, arcade PCBs and, like, mod these, which is really stupid at the time, because this was when, like, Raspberry Pis were popular, so you probably could have put, you know, thousands of games on that, and I showed my buddy what I did. He's, like, dude, you should do, you should, like, make a YouTube channel and, like, show people this. Like, no one's gonna care about this, because at the time, I really didn't think, I really didn't think people cared. Like, I didn't think people were that nostalgic for this stuff. I just thought I was like, cause you know, now you can go in a forum and a group and associate, you could be like a knitting and knitting could be your hobby. And you could probably find like a very engaged knitting group on Reddit or on, you know? And so, uh, yeah, I got, I got into it and it blew up. Like I, I remember getting, having videos that had like 30,000 views. I'm like, this is nuts. Like, how is this even popular? But then, like, it was weird because I ended up, like, building a whole, like, taking, I was single, by the way, at this time. I was divorced. So when you're divorced, you're like, oh, I can do whatever I want. I'm just going to make my house a playground. So it was like, fast forward, and I have this room filled with modified, like, really thin, crappy wood cabinets. And I'm like, this isn't, like, did I convince myself that I like this? Because I'm like, this isn't that cool, really. It took, like, a year and a half, maybe two. I'm like, this isn't good. Maybe I should go revisit. I'm putting regular, I'm putting like real hardware in this crappy cabinet. Why don't I just see what it'd be like now at this point in time to seek out real stuff again? And then it was like a complete, I mean, I went crazy. I was buying every game I wanted as a kid. I was like, I'm buying Road Blasters. I'm buying After Burner. I'm buying whatever. Name the game. And then it just snowballed, dude. Like I had storage units filled with real arcade games. I was trading them. I was meeting people locally in town that, that like had been in the arcade collecting hobby for a really long time. And they were like, show me the ropes a little bit. Like I was like, Hey, how do you discharge these CRTs? Cause they look dangerous as hell. And like, I anyways, fast forward through all of that. I meet this guy. He actually reached out to me. His name was arcade. I don't know if you've ever seen him online. His name is arcade Hollywood. No, I never really followed the arcade scene, so I probably don't know a lot of these people. Okay, he does some pinball. He did actually quite a bit of, he was very, very involved with Rob Burke and Pinball Expo, but I didn't know this at this time. So this was some random guy I had never met before who reached out to me on YouTube, and he's like, hey, I love that you're so passionate about arcades. He's like, do you know I have a barn that I built? Like, I built a whole barn, a giant barn on my property, and I've got arcade games and pinball in it, I'd love for you to come. And this was when I was like filming a lot of, I started to, I mean, in comparison to now the quality wasn't there, but, but it was way better than like what other people were doing. So it was kind of like, that's how I grabbed his attention. Now he was way better. Like with the, he had his whole job and background was really in production and animation and stuff. So he was like light years beyond what I could do. But he's like, why don't you come out and film the barn? He's like, you're going to love this thing. And he really was the one, as my relationship developed with him, well, first of all, I was blown away that this guy built a barn with all this stuff in it. I was like, holy shit. No, like, this thing was, it's very impressive. And he had everything. He had all the games from the 80s, all the games from the 90s. He had some pinball, but it was very arcade heavy, not, well, actually, as the cool people would call it, vids versus pins, which I don't really go, I don't like that whole vids and pins thing, but that's kind of like a lot of the older guys, like that's what they call vids and pins. But yeah, it's like the older guys that have been the hobby for a while, they're like, oh, you're getting out of vids and going into pins. Like that was the terminology they would use. So I stayed, my relationship kind of grew with him. We became good friends. And he goes, hey, why don't you go? And he introduced me to like Todd Tucky, who I love. I adore that guy. Oh, he's such a good guy. Such a good guy. And he really, he really was like, he got excited, I think, because at the time it was all kind of starting to blow up again. And I think his business started doing better because, you know, whether you liked, whether people liked Arcade 1-Up or not, there was definitely, it introduced this whole new community of people that were nostalgic for this stuff. Like, it was attainable all of a sudden because they weren't going to dabble in like the real arcade stuff. It just, it was overwhelming, which is a lot of people like that, right? I mean, I think that's why some people gravitate toward their first machine being a stern, because they tend to be like workhorse games. They're reliable. You don't have to touch them that much. And so he was basically like, hey, why don't you come to Pinball Expo? And I honestly, like, I was so uninterested. I was like, meh. I was like, I really wasn't. Like, I was like, meh, I don't know. I was like, I don't know, maybe. And so he kept bugging me about it. And even Todd was like, dude, you got to come. Like, you have no idea the world that you, this is a world you don't know about. And at the time, though, how they got me to go really had nothing to do with pinball. They were like, you know, Galloping Ghost has a whole section. I was like, oh, they do? And then to like bait me, this guy Jeff, Arcade Hollywood, was like, hey, I'm going to arrange for us to go to Galloping Ghost. and we're going to get a private tour, and you're going to be able to ride this or play this game called the R360. So have you ever seen this thing before? No, no. I'm not very familiar with a lot of these arcade games other than, like, the really popular ones. Okay, the R360 was something that was, I think it started in Japan. It goes upside down. It's a flight simulator that is an arcade game, but it has, like, an oh, shit button inside. Can I swear on your podcast? Oh, yeah, I don't care. Okay. it has an oh shit button so like if you're if you feel like oh i'm woozy or i can't do this anymore you can hit this button and it will stop the problem that he what what he did tell me but i was so excited that i wasn't paying attention if you hit the oh shit button it stops you in the position that you're in yeah so if you're upside down and you hit it you're upside down are you strapped into the game yeah yeah you're strapped in like it's an art like it's a roller coaster almost like you're strapped in you have you're fully strapped so i i i'm not that good with um As I've gotten older, I have a hard time with things that go upside down now. I didn't when I was a kid. I used to be able to do all of that. Like Don, like the fact that Don, you know, Don's Football Pod, like he was big into like all the roller coasters and stuff. Oh, I just went to Universal and I rode a bunch of roller coasters, and I'm like, I'm getting old. I can't quite take this anymore. Yeah, you change. When you get older, especially some people, like my wife can't do rides that go in a circle. Do you remember Music Express, those kinds of things that just spin? Yeah, I can't take it. And you just get crushed. I can't take it. Yeah, so anyways, that's how he baited me to go. And I'm like, all right, I'll go now because you're making it sound really cool. So we did the whole Doc Mac thing. We rode this ride. We got this private tour of the arcade. That was blown away because as someone that was really into video games, to go to Galloping Ghost is like, that's the mecca. He has everything. right thousand i think he's over a thousand games now and i think when i went that's crazy like 600 yeah it's great i don't even know what his electric bill it has to be completely insane because nothing's nothing's um emulated it's all authentic so it's all real crts the power in that building is insane so yeah it's nuts so um when we went back to the show floor he's like i really want to show you godzilla like you're gonna blow it's gonna blow your mind and i I remember watching, I wasn't really playing because that's a, if you've never been in that environment and you're there for the first time, you realize like at the time, these people that were playing, I mean, I'm sure now I'm probably like at that skill level or somewhere near there. But then I was almost nervous to play with these people because they were really good. Oh, that's how I remember. I was like, they're just going to kick my ass and I'm going to look like this. Sorry, little player. And the thing is, that's all in our head more than it's in theirs. For real. they probably, they're probably excited watching you and I, if like we fat rewind, I'm sure they're, they're just excited to see you excited about pinball. But I was thinking, oh, they're going to judge me. I don't know what I'm doing. And, um, I watched someone lock three balls in the building. And then when the building came down and started playing the blue oyster cult music, I was like, what the hell? This is the coolest shit ever. I was like, this is freaking awesome. them. So, so like that kind of, and even then though, I remember there's a, there is a video of this event and in the video, uh, I say something and it's captured on, I always wanted to pull it up cause I don't, I can't ever find it. I got to figure out what video it's in. I say, man, I think I got to buy a pinball machine, but I didn't get one yet. But that was that way. It started with that comment. And then I want to say like six months after that, it probably was faster than that. I ended up getting my first machine, which was a Jurassic Park. Nice. And then you got rid of it just recently? Is that the same one or your second one? No, that was a boomerang game. That's the second time I've had it. Yeah, yeah. But a conversation I'll never forget is we were at, you know that at Pinball? You've been to Pinball Expo, right? No, it's like the one I haven't ever went to for some crazy-ass reason. I might try to go this year, finally. I go to TPF every year. You have to go. That's my show. So will I see you at TPF, then? Yeah, I'll be at TPF. Oh, cool. Me and Don are sharing a booth, and we should be next to Spooky, so it should be, like, right there somewhere. Oh, sweet. Okay, so cool. So then I'll actually meet you in person at Expo. But there's, like, this little, everyone at night goes to this fire pit, which is, I call it a fire pit, but it's really not. It's like a really fancy fireplace, basically, and everyone just sits around it and drinks. And it's like after the show's floor is closed because the hotel is connected to the convention center. So it couldn't be more ideal. And this isn't – I've been to a couple pinball shows where the hotels are like kind of questionable. Like, yeah, people probably got murdered in this hotel. But whatever. So this one, it's like fancy kind of. So it's a nice hotel. and the night, the first night I think it was, yeah, it was the first night we were there, we had gone through the show floor, and we were getting a bite to eat in this, like, little, it was it was like Frank and and and Todd and the whole like TNT crew and we were sitting there talking and they were like Ralph what do you think like are you going to get into pinball And even then after all that excitement of that day I like nah I good I'm good. I'm just going to stick to my video games. And there was a guy that always hangs out, and I feel so bad not remembering his name right now, but I think it's John. He's a really good dude. He goes, you realize that you're going to have all your arcade games are going to be sold in like two years, and you're going to replace them all with pinball machines, and right like that's funny now but it's so true yeah I'm like no no no I was so opposed I'm like nope not gonna happen not gonna happen and like you know two years later he was totally right but at that time maybe it was three I don't know it took it took probably like three years for me to finally like get rid of everything but I was so into it that I'm like there's no way that I'm this passionate about it and there was no way I could have had both because I had I definitely was obsessive though then because my garage went from looks like a cool kind of somewhat arcade setup to like soldering irons and de-soldering irons everywhere and paint and sanders and like because I was getting really deep into like kind of actually similar to what