The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. welcome to the final round mix it up Marty you start oh hello hi was that okay we've already screwed up you had a month to get this right welcome everybody to the final round pinball podcast a month later my name is Martin robbins i'm the ever frequent jeff tiolis shoving podcasts down your throat for now six years and uh yeah we've been taking our time we've been busy just do people care okay so i had noticed that there really hasn't been some episodes from pinball profile in some time and i know we haven't been able to record because you've been at tournaments and shows you're you're really busy at the moment. Thank you for saying that. The Pinball Profile Played in America tour, I've already done eight or nine dates. I can't remember. There's, I think, five or six more. That's taken up a lot of my time. New software. I've been traveling for pinball events. We'll talk about that. It's not easy to podcast when you're on the road. It's not about quantity. It's about quality. I can only have quality. It is about the quality. We cannot give you any of that. All right, a little sneak peek. Pinball Profile. I'm recording with Josh Sharpe this week. It's good to have him back on Pinball Profile. Because you've never recorded him before. No, but, I mean, think of all the shots I've taken at him over the last few months. And he's coming on to talk about it. And one of the things we'll talk about on this podcast is the return of the flip frenzy. We'll get to it. We will. We've got a lot to cover. We're back, baby. Not you and I. Like, no one wants us to be back. But more so, really, tournaments and shows are just back. We are, I guess, back to COVID normal. Thanks, Ian. But we're just back to normal. And you now get to go to all these shows. And I do, I wouldn't say I get mega jealous, but I'm envious of you being able to go to all these shows. I just watched the movie Seven, so can you quit saying envy? Because I know how that ended. Ryan C's head will be in a box by the end of this. Ten of Bucks right now. Giggle, giggle, double entendre. Yeah, I've been going to a lot. And also, too, because I've been trying to be a successful, competitive player. You know, those chasing the whopper things do matter. Some of the places I've been to in the last little while, you know, we talked about Cleapin before that. I went to Chicago Expo. Since the last time we've talked, Freeplay Florida happened. That was great. Pinsonati is going on right now as we speak. It's the weekend here, first weekend in December. And next weekend, I'll be in Wisconsin at District 82 and just signed up for a big event there in February. So Indisc is coming up in January. It's go, go, go. And a big year next year with the World Championships and European Pinball Championships in Germany. So my calendar is filling up for next year. Plus, like I said, those dates at the Pinball Profile Played in America Tour. You can be envious, jealous, whatever you want to say. It's a lot of time and a lot of fatigue. So sometimes podcasts take the back seat. But I do have a few in the works and glad to do this. In fact, Marty, you and I have actually not talked since the last final round. I tried calling you earlier in the week. I know. We texted and then I sent you a FaceTime thing and you didn't call back, you son of a bitch. I noticed that. Not even a, hey, sorry I'm busy. No, no, no, no, no. You are known to butt dial me. I would say pocket dial, but, you know, we're talking the bubble here. You butt dial me. So I wasn't sure whether that was a legit call or not. So that's why I didn't. So I need to preface my calls by, hey, cunt, I'm trying to call you? Yes. Oh, no, for sure. There we go. It's tough to butt dial that. So can I just also just bring this up, just because you've been going to a lot of tournaments. Has your ranking slipped? I don't think so. Well, you're currently 64th. Sure. Is that? That's great. Is it? Yeah, I'm happy as hell. I thought you were top 50. No, it's, I went during COVID when the decay happened because of the volume of tournaments I go to. And it had nothing to do really with skill. It's just, again, the volume. I had a lot of tournaments that could fill the gap when tournaments fell by the wayside. So in the middle of a pandemic, when IFPA wasn't even happening. Yeah, I got up to 41, but I wasn't playing. Now that tournaments are back, hey, a little bit of reality comes into play. So 64th is great. And again, holding on to number one in Canada, which will not last, but I'm looking for that country exemption. Do you care about being top 50 or not? No. Okay. No, I care about being probably top 100, but not top 50. Top 50 would be great. I don't go out of my way to do something I wouldn't have done to be top 50. it's pretty difficult and it's going to be more difficult and i think josh and i will talk about that in the future because events are going to be worth if they were worth 100 now they could be worth 280 so if you're not kicking ass like in this coming up in january the winner of that is going to receive over 200 whoppers easily do you believe that oh damn damn that's a lot that's yeah That's a lot. I go to something like Indisc, and the goal is maybe, hopefully, try to make the playoffs. Because every great player from the world shows up to that. I mean, Daniele's coming from Italy. The Flygars are coming from Sweden. It's going to be huge. Of course, all the North Americans. If I can make the top 40 in that, I'm thrilled. Which, it's difficult, the card. So, yeah, no, no, no. It's going to be tough next year. Your tournaments that you've gone to recently. I think we did actually have a mini chat in that time because I think yet again you went into a tournament and did really well in classics. Am I right? It seems to be a pattern. You might have caught on to something. You've been trying to hide that. I think most people who play against me know that. Yeah, so I did well as we talked about UK Open and then Chicago Expo, but Freeplay Florida was also good to me in the classics department. I made the playoffs, too, for the main event, and I pulled what they call the Jim Belcido. I do know what that means. You know what that means. Jim Belcido is one of the greatest players, one of the guys who runs Indus. He's known for never counting Jim out because last ball, last player, he can pull it out. And I was last player playing the tournament. Six points out, top 24 made it, I'm probably 30th. And I needed, I don't know, let's say 8.3 million on Earthshaker to get in. and I pulled out a 10.6. I totally bell-seeded it. Last player in the tournament, and I jumped up, got in. Got blown away the first chance next day, but who cares? Made the playoffs. I was happy about that. So that was fun. Free play Florida. Can I tell you about this? It's something I go to every year. It's in Orlando. Great tournament. The guys at the Pinball Lounge, the men and women there, do a wonderful job running all the tournaments there. And I just want to thank them for not only doing that, but also the Pinball Profile event that we ran there the day before. Something happened, Marty. and I haven't talked to you about this because we haven't talked. You've been a tournament director. Sure. You've been a player. Yeah, apparently. This happened at the playoffs. And I'm not going to mention any names, but I was extremely disappointed. The TDs are announcing, here's how the playoffs work. And one of the players basically leans back to the rest of the crowd and says, do we all agree this is a stupid format? What? Well, that person didn't get a response that they were looking for. but it was the response that did happen was from the TDs that basically were insulted. Sure. For the wonderful tournament that they were doing, by the way, all rules are set out before you start. So you know what you're getting into. So there were no surprises. This is the way the rules are done. If you don't like it, don't play. They said, yes, we're well aware that this isn't what some people like. And then, you know, we will discuss changes for next year, but as it stands, this is the way it goes. So what was it? What was it that was... Explain it to me so then I can... It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It was one person's opinion. And maybe others felt that too. But you might keep that to yourself and not make a public display like that and try to embarrass the TDs. You didn't get the support from the, I don't know, crowd you wanted to respond that, yeah, this may or may not be stupid. It grossed me out. I have no other way to say it. And I hope that person has apologized to the TDs because you know what happens when you do things like that? TDs go, fuck it. I'm not running the tournament anymore. You know what? I bust my nuts for weeks and months to put on this tournament, to get shit on. So you preface this by saying that I used to be a TD and a player. And let me tell you from a TD's perspective, this is how I would react to something like that. I would feel really disappointed because I have actually had that. When I've run tournaments and people are like, oh, how can we be doing it like that? My first