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episode 38 mayday,mayday.

The Spinner Is Lit Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 10m·analyzed·May 9, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Haggis Fathom Revisited and Stern Mandalorian announced; debate over remake pricing and market viability.

Summary

The Spinner Is Lit podcast (episode 38, "Mayday Mayday") features a roundtable discussion at Eric Seifert's house covering two major pinball announcements: Haggis Pinball's Fathom Revisited remake (releasing in standard and limited 'Mermaid Edition' variants at $7,408 and $8,968 USD respectively, with 250 Mermaid units limited) and Stern's upcoming Star Wars: The Mandalorian pinball machine (designed by Brian Eddy, coded by Brian Eddy and Lonnie Rock, 750 LEs sold out pre-announcement). Discussion focuses on pricing competitiveness, target audience demographics, remakes vs. originals, and community acceptance of modern takes on classic games.

Key Claims

  • Haggis Pinball Fathom Revisited Mermaid Edition costs $8,968 USD, standard edition $7,408 USD

    high confidence · Alex confirms after looking up pricing online; Spencer initially estimates, Alex corrects with exact figures

  • Fathom Revisited Mermaid Edition limited to 250 units; standard edition has no production limit

    high confidence · Dan states '250 limit on Mermaid,' Spencer confirms no limit on standard

  • Mermaid Edition includes comic book, advanced rule set, display screens for rule set cards, iridescent reflective cabinet paint

    high confidence · Dan describes features in detail during product explanation

  • Fathom Revisited includes auto launcher and ball save features

    medium confidence · Spencer states 'they already have' auto launcher; Alex believes he read about ball save 'somewhere'

  • Stern Mandalorian LE (750 units) sold out before announcement

    high confidence · Spencer and Dan confirm all 750 LEs sold out pre-announcement; attributed to FOMO

  • Star Wars: The Mandalorian designed by Brian Eddy, coded by Brian Eddy and Lonnie Rock

    high confidence · Spencer states these credits with confidence; no contradiction from roundtable

  • Mandalorian has rumored upper playfield that flips, two flippers, six drop targets, and includes Razor Crest ship

    medium confidence · Spencer says 'rumor is' for upper playfield details; confirmed by Dan for Razor Crest

  • Beatles Gold machines selling around $6,000 on secondary market

    medium confidence · Speaker mentions seeing Beatles Golds 'for six' recently

  • Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses basic model $8,500, limited $10,500, collectors $12,500, with $1,000 mid-run price increase

    medium confidence · Speaker estimates pricing (says 'maybe 85 for basic') then acknowledges uncertainty; mentions price bump mid-run

Notable Quotes

  • “will it feel like a fathom? That's a great question. Those early valleys, it's got to feel man.”

    Dan — Core tension: whether a modernized remake can capture the original's intangible 'feel' — central debate for classic game remakes

  • “I own a medieval remake, and my buddy Henry owns a medieval remake, and it couldn't be more different than mine... just every two pinball machines are different.”

    Speaker (discussing CGC remakes) — Establishes variability between individual machines as a counterargument to perfectionist restoration expectations

  • “I'm sure they'll sell the 250 mermaids because there are enough people in this hobby right now who are just going to take a chance hoping for resale value.”

    Speaker — Identifies collector/speculative demand as key sales driver for limited editions, separate from core gameplay interest

  • “It's full FOMO fever right now... 750 LEs. All sold out. All sold out before the announcement was made.”

    Spencer — Highlights aggressive pre-announcement FOMO-driven sales strategy for premium limited editions

  • “Disney's got to approve it, so no she won't [Gina Carano won't be in Mandalorian].”

    Speaker — Addresses contentious IP approval issue; assumes Disney intervention based on actor's contract violations/social media controversy

  • “you're the guy who would be like, shit. Like, this is the game for my youth. I need it. But you're also the guy who's like, I ain't spending $7,000 on a game from 1980.”