I think Kerry did like Kerry got really into restorations and that's how I I discovered pinball restoration through his channel. And so I was just thinking, there's no way I want to do that all over again with pinball because I, cause all I ever, it got to a point where arcade games became almost like I'd pop the switch on for the, for the garage and something would break. But back then that excited me to fix them. But then it became a point where I was like, I'm not really playing them. All I'm ever doing is repairing them. So, um, yeah, then, then like gradually after that first Jurassic park, I kind of started being like, Oh, I'm going to like, cause you know, pinballs, I was buying games for $500 arcade games, $500 and fixing them. Like that wasn't a big investment really. I mean, it's $500, still a lot of money, but it wasn't like $10,000. You know what I mean? It wasn't even close. And my mom, and by the way, back then you, if you told me that I would be buying something that was $10,000, first of all, I'd be like, there's no way. Oh, I was the same way. Even when I jumped in pinball, I was buying games for like $1,200 and like $2,000. I was like, I'm never spending $7,000 to $13,000 on a machine. Right? It seems like, yeah, it seems like there's no way. But then it happened. It started happening gradually. And then, man, I don't know. It kind of got a little out of hand. I mean, it did for a little while. It took a long time to shed my arcade collection, though, because I had a lot of, like, rare stuff that was kind of expensive. Like, some stuff I would fix up, and it was, like, I'd buy it crappy. Like, it was rare, but it was junk. And then I restored it into something that's, you know, more collector quality, right? Like, collector-grade stuff. And that's also a whole other thing. We get to have a whole other show about that, because there's way more rules in arcade gaming than I think pinball. Pinball gives people more liberties, I think. They're way more open to, oh, this is the original game, but I enhanced it. Like, you'd get crap in the arcade world if you didn't replace a fluorescent bulb with another fluorescent bulb. Like, putting an LED marquee was like, hmm, I don't know, this guy's ruining the whole thing. Like, they would. Very judgmental about that. I mean, there became a point where you couldn't even get, like, it's hard to get fluorescent bulbs now. So it's not, you know, it's not like you can still kind of seek them out. Most of them have become modern fluorescent bulbs with LEDs in them. So it looks like a fluorescent bulb. It connects to the fixture, but it's not. An LED, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I would say, you know, people ask me a lot. They're like, is the arcade hobby more harsh than the pinball hobby? I would have originally said yes, but we have some people in our hobby that can get pretty brutal too. Oh, yeah. And there's people of classics like, oh, you can't have LEDs, or if you do, you've got to have the off-white ones. You can't have the bright white ones, or you've got to have incandescents because it's an old game. There's some people that are picky, I guess. Yeah, but I definitely feel like there's a little bit more flexibility. So, yeah, it all happened. It sounds like it's fast, but it kind of happened over time. And then what really, what really kind of, I, this is so weird, but one day I woke up and I was, I was like, I, I don't think like I'm, I want to do this anymore. Like, I think I want to maybe get more pinball machines, but I knew that, you know, I really didn't want to dabble in the older stuff. I really wanted to get something new because I was so over fixing things. Like I, I'm still very like, I'm, I'm mechanically inclined to a point. I can do electronics pretty well, but I still wasn't interested in buying old stuff, but I would just buy a used pinball machine or something like that. But it was more of like a modern. I never was really into. Now I think we could probably get there, but I do think that might change going forward because I'm so into it that there's some old games I've really fallen in love with. So maybe I'll go down that path a little bit. Oh, I've made three circles. I started off with the old ones, went to the new ones. Now I'm back to the old ones as well. Are you really? Yeah, it's crazy. There's something very, you know, you and I kind of connected through tournament play because I had been talking a little bit about playing in tournaments. And that was really, yeah, because that was, yeah. And honestly, I needed to. I needed to hear that because I would get frustrated. But little did I know that some of the best players played at Electric Bat. So for me to think I could like walk in there and be. Dude, most tournaments are like 20 to 30 people, and you're starting off with what? How many people do they have, 100? I mean, when I first started going there, they would probably average 80, but now it's pretty common for them to average 100, and that's every Tuesday. That's tough competition, man. It is, and it was a little bit, I don't know, it was a little bit maybe stressful in the beginning, but I was playing, like, I'd get on a game and it'd be like, oh, hot dogging. And I'd, like, plunge the ball, and there's this weird thing about hot dogging. Like, if you plunge the ball and you end up in that, like, left side of the game and you don't know that you probably shouldn't use that right flipper very – oh, sorry, not left side of the game, right side of the game. Okay. And you use that right flipper, like, you're in danger mode now, and everyone would be like, oh, and then they would just drain. And I'm like, oh, no. And so – but now I love those old games. They're really cool, and it's a nice change of pace from you don't realize how fast modern pinball is until you start playing some of the old stuff. Me personally, if I'm going up against a super hard player, I want to play a classic. I don't want to play Godzilla. They're going to crush me on Godzilla where I feel like I have a chance on a classic. Yeah, I agree with that too because you can almost have like an – especially if it's a harder classic where it takes everyone's ass. Right. Yeah, even though there are some players, I want to say it was like, I don't want to jump around too much. I'm sorry if I am a little bit. You're fine. They were, I can't remember what game it was. I want to say it was Strikes and Spares. Oh, man. I've got that one. Does that have the, like, scoop on the right? Not a scoop. It's like a spot on the right side. Yep. So I stamped after that one day. There was this guy that he could just repeat that shot over and over and over. And I'm watching my score, which I thought was, like, kind of respectable on the first ball. I'm like, oh, it was like he's ready to flip the, you know, flip the score over. And I'm like, oh, wow, I don't know what I'm doing, you know. And so it kind of drove me to sort of appreciate the fact that even those old games have, if you know what you're doing, like, you can blow the game up. Yeah, I was playing on that game yesterday, and it's usually an ass kicker, and I've got a new play field in it, so it plays way too fast. And then this guy shows up from Tennessee, like, never met the guy in my life, and he is just like a freaking beast. And usually Strikes and Spares is like a super quick game, and this guy is just like blowing it up. I know, and that's kind of, you're like, whoa, okay, I have a lot to learn. But, yeah, so that arcade made me appreciate the old stuff as well. But I still kind of, I think for now at least, I'm going to still stay the course with kind of the newer games and we'll see where it goes. But lately I've been kind of dabbling in, like looking up games that are older. And I really like, even though a lot of people hate this game, and I did at one point hate it. I tend to hate games at first if I'm not good at them. So it's like I probably should. But it was Black Pyramid. So Black Pyramid, I like that game for some strange reason. But I hated it at first because I would just, I would shoot the, I'm like, oh, I must have to shoot this target in the front. That looks logical. It's moving. I should probably want to shoot at that. And then all of a sudden it was like ricochet off and go down the middle. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. Like the damn drop targets on Ghostbusters, man. They will screw you so fast. So I'm like, bad strategy. All right, lesson learned. Don't do that. And then, of course, you meet people through the hobby that want to see you do better, and they'll kind of coach you through a little bit. And, yeah, so sorry if I'm jumping around, but then, you know, through all this, I started, like, you know, I sold off the arcade collection just because I don't know how I would, like, I just couldn't figure out how am I going to get into this because I don't want to buy the old stuff, which would have been a smarter move maybe because that stuff was way more affordable. Like, how can I start getting into these, like, newer games? My problem is I'll buy, like, a taxi. Say I bought my taxi. I don't know. It was, like, $2,500. And then I'm like, I'm going to restore it. And now I have $8,500 in it. And it's like, that was a horrible decision. The game's worth five grand now. Isn't it funny, though, when you can justify, like, oh, I'm going to add this and this and this. And then you're like, wow, I might have the most expensive whatever game it is. You get all this stuff to it. And nobody appreciates it. It's sitting in my local arcade now. He loves it. He got a great deal. What did you say it was? It's a taxi? Yeah. I made probably, like, the prettiest taxi ever. Radcals totally chromed out You know and everything was replaced It was a new game That's so cool But yeah so then it just It really once the arcade collection started to be Shed away It was like more pinball more pinball And then at one point it kind of turned into And this is where I knew Like I need to make a choice Because I had maybe like four Inside the house And my wife is the coolest I have the most understanding she's like look you don't do anything bad she's like I'm never worried about you at all you're you're a nerd who goes out and plays pinball so like it's not like I'm a guy that goes out and gets wasted and I'm doing making making bad choices or anything so so but she really um she's always been like a big supporter of you know whatever I want to do that's like my hobby just because I kind of have a rather stressful day job so she's always been like really like supportive of that kind of thing. Um, but when I had them in the house, our house is, um, it's like in Arizona, a lot of these houses have like tile floors. And so a pinball machine in a mostly tiled floored house is so loud. And, um, I found myself being like, man, I want to play more, but I want to be respectful of her because this is a wide open space. There was no doors I could clothes, and so after, over time, um, this is actually, I don't know how I got her to agree to this, but I was like, hey, I'm really into the pinball stuff, and she was kind of, um, she won't say this, I don't think, but I think she was pretty supportive of the arcades going away, because, um, I just had stuff everywhere, like, you don't, you don't realize, like, I had buckets of paint to match like, oh, if I ever get a Donkey Kong, I'm going to need that blue color. So I should stockpile blue paint for Donkey Kongs. It was just, it got stupid. And so I'd have, it didn't look nice. You know what I mean? Like I had all these games and I tried to keep them nice, but I was always restoring stuff. So in a way it was always like in a state of disarray. So I kind of told her, I was like, look, cause she always said, you know, you're kind of taking up the garage and the front room of the house and the guest room with like your random parts and stuff. So I could tell that that bothered her. So I was like, well, what if I was like, and I know this is a big what if I go, if I were to move the pinball machines somewhere else, a.k.a. the garage, I was like, but and give you the front room back because that was my arcade all this time. I had gone through like many transformations. I don't know how she agreed to it because, you know, Summers in Arizona can be like 115 degrees or 120 sometimes. And so having a garage is nice because you don't really want to get into a car where it's been 115 degrees. But I somehow convinced her. I said, you can do anything you want to this front room. I will buy whatever you want. Because I knew if I said, and she's actually pretty frugal, so I knew she wasn't going to go totally crazy. But she was like, fine. She's like, I'll do it. I don't want to hear the clinging and clanking anymore. It's driving me nuts. She's like, and you seem to love it, so you can do it. And that's when I made