thought is, oh, are people not having fun with what I'm doing? Are people not happy? Is this a real problem? Because I just want people to have a great time. So I'm assuming that the TDs are probably thinking, oh, well, that's kind of a bit disappointing that somebody's trying to derail this tournament that no doubt they have spent months preparing for. You know what I mean? Most tournaments have post-mortems And figure out, did this work, did this not work What was positive, what was negative Let's make changes for next year But you can't change on the fly No, that's right All you can ask from a TD And this is what they did Was be consistent, be consistent with the rules And they were to a T Just as an aside, was this the tournament where And I quote the listener You messaged me saying Another Classics top finish, sixth Whatever, get over it I'm sure it won't even be brought up on the podcast Nor that I beat Escher, Ray Day, Kaylee No biggie Was that the one? No, it was the main tournament But it was the same event Listen, listen You brought it up, I didn't I wasn't going to say a thing I wasn't going to say a thing I brought it up because you messaged me So I would bring it up Come on Great job. Free play Florida. It's such a perfect location. Again, how many times have I told you? When you can play a tournament where you don't have to leave, it's right there. You don't need to rent a car or anything like that. It's heaven. That's going on right now at Pinsonati. I've got friends there. Ray Day won the Friday night event. They're playing right now. I don't know who's playing in the, I think it's a, it's not a strikes event. I can't remember what it is right now, but the main Pinsonati event. But Ray Day beat John Delzoppo and my buddy Mike Dimas. That was very exciting in the Friday night event. And again, another place where it's right there at the hotel. It looks spectacular. I guess 130 games on free play. The tournaments are really well run by Eric Wurtenberger. He looks like he's doing a good job, and I know there's others involved. But I've been watching the Straight Down the Middle stream. Really good stream, too. They have tutorials. When the game comes up, they show a mini tutorial how to play the game. I thought that's really cool. Yeah, it's great. That's awesome. Another thing that's important, if you're streaming a tournament or even streaming at home, Pinsonati does this, put the game on the left-hand side of the screen. Yeah. Why is that important, Marty? I know that because I changed my stream to have the game on the left-hand side so you can have the chat window up on the right. That's right. So if you have the chat window up, if you're watching on a mobile phone or an iPad or something like that, and the chat will block the game, so you can't do both. Yeah, yep. By the way, the commentators were really good, and I'm sorry I don't know them all. Justin was there. I saw Scott, who listens to this program. There was a woman named Elizabeth who did a great job, and some others that were in and out of the booth. Really, really knowledgeable people and friendly and pleasant to listen to. But they did something that was interesting. On the screen, the commentators were always on the screen, and I do a lot of commentating. I would never want that on me. I would never want the camera on me because the action is on the player, which they had a player cam, and the game itself. I personally like seeing the commentators. The whole time during the game? Yep. Really? But only in a small little window. But yeah, no, just for me, I like seeing the commentators. How do you pick your nose or scratch your nuts? No, well, that's up to the, obviously, the commentators have got to be on their best behavior. But for me as a viewer, yeah, I like seeing them because I like feeling a connection with the commentators. And that's a point that I think was made at one of these streams where someone had suggested to the commentators that they shouldn't really be engaging with chat. Okay. Yeah. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. I think chat should be acknowledged. I think it shouldn't be the primary focus, though. If you're getting away from the game, if some game action is happening. Don't do it during a ball. because usually the chat is not it's a little delayed so you're it's just not a smooth transition like in between balls it's a good time to maybe talk to chat and stuff or answer some questions if you ask chat a question hey who knows what this does that's a different story there's two things that happen when you stream you stream for a live audience and then you've got the vod later for people to watch it they wouldn't be interested in engaging with chat because sometimes you can't well even though on twitch you can see that like the history of the chat happening at the same time but if it's on youtube not youtube yeah correct so it is different to be able to do both but i do prefer to engage with the the viewers i know that in video games especially if you're on twitch the person is always on stream so it felt more like a video game thing to me than a pinball thing because for me sports background i can't think of one sport where you're watching a baseball game a football game a basketball game and you're seeing you're hearing the commentators but you're seeing them too it just seemed weird where the action to me should have been focused on the game and the player sure but you're talking about like video games and video game streaming gets how many more viewers compared to people uh you might be onto something you know what i mean like use that as the gold standard you're a younger man than me so uh you know i'm learning these things yeah we are currently the same age but sure for a few more weeks not long now that's right just one thing i do want to ask just because i know we talk about tournaments and people that don't you know aren't in the tournaments even though this is meant to be a tournament podcast i've probably tuned out but what i'm curious to know about is classics right classic tournaments because we don't see a lot of older games outside of personal collections. And so therefore, a lot of the tournaments that we play in, they're still just almost exclusively Stern games. So I'm curious to know, what were some of the highlights of the games that you played in the Classics Bank? Just talk me through that. I just want to get a bit of nostalgia for those games. One of the unique games at Freeplay Florida in their Classics was Card Whiz. It is an EM, two-player game, a bank of drop targets, ace through 10. There are some joker rollovers, but it was set to three ball. In fact, all their games are set to three ball, even the EMs. It had a unique rule. When you normally play Card Whiz, I think on the final ball, ball five, it's double bonus. It's worth a little bit, an extra 15 grand if you get it. But this set on three ball did two things. One, the pop bumper was always lit for 1,000. That's kind of interesting because maybe you don't plunge for the jokers. Maybe you try to get a few bounces off the pop bumper and then even hit a joker. So that was kind of a strat there. The other thing, too, was behind the middle queen on that bank on Card Whiz, there's a 3,000-point light that only comes on when you clear the bank. Uh-uh-uh. On three balls, it was always lit. Fuck the bank. Fuck the pop bumpers. Hit that queen and just hit over and over again. Just aim at that 3,000 light. So that was a different strat. They did have a Fathom there, I will bring up. And it was the go-to game. It wasn't, unfortunately, the wonderful Haggis version, but a beautiful original Fathom. And, you know, made me want to get the Haggis one even more. That was fun, too. And seeing the neat strats there. I mean, you've spent so much time on Fathom. So you can imagine, if you were playing the game by yourself, you would go multiball strat. If you were playing in a match play where you're playing against others, maybe you don't want to leave a couple of locks in there for your opponent. Yeah, yeah. In tournament, it is start a two-ball multiple, make sure you've got your spinner lit, and then rip the spinner. That's all it is. Yeah. They had Evil Knievel, which was very, very evil. Tough to play. They had Mata Hari, which, you know, you prayed every time you hit that center saucer up top. That's kind of where your bonus multiplier is. If you hit that, it's supposed to kind of kick it out and hit the tip of the left flipper. Well, sometimes it went straight down the middle, so it depended on the game you were playing. They had Nitro Ground Shaker, classics. That's a great one, too, but I mean, I think I watched, it was either Ray Day or Usher, and they shot the right spinner over and over again and hit the center saucer several times, but never once. I think 10 times, and never once was it set on double bonus. That's the one thing about playing in classics that have saucers or upper inlanes. you know if you plunge correctly or if your timing is right uh you may or may not do well so that that is the big luck factor in that game i mean yes you go up up there until you finally get it But I think of a game like Stingray