    Spencer — Articulates generational nostalgia vs. pricing resistance for Fathom's target demographic

  • “The group of people that have that kind of disposable income that are interested in pinball. I don't think it's a huge group of people.”

    Speaker — Acknowledges limited addressable market for $7-9k premium remakes despite FOMO tactics

  • “I'm going to enjoy one life with Steve. No, you don't. Nobody does. Because every time somebody makes one, they don't smoke for shit.”

Entities

Haggis PinballcompanyFathom RevisitedgameStern PinballcompanyStar Wars: The MandaloriangameBrian EddypersonLonnie RockpersonEric SeifertpersonSpencerpersonDanpersonBrianperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Haggis Pinball announces Fathom Revisited with standard and Mermaid Edition variants; limited 250 units on premium tier

    high · Confirmed pricing ($7,408 standard, $8,968 Mermaid), production limits, feature set (comic, rule variants, display screens, iridescent cabinet)

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern Pinball Star Wars: The Mandalorian announced and pre-sold out (750 LEs) before public reveal video

    high · 750 LE units sold out pre-announcement; design/coding credits confirmed (Brian Eddy, Lonnie Rock); video reveal expected 'this Tuesday'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern Mandalorian sells 750 LE units before announcement; speculation about speculative resale value driving purchases

    high · Spencer: 'full FOMO fever right now'; quote about collectors buying hoping for resale value; Pinsider rumor about putting game on location as 'ATM machine'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community debate over whether Fathom Revisited can capture original's 'feel'; tension between modernization and authenticity expectations

    high · Extended discussion of 'vocal minority' demanding exactness; CGC remake comparisons; Medieval Madness game-to-game variability; concern about flipper mat/coil stop differences

  • $

    market_signal: Premium new game pricing ($7-9K Fathom, $8.5-12.5K Jersey Jack, $6K Beatles secondary) compresses into narrow band; buyers choosing between multiple premium options

    high · Roundtable discusses buying decisions as tradeoffs; question 'do you buy one Mermaid or two classic games'; Beatles Gold at $6K mentioned as alternative