the decision like, hey, my content has now shifted to almost exclusively pinball, which I never would have. If you asked me, like, would I have got out of the arcade hobby and replaced it all with pinball machines, I would have never said that that was going to happen. But it was what was magical about it. And I think this is the thing that people love pinball for. Is it just I was having way more fun. Like, I know I'll get crap for this, but I would tell you that I think people have way more fun with pinball than they do arcade games. My friends do for sure, man. I feel like my friends, when I had some arcade games, like, they would only play them once, and, like, that was kind of it. Or they'd play them for, like, ten minutes, and they were done. Yeah, and I had a buddy that was like, really, I want to have a, he loved, he's a big fan of the Simpsons. He's like, I want to have a Simpsons. And this was after I'd been in the hobby for a while. I go, dude, here's the problem with that game. And he didn't want to listen to me. I was like, you're going to get this game and you will be nostalgic for it. You're going to walk into the room. It's going to make you smile. You're going to be really happy. I go, but once you realize that those games were more fun when you put quarters in them and there was a challenge to them, they're not as fun when you're just on free play. I go, you're going to beat it the first day. You're going to think it's amazing. and then you're probably not going to play it much after that unless someone comes over. And it's totally true. The only games I'd say that are arcade games that don't fall into that would be like the 80s games, like a Robotron 2084 or a Tron or things like that because those games are actually really challenging. Even with endless quarters, they're just a lot harder. They require a skill to get good at. And like a beat-em-up is just button mashing, really. I mean, there's some skill to it, but you just kind of, you know, you just kind of bash the buttons. And if you're like me with X-Men, I used to always choose, shoot, I'm going to forget the character name, the one that goes, and that's like his special name, a special move. And I would just put as many quarters as I can and just keep spamming that button and destroying everybody. And I'm like, that was my problem. Yeah, because if you keep feeding it quarters, you kind of lose the love for it. Where, like, say, just Pac-Man, for instance, like, you can feed it more quarters, but you still die. What is it? Three, after you get hit three times, you're dead regardless. So, like, you can't just keep feeding it more quarters. It's not going to help you. But, yeah, like, I had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and you play through it one time. I mean, it's jump fight, jump fight. Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah, that's kind of it. So when she agreed to do that, that's when I was, and part of it was also, it was really hard to make pinball content. And I was always like, pinball content's really hard to make in general. Because, especially at the time that I started, because I wasn't that good, and I'm not saying I'm a great player at this point. Like, I've gotten a lot better, and I've gotten more of the fundamentals down. but trying to film I was like alright I have this do you want to get into the whole Stern loaner program thing because that kind of also helped me so when the arcade was still in the house I got this random email from I think it's called 87 or something like that it looked fake it looked like it was something if I clicked on you were going to get ransomware and it was going to destroy your whole computer I don't even know why I responded. It looked shady. But it was basically like, hey, because you know how you get those emails that will be like, hey, I'd like to edit your YouTube videos. And it's like a random person and you don't even know who it is. And it's probably someone in like Sri Lanka or something. Yeah. So I get this email and they're like, hey, we saw your video on and it was either Pinball Expo or something. And they were like, we like that you're excitement and passion. and we want to know if you'd consider being part of this loaner program that Stern wants to do. And I think this was, there are a lot of people that talk about this, and I do think this was Stern's strategy back, I think they were going like, hey, there's a lot of these arcade people that we could convert into pinball players. Let's like target some of them. And I responded, but it was like months that I went back and forth on this email. So I was like, this isn't going to happen. It just felt very, they were like, oh, we'll work with a local distributor. leader and it was game room goodies at the time aaron was the owner unfortunately that he just closed his business which sucks oh man that's dude that's already here yeah really good guy and he was well known here in the in in the valley and um so they were like we're gonna work with aaron i was like well i know aaron and they're like yeah just let us handle it from here we're gonna work with and it was um it was uh joe marchfield who works with zach so zach and zach's I don't know what Zach's title is anymore over at Stern. He's like chief. He's in marketing, but he's not. They have a CMO. I don't know what his actual title is. So Joe Marchfield at the time, I think, worked either with Zach or for Zach, and he then took over. He was responsible for this. The marketing company was responsible for finding the people, and then he would take it from there. And so they gave me the first game they let me have under this program, I want to say was, I think it was Bond. Now keep in mind, to be like an okay player, like not an okay, I wasn't very good. So to be a not very good player and then have them go, we want you to showcase Bond. I was like, oh man. So, and you know, I start filming it and I'm like, I don't know how to play this game. And in the video, I joke, I joke. I'm like, I don't know how to play this game. So I was like, how can I make this interesting? Because I don't know how to play it. Anybody that's like watching this video is going to go, this isn't that interesting. So I had a buddy that I'd met through pinball expo. And I was like, Hey, if I call you during this video, would you consider walking me through what to do? I think it'd be really interesting because I think a lot of people buy pinball machines and they don't really know how to progress through the game. And I don't. So what a cool video for me to do where like you're showing me or telling me what to do now, whether I'm going to be able to do it as another thing, but I think people would find that interesting. And so he, I, I brought, I had him, like, on the phone, and I made him part of the video. And he was kind of the first person to really start breaking down the rules more, and that's when it really opened up for me. Because I was like, you know, when you first see pinball, if you're not in it, especially, like, if you have, I'm sure you experience this all the time, if it's someone that's never played, you kind of mash the flippers, and you hit things, but you don't realize there's, like, modes, and that you can actually beat a mode and, like, progress through the game. Like, you don't really, I don't know that pinball is that intuitive a lot of times. Like, it's not like you walk up to it and it's telling you what to do. Right. Would you agree with that? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's plenty of people that I've told them, like, you know, there's more to this than just hitting the ball. And they're like, really? What do you, you start a mode and now you shoot these shots and, like, multi-balls. Like, oh, wow, that's so much better. but isn't it crazy when that thing clicks with them and they go they like it way more after that if they if you can get them to accomplish even one task even if it's just hey um you're up you're you're you're you're you step to it up to an avengers this looks really daunting just hit this captive ball and you're gonna start thor multiball and then when they do it they get really excited because they know they did it like they were able to accomplish this thing even if it's something small that we would go oh cool it's just a multiball like you didn't really do much but But so that's, he kind of got me into understanding the rules. He's also like very, very good at, like, I'm still, you can tell me how to play something 100 times and it's probably going to take me 150, right, before I really get it. I'm the same way. I'm not Joel. Joel just like eats it up in 20 minutes, I feel like. How does he do that, though? Like, I don't, he has to have some different kind of brain. Like, I don't know how he does it. I have no idea, but I watch his videos all the time trying to figure shit out because he explains it where I can understand it. I forget the guy's name with Kale. What's the guy that does the rules with Kale? Oh, Serge. Serge is amazing. Oh, he's amazing, but, man, he's over me. I can't follow him. Yeah, no, he's one, though, that he walks around the arcade at Electric Bat, and if you ask him, like, hey, I could really use your help, he'll open up a game that you are struggling with very soon because he'll break it down and like, hey, start with this thing and do that, good, and then get consistent at that. And then he'll go, all right, cool, now we're going to pile on the next thing. And so I think that's a good way to learn a game, because if you try to like do everything at once, it's just too overwhelming. And some games start things like modes, like you're in a multiball, but you're in a mode, and if you don't actually know that you are, you're confused. like Harry Potter would be a good example of that because there's so many things that you can do while you're doing other things so while it's cool and everything for someone new, they'll probably have a good time on it but they probably will have no clue what they just did but they'll have fun, so it's a good game for that it's a good game for someone beginner because there's a lot of I think Harry Potter is very, it's forgiving the shots are wider so you can kind of flail and still hit things and actually hit a ramp or hit the Death Eater. You can kind of get something going. But so this Stern program started with Bond, and then as I started to learn the rules more, they said, hey, well, do you want to do another game? I think we ended up doing like four. Actually, I got it wrong. It was Venom I had first. They sent me Venom. Oh, man. Yeah, they sent me Venom, which I didn't know enough to know at the time why they sent me Venom. I mean, they sent me Venom because no one was buying Venom. Like, that's why they sent it to me. But I didn't do that. It doesn't exactly get you in the hobby, though. It's like, send me a God of the Rillo, man. Yeah, probably not the best. I know, and they never offered that. But now I know why they offered that game, because I think sales of that game weren't good. They're like, hey, this guy doesn't know shit. He's from the arcade world. Let's send him Venom. And believe it or not, I ended up kind of liking Venom. They didn't send me a Pro. I definitely am glad they didn't send me the Pro, because the Pro is my least favorite of the Venom games. but, oh, shoot, my mixer just did something weird. Oh, you sound good. Can you still hear me? Yeah, you're good. Oh, all right. It did something like this session is about to expire. Oh, just keep going. Hit continue. You're good. So that whole program started, and I kept doing that, and then I was getting more of a taste of new games, and it was kind of cool because at the time, I don't think, I think at the time, and I know I bounced around a little bit, I hadn't fully gotten rid of all the arcade games yet, so to buy something for $10,000 or $5,000 even was going to be a stretch for me. So that program really, which was funny because the program, you were supposed to send the game back. There was no, like, you keep the game. It wasn't like they were like, here, you get to have the game, which I didn't expect that anyway. But when it was time to pick it up, I was like, huh. It wasn't Venom. It was Bond. And I was like, hey, I really like this game. And so I contacted Stern directly. I was like, can I buy it? Like, can I just have it? Like, not have it, but can I buy it? And they were like, well, that's not really the point of the program. The program is for you to give it back and then get something else. I was like, yeah, but I really want to keep this. And they were like, okay, hold on. So they go back to Game Room Goodies, and he's like, yeah, I can sell it to you, but it's not like you're going to get it for a good deal. It's just whatever. So I ended up buying it. No discount. The funny – No. there was no discount no yeah then I and