You ever played that the Stern Stingray game Stern Stingray, yes, I have. Terrible game. It could be fun. The unbalanced part is the weak part. Because there's a 55,000 point saucer that just randomly comes up. Depends on where the switches have been hit. And that's just such an uphill battle to climb. So I'm not a big fan of those type of games. Did I answer your question? Yeah, you did. And I did get my nostalgia fix. And you talked about games that I love. And not that this was meant to be a loaded question, but again, you talk about these games from a tournament player's perspective where you're saying, you know, Stingray you don't like because there's obviously some unbalancing when it comes to scoring. But outside of that, I mean, it's still a fun game. It's weird. It's weird. It's like being a magician. So when you see magic, it blows you away, and it's the how did you do that. It's the wow factor. Maybe you catch it the second time you watch it, or if it's on a video, you watch it a few times. Oh, maybe they did this, but you're not really sure. But the other side of it is when you're the magician, you already know how it's done. It's trying to trick people, and it's about the art of the sleight of hand. Did you fool people? Did you wow people? Were you in the right position? All that kind of stuff. Once you know the magic, you forget the wow factor that the audience had. So I relate that to being a competitive pinball player. When you first play pinball, it's, wow, it's fun. These are neat shots. I can go here. I can go here. This does this. You don't care about the score. But once you're a competitor, you don't care about everything else. It's only about the score. Ulterior motive time. Because obviously, as you know, I am a rules designer, right? Fucking bragger. Holy shit. Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I didn't bring up my competition wins. You did. But here he is dropping. Anyway, Mr. Programmer, what? Sorry, go on. You've actually now been voiceover in more pinball machines than me, so you could have bragged that one. So, whatever. We've done the same number of comedy career things. Hey, where was that? It's taken too long. I can't believe. I'm off my game. I can't believe it. It's got to be within 20 minutes. Come on. Get back on it. Okay, go on. Programmer, go ahead. It's so good. Okay, here's this weird analogy I'm going to give you, right? So, do you know the band Bloodhound Gang? Hooray for boobies? That gang? That's the name of their album, Hooray for Boobies. It is, it is. What did they sing? They had one hit. What was it? They actually had a couple of hits, but it was The Bad Touch. No, it was another song. Yeah. You and me, baby, aren't nothing but mammals. That's true. They do it like we do on the Discovery Channel. Yeah, The Bad Touch. They also had another one called Untis Untis. Okay. And there's another one as well. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is I listened to one of these songs that they did, and they had a section in it which was just so good, but it was a really short part of the song. So I just kept playing this song over and over and over because I just wanted to hear that bit. And then one day I went, you know what, I'm going to edit this, and I'm now going to double that bit. I listened to it once and went, huh, I'm done, because I got what I wanted. okay so the what i'm trying to say and i do this with with rules design but also looking at these games is the challenge is the that thing that's just slightly out of reach because that is what draws you back to want to do that if you get everything if you've got a game that just does everything you go i love it you don't have as much passion to it because there's not a challenge anymore hmm do you understand what i'm saying so i do this is the philosophy of game design because remember the point of pinball is to make money and by making money it's people pushing the start button you know that's the purpose of pinball is to want to make people hit the start button so the the secret sauce in all of this is how do you put something that's just slightly out of reach and it's not just rules, it's also design. How do you make that shot that's just a little bit too hard, but you want to master it? Makes sense, yeah. So that's when I look at a game like Stingray and all those EMs that you talk about, where you sort of, and I'm not saying that you're being critical of them because they are what they are, but when I hear those things, I go, yeah, I like that because that causes a bit of angst towards it, but it's something that you want to conquer. You want to have resolution with it. Unfinished business. It's tough for me. I see your point. I saw that player hit Nitro Ground Shaker up top 10 times in the saucer, never got the double bonus, whereas somebody like myself might have done it once, and I got it. That's unfair. It's one thing that's always bothered me about newer games. Love them. Don't get me wrong. When I played pinball, you know who the winner was? The person who played the longest. The score usually matched who played the longest, especially if it was double the time of their opponent. That's not the case anymore. When you look at number of shots taken versus drains, the person who plays longer is better at that, but it doesn't mean anything. And I agree with you. And I guess my design philosophy is the further you get through the code should equal your score. Sure. Not how many times you've repeated a ramp. You have an interesting formula. to work with for coming up with these. And I say that to all programmers because they're all doing the same thing. It's that secret sauce. What is the right formula? And it's not easy to come up with, but you want to make money. You want the game to be fun. And, you know, I say all that as I have a home collection myself. This is the dilemma for me, my home collection. You know, I have a rush game. I've never done really, really well on it, but part of the reason is I've got it set so hard. no extra balls tight tilts you breathe on it you tilt it i want to explore it but then if i make it a little easier or even normal i go to a competition and they play a game that's been tightened up a little bit and i'll be terrible say tournaments are ruining pinball yet again no no no i know they're addictive as shit is what the problem is i just here's another little tip i just got i'm looking at it right now godzilla premium it's in my house okay congratulations Thank you, thank you. I still haven't put it on legs yet. It's actually folded up. I sold my Avengers Premium, which I hated to get rid of because that was a fun game too. But, you know, owning so much space and it replaces it, pays for it, all that kind of stuff. I'm looking forward to playing that, but I know, do I set it? I want to see how deep that is. I want to get to all the stuff. But if I make it easy, I think once my competitive days are done, you know, I'll want to explore these games a little more. Like, Simpsons Pinball Party is the one game where I don't even give a shit about score. I just want to explore everything on that thing because I love it. Yep. But it's not the right way to play competitively. No, I know. And I would like people to write in to us, just for the fact that we like to talk to people, but talk to us about a game that you love and you are just constantly playing. Like, you've got that unmet need. that something that just for some reason just draws you back in and tell us the game and tell us what it is that draws you back in i'm i'm just i'm doing market research sure sure i'm not i'm not because i actually know with a focus group of three listeners well done marty well done no i'm not genuinely doing that that's just a nice little bonus but i'm genuinely curious because the the philosophy of pinball design is vast like and only a few people have really been able to master that i just don't know whether i wanted to do a segue into another point that we want to talk about but it's about some some manufacturers and some designers know how to sprinkle the magic on the game and others are yet to be able to tap into that you were joking when you said competitive pinball is ruining pinball. But I will agree with you on one point. Two of the greatest selling games of all time. Biggest money makers. I won't even tell you what they are. I'll let you guess. I mean, biggest of all time. Adam's Family. Yes, that's one. What's the other one like that? Kind of the same era? Twilight Zone. Boom. I didn't even tell you and you knew what they were. Sure. Huge games. Competitive pinball have wrecked those games. So I'm agreeing with you. Those games are super deep. When they came out, holy shit. Look at all these rooms. Look at all these windows. There's all kinds of stuff going on here. Competitive pinball players went, fuck it all. I'm just going to hit the ramp, hit the chair, hit the ramp, hit the chair. And that kind of sucks, but it's how you get points. We never did that when we were playing in arcades. No, that's right. But here's the difference, right? When you're playing pinball at home, it's you and the game. When you're playing in a tournament, it's you and the game and the game. The game that you're playing and the game of the tournament. and that in itself makes up, I think, for what you're not doing in the game, if that makes sense. You've got that whole layer of competitiveness of how well your score is compared to other people and how you're progressing through a tournament. That in itself is a game. Well, when you see a lot of tournaments and people say, you get to pick the order and people say, I'm going to go last and I do it all the time too, is because you're like, I want to see what the other players have because I want to know what I need to beat them. Oh, okay, I don't need to blow this up. I just need maybe a skill shot and start a multiball. That will make me advance, things like that. It's not how you play pinball probably at home. You're playing Bram Stoker's Dracula, and you're in a competition. Okay, I really want to stack these multiballs. I want those jackpots to be 30 million if I can. You play things differently. It's not right. It's not wrong. It's the added value of competition. It doesn't ruin games, I don't think. It does make some games good for competition and others not. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Like, if you've got a... Let's just say you can visualize a pie chart. When it's you and the machine, it's 100% game. When it's you and a tournament, it's 50-50. It's enjoying 50% the game and 50% the tournament itself and the competition and the competitive nature of it. So I still think you are getting a 100% great experience, but you're just sharing the focus when it comes to tournament. Okay. Fuck, have we lost all listeners or what? No, what I'm saying is, like how many times have you been in a tournament and someone went, oh, fuck yeah, I got to the wizard mode? Never, never, never. Who goes for a wizard mode? Well, there's different tournaments too, right? So if you're in a pump and dump tournament where you're trying to blow up the score, yeah, you are probably going wizard mode. If you're in a card format like Indisc where I have to put five great games on one card. I can't have one stinker. Do I want to try to blow it up or just have a good base so that this card's somewhat decent? Because if I don't get that wizard mode and I'm putting all my marbles into that, I could get a shitty score and that ruins my card. So pump and dumps where you can go back and back. Oh, yeah, people go wizard mode for sure on that. Well, okay. So that's interesting. Speaking of pump and dumps, so it might have been the last, I think it was the last in... You know, you and I are the only ones listening to this right now maybe Colin MacAlpine maybe ray day no but what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to get people that still don't want to get into tournaments the psychology behind it so they can say well here's why it is and it's not we're not so different but now here's what i was going to say was i remember at indisc and it was pump and dump and game of thrones was there and everybody was playing Tyrell. And I started and I played Greyjoy. And I remember a couple of people behind me sort of going, I'm a fucking idiot. A qualified second. Greyjoy is how you blow that game up in the old code. That's right. It's risky. Yeah, it is. But it's pump and dump. So it doesn't matter. Yep. That's the way to do it. That was the way to do it for sure. I was one of maybe three people that didn't do Tyrell. Yeah. Yep. I just wanted to have fun. You're talking about the add-a-ball. No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about Greyjoy where you... No, no, no. Tyrell was the add-a-ball, right? No, Tyrell is the multiplier. The lanes that multiply. The lanes. Okay, so Martel's the... Martel's the add-a-ball. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody does that anymore. People usually choose those two, right? It's kind of, again, to have a good base score in match play, but you don't do that in a pump and dump. We are... I'm even getting competitive pinball out here. No, but the reason why I brought that up is that I... You want people to send pie charts to our email. Send us a pie chart. I got it. I got it. It's more so, you know, when I had that meltdown on stream when I was streaming Guardians of the Galaxy because everyone was saying, no, you need to play these modes. I'm like, no, I want to play this mode because I like the color. And that's what I did with Game of Thrones. I was like, you know what? I want to play the game the way I like because I'm comfortable with it and I'm not going to be stressing out. And that's what got me through as opposed to trying to play a game another person's way. There you go. Done. We're going to move on. We are going to talk about some of the things that have happened recently. A lot of James Bond launch parties. Are they there in Australia yet? I haven't seen them yet, no. No. They're coming here. We've got a launch party coming up on December 30th, and I've seen a few pop up and stateside. They're everywhere. So interesting to see what code's been developed. It was very raw when I first played it. And again, you being a programmer, I understand the need to get these games out, especially maybe before Christmas, especially to keep the line moving. When I played it at Expo, it looked fine. I liked the theme. It wasn't enough for me to want to play it again yet. I'm dying to play it, but I wanted to see more code. That's a big risk. You remember when Batman 66 came out and it really was like no code? Yep. I wouldn't say it's that. I can't think of anything closer to. Is it missing the magic? I think so. Yeah. So far. I mean, again, I have not played it since X-Ball. So things could have changed big time. Yeah. Look, the impressions I get from comments that I see from people are, it shoots great. Yes. But nothing really about the code. It just, it shoots great. Don't you and I always say, if you have a game that can shoot really well, don't worry. The code will come. Remember Guardians? We're like, that thing fucking shot well. Oh, the code. There was another game where like, really? It just grew it all day? Code came and came. And then you're like, okay. And then it was Orb all day. And then, yeah. But then they fixed it. then they fixed it yeah yeah yeah so yeah i think uh the bond will be neat but uh today today's saturday december the 3rd a little teaser for scooby-doo coming out from spooky pinball good on them what do you feel about that as a theme great yeah same i think it's a fucking it's an awesome awesome thing we did see a teaser trailer from spooky can i just say something does it have to do with the vocals okay okay okay okay let me let me preface this by saying when i was in Robert Englunds and i kind of knew scooby-doo was coming okay right Marc Silk we're going to talk about right i was with mark and i said mark you don't have to tell me but i hope you're doing scooby-doo and all he said is i'm pretty sure they'll get americans to do that which basically told me he's not doing Scooby-Doo, but he didn't say yes or no. But the fact is they got, and I don't know how well you know this, but anybody who's ever done voice acting or knows cartoons, they got Frank Welker to do that. He is the voice of Scooby-Doo and Fred Jones. I love it. I would have liked to see Mark as Shaggy. They got Matthew Lillard, who was in the movies. And you remember him from this? He was the scream killer. Sorry to spoil it for you, but it didn't work. It sounds like you know uh the other characters are fine but i would like to see mark as shaggy and i'm thrilled that welker's doing scooby and fred what do you think the opposite oh boo i i think because Marc Silk's scooby-doo is so ingrained in me i was hearing this scooby-doo going hang on but It just doesn't sound right. It doesn't sound authentic. It doesn't. Well, Frank's in his late 70s, right? Sure. 1946, I believe he might have been born. March 12th, just off the top of my head. Sure. God, you've got a good memory. I do. He was born in Denver. Did you know that? Holy shit. Yeah, I know a lot about Frank Walcott. Next you're going to tell me he was the voice of Astro on Jetsons. I haven't got that voice acting career. And we just quickly... Oh, he's done lots of stuff, dude. There's too much. He's the closest to Mel Blanc. And if you know who Mel Blanc is, Mel did all the Warner Brothers, all the Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, all those things. Well, Mel, as he got older, his voice sounded a little different too. So is it the difference that's bothering you a little bit? Because his Fred's perfect. Yeah, no, that's what I was going to say. His Fred is perfect. Scooby, I just... No, it was just, it took me out of the fantasy. It was the Shaggy that did it for me. I would rather hear Mark do it. Casey Kasem was the voice of Shaggy, and he's no longer with us. So that aside, great theme. Hope they do well with this. Hope it shoots well. I don't know any more about design. I'm sure we'll find out as the time, between the time this show comes out, we'll probably know a little bit more. But there's going to be a lot of people excited about that title. I genuinely hope it does well, because I think people are