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.392

0:00
Welcome to the Spinner's Lip Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Spencer. You guys know me. And we've got the round table. And we're here with our special guest at his house for the second time in about two years, Eric Seifert's house. And we've got Eric Seifert, who's hosting tonight. He's just been suffering over and over. And I got right this time. It's suffering.
0:23
He's got a great pinball collection. and also a cool car enthusiast. He's a hell of a fine American. He is. He's a righteous dude. So thank you for hosting again, man. Since before COVID, you hosted last. And then we've got the round table, so we've got to my left is Dan and Brian and across from me is Alex. What's up? Hey, guys. Welcome. And it's the Saturday, the 8th of May. Maybe 8th will be with you. Mayday Mayday is episode 38 And so we're here So we're going to talk about all the cool pinball stuff going on What's in the news, what's happening People are starting to unlock from COVID Summer's on its way, it's beautiful It's spring, so let's talk about Getting back in the water with A cool remake of a game A game from 1981 originally Valley's Fathom Go Dan Go Dan, this isn't my segment Hey, hey, hey. Why don't you folks ask a question? Oh, the question is, hey, did you guys hear that Haggis Pinball from Australia is going to be remaking the classic 1981 Valley game, Fathom? Why, yes. By War Pimpleton. Why, hey, good tip. Why, yes, we did hear that, Spencer.
1:42
And, in fact, they're doing two versions of it. On the Mermaid. the mermaid version, which is going to be like the super duper awesome special edition, which will have a really cool cabinet design, some kind of iridescent paint that is like reflective, makes it look like the cabinet lights up or something. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's really, you've got to see it. And it's going to have the original rule set, plus it's going to have an advanced rule set with the mermaid edition where it's like you have a storyline. It comes with a comic book. It tells you the story. And also the rule set cards are actually display screens, which is pretty cool looking. And then you have the standard edition. What's the cost on the mermaid edition? So I believe... $89.90? No, it was more. I thought it was like $9,400 for the mermaid and like $7,300 for the classic. And that's American price, right? Right. That would be with the conversion. Okay. So don't quote me on that, because I haven't, you know... You can look online. I was reading the article about it. It looks really, really nice. I mean, you know, with Fathom, you know, it's obviously a super classic. It's got a lot of history because it was an early... It was an early classic, I would say. One of the first ones that people really cared enough about to start doing restores and remanufacturing playfields for. So one of the cool things about, I would say, about that game is just because of the history that it has, it goes for money that, you know, maybe I wouldn't spend $7,000 on a Fathom, but it goes for enough money that I think that it's one of the titles that really justifies that price point. Like, people will pay that. Now, the $9,000 version, that's pretty severe, but if those if that extra rule set and the other features are really, really good, you know, I mean, I'm sure you're going to, I'm sure you're not going to have any problems the way Pinball is right now selling, what, 250 of them? Yeah, as I was going to say, there's a limit to the Mermaid of 250, and then is there a limit on the standard version? I don't think there is. No. Price-wise, I just looked it up, classic, 7408 U.S. funds, Mermaid, 8968 U.S. funds. Dude, you're right on, man. You're the man. Alex did his homework. I knew there was a 400 in there. Well, you know, we get the idea, okay? You're looking at nine grand, basically, for the Mermaid Edition. Yeah. Because it's good for the one-hundred. But would you spend the money on that versus getting a Sea Witch Gold? I mean, Beatles? Yeah, right. You know, I said as soon as they announced that they were doing this, it's called Fathom Revisited? Yeah. That sounds right. As soon as I heard about this, I'm like, man, if somebody at Stern isn't like, let's re-theme the Beatles right now to Sea Witch 2.0.

  • Fathom (1981) was 'one of the first ones people cared enough about to start doing restores and remanufacturing playfields for'

    medium confidence · Dan's assessment of Fathom's historical significance in restoration culture

    • Speaker — Critiques manufacturing/QC consistency issues across batches; humorous but points to quality control variability

  • “what could they possibly add to it... they already have they added an auto launcher so maybe yeah I believe I read somewhere about that”

    Speaker (uncertain about rule set additions) — Reveals limited information about actual rule set enhancements for Fathom Revisited beyond mechanical features

  • “When you're with your friends or when you're around people or stuff, man, shut up on the internet... You've got to understand you're a public figure and your words will be used against you.”

    Speaker (re: Gina Carano situation) — Broader commentary on social media consequences extending beyond pinball industry; shows media/IP strategy impacts game decisions

    • Alexperson
    Valley Fathomgame
    Medieval Madnessgame
    Attack on Marsgame
    Monster Bashgame
    Flash Gordongame
    Beatlesgame
    Guns N' Rosesgame
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Gina Caranoperson
    Kathleen Kennedyperson
    Henryperson
    Razor Crestgame
  • ?

    product_concern: Variability between individual units of same game model; Medieval Madness example shows coil stop failures and ball deflection differences

    medium · Speaker compares own Medieval Madness to Henry's; notes different flipper behavior, coil stop replacement required; joke about 'every time somebody makes one, they don't smoke for shit'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Gina Carano (Cara Dune actress) excluded from Mandalorian game due to contract termination; Disney approval requirement prevents inclusion

    medium · Roundtable question 'will Cara Doon be in there or not'; assumption that 'Disney's got to approve it, so no she won't'; context of social media controversy/contract violation

  • ?

    machine_intel: Mandalorian rumored to feature upper playfield, two flippers, six drop targets, Razor Crest ship; art inspired by pre-production stills

    medium · Spencer: 'rumor is the game's going to have an upper playfield'; 'two flippers and six drop targets'; art from Star Wars comic artist; 'pre-production stills' inspiration rumor

  • ?