I was kind of I played the angle a little bit I didn't want to like press my luck but I asked and they were like yeah no there's no there's no discount they didn't care and and now nowadays now that I'm deeper in the pinball space I probably would have I think I probably would maybe be able to give me give them give me some kind of discount but at the time it was no discount so I bought it but the funny thing is like a couple games later they gave me Foo Fighters. And I kept buying the games. And they were like, this isn't the point of the program, dude. Like, the point of the program is that you show us. At least you got to try it out before you paid for it. I wish I could do that sometimes. Well, they don't do the program. I think they abandoned the program. Like, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist anymore. And I don't know if it's because they felt like they weren't getting whatever they wanted out of it. It's because they're like, he's going to buy it anyway. What's the point of sending them games? Probably. yeah they sent it to the wrong person they knew I was very impressionable like we'll send it to this dude he'll just we'll send him like 10 games he'll buy them off so uh so yeah so I started by that's really where it took off because it was a combination of my buddy teaching me that hey there's rules to these and once you start accomplishing things I think you're going to be way more into it which I was and then from there because I kind of jumped around after that that's how that room grew to more games and that's when I had that conversation with my wife to say like, hey, I really like this. And she's like, hey, okay. She's like, but how are you going to fund it? And that's when I said, well, I'm going to sell. I just felt like it was time to sell all the rest of the stuff. And I just had so much high-end stuff that I knew, I mean, it's kind of crazy to say this, but I knew I could raise easily, easily $30,000 or more just selling some of my arcade games because I had such rare stuff. That's nice. Yeah, and that's honestly where it all took off and then it um you know then of course when you start dabbling in the hobby you you start going well who's this you want to know like who like i like this game who designed this one you know and then you start because i didn't know anything about that if you said this is an elwynn game i'd be like okay like i wouldn't know what you meant or if you said this is a george gomez game or a borg game i would have no clue what you were talking about i might nod my head and be like, okay, and then probably go Google who the hell is John Bourne, you know? And, yeah, so that's when it really took off because I started dabbling in, like, well, what games do I like and then why do I like them? Because, you know, when you're starting to look at purchases that are so much more expensive, and I still made a ton of mistakes. I mean, I have videos. There's video proof of it, documentation of me selling this and trading this and doing this, and, of course, people would always, they still joke to this day. they're like it'll be gone in six months or it'll be gone in three months and i laugh at that because you remind me of myself like a year and a half ago i was buying and selling and buying and selling finally i'm to the point where i'm like i am tired of doing this if i buy something i need to hold on to this game for at least a year to like two years but uh well so this that's a good segue then because that's where the problem started because they get expensive and then, you know this could be thought of as a not so great way to do things but I was like I really want to I find that I learn the games better at home than I do in an arcade and I love going and playing on location Like, I'm a big supporter of please go out of the house, and especially if you can't afford one, which they're expensive, I get that. Go and, like, go and buy, like, go and play them on location for a dollar. Like, do that, because you'll have a ton of fun, enter tournaments, you'll meet people. but I really felt like at that point that I really enjoyed making content about pinball and I also felt that I was sort of still so green that what I would learn might help others that are making that transition from arcade to pinball and then I started getting comments on videos like hey I saw and keep in mind this is such a basic thing like I saw that video of you installing art blades or shaker motors like you can customize these and I was like oh my gosh you can totally customize there's so many things you can put speaker lights and and like at the time expression lighting on a stern wasn't necessarily like a big thing i don't even think it was out yet so everyone was doing like the speakerlights.com guys speaker kit and uh the light kit and which i love he it was his his stuff is very like he puts it puts it together a nice little package for you to install it and um and so i i realized then that i had captured an audience that probably was on the same journey as me. So I was like, well, if this seems basic to like someone that's been in the hobby for 10 years, you got to remember there's people coming in all the time. So I kind of, I kind of felt like, well, this is cool. Cause even though what I'm educating them on has probably already been done a million times, it's new to me and it's new to them. And so it, I got really motivated by that because people seemed really interested. and that's when I just went full on. It was just, all right, I'm a pinhead now, if that's what you want to call it. I just knew. I was having way too much fun. Every new game that came out, I didn't have a podcast then, but I was really into that whole, who's going to launch a game? Oh my gosh, Spooky's going to launch this or Jersey Jack's going to launch that. I didn't realize. I was like, this is a whole new world. I was blown away by how many new games come out a year. I was like, holy crap, The first year I started heavily doing this, there was so many games coming out all at once. So that's exciting where the arcade space, you're really just playing old games that everyone keeps playing or recycling or trading and buying. And so I got really excited by that because I felt like I was always trying to find some angle around arcade games, like someone would build something new. Because there are people that still try to build upgrade kits for arcade games, like things like, I don't want to go too deep down this path, but like there's this thing I was like, it was my, I thought it was my holy grail. I was like, I want to get a Nintendo red tent. And I don't know if you've ever seen one of those, but it looks like a red tent. That's what it looks like. And it has monitors on two sides and people can play it like head to head. It's pretty cool. That's kind of cool, yeah. Yeah, it's cool. But it's also like, there's a reason why people don't put these in their house because it takes up a lot of space. and if you don't have the proper game room, it doesn't really work. But there's companies that make kits to say, like, oh, you want to plug your NES? Do you want to play NES games on this that they never made for this platform? So there are people that make, like, modern tech to go in it. But still, you're still playing the same old games over and over again. So that was also, I realized really quickly that there was so much excitement in pinball for any new release that would come out that that's what that grabbed me too because I was like oh my gosh and then you start seeing the the licenses that they're going after and then you start fantasizing about oh my gosh if they made a this or that like I'd be I'd you know because I still to this day like want a Goonies so bad and I hope that I can't think of a better company than Spooky to make it oh I'm excited it's gotta happen it's gotta happen it has to happen but like to me that's and and and you know So the interesting thing, though, is that this hobby does reach into a very interesting age demographic where you're way deep in this, too, and you start reading forums and what people want. And it's just interesting because you can easily find people that are around your age like that. I don't know how old you are, but do you want to share that? Oh, I'm 37, so I'm a little bit younger than you guys. okay so so so what what you might be nostalgic for is you you probably there's probably things that you and i both love that are similar um you know there's an ip we both love because it transcended the generations yeah and then there's certain stuff where i there's like older people than me and they want like they were so bummed that and i don't know if this is going to be true or not but the later room the latest rumor about how it was going to be acdc and that and then it was going to be kiss and i think naf reported it's actually going to be acdc again see i'm not excited for either one of those. I'm burned out from ACDC from like high school years. I'm done with ACDC. Right. So like those two titles, if you told me to pick one, I'm probably going to pick ACDC over Kiss, but that's because I don't have any nostalgia for Kiss. I know who they are, but that's it. It ends there. But there are people that are like, no, you're wrong. It's got to be Kiss. And I'm like, I'm done with both of them. I'm like, let's just move on. So me being almost, I'm 46, like even, so I'm thinking, all right, if my age demographic isn't interested in Kiss, there's the older demographic that is. But again, like that doesn't excite me at all. Like there's no interest to me for either one of those titles. But, you know, something like Goonies, I watched the crap out of that as a kid or Back to the Future because I watched that a ton. And, you know, the first time I played the Back to the Future, the one that exists, the Data East one, I was kind of disappointed. Was it really? Yeah. See, I was a huge Back to the Future collector, so I had this huge Back to the Future collection, and everybody in that collector hobby is like, well, if you don't have the pinball machine, you're not a co-edist. So I was like, oh, I've got to get the damn pinball machine, and that's how I got into all this. So now I'm going to have to ask you a question. Do you still have this stuff? No. Sold it all for pinball. Okay. but did you have a, I'm assuming you had to have had these two items. There's no way you didn't. So you probably had like a replica flux capacitor, right? Oh, yeah. I had parts from the real car, all kinds of crazy shit. No way. Oh, you went deep. Oh, yeah. You went really deep. I still do have like original movie posters signed by the whole cast. That's the only thing I kept. All right, Sterling, I'm going to ask you another question, and it's okay to answer this truthfully because no one is listening. I'm kidding. It's just you and I. No one else is here. Yeah, yeah. Did you watch the Out of Time movie? The Out of Time movie? Movie? It's like a documentary. Oh, yeah. There's a documentary like 10 years ago. I think it was 2015. Yeah. Did you cry? No. A little? No. Did you get a little emotional watching it? Maybe. Oh, no. You're not supposed to answer it this way. I've watched all... See, like I already knew about like 90% of all this. They're like, I watch these documentaries and stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I already know. I know. I know. I know they're restoring the machine. You know. I got so sad to know how picked apart the show, the game, like the cars got. So you already knew about all that. Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah. They destroyed that. That made me so sad, dude. Like, I'm like, how can you disrespect such a big part of pop culture? Like, how could you even do that? And why would a universal even? I mean, I guess they probably didn't know people were doing it, but it's like, I don't know. So it's like the original Jaws, but it was the same way. people picked it apart and then they just sold it on eBay. And for the longest time, you could find all these little parts that people were selling that they just ripped off of the car and the boat. See, I didn't know that. See, that's sad, too. This stuff is, you know, some of it is, thankfully, there was people that were passionate in that hobby that put the DeLoreans back together. I think they did all of them, right? They did the Western one. They did the 1985. Well, the other ones are in private collections. So the Peterson has the original, the A car that everyone knows that they picked apart on the back lot. And then for a while, the Universal Studios in Florida had the car that everyone saw at the end of the movie on the railroad tracks. But now that one's disappeared. No one knows what happened to it, and they replaced it with another car that's just a replica now. But the real train's there, the train from the last movies in Florida. Did you like the third movie, the way it ended? Oh, yeah. Die Hards love all the movies. So I loved all of them. It's one whole story. Like Jules and Vern, I don't know why they always kind of annoyed me. I don't know why. I have no idea why. Certain things annoy me for some reason, and I always get annoyed by Jules and Vern. I don't know. I just didn't know why. They're in the movie for like 10 seconds. They still annoyed me. They, like, ruined the whole end of that movie. Like, I just, because then I started getting weird and being like, so Clara and Doc, like, had sex. Like, I don't even know this. Like, I don't want to know. I never thought about it like that. Why my mind went there is probably that. I wish we could edit that part out, but I said it, so. No, for the longest time, I didn't like the second one for some reason. Now I appreciate all of them, though, so I don't know. Well, what a cool time that, even though I don't know, I don't know, I'm starting to lose faith in the idea that that game is even going to come out this year. Because every year I've been in this hobby, it's been like Back to the Future is coming out this year. And it's been like three years. And now they're making Raza. Why? I don't get that. I don't get that. Because anybody that I've never played it, but everyone that I talk to that has is like, I don't get why they even are bothering to make this. Well, it's like Big Bang Bar. The Wormhole brought that to TPF one year. and I was like, oh, I get to play Big Bang Bar, and I played it, and I'm like, this game sucks. Why would anybody remake this? You know, what's funny is I actually, I recently kind of, I'm not saying I'm into this, but I definitely, there was a time where, actually during the arcade hobby time, I got into virtual pinball for a short period of time, and I built my own and, like, did all crazy, like the analog, I can't remember what it was called, like maybe a Pinscape. I can't remember what the name of the board is, but it's a board you can put inside a virtual pinball machine so you can nudge a game like you could a real game. It works okay. I'm sure it's come way further now than it was then, but I was playing with all that stuff, and funny, recently I have one little multi-cade arcade cabinet in my office that I'm in right now recording this, and I was like, I wonder if I could get back into like vpx to play some of these older games because i do think there's value in virtual pinball if you're trying to learn the rules of older games absolutely especially for tournament players i mean you you aren't going to get a feel for the game per se but you can learn the rules for sure and where the shots are yeah so the other day i downloaded big bang bar and i was like man this game because i never played the real one i was like if this is how the real one plays like i'm good. I don't know why you'd make this, but hey, whatever. I don't get the whole rare, let's just build it because it's rare. I think it's going to backfire honestly with the Raza games. I think so too and I don't know. That whole thing is weird and I also am a little disappointed. I know this gets talked about a lot, especially recently, is it's just that company because I do have a friend. Again, this was early on where I didn't really know and he was talking to me about Big Lebowski and he was telling me the whole thing about how he had friends that had waited like seven years to get him. I got a buddy that waited 10 years and he was one of the first people to pay. Like, how does that work? Don't you take care of those people first? That would disappoint me so bad. Like I, I'm telling you right now, there's no way. 10 years, I would flip out. I couldn't do that anyway. I'm way too, I need like instant gratification, which is, which is a part of my personality that, that, that, that makes it like, if people want to know why sometimes I just, oh, I have to have it and I get it. And then, you know, that's bad to be that way sometimes because sometimes the thing you think you want so bad, once you have it, you're like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was. You know what I mean? But you thought you had to have it so bad. So I tend to get a little impulsive sometimes with the hobby, which I've really calmed down lately. Like there's, I never want to use the term bolted to the ground because I know that's... Oh, man, I used to say that all the time. and I don't think I have any of those games I claim that were bolted anymore. You don't have one? You must have one that you said that to that you still have. Godzilla. I got rid of my Godzilla, which I was surprised. I was like, oh, it's bolted. I got it right when the game – that was the first new in-box game I ever bought. I met my distro, and it had just came out, and I was like, I'm going to get a Godzilla. It's a great game, so you can't really go wrong. When people ask me what their first game should be, I struggle to answer it sometimes, but I feel like Godzilla is one that just has a lot to it that someone could be, I think it would get people excited to play it. But then I look at it and go, it's not that, I don't know, would you consider that? I don't think it's an easy game for a new person. Not to me, but I watch some people just blow it up at a billion all the time, and I'm like, how do y'all do this? I know. Sadly, I never got to a billion. Me either. Yeah. I think I'm at like, I'm in like the 700 million-ish range, and I thought that was good. And then you see people like, oh, I have two billion on Godzilla. I'm like, screw you. In tournaments, you don't have extra balls and all that. And like my buddy, like every tournament hits a billion on it. And I'm just like, no extra balls. It's set up hard. You're under stress. I'm like, how do you do this shit? I don't know. But it makes you realize there's definitely, like, such a giant, there's, like, this giant gap between, I mean, I guess the good thing is that if you always feel like you're getting better to some degree, that's good. But I definitely feel like I've hit, currently I'm at, like, this weird plateau where there's certain, like, I watch Ray Day play, and I'm like, man, he's drop catching everything. And he has full command of this machine. Like, this machine, he is working this machine. And all those good players like that, they can do that. And I don't know. That's what I had to start focusing on. Like, for the longest time, he's tried to learn how to play the game and all that. And, like, you got to back up. And, like, on Deadflip's page, he's got all these, like, different things you can do with the flippers. Like, start trying to practice all of those, you know. And it really opens up, like, what you can do with the game, I feel. have you ever done the one-handed thing to try to practice um dead bounces that that actually does help a little bit no i hadn't done that one so you basically like you play purposely with one hand so it's forcing you to to follow the ball more and then you'll see okay the ball's gonna i know now after doing this like you kind of get into this rhythm where like okay i know now that i don't have to flip this like it's gonna hit the flipper and it's gonna bounce over to the left or the right uh I I've gotten a little bit better at that but you know it's funny because I did like a live stream on on uh on Evil Dead and it was like I was watching the comments like please for the love of God dead bounce and because I start getting uh I think George Gobez calls it a flipper oh what does he call it I can't he has a word for like when you just start flipping when you're flailing your flippers and it's not that I'm flailing but I definitely tend to not I definitely tend to be like, I want to hit it all the time. It's just a skill you've got to learn over time. I've got really big into flipping the opposite flipper to settle the ball on the other flipper. Do you ever do that? Yeah, for sure. I'm big into that now and slap saves. I slap save like 20 times during a game, and it saves my ass all the time. Yeah, sometimes it's not pretty, but if you save the ball, hey, you saved the ball. Just don't wear a wedding ring when you're slap saving or you're going to destroy the side of the game. Oh, good point. Or wear my gloves. You got those fancy gloves, yeah. Well, the gloves, I get crap for the gloves. The gloves is really the root of the gloves is I have really sweaty hands and I will slide off the bar. I'm always wiping the whole game down and I'm like, maybe I need to start wearing gloves because after every ball I'm sitting here wiping the whole game down for the next player. I was at Don's thing for the Midnight release and I was playing Ava and Kerry was giving me shit He's like man are your hands sweating that much Because I kept wiping the damn game down He's like what is going on here You got like a shammy with you Like yeah Just like resting the ball on the flipper And like wiping my hands in between Like you know not even Before I'd even drained I'm like wiping my hands Yeah it's nasty That's awesome So where do you want to go from here? I kind of accelerated a lot of the timeline, but I don't know where we're at time-wise. Oh, yeah, I mean, it's fine. I've enjoyed it so far. I did want to touch on, like, how did you get this whole opportunity for filming the Harry Potter launch video and featurette and all that stuff? So that came from, I don't remember how we became, like, how we got in contact with each other. really, but I, I kind of got like kind of friendly with, um, and he's, he's definitely a friend, but, uh, Ken Cromwell, like I started talking to Ken a lot and there was, there was a, um, I was in Chicago for work and Ken called me up and he said, Hey, and this was like, I've been in the hobby for a little while now. And he knew, like, I, I focus on, you know, the video quality and that kind of thing. Like I was always like prideful about that stuff. And he goes, Hey, would, have you ever, would you ever consider taking on a larger project? and of course he couldn't tell me what the game was at the time, but it, cause I wasn't, you know, I didn't, hadn't signed anything and he's not going to just like randomly tell me. We knew what it was like, look, I mean, we all did, but I, you know, at least I felt like we all did. And, um, he's like, would you consider doing a project like that? And honestly, I was really scared about a project like that because the last one was the avatar one and it was so well done. And I know they poured a ton of money into that. And so my, my response to him was, was like, Ken, look, I don't know that I could do it to the quality of that. I was like, look, I'm a two-man show most of the time. It's me and Mason. And I go, and I've never done anything like that. I go, I don't think I couldn't do it. I go, but just keep in mind, if I did, it's not going to be the Avatar version. Like, I can't do that. I don't have a $100,000 studio and, like, all these things. So I didn't give him an answer then. I just, I then, like, I got, of course, really giddy about it, even though I was sort of scared. And I called Mason. I was like, hey, I know this would be a stretch for us. Would you consider, like, because I needed him. There's no way I could do that by myself. There was no way. And so I was like, do you think that you'd be into doing that? And, of course, he's like, well, you know, his first thing is, like, it's my hobby. And for him, it's his work. So he's like, well, how much do you think they'll pay to do it? I was like, I don't know, man. Because I had told him. I was like, because, of course, I shouldn't have led with this because he's like, you know, a 27 year old kid. I was like, I don't know. They paid like, I don't know, probably 50 grand for the other one. I don't know. It could have been more. There's been numbers thrown around. Dude, that Elton John one where the guy's like floating in the air and shit, that couldn't have been a cheap video. Yeah. So so he's like, 100 grand. Oh, let's do it. I was like, settle down. Cool your jets. There's no way that they're going to pay us even close to that. I was like, plus, we have no idea what we're frigging doing. so we gotta like be realistic about this so I I kind of got his buy-in that he was interested in doing it and even then I'd say we still didn't realize all the things that I didn't own really to do that kind of because I shoot everything at my house for the most part and if we're doing a conference that's just like a camera a DSLR we're walking around and we have decent mics like it's not you know it's not like the kind of production that they would they would want so um I ended up calling him back and this was way he told me way way way way like this was way before launch so this wasn't even close to when like to get this was way before jack did the whole like the next game is harry potter save your money like that yeah this was way