still a little bit shaken from Halloween. Just, you know what, when I saw a lot of social media people posting the teaser trailer and all that kind of stuff, there was a bit of negativity, and that kind of disappointed me. negativity towards spooky, what I hope is that this is a good redemption story for them. That was the general comment you would read was hope it bounces back. Yeah. And hey, why not? You know maybe again you live and learn right You try things and some work some don You not going to see a Halloween layout for Scooby I pretty sure of that So we'll see what they get back to. Yeah. Spooky's made some pretty awesome games. I've liked, well, I say I've liked spooky games, I've liked all their games. I've not played Halloween or whatever its re-theme was. What was that called again? Something Man? Ultraman. Yeah. No, I've not played it, but all the others I've played, I've liked. Even Rick and Morty, which I know sort of gets, that's a bit of a polarizing game, but I enjoy it. I enjoy it too. Can I just side note? Yeah. Rick and Morty. Yes. So I felt the previous season to the one that we've got right now was just not very good. They said it was not very good. They've even apologized for it. Have they? Yeah. This last season is fucking great. Really good. there's one episode where they said it was the Jumping of the Shark episode and it might be the Get Schwifty episode season 3 Pickle Rick Thank you, thank you, yes Get Schwifty was brilliant Show us what you got I love that It was one of my favorite episodes It's funny, but you're right it was the Pickle Rick one that was the game changer I thought it was funny but it did lose some fans. Yeah, they've come out and said, we're sorry for season five. It's like Stallone saying, sorry for Rocky V. It didn't exist. Don't worry about it. We'll fix it. Yeah, it was fine. Look, it's about magic. Sometimes you create magic. When you try to manufacture magic, that's when it sort of doesn't work. Sometimes you've just got to just be yourselves, be creative and hope that you create magic and that that was kind of what was missing from the last season whereas this one right now i think the magic is back so there you go side note done speaking of magic yes what a great segue this is going to be you don't even know where i'm going i don't know uh elton john flip frenzy is it where no okay no we'll get to that you like games don't you yeah sure all right tournament players or people traveling if you're traveling with buddies, this is a game you can play. You like the game Clue? Kind of the whodunit where you have to figure things out? Do you like games like that? Just say yes for the year. Yeah, absolutely. They're the best game. The best games ever. Here's a little mystery you can do. I'll give you an example. I'm about to go to District 82. We've rented an Airbnb home, so it's got four different bedrooms, which is good. Have you ever played, and you can do this in a hotel room, if you've got more, you need more than three people, alright? Just like Clue, you need more than three people. Is this Soggy Sayo? No, you play Mystery Dump. It sounds a lot like Socky Sayo. Mystery Dump, where you leave a dump in the toilet, and you say, who the fuck left that? And you try to figure out who did it. Okay, okay. You know? So make sure you're not eating corn on the cob the night before, but I'm just saying... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mystery Dump is a great game to play on the road. Just something to throw out there and try to solve it. I guess it's like playing Werewolf for the kids that play games like that. It's a whodunit. Right, okay, gotcha. Just something, you know, it's all blah, blah, blah. That's so good. What is soggy, what? Soggy say-o. What's soggy say-o? I'll leave that for you to Google. Oh, gosh. I hate Googling. I don't want to Google anything on my computer for anything you say. Just Google it. That's never worked out. And then the police are knocking on your door and you wonder why. so there you go say say oh is a biscuit there you go oh fuck it's i guess circle jerk no come on dude yeah yeah you pretending that you don't know is a bit of a giveaway yeah yeah exactly anyway uh let's see you've got elton john next on your list i do have elton john next on my list because that is a rumored game and I do not know. I'm telling you right now, do not know if that's true. I've heard people say that. Possibly a Steve Ritchie game for Jersey Jack. I have zero knowledge of anything happening with that. I'm just repeating what I've heard. I just watched on Disney the final Elton John concert at Dodger Stadium. Have you seen that? Do you like Elton John? I love Elton. Oh, Marty, don't do it to me. Come on. Rocketman kicked the shit out of Bohemian Rhapsody as far as movies are concerned. I've not seen it because... Because... What did he do? How did he hurt you? Where did he touch you? I like Elton John's music. I don't like Elton John the person. From all reports, he's an absolute cunt. I think he admitted he was. He probably did, yeah. No, no, no. If you watch the movie Rocketman, whereas Bohemian Rhapsody kind of showed the better sides of Freddie Mercury and not the horrible, horrible things that he did when he was high on coke, they're out there. Google. There's something you can fucking Google. They glossed it over very, very quickly if they did at all. In fact, Sacha Baron Cohen was originally supposed to play Freddie Mercury. Would have been all over that. And then he saw the script and he's like, what about these cocaine parties with fucking little people having trays on their heads of coke? Like, just horrible things, right? I'm being serious. Yeah, no, I know. Okay, okay. Other debauchery things. Anyway, listen, greatest performer, no question. I always separate the art from the artist. Do I want to hear Queen music? You're fucking right I do. Do I want to see him live? Absolutely. Art and the artist, totally different. whereas Rocketman when they made Elton John the movie Elton who was an executive producer said no no no no I was an asshole I did this I did this and they show it all in there and he had to sober up so plus he's got a great autobiography you should read the if you don't like him you're not gonna read it but the book me the book me talks about him being an absolute dickhead and changing his life okay no I'm I I want to see that movie I do I have an interest I just haven't yet. What I'm going to say though is this. This is just a gift I'm giving you and the listener. So there's an Australian group called PNAU. P-N-A-U. They're sort of a dance, sort of electronic sort of group. They did an album called Good Morning to the Night. And it's an album of PNAU and Elton John. What they did, they took all these samples of all these old famous tracks and created completely new songs out of it. And it is fucking genius. Listen to it. I'm not surprised. You know what? I will. Because the latest stuff he's done, he did a song with Britney Spears. He did that huge hit, Cold Old Cart, or whatever it's called, with Dua Lipa. Yes. It's great. It's so good. Yeah. No, so I think what we're getting is the essence is there. You take a bit of Elton out and add something else that's a better ingredient, and you've got something great. Here's my thought, though. Elton John pinball machine. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. He's so over the top. There's so many things you could do. I just wonder what the approach is going to be. Are you going to do, dare I say it, yet another concert machine where it's all about the live concert? or are you going to build modes around the songs and the stories that the songs are trying? That's what I would prefer. Just say you want to know what they're doing with the brown dirt cowboy. That's all you care about, Marty. That's all that matters. I know. That's not a mystery to me. But you know what I mean? To me, I just want to see Goodbye Yellow Brick Road as kind of main theme. And if it is J.J.P., they have a little bit of history with that Wizard of Oz. The weird thing is, a lot of his songs are a little more on the mellow side. You know, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting is an upbeat song. That's great. Tiny Dancer is a certain wonderful sing-along song. Not exactly a rocker by any means. It'll be weird to see what songs they use, if that is the game. I think it's a great idea. He's definitely got a lot of songs that would make a great pinball soundtrack. Again, I just hope they don't go... And I know why they do the concert things, because it's all about licensing. When you've got concert songs, you're only paying the license holders for that concert. When you're doing songs off multiple albums, you've got to pay licenses for the studios of each album, the engineers of each album. It all just gets more expensive. That's why they do the concert one. So I just hope they don't. When I think of three rock pins with LCD screens, I think of Guns N' Roses. I think of Rush and I think of, I don't even think of Led Zeppelin. I think of. ACDC. No, it's a LCD. It's concert. It's concert. Queen. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So Rush and Guns N' Roses both show incredible live footage and lots of it, but it's the studio version and they sync it up brilliantly. Whereas Queen rightfully picked concert music and concert footage because Queen was the ultimate band live that i mean no band could captivate a hundred thousand people at wembley like like freddie could do i mean no i know you know i saw queen with freddie mercury so it was just one of the best concerts of it was my first concert i ever went to by the way but i would prefer to see the film clips of queen songs because their film clips are also epic they have i did play queen at expo and they did have i think when you drained they showed um the what's the funny video where they're all in drag i want to break free they showed that it was fucking hilarious it was awesome so yeah but also you know radio guys and also a great album crazy thing good love is great film clip sure obviously behemoth rhapsody is an epic film clip so yeah you could have gone either way i would prefer and this is just me i would prefer people to go down have an individual song, listen to the lyrics, and tell a story on the play field linked to that song. Okay. As opposed to getting band members on stage. Inside Marty. Yeah, for sure. There's my whinge for the day. Anyway, I hope... Who's doing the Elton John game, did you say? Don't know. The rumour that's out there is Steve Ritchie. Steve Ritchie, Jersey Jack. Like, yeah, I feel that Steve Ritchie would be a fan of Elton John and therefore would put a lot into it, but it was heart and soul. Steve Ritchie's a music fan. Yeah, big time. And 70s rock for sure. Yeah, so that'll be good. Okay, did you see what Match Play did? Andreas, you, sir, are a lifesaver. What happened? I don't know if you've ever listened to this program, Marty. I know you are drunk half the time, but if you go back and listen to recent episodes, especially in the last six months, you would have heard maybe one of these commentators talk about the IFPA not fixing flip frenzies and instead deciding to just nerf them. By the way, I agree, 90% of flip frenzies are absolute garbage, but there was a solution to fix these things that are obviously very popular and concerning to the IFPA because they were happening too much and we had to do something about it. Well, somebody solved it, and that is Andreas from Matchplay, you, sir, are a legend. Because even Josh himself admitted that the reason flip frenzies were being nerfed is because they were too effective. You were getting so many games in a short period of time. The thing that needed to happen is get everyone to play the same amount of games. How do you do that in a flip frenzy? So flip frenzies are two-player games, and then there are a bunch of people in the queue. Hopefully not too, too many. So what the old flip frenzies would do are you play a game, you play a game, then you go in the queue and you wait for your turn to show up. Well, that would not even out the playing field because some person might play in three hours 15 games, another person might play 25 games. So now, same thing, but the queue is now going to pick not the next person up, it's going to pick the person with the fewest amount of games played so that it all evens out. And then at the end of the three hours, everyone's played, give or take, the same games by one. Therefore, no nerfing in the IFPA. Flip frenzies are saved. I would still have a playoff, by the way. Sure. That's a biggie. That's huge. People are thrilled. Here's what happens in match play when you play in a group of four and you're doing a number of rounds. It's fair. No question about it. But the problem is the wait time because one group is always playing longer than everyone else, especially if you have a Swiss format where the top players play the top players, the weaker players play the weaker players as the tournament goes on. You play people with the same amount of points as you have. So guess what? The more the tournament goes on, the larger that gap is that you're waiting because now you've got the top four players playing Godzilla and blowing it up and everyone else is twiddling their thumbs waiting for their game to play. someone needs to come up with a way to do four player flip frenzy oh fuck that would be cool it's it's possible for sure it's possible because there you go because you've now got four people per game and less people in the queue because they run a game again when you have too many people in the queue that is a problem you know the perfect number to me and i've run a lot of these things if you have 10 machines have no more than 20 players two people per machine that's it That's the formula. Because sometimes machines will break down, and then that queue line will get longer. You don't want people waiting in queue. You want people go, go, go, go, go. Anyway, I'm just really thrilled that that's been changed, and we're going to see a lot of that in 2023. That doesn't stop the nerfing of Flip Frenzy, though, does it? It nerfs Flip Frenzy. It doesn't nerf this format of Flip Frenzy at all. And in fact, if you're in a playoff, you could even have the thing worth 200%. You heard it. That's right. Because it's the number of games you play. if that flip frenzy element everyone's playing the same amount of games give or take one Josh has said he'll round it up, that's fine, that's good it's no different than match play, think about it because if I'm the shittiest player and I'm getting done my games really quickly, I go to the queue but I've played three more games than everyone else in the queue, I gotta wait till people come in that I gotta wait till they play their games so there's a bit more waiting in flip frenzies but it still evens it out, I like it I like it a lot Okay, good. So there's that. So I also just want to go back to where you said 90% of flip-flops is garbage. That's bullshit because that 90% you're talking about are still fun for 99% of people in those venues. Oh, for sure, for sure. I guess I was saying garbage as far as fairness and, you know, compared to other IFBA formats. Garbage is relative to that, not as far as fun. Fun, yeah, absolutely. In fact, it's a great way to introduce pinball to people that are first competing for the first time. Flip Renzies are spectacular. Cool. Yeah. Good. Just wanted to clarify that. No, I'm glad you did. Thanks. All right. What's next, Mr. Correction? I mean... So let's talk about Zidware because everyone wants to talk about Zidware and John Papadiuk. I haven't read much about it other than Case Closed. Tell me what's going on. So I would. There are two articles. Go to Nap Arcade. I mean, look, always go to NAP Arcade anyway, because he's always got great articles. There's an article on that that goes more so into the actual court case, and I think there's documents and all that kind of stuff. But also go to Pinball News. They've got a really good editorial that talks about the story itself and how people were trying to get their money back and why they didn't take the handouts from Deep Root, etc. Bottom line is, it's now the ruling's happened. I don't think they got what they wanted, but there are assets that they found in like a lock-up garage somewhere with whitewoods and back glasses and documents, which they're hoping they'll sell off and people will get 50% of their money back. Those are the Zidware ones, not the DeepRoo ones. Zidware, yeah. Okay. So you've got like the Houdini design that he did for American Pinball that they didn't go with. So all that stuff as well. That's all I really wanted to say. Not that we're going to talk too much about it, but I would say go to Pinball News or go to Nap Arcade or go to both. It's actually an interesting read, even though obviously it's a terrible story, but I just find it fascinating. I feel for the people that lost their money, and I know some of them personally. They knew the risk. You do with any kind of startup company, but still, it's a lot of coin. I can imagine it still hurts years later. what I'm kind of excited to see hopefully, and this is more to the deep root side, and I was one of the people that lost money in that as well and I'm fine with that, I knew the risk all that other shit, we've talked about it before the people that did buy the assets will these games ever come up? I'm hoping so, I really did find Raza a lot of fun to play and I know Steven Bowden put a lot of work into the rules, shoot me if you have to, please don't I fucking like John Papadu games I find them fun as hell to play. Same. I do. I do, too. I do, too. It's hard to separate the man from the machine. The art from the artist. We talk about it. Yeah. Except for Star Wars. Yeah. Star Wars was bad. That was terrible. All these other games are iconic. They're fantastic games. The one thing that he did which was genius, he made a soccer slash football game really enjoyable. It's great. I had it and I had to sell it to buy one of my other games. And I think I've had 21 games in and out. I have nine now. And I think of the 12 that are gone. And if I could have three of them back, for sure World Cup soccer was one of them. It was, Josh Sharpe has once told me it'll never leave his home because, and I don't know if