    collector_signal: Mermaid Edition positioned as 250-unit exclusive with expanded rule set and premium cosmetics driving FOMO collector demand

    high · Speaker: 'I'm sure they'll sell the 250 mermaids because there are enough people... going to take a chance hoping for resale value'; 'limited edition FOMO' behavior

  • ?

    design_innovation: Mermaid Edition features iridescent reflective paint creating light-reactive cabinet effect; display screens replace traditional rule set cards

    high · Dan describes 'iridescent paint that is like reflective, makes it look like the cabinet lights up'; 'rule set cards are actually display screens'

  • ?

    community_signal: Fathom Revisited skewing toward older demographics (40s-60s) with disposable income and 1981 nostalgia; question about younger player adoption unresolved

    high · Discussion of target age (15 years old in 1981 = 50s+ now); concern that younger players (Alex at 27) don't have disposable income yet; barcades as potential gateway for new generation

  • ?

    business_signal: Question whether market has sufficient demand for $7-9K Fathom Revisited at 250-unit-plus volume; concern about competition from Stern/JJP premium lines

    medium · Roundtable skepticism: 'how big is the audience... I don't think it's a huge group'; 'are there enough people... to make it a success'; comparison to competing $8-12.5K premium games

    • 4:44
    Guaranteed they're watching that. They can just be printing money. Get that sucker out there for like $6,000 like a pro prize. They will sell those things. You don't have to pay for the Beatles license if it's the Sea Witch. All they need to do is just redo the artwork. Just redo the artwork. They probably wouldn't have used the original files. They probably have like Zombie Yeti or somebody do it. Update them a little bit.
    5:10
    You can sell them for $65 and sell a bunch. Well, Beatles Golds are hitting around six right now, it seems like. I've seen them for six. And I would pay $6,000 for a Beatles. That would be a lot of fun. It's not a bad playing field. That would be a lot of fun. It's a fun game. That is. It's a lot of fun. And it's not like it's theme dependent. No. And Fathom's going to play like a new game with Clearcoats. It's going to be fun. Yeah. The original one's a great game. It's beautiful. It's one of the best looking solid state games. Oh, yeah. 7 grand per feet price, but a fully restored one is probably right around that price.
    5:49
    They've always been in Hock's Moddy since I've been in the hobby since 2003. So here's the question though, right?
    5:56
    And I mean, obviously the answer is no, but like, will it feel like a fathom? That's a great question.
    6:04
    Those early battles, it's got to feel man. in the end, well, no, I'm sorry, I've got to play it in this soldier now, because we'll get to that later. My Flash Gordon, you know, you guys have all played it. I mean, and that's not a restore even or high energy, it's a minor, well, a decent shop job with some new parts from Greg when he had it, and that thing plays like butter. That thing plays incredibly nice. Like, you can't, like, your right nipple just plays so good. It's not totally brutal like Adam's? No, it's really, like, smooth and good flipper power and everything works pretty well and it is a really nice game. Big shout out to Brian and Cheddar for helping me get the damn thing up and running.
    6:48
    The course of your fountain is not going to feel like the old fountain. The old fountain that uses older style flipper mats, newer ones are superior in every way. Right. That's going to be the biggest difference right there. A good example is, you know, on my Never Ending Project, I have another meltdown. I'm just got those crappy Ballad 60 or A3 flippers, which are garbage. And I'm upgrading the WPC style. A, they're cheaper to do, and B, they feel better. See, but that's, I think, where you're going to run into a lot of problems. Because I think that, again, there's a segment of our pinball population that is, right, they are so demanding. Like, there's still this raging debate about why don't the CGC remakes feel exactly like the real thing. Because they're not the real thing, or at least not the original thing. They're not the original. I've played the originals, and I've played the remakes. I haven't played the remake of Monster Bash, I'll say that. But I've played the remakes of Attack on Mars and Medieval. I can't tell the difference. But I don't have as much time on Attack on Mars as a bunch of them. I don't have as much time on Medieval Madness.
    7:56