before that so i um i was like let's do it i'm in and the reason why that opportunity came up is really because um you know zach had always been the one at flipping out that was doing all these featurettes yep And Zach was just overly, he was just too busy to do it. And so had Zach said yes, it probably, the opportunity probably wouldn't have, you know. Oh, really? And presented to me. Yeah. So, so we signed up and then of course I was in the back end after the reality of we're going to do this. I was like, man, we need, like, how am I going to get, like, I don't have, I don't have, like, I can't travel with my lights. Like, how am I going to travel with lights and the right tripods and the right microphone setups and all this stuff. So then I started looking into like rental, like how can I rent stuff? Yeah, like B&H or something maybe? If it wasn't B&H, there's a company called something Lens. I can't remember the name. The company isn't called that anymore, but I can't remember the name. Borrow Lenses I think was the name of the company, and I don't know if it's still that name, but. Okay. So I priced everything out as to what it would be, you know, thinking like, all right, we're going to get some compensation for this. I don't want it to be like I did the video and I didn't get anything. Um, so I figured out, I was like, look, maybe I can work something out. Cause I probably could have asked for more, but my thought was if I can get Mason paid a little bit for doing the, because if I was making this video, I'd be paying Mason probably something. I was like, so Jersey Jack can sure as hell pay Mason a lot more than I can. And so I negotiated something and I was like thinking to myself, well, cause I can't remember if at this time I knew what the game was. No, I didn't know what the game was, but I, I kind of, cause I was a little, you know, I don't say we're, like, rumors at this time, but, huh? There was a bunch of rumors out, I'm sure, at that time. Like, a lot of us knew it was kind of coming, maybe. Yeah, so I kind of knew what it was, but I was like, well, what if I work something out where all I want for my compensation is the game? Like, I want the game. And I asked him, I was like, has anybody ever done that before? Have you ever, like, paid someone in a game? I was like, but obviously Mason, I need to pay him, too, so maybe, like, cash in a game. and they agreed. It's never good when someone agrees right away because that means you could have asked for more. They're like, yeah, that sounds great. I was like, wait, what? And I probably could have gotten Mason a little bit more. Hopefully he doesn't want to listen to this. But if he does, he's going to be like, wait, what? You never know. I felt like what I negotiated was reasonable for someone that's never done a video of this magnitude. You know what I mean? So they said yes. And then later on, like probably a month later, because I travel, I support Chicago for my day job. So I was like, well, Ken, I'm going to be in town. And they still hadn't told me what the game was. And he goes, hey, when you're in town next time, he's like providing you're in town the next month or so, which I go there pretty often. I'm almost there every month. So he's like, why don't you come into the office? You're going to have to sign an NDA, though. he's like I can't show you this game without you signing something because it's been even and it's still so still to this point Jack hadn't done the thing yet so no one knew okay well no one officially knew right right that that was the next game so he brought me in there and this was actually I don't know if I've ever told this story so I go in um we're in a conference room and they go okay we're gonna play for you the trailer which is the one with the castle and the kids walking in and all that. Okay. And that was done by Alex Manning, who, uh, he's super brilliant guy. Oh my gosh. He's so, so if you see a lot of the social media stuff for Jersey Jack, Alex is probably involved in it to some degree. And, uh, so I watched this trailer and I'm like, holy crap, this looks amazing. And of course then they show the game and they're like, well, that's the game. It's Harry Potter. And I was like, holy shit. And it looked really cool. Um, so he's like, well, obviously now you can't tell anybody. And he goes, well, do you want to play it and they had one done it was only one so um they I go into and it was in um I can't remember her name she does a lot of the uh like I think she does a lot of the financial stuff for Jersey Jack like any of the accounting and stuff so it was in her room so we go and I walk in her office and it's Eric Minier and and um Joe Katz and keep in mind like it's kind of stressful for you to be in a room with the game designer and the software guy and they're like play it and i'm like oh man i was nervous i started immediately sweating i didn't have gloves so my hands were like shower there's like water shooting out of my hands it was terrible so i'm like okay so like i was really nervous like i'll play it i'll play your game so and at the time i i will admit i know i had watched the first two movies so i didn't have the whole i'd never watched all of them and um so eric is a hardcore fan as you've probably seen like he's wicked into harry potter i mean crazy into it so for him this is like a designer's dream to design a game of a of a property that you like are super passionate about so i i played terrible it was terrible but here's what's funny about it so he's like it's fast i was like okay and i didn't really when you're in those moments it was like information overload and i was like pretty like geeked out that i was even at Jersey Jack and I'm in the room with Eric and Joe and Ken and the lady that does accounting that looks annoyed that we're in her office and um and so I launched the ball and you know how there's like really nothing to slow down the ball it goes around it comes around and it just like drains and Eric's like yes and I'm like what he's like yes and Joe Katz is like this is awesome and I was like what do you mean he's like it's so fast right it's so fast I'm like I didn't hit anything I was like I didn't even do anything and they were like so pumped up that they were like yes and I was like okay so I was like can I plunge it again because that was pretty rough and like they didn't you know you know how we go back to that part of the conversation earlier when we were talking about how nervous it can be nervous you can be with good players right so I'm starting off as like basically I did nothing and the ball drains and they're like pumped up he's like it's so fast, so then he's like, shoot the Death Eater, and I didn't, he didn't tell me what it did, and so I shoot at the Death Eater, I, you know, the ball gets locked in there, and the, the, the, the drop target pops up, and I'm looking down at these flippers, and they're, they're, they're flailing, I was like, whoa, this is cool, and then the thing just shoots it, you know how fast it shoots it out, and it, the game wasn't tuned at all at this point, it was very early, and it just shot it right down the middle, and he's like, yeah, this is awesome, like, he was so pumped, And I'm like, what the hell is going on right now? So, like, nothing is going well. Like, I'm not playing well at all. I want to say I have, like, three million points or something. It was terrible. But it was so fun because I was – at that moment, I knew it was going to be a fun project because Eric was just so into it. He wanted to tell me everything about it. And then he, you know, deep-dived the whole game and all the features. And there was definitely things that weren't finished yet, like the lights. He's like, oh, yeah, these lights, the light covers were just metal at the time. But Eric's like, hey, show them the thing you've been working on. And so I guess Joe was the one that said, hey, it would be really cool if we covered these with the books. So I don't know if Joe was the one that designed it, but it was Joe's idea to cover the lights with books, you know, from the book series. Right. Yeah, I just saw a video where they were talking about that on YouTube a couple days ago. yeah so it was super cool so he so he shows me that and then he puts it on he was just a prototype at the time so it was just this was just like it was geek overload because I I had never been involved with anything where I got to see this kind of look behind the curtain so I this just gave me I was I was so sold after this I mean there was no turning back anyway let's face it I was I really gonna say no at this point I'm in the office I signed the NDA I watched the video so and then the funny thing is between then and Ken and I kept going back as to when they were ready to film it. And that date kept changing. It was like, oh, we're going to film it this day. No, we're going to film it this day. And I was like, dude, I need to kind of know. I have a day job. And so finally we landed on a date. And it was like a couple days after we landed on the date that TPF happened. I think it was that TPF, right, where he's like, the next game is Harry Potter. So I was like, Ken, why did he say what the game is? He's like, you can't control Jack. He's just going to say whatever. So I'm pretty positive that no one knew. Like, at least I have no reason to believe Ken wasn't being truthful with me. Ken was just as shocked as everybody else. Oh, you can tell on that panel. They, like, looked over at him like, what did he just say? Yeah, so I was all like, what the hell, man? Like, why is it out of the bag? He's like, whatever. He's like, it's fine. So, yeah, then we started working on the project, and there was a whole bunch of challenges with that because I didn't realize, you know, I think Ken might have just – And it's not like Ken didn't tell me intentionally, but when we get there to set up all the stuff, we're setting up all the stuff and he's like, you're going to flip out when you see what we have. And that castle that they filmed the trailer, that was Alex Manning's studio. They erected that whole castle. They built that whole thing and they shipped it from North Carolina to Jersey Jack. So I didn't know that that was going to be there. So now my level of excitement is so much better because I was thinking, well, how are we going to film it in a factory? Like, how's that going to be interesting? And if you look back of, like, go look, if you're ever interested, go look at the Godfather featurette. There's, like, a bunch of pallets in the back, and there's, like, a table with a glass of wine. Like, they tried to make it look kind of mobsterish. Are you sure you didn't do something? I guess I'm sure they didn't. I don't know. It would be because that room is so big. The factory ceiling is so high. So I was so grateful that they had this big castle. And so it just made it so much cooler. But the challenging part was that we start filming, and all of a sudden it's like, boop, boop, boop. And then you hear like, and I'm like, what the fuck is going on? He's like, oh, we have to film all this after he's working. I'm like, how the hell are we going to do that? Because you can't have someone talking about like, hey, Eric, give me your inspiration for the game. And all of a sudden it's like all this noise. And I'm like, oh, shit. So it took way longer to film it than I thought because we had to keep stopping. And then but everyone there was so nice. And like I had written, I spent like two months prior trying to write really interesting questions because they didn't have a script. It's not like they came in and said, OK, Ralph, here's the script. You just film it. It was you. You're responsible for all of it. Like you make us interesting, basically. That's a lot of work. It was. So I had a bunch of, I had way too many questions, but I was like, look, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to build some kind of story in my head that would be interesting. And then if they answer all of this, I think we could piece this together. And Mason was kind of nervous because he's going to be editing this. So an editor's nightmare, it's like a nightmare and it's also a blessing to have too much content, but it also means your edit's going to take way longer. so um so but we had so many cool nuggets like I really wish I could show I can't they will not let me but I really wish I could show the original cut of the trailer because it was way more uh like it was more raw they but but the you know when you go back and forth with the license holder that you know there's certain things you can and can't do and I never I never had to deal with any of that. So, uh, so there was lots of back and forth during the edit of, of, of like, okay, you can't have this. You can't have that, that we had put an owl in it and they were like, well, that's not the, that's not the, that's not