that true or not but he said kids love it and it the easiest game to explain to somebody See that goalie Hit the goalie Good things happen Yeah By the way speaking of which you know when Dr John gave us the Canada versus Aussie quiz that Craig Bobby and Dr John himself wrote and I kicked the shit out of you, I will also concede victory as Canada did not win in the World Cup, whereas the Australians did advance. You know, they've since been eliminated, but they did do better than Canada. So we're even once again, my friend. Oh did they? Because I think they were up against Argentina Argentina won Did they? Yeah it happened earlier today Fuck I'm glad it was a big day there You've really been drinking Yeah Argentina won today I knew what they did here They opened up a huge stadium here For free And put it on the big screen so everyone could watch it That's cool Yeah go Dan It's that time of the show where Everyone wants to get inside Marty's head and figure out what would Marty do. Is this a new segment? No, no, we've done it before. Ask Marty. I've got a dilemma, and I want to know what you would do. Okay, but I'm not having to kill anyone. That's gone, isn't it? That's dead. It's not dead. It's on hiatus. Okay. There may be a time to bring that back. But right now, no, we're not going to kill anybody. Although I can't promise that some of the repercussions of what you're about to choose. Yeah, I might want to kill someone anyway. Yeah, we don't know. So it is time for Ask Marty. Okay. Ask away. You have to do one of these two things. What would you choose, Marty? Okay? Yeah. Okay. And I love that you're drunk, too, because I'm going to get a good answer. What would you rather do? Sit in the coldest room possible for 30 minutes, like absolute below zero freezing, and then immediately go strut around a nude beach? Yes. Okay. Or... you're going into work at haggis all right and that day you decided to wear track pants and you have the biggest raging boner that you can't get rid of what are you going to do marty uh you know what you feel like you've created a dilemma but you've done both you actually just said huge boner why would i not want to show that off you know like like i'm literally going to be walking around a nude beach with a shriveled cock or I'm going to be walking around with a giant cucumber in my pants. Oh, man, easy. Give us the cucumber. Every day. I apologize to everyone at Haggis Pinball. There may be some deaths. It's tomorrow. This isn't a real thing, but I'm doing it tomorrow. So, yeah, no. Okay. Do you want photos? Like Anchorman? It's the pleats. It's an optical illusion. Oh, I haven't seen Anchorman. You hate Will Ferrell, don't you? I hate Will Ferrell. You know. Except for Superstar. Loved him in that movie. But everything else. Oh, Anchorman's classic. Anchorman's near and dear to my heart. But you know what? It's funny we should talk about Will Ferrell and has his career kind of tanked over the last few years. I will say. Tanked from what? Well, he put out Talladega Nights. He put out Semi Pro. He put out some big movies. Old school. He was at the top of the comedy game. But. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm waiting. Night at the Roxbury. It's a shit movie. Oh, fuck off. It is one of the best movies ever. It's fucking hilarious. It's juvenile, but it's... You suck. Low brow, dude. Yeah, hello. Anyway, that's fine that you like it. The point is, he's had some funny moments. We both can agree. All right? Superstar. Fuck, I didn't even... I can name ten Will Ferrell movies. That one's not coming up. Anyway, here... Have you seen Superstar with Molly Shannon? Oh, I love it. Yeah, I saw the Saturday Night Live skits. I'm like, what more can you do? I don't need to see a movie about it. Oh, it's very good. Okay. Okay. Very good. Very, very good. Anyway. Saturday Night Live is not a thing that we see here, so I didn't even see the character before the movie. Oh, okay. Okay. Makes sense then, why you would like it. Because it was a funny skit, but it was done because they'd done it every week. Sure. So, I want you to name, as you always like to talk about comedy, I want you... You cannot fucking Google. I know how you like to fucking type away. If I have to, I'll FaceTime you right now. I'm very good at silent typing. I will FaceTime you right now. No, I'm not. I wouldn't. Come on, just tell me. I'm not going to type. In the last 10 years, 10 calendar years, name an all-time classic, gut-wrenching, holy fuck, there isn't anything funnier movie that has come out. Okay. Okay. Do you know what's really fucking funny about this? Go on. About three minutes ago, I was thinking, oh, how can I bring this movie into the conversation? And I was just going to go, by the way, here's a movie. I have, oh my God, you could not have handed this to me better than what you've done. I saw three nights ago and four nights ago what I think is possibly the best movie ever. Top five instantly, and it's fucking hilarious. Night at the Roxbury too? Yeah. Everything, everywhere, all at once. Yep. That is a good one. Oh, my God. Hilarious and just relentless. It goes for two and a half hours. There's not a moment where you have an opportunity to breathe. It just is just a roller coaster. It is fucking fun. I love Michelle too. She's like one of my favorites. Short round. Short round for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I didn't know until the movie was over. Everybody. I mean, it's not going to be for everybody because it's a bit out there. It's about multiverses and butt plugs. Sorry for giving that away. But you asked. Absolute gut-wrenchingly funny. I was in agony from laughing so much watching this film. And I'd been meaning to watch it for a very long time. I rented it on Apple TV and then watched it again the night after because I just loved it that much. So there you go. There's your answer. Here's the thing. I can't disagree with you. Does it stack up with classic movies like, I don't know, Animal House and Caddyshack and Airplane and some of the all-time great comics? I was thinking about these movies today for some reason. The point is, it's difficult to make comedies in the last 10 years. Sure. It's been almost impossible. Can you at least agree? I mean, we love The Boys. That disguises it as a superhero movie. But we, and it's got action stuff, we laugh our heads off at how funny that is. But it is extremely rude and disgusting and all these things that just can't be done in movies because the sensitivity level is just, oh, I can't believe they did that. No, I think you're right. And I think the summary of probably what we're both saying is if you want a good comedy, you've got to go to TV shows. I don't think comedy makes for good movies, but that movie I just talked about is the exception. People get too offended, and that's why comedy has suffered over the last 10 years, especially on the big screen. And just movies that... A movie like The Hangover. Please tell me you've seen Delirious by Eddie Murphy. Nope. Okay. One of the greatest stand-up comic shows of all time. Done in 2022. Extremely inappropriate for many things he said. Does that mean it's not funny when it came out? Hmm. Anyway, it's just difficult to do these things now. So comedies have really, really suffered over the last little bit. So it's rare when you see a gem like the movie you just described. It's really rare. I guess the point is I chose right not to choose comedy because there was a shelf life to that. And radio has provided me with. You chose not to have a career in comedy. You chose. I fucking did. Fucking bullshit. No, I did. Chose right. Well done. It chose you. Thank you for this lovely home and this family, these pinball machines, the ability to travel. And, oh, life is good. Thank you. And you don't worry about the fact that, you know, you could be selling out stadiums right now. yeah that happens a lot that's everybody no fuck i did stand-up comedy because my buddy and i we dared each other to do it we went to a show we laughed each other we said we could fucking do this we're 21 years old we did it the next week and we're like oh i guess we're kind of good at this summary of that is you did comedy as a dare says everything it's true it is true though yeah yeah let's go to fucking emails you asshole no did we talk about the fact that james bond the The 60th anniversary one is going to be revealed soon. By the time this podcast is out, you've probably seen Keith Elwin's new game. Okay. I say that because it's Sunday the 4th of December here. God knows how long it's going to take me to edit this. So this could be January by the time it comes out. Really? Is it going to take you a while? No, I don't. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Last show took me about eight hours of editing. Okay. Maybe I should edit this. No. Anyway, whatever. Anyway, so let's get to emails. It was more of a comment I saw on Facebook after our last show. I thought it was interesting. Somebody with a fake name, Tilt Trek. By the way, just to let you know, I usually don't acknowledge fake names. Give me your real name. Tell me who you are. You've got a better likelihood of me responding to anything you do. People who hide behind fake things, I'm not big on that. Just letting you know. Just letting you know. I don't fucking – you know that, right? you would never hide behind a fake name everybody knows Pinside fucking Petey was me fucking asshole everyone knew that did they they do now anyway it was a good comment so the conversation regarding this was from our last show which aired conversation regarding updating music in a game because I went to the UK and I got to play Neil McCrae's awesome Disco Maiden game which is spectacular and I love it and I'd like to put new songs in my Zeppelin or maybe a different one in Rush or two. I like all the Rush songs. But I'm just saying, people who do that, oh, you've got to worry about getting bricked. Thought it was neat. He'd love to hear more. He added Beatles, added different albums from Pinside, and it fried the node board. Okay. It didn't make any sense that the software would take out a physical part in a game that couldn't be corrected by just reinstalling the original code. Seemed like a conspiracy of some sort to me. Well, I don't know about that, but I do wish we could do we talked about the end user license agreement. I wish once you own it you can do whatever the fuck you want with the machine. Mod it up, change it, do this, that. Well, can I add to that an email that we got from Warwick who said the section of breaking end user agreements by modding a game got me thinking. Stern's Godzilla is a really popular game but on Pinside there's a lot of discussion of various issues with the game and how to fix them fresh out of the box. For example, how do you stop the bridge from breaking the plastic that's over the magnet? How to prevent balls from getting trapped in the mechzilla? How to get the ball to plunge cleanly. Changing coil stops on Stern games because they're well known for using inferior parts. Some people admit changing them on new in-box games. Calling fans to stop flipper fade. I was searching for fans to put on my game and my wife said, why was I doing that? Surely if it's a problem then the manufacturer should address the problem. She has a point. Why do we accept these issues on new games? Part of it is fear of missing out when it takes up to 12 months to get a game that's been hyped up on social media. Then there was the issue on Rush with the scoop that took some time to get fixed as well. it would be good if manufacturers could be held responsible especially in these times when game prices have gone have shot up so he's in New Zealand so here in New Zealand we only get six month warranty on games and it could take that long to get spare parts from the US so that's just a good dialogue to have about this where does the responsibility end and if someone wants to change the music and it fries a node board what's going on here buy everywhere right I mean, if you're going to fuck around that, you know the risks. You know what's weird? With the code updates now being done by Wi-Fi, at least on the Stern games, I like to manually, on a little thumb drive or something, get the old code and keep it on there just in case something goes wrong. It doesn't help if you fry a board, but sometimes they're been – like I think if you look at Godzilla, Godzilla came out with back-to-back code updates. Did you notice that this week? No. Yeah. They had 1.02 and then the next day 1.03. There was obviously some bug or something. It would be weird that they would update it that quickly without something going wrong. They would wait to put whatever feature would be in. So I just thought I play it safe. I mean, adding physical mods, that's different. Changing software, you run a risk. Yeah, and I think I may have made this point many times when I've been talking to coders, is that when you are changing code, it's not just about rules and light shows. It's coils. It's solenoids. It's things that could actually damage your game. So I think the reason why they have some sort of control over this stuff is because they actually don't want you to break your game. They don't. And I say this about manufacturing pinballs. As soon as the game doesn't work, it's not fun anymore. You're selling fun. So you've got to make sure that these games constantly work. Electric magic spinner on. Still disabled. Sorry, what? You should get that cough looked at. It's just at the back of your throat. Yeah. Pube or something. I don't know whether we had any answers to either of these questions. We read their emails. That's good enough. Thanks, Warwick. Thanks, Tilt Trek. Thanks, Warwick. There really is no answer to this. It's really... Look, I'll give the, you know, they're talking about the scoop from Rush, right? It was a problem. Does the game still work? Yes, but a great easy fix that software fixed that. Okay, here's a one-second ball save. Boom. Are you talking about the actual physical, the mangled of the? Yeah. Yeah. I got to tell you, I was really happy with the Stern fix on that. They realized there was a problem almost immediately, said, we're working on it. Don't worry. And then everyone was given the kit. easy as shit even i could install the kit and that's amazing i don't know i hey when you buy something that expensive like a pinball machine you want support and i i gotta love the support i've received on every machine i've ever owned i hear that from others too so yay and that's even well after the fact too you know yeah well look i've had problems with my stones here and I've always gone through AMD in Australia and their support has been exceptional. Exceptional. Like, couriering things the next day to me and being very sort of empathetic and concerned and wanting to do things right. So, you know, that's good. You know, this ties into you being concerned and the fact that you're drinking. Yours truly thought, I should probably go see the doctor about something. I was having a little bit of chest pains a little worried about some heart condition I thought this would have been the erectile dysfunction you've been having but obviously no wow fucking Mr. Sensitive is there a reach around for Mr. Sensitivity I'm telling you I had perhaps some heart issues I was concerned about so I went to the doctor everything is fine I just wanted to pause a little bit to make you maybe care you certainly care everything's fine weight is part of the problem maybe a little acid reflux whatever the case is, but he's asking me, do you smoke? I'm like, no. And do you drink? I'm like, actually, I'm not a big drinker. No, you're not. That's true. When I go away, the gloves are off. I don't have to work. I don't have to drive. I don't have to be responsible for kids. Let's have some fun, for sure. And people see me at these things, and I said, well, I go to these events on weekends when I'm away, and yeah, I'll let the hair down, and I'll have a bunch of fireball. The doctor looked at me and was like, are you an 18-year-old girl? like i'm like what and he goes he goes my daughter drinks that fireball yeah i'm like it's great i i'm he's like he just abused the shit out of me so now my heart was broken you fucking asshole doctor you're killing my fireball you do you if you find enjoyment in it i do that's what i say i have a sweet tooth right that's i like one beer and one beer only on a hot hot day that's it it's too filling and bitter i can't do ipas or dark beers or anything like that but i like sweet drinks right like fuck give me a tom collins give me a long island iced tea give me fireball sweet sweet yeah yep yep like me yep do it do it yeah i i agree i agree that's why i like your gins they're good too they are good i don't like them as much as you but fuck no well fine but I like Fireball. Fireball's fine. Fireball is the drink that when you take a quick shot, it reminds you where every hair on your body is. That's what I like about Fireball. Yeah, correct. Correct. It's an experience, Fireball. Okay. People are going to want to reach out to us. Are they, though? By the way, thank you for all the fucking Twippy votes. We really appreciate that. Oh, you know what we forgot to do? We forgot to fucking put vote for us online like everyone else. Do you know what? I swear to you. You know there's that photo of you where you're lying on the couch, and I think you've got, like, Tiger print or something on you? It was after Tiger King came out, yeah. Yeah. I was going to put that on our Facebook saying, for your consideration, just a picture of you. Is there a Twippy for douche? Yes, there is. Anyway. All right. Cool. People are going to want to reach us some way, somehow. Facebook, I know we're there. Yeah. Finalroundpinball.gmail.com. Final Round Pin is Twitter, which we don't use and nobody does anymore. Thanks, Elon. Yeah. And Final Round Pinball Podcast on Instagram. That's a good one. Yeah, do that. You get some nice microphone shots on there. But do reach out to us. We like actually having conversations offline as well. So do that. Just not with each other, apparently. All right. Well, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Valentine's Day. St. Patrick's Day. I'll talk to you soon, Marty. Yes, I will do the same. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, guys.