    I honestly prefer playing dance. Maybe you need to become more anal than your pinball. and recognize the .00001 millisecond difference and complain about it incessantly on Pinsider. That's one that's fit, right? And that's just the thing is, I own a medieval remake. I've been late to 21st century. I don't have to complain about it. Fuck off!
    8:20
    Wow, way to drive home that. I think something else to consider is how many people have played a monster batch out in the wild prior to these remakes. I know, but I mean, you're probably one of the minority. I've never even seen one on location anywhere. Fanny Ann's used to have one years ago. A long time ago, Fanny Ann's had one on the landing.
    8:40
    Like that, the hole, the scoop in there, you could hit it. The scoop in there, this is not a joke about how big it was. You could hit a golf hole into it. You are man-worn.
    8:50
    Those are the ones that always work. You know, the Roseville Sunspots had one too. Well, they were out there. Really? Yeah, Roseville Sunsplash had one. They were out there, but again, they didn't make many of them. Yeah. So if you found one, you're right. On location, it was kind of a luck of the draw. Yeah. I think you have much better, you have way more chances to play Attack from Mars or Medieval Madness than... Medieval Madness wasn't everywhere. Yeah. Even though it was... How many did they make of those? Like 3,000 or something? Like 4,000. But that's too rare. But the Medieval Madness had a thing set up where if you wanted to buy that game, you had to pick up like a Popeye or some garbage as well.
    9:32
    Williams had this real weird distribution thing trying to get you. If you wanted the hot game, you had to buy several of our campers. I don't know the whole story, but it's out there online.
    9:42
    But, yeah, getting back to whatever it was. Yeah, Fathom Rise. A lot of people are just not going to be forgiving of the differences. But, you know, I own a medieval remake, and my buddy Henry owns a medieval remake, and I was over at Henry's house buying his medieval remake the other night, and it couldn't be more different than mine. Yeah. Nope. I like that. Like, the flippers are completely different. It played good, though. It played fine. It plays great. It plays like a pinball machine, but yeah, you know, just... It's different. It's just every two pinball machines are different. So, I'll raise my hand on this. Henry's plays different because his coil stops broke in both his flippers almost immediately. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, that's right. You mentioned that. Yeah, I had to go over there and replace them. Right, but I replaced my coil stops with proper coil stops. Well, I don't know which one. I can't recall if we just used ones he had or if we had an orb. We just used something he had laying around. I remember that. Yeah. But you're right. They all play different. Because yours has that weird, if it's not hitting that left loop, it bounces off the right sling. His does that, too. But what I really notice is, like, on mine, if you hit a screamer up the orbit, it, and then you hold up the right flipper, it will, or I think if you just let it go, there's somewhere you can do that where it just deflects right into the catapult. It'll do it consistently. And I try to do that on his game, no.
    11:03
    That's right. The ball pops straight up. And I was like, whoa. Again, you're right, game to game. The Pinball 101 DVD had that trick for Tommy where it's the same thing, where you hit the left loop, it's screen dashed, there's a hole in the flipper, and it bounces into the start mode scoop on the left. Yeah. I've never played a time when you could do that, including mine, and mine played like a rocket. Right. So that's the thing, is just like, you know, but I mean, and that's why I'm not saying, will it play like an original, but will it feel like an original? Because I do think that, for the most part, the remakes, you know, they don't feel like an original. They play fine, but you know, and I'm willing to accept that, like, it doesn't have to be exactly like the original. No two games are alike, right? But like, the early valleys, and your Flash Gordon is a great example, you know. Yours doesn't play like Adam's, but they both have that specific feel. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, will it feel like a modernization, which is probably what we're going to get, or will they figure out a way to get that same, you know, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but that very specific, you know, ballet, you know, je ne sais quoi, right? That I don't know what. but it's something you feel and you can't really describe it and even if they don't will the pinball hobby be able to accept that no of course not they can't accept anything well I don't think that the people I don't think the vocal minority will speak for the pinball hobby here's a question that I would have so we know the price is on fat and how much they're going to ask for those games do you buy one of those or do you buy two classics, you know, buy like an 8-ball deluxe and a Flash Gordon instead of that? Well, and that's the tradeoff. You know, and that's how it is right now with any game. You know, you need a new pro for six grand or whatever they're costing. I buy you a lot of pinball. Yeah. You know, especially depending what you're into. You know, if you're a guy who's getting pinball, you know, six grand, I can get a used Iron Maiden or whatever, but I really like EMs. Yeah. And you can get like 5, 6, 7 EMs for that price. Yeah. And again, that's just – 10, they're not worth it. Yeah. And that's up to you. You know, with how stuff's going, it's like I don't – no, I don't want to pay it because I don't find it worth it. But again, I'm different than everybody else else. Sure. You know, we've got friends who just dropped 9 or 10 grand on a Rick and Morty or whatever. It's worth it to them. That's fine. well are there enough people out there to make it a success who are going to want a remake fathom over a stern premium or a stern limited edition or a jersey jack limited edition at the mermaid price point like it's just you're wading into some heavy competition at $9,000 with a 40 year old game Well, and good point, because are the newer buyers, which are a lot younger folks who are like, I grew up with the 90s stuff, everything before that sucks. Are they going to be willing to try that out? Or are they going for the older market, which most of us fall into, who have fond memories of playing that when we were a kid or a teenager or, in Spencer's case, a senior citizen, playing that game in the arcade?
    14:27
    And yeah, a lot of people in that age range have a ton of disclosed income. It's like, yeah, I want that because I remember playing it. and now I don't have to go try to find one and have it restored. I can get a brand new one, and that audience is going to be a lot more forgiving than some of these super angle retention folks. They're just like, I don't care. If it plays right, and it plays how I remember playing as a kid, that's all they care about. Well, and do you think that the market for remakes is a 1980s game? Because my thing is this. If you're really talking about guys like us, you're talking about things that we did 20 years ago, because, honestly enough, Fathom is 40 years. So 20 years ago is 2000. 30 years ago is the 90s. And that's sort of like, look at where the remakes have been. They've all been the late 90s. Because you just started my midlife crisis. You got it. I just found them. Go buy a Corvette. Quick, because I want to drive one. But no, seriously, I think that it's skewing a little too early. And again, I think the guy who wants to spend $7,000 on a Fathom, they probably already have a Fathom. Maybe. I don't know. You know. You know, honestly, if I had that kind of money and space, I would get one. Fathom's a great game. You know, it's fun. It's insanely difficult, at least for someone of my skill set. And it's beautiful. You know, it's got the backlash on it. Art is great. The play field art is great. I don't know if I'd blow nine grand without seeing anything about the rules. like what could they possibly add to it maybe like an auto launcher or something like that they already have they added an auto launcher so maybe yeah I believe I read somewhere about that so there's a ball save I think so yeah a ball save which for me does nothing because like everyone here except for Alex we didn't grow up with ball saves so for me it's like okay it's a cool added bonus not a necessity right but it'll be interesting I'm hopefully we get to see one here next year at Golden State or Pinnagogo happens hopefully there'll be one even depending on what happens I seriously doubt they're going to be out this year that's true so but yeah it looks cool man you know and I'm really stoked that somebody's crazy enough to try it I hope that they I really hope they can find an audience you know I don't see a problem finding an audience but how big is the audience that's where we're at I think that the group of people that have that kind of disposable income that are interested in pinball. I don't think it's a huge group of people. But maybe the barcade thing will help bring more of that back as people get back into society and get out to places like we've got going on. Yeah, that's open again.
    17:13
    But for places that have barcades that can pull people in and introduce them to pinball if they