the Harry Potter, Potter owl. I was like, well, can we have the Harry Potter owl? They were like, yeah. I was like, well, okay, well let's use that then. Um, but there was a cool, like Eric's intro was a bit more, it was still good, but I'd say the intro that we originally had, we were so in love with it. Like Mason and I were geeking out. We were so in love with it. And we basically had to blow up the whole intro and change it. Damn. The other thing that was really hard is they were still dealing with licensor approval stuff for certain things. So we couldn't use everything because some of it was either it was approved or wasn't approved. So we were really editing down to the 11th hour. Like the one thing that I've told this before, I don't think they would care if I said it again. But the, shoot, I don't know who it is on the broomstick. You know the person that's, like, riding the broomstick on the spring? Harry Potter? Yeah, there's, like, over by the Quidditch area, there's, like, that figurine on a spring. I couldn't tell you. I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan myself. Anyways, she's flying on this little broom. I don't know what character it's supposed to be. I don't know. I don't think so. I think it's supposed to be like Hermione. Oh, okay, okay. But so she's on this little thing, and she had an 11 on her back. And I remember when we were filming, I was like, and keep in mind, we filmed all of it with her having an 11 on her little cape thing. And so I asked Eric, and at this point, the 11 was fine. No one had said anything bad about the 11. They didn't say we couldn't do it. Now, keep in mind, we had filmed everything. So I wasn't there anymore. I was back home. But at the time when we were filming, I was like, Eric, what's the 11 and he goes oh it's because it's a jersey jack's 11th game i was like he's like it's a little easter egg i thought it was cool yeah so i was like oh cool awesome didn't think anything of it after that so we put the whole intro together which has a bunch of that footage with the 11 and um we get this call like hey uh yeah the studio didn't approve the 11 because there is no 11 like there's no one in that movie that has that number on the back of their thing or whatever So, yeah, we got to take that out. Now, if it was a static picture, it's a lot easier to just mask out an 11 from a static picture. But when it's a bunch of video, that's not that easy to do. So you can imagine the phone call I had to give to Mason going like, hey, bro, you know the 11 thing that you and I thought was really cool? He's like, yeah. And I could tell he knew by my phone because we were working together. So if there wasn't good news, he's like, yeah, we have to take it out. He's like, oh, shit. He's like, are you kidding me? I'm like, no. And so like he did such a good job masking that out, but that took hours. Now there's probably, we didn't really want to do a funny thing. We didn't want to use AI to mask it out because we did try. I bet now you probably could because AI has come so far in just a very short period of time. But it looked goofy. Like AI was making, there was leaving artifacts. We can't use this. Like there's no way that it looks shitty. Like there's no possible way. so he's like well i'll do it the old-fashioned way and he did it it took him so long it was like pretty much it was every single scene had the 11 in it um the other thing yeah it was terrible and then the other thing that happened toward the 11th hour is there was a and i can't say who the character is but whatever there was a character on the side art of the wizard edition that the studio said couldn't be on it. So that was also in every single shot. So some of our shots, yeah, so anytime we do like a swinging, cool, sexy cabinet shot, that person was in it. And like there was no way we could refilm. It wasn't going to happen. There was no way. They were getting close to the deadline. So, you know, they were like, we just got to figure it out. So luckily we had taken enough angles that we were able to, because we didn't mask it out. you just literally don't see it. We just didn't. We cut the clip as it's turning so you don't see. And I know there were people that were annoyed by that because when the video came out, they were like, we want to see the wizard more. We want to see the side art on the wizard. And I literally couldn't tell them why they couldn't see it. So that's why the video is so heavily showcasing the CE. That wasn't even their intent. They didn't say make this video and only showcase the CE. They were basically like, well, we have to now because we can't show this person. and so there we go. The thing is, I don't know how many of those original radcals they printed, but I got to think it was probably not a cheap Oh shit, I didn't even think about that. Because at that time they were ready to go, so they're not going to tell me that, but I got to think there was probably a lot of money that just had to get thrown away because what can you do with it? So as fun as that project was, it was really, really stressful because I had never dealt with that. And I think if you, I'm sure it's per, I'm sure it depends on the license holder, but when you have a property that big, they're just going to be so anal about that kind of stuff. Like, have you ever heard the George Gomez story about the, what's the car that Bond drives? What kind of car is that? Oh, that's the Martin. Yeah, do you know about that story? Like, they were, do you know that story? No. I didn't know they had an issue with it. I could see them having an issue with it. I'm worried about that back to the future, too. I know. So they were really particular about, because I guess, I'm going to get this wrong, and there's going to be someone that listens to this that's going to go, no, you're wrong. I don't remember it fully, but there was, there's like an estate, like I think it's the car brand that has to give the say on that. It's not the same, it's not like whoever owns the bond license. It's whoever owns that. yeah like they work in conjunction with and so i the gomez story goes something like they got they saw the car and they were like uh and i don't remember what you call them like sight lines or something you know how like when you close the door of a car you don't want to see a big gap right yep well they were like hey when an aston martin doors closed like it you don't see these lines in it like what is this crap oh they made him they made him like re-architect the whole car and i guess the car also didn't have a roof on it because you know how you know like that vuck shoots that off through that car roof. So he had to figure out. It's not a convertible. I don't think he realized. Yeah, so Gomez had to figure out, like, oh, shit, the only reason why I didn't have a roof on it is because I don't know if I can architect this mechanism to shoot through the roof with a, or shoot through the car if a roof was on it. So it was just, so you never know, like, what these license holders are going to be anal about. But, like, I always kind of think about Spooky, and I think about how, I don't know how they, maybe the, because I know Evil Dead 1 and 2 are owned by two different, it's two different license holders, but I feel so, maybe because it was that license and it's... They didn't put the car on there, though. That's true, that's true. But, you know, I mean, they really did a good job. If you think about how well they, like that game still blows me away. I mean, it's not an old game or anything, but it just blows me away about how well they integrated all of the elements of that movie, and it's just amazing to me. And to think that Bruce recorded so much, like so many cool, like funny too, like really funny call-outs for it. It's just, so I mean, I think it can go both ways. It just depends on who the license holder is. Like Eric Minier was saying that Guns N' Roses was really easy to work with because Slash is a big pinball fan, so they could almost ask him anything, And he'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like do it, man. Cool. Like, that's rad. Do it. Like, you know, so, um, but that was cool being able to see that side of the hobby because like, we just always complain about why something's not there. Why something, you know, why isn't it there? And a lot of times I'm sure it's either comes down to the license holder didn't allow them to, or it was too expensive to do. Like, that's probably how it's probably that black and white, you know? Oh, for sure. I mean, look at Jurassic Park. We didn't get a Jeep on it. It's another Gomez vehicle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know. Have you ever played with the movie code on that? A long time ago I had it, but it was years ago when I had it, so I don't really remember it. My first go-round I had it, and then more recently when I just had the game, and even though it's gone already, but they really enhanced that movie code a lot. Like there were things that like some of the clips didn't look as good, and in the latest code release, or whatever the most current Jurassic Park is, because I think that's code probably complete, obviously, at this point, but someone went back and made a new version that was updated for the latest code of Jurassic Park. And they really did. There's still a couple clips in there that are kind of questionable, but it was cool to be able to hit start and see the actual helicopter fly into Jurassic Park. You know, see, when I had it, I felt like it was just the Ford Explorers over and over driving in front of like the museum or whatever that building is, the Welcome Center. Oh, they added so many cool things. Like when you when there's a ball save, it's the scene where I never remember the names of people in movies, but it's the scene where the Velociraptors are after them. And he pulls her like up into the roof, like he pulls her out like he's about to get attacked by the Velociraptor and he pulls her up. So, like, the ball save is one of the ball saves. That might have been in the original one. That's the ball save? Yeah. Okay. And the other one is the kid on the – this one might have been in the original one. I can't remember. But it's the kid getting electrocuted. Like, he – Yeah, I remember that one. Off the electrical fence. Yeah. So, it's a shame that they can't get a lot of that stuff. But, you know, luckily the community does fund projects like that. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, is that it? Or do you want to cover anything else? I mean that's really the Harry Potter story I mean I was really happy With the way it came out I think the funny thing is You know It's always like one of your friends That points something out But I don't know why this happened Probably we were exhausted And didn't notice But there's a part of the video Where I left the keys in the backbox I've heard I didn't even notice it at all Until someone else called you out I think it was Canadian. I was so bummed. I was so bummed because Cale's the one that was like, hey, man, the video's awesome, but... And I was like, oh, no. He's like, you've got to take the keys out of the backbox, that one scene. I'm like, come on, man. Like, you're killing me. Like, it took forever. Shut up. Like, I don't even care at this point. But, I mean, of course I would have preferred it not being there, but it got past both of us. I think we were just... There was a... By the way, that was my first real experience with Jersey Jack pinball machines. Like, not playing them, but I had never moved one. and when they left us, like, there was a part when we were done filming, we were, we were done filming, like, the bulk of the interview parts and I, I told Mason, I was like, man, I feel like we're light on, like, b-roll of the cabinets, let's focus on, on doing that, but the problem is we had moved the cabinets, they moved the cabinets around a bunch of times, so they're all kind of gone, like, most of the people are gone from the factory, I want to say Steve Ritchie was still in the building and, like, maybe, shoot, I can't believe I'm spacing on his name right now, the designer for, he's going to kill me, the designer for Avatar. Oh, shit. Oh, I'm forgetting it. Damn. Oh, my God. So, anyways. Yeah. We don't know. Neither one of us. You know who we're talking about. Yeah. So, he's in the building, and I'm like, Mason, I need your help moving this. And I don't know if Mason just like didn't have a clue of how, cause I'm like, this thing's going to be heavy, but I didn't realize how heavy. His name's Mark. Yeah. Mark, Mark Seiden. There you go. Yeah. So, so, uh, so I get it. So we had to move it like a long way cause they had moved it all the way out of the way cause we were filming some other stuff. I think we were filming the wizard, but I needed the CE to be like in a cool spot with the, with the castle backdrop. Cause otherwise it wouldn't have made sense. Like the game would have looked like in the trailer that it moved to another area. So it wouldn't have been cohesive. I was like, we have to put it back where it was. And I had taped the floor where it was so we could move it back to exactly the spot. And him and I, I was like, dude, it was the end of the day. We were both tired. We were both really cranky. We hadn't eaten enough. And we're moving this thing like a centimeter at a time. I'm like, this is terrible. And I couldn't find a cart anywhere. And I didn't want to bother anybody. So it took us like we wasted probably way too much time moving. And then I was freaked out because it was the only CE. It was the same CE that they sent to North Carolina. so I don't want to ruin the thing. So I'm trying to like, I'm like, Nathan, you can't drag it. Like, it'll rip the legs off. Like, you have to be careful. And so we're like moving, and he was nervous. He's like, I'm going to break, I'm going to break. So we're like, eek, eek, eek, eek. Like, this little, I was like, this is a nightmare. But no, now looking at it, it was so fun. I kind of hope in a way, there's part of me that's like, I don't know if I want to do that again, but knowing what the next title is. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, would you ever do this again? if given the opportunity. So, I would. I would, but the thing is, it was really hard for me. The time that they wanted to film it, because that game came out, what, June? I think it was June, and that's a really busy time for us at work. So it was like, I was kind of, I was kind of like pressing my luck by taking more days off. And I also, like, we don't have unlimited vacation at my work. They say we do, but we really don't. Like, it's like, yeah, you have that, but no one, you can't take unlimited vacation. It's just in the, it's in there. It's in the HR document. Sounds good. Yeah. So I was like, I felt like I was pressing my luck because last year I just did so many of these little, like, getaway projects that happened to be during the week. So I was really, I don't know. I think I would knowing what the game is. Like, I mean, we all kind of think it's Sonic, and I think that's pretty much determined that that's it. You know you want to film Sonic. I know, and that's the thing. Like, I played so much. Sega Genesis is, if I had a game system that was, like, defined my childhood, it would, like, the one I really invested a ton of time in. NES was obviously part of it, but the Sega Genesis by far. Like, that was the one that we just spent hours and hours on that system. And then Sonic was obviously, like, the pack-in game. So, like, the game I got, when I got a Genesis for Christmas, it had Sonic in it. So like, you know, most, although there was one kid in the neighborhood that his parents would just buy him everything. He was like, his dad was a doctor, so he'd get every game, like everything. But like most of us just had the pack-in game and we just played it as much as we could until, you know, maybe a birthday or something came up or when you could start renting games at Blockbuster or whatever. But yeah, so I, yeah, man, I would want to say yes. Like, I would want to say yes, but, yeah, I don't know how I could say no. It would be stressful. It would be so cool. But it was, yeah, it was a lot more work than I thought, but I also think working with Sega probably would be a little easier than Warner Brothers, I think, because they, I don't know, I feel like they'd be easier to work with, and there's not, I mean, he's a video game character, you know what I mean? If they're doing the video game, they probably just would give him all the assets to the video game and say, go crazy, because I don't, I can't imagine the game is going to have anything to do with the movies. So if the movies aren't in them, I think they'd probably, it'd probably be an easier license holder to work with. Oh, man, if it's the movies, I'll be so disappointed. It can't be the movie. Like, I'm with you. I wouldn't want it to be the movies. It can't be, right? No. They did Toy Story 4. I have no idea what their ideas are. Yeah, that was a questionable decision, right? But I'll tell you one more story about the thing that we can wrap up on the Jersey Jack thing. But Steve Ritchie was coming out of, he was, because you have to go, I don't know why people go this way, but maybe because the parking lot is like on the side. So you can, you can walk out of the office and kind of go out this side door and it goes right to the parking lot. And Steve Ritchie was walking by and I was like, oh man. And like, I'm still weird about, like, I wish I had the Don gene. Don can just go up to anyone and just be like, hey man, like I'm Don, what's up? Like he doesn't care. I'm a little bit more, even though like on these shows, I'm probably pretty, um, like, uh, what do you call it? Extroverted. I have a very big introverted part of me. And when it comes to that kind of stuff, I really try to like leave people alone. And, um, he was walking by, I was like, oh man, I'd love to get him to say like a line from, cause he was, he was like, he did Mortal Kombat. He did a bunch of other things. I was like, I want him to say you, you weak, pathetic fool. I was like, I want him to say it so bad. and Mason was like do it do it ask him ask him and I was like hey Steve can I bother you for a minute he's like hey yeah man what's up you guys finished he was so nice he's like you guys finished filming that's so cool and uh or whatever he didn't say it exactly like that but something like that he was very like he was excited to stop and talk for a minute okay and I was like hey would you mind saying something for me he's like yeah sure what do you want me to say I was like can you say you weak pathetic fool and it was so weird because he's such a good voice actor when he switches that switch to like the black knight voice or whatever you you'd almost think it's a different person i was like holy shit and he did it and that was it that like made the whole thing and that was kind of the last hour we were there and i was i was like okay that that ended on a on a note that i can't like that's a cool memory so uh so i don't know how steve would be though it'd be interesting to see how steve would be having to do like it's not by the way none of the things that we, I say scripted, I would ask like a question, but my question, I didn't ask it like verbatim. It just depended on how they were reacting because certain people would be more inclined to be like, um, their mechanical engineer. He, he was a little bit more comfortable like on camera. He just, he, he was like, yeah, it asked me whatever. But, but like Joe, I could tell Joe wasn't like a big fan of, he, he didn't mind doing it, but he was like uncomfortable a little bit. And so with him, I, I, we went off script big time. Cause I was like, all right, this is what we need. You know, you're the guy that codes it. So tell me about the modes. And it was weird because it was, it got, it got really convoluted and obviously there's a lot to the mode, so you could make it really confusing. And I was like, well, what could you break it down to that would be like basic enough that they'd understand there's a lot to content to chew on, but not so in-depth that someone's going to go, oh my gosh, this game is going to be really hard to play. Because you don't want that. You don't want the video to be like, yeah, I don't know, there's like 6,000 modes, and it's really complicated. So we settled on 96 mini-modes, but it was interesting because no one, when they watched it back, focused on the mini-mode part. They just focused on 96 modes. And so everyone was like, oh my gosh, this game is going to be so complicated. And then, of course, you know, Jersey Jack does sometimes nest their rules and it can get a little bit convoluted. But so like why I brought that up is that I don't know how Steve's going to be. I've never had like that kind of one to one on one interaction with him. So I don't know how he'll be in like this setting where because really it's like you sit in the chair. I'm going to sit to the side. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions and you're going to answer them. but like if someone runs on for too long like I have to say hey Steve like I need you to do that but a lot more condensed because that you said a lot of good stuff but it's just too much that that's also a challenge like you know who actually talked a lot but we used quite a bit more of his content that I thought is Jack himself like Jack went like Jack had this awesome thing we couldn't use just because it was, you can't, I think, I think I've said this before. You couldn't say certain words, like you couldn't say magical. So, so yeah, like you couldn't use the word magical to define something. And he had used it a bunch and I was like, all right, we got to do that again, but you got to come up with a substitute for magical. Um, so like, you know, it's hard when you're, you're dealing with someone that, you know, you're like, Hey, I'm a nobody. I'm some dude on YouTube telling Jack how to not say a word, you know, so it gets a little bit, you know, it gets a little bit weird. But no, I don't know. Steve, I'm sure would be really fun to work with. Oh, if you did, Steve, it would just be a whole bunch of the... I swear to God. Right? I mean, it'd probably be really fun. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I have not been asked, but I don't think I'm going to be asked. I'll probably have to ask them. So I did actually float a month – no, it was like a week ago. A week ago, I randomly got a call, which is crazy, but I got a call, and it said Jack. It said Jersey Jack, and I was like, why is he calling me? And it wasn't about the video. It was about something else. It was about something with the electric bat, and he was asking me some questions about – because he really wants to have a Harry Potter at the electric bat. But I think, you know, Kale, their arcade is very unique in the sense that it gets so many plays that they're nervous that it won't hold up. Really? But Jack is like, no, I know it will. He's like, no, it will. I know it will. To convince him to get one on site. He wants to even just try to see if they can just loan him one just to see how well it will do, which I'm all for. Actually, I haven't even. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, he doesn't even know this yet. But so in that conversation, I was like, I was like, Jack, you know, we had a really good time filming the Harry Potter thing. If there's any way you'd consider having us back. And he's like, well, you know, all he said was he's like, well, you know, everyone really liked it. No one said it was bad. So that's good. He's like, I'm not really on the marketing side as much anymore, but we'll definitely keep you under consideration. So he didn't give me an answer like, yeah, sure, we will. But I definitely am starting to float that out there to say, like, hey, I think we'd be interested in doing it. So to answer your question of that very long answer, I think, yes, I would absolutely do it again if I had the opportunity. Awesome, man. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about? I think we're at about the two-hour mark now. Have we talked for two hours? We have talked for two hours. But it's been a blast, man. I've learned a whole lot about you. It's been cool. yeah no it's been super fun well I'm definitely like very grateful that you reached out and uh and I know we we talked a little bit in the past but but never never as much as this so um yeah no I'm just excited that you had me on and hopefully people enjoy hearing some of this stuff I'm sure people will love it man uh yeah I appreciate you coming on and uh yeah tell them how to find all your awesome content and how to get a hold of you yeah so um so really the you know I have two YouTube channels. One is, is Retro Ralph. And that's, I haven't really been putting as much time and effort into that lately because it's kind of long form content and I just haven't had the time. But, uh, but I have that, which is, which is really when I want to do like a, a longer, more produced video. And then, uh, and then Retro Ralph Live, which is, I know it's an old name of the channel. I couldn't name it the flip side, long story, but yeah, Retro Ralph Live is where the flip side podcast is. And then, um, it's on Spotify and it's on Apple Podcasts too. Yeah, other than that, that's where you can find me. Awesome, man. Well, until next time, yeah, it's been fun, man. Yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. All right, later, man. See you, man. All right, man. That was fun. I can't believe we went for two hours. Yeah, I wasn't trying to cut you off or anything. I was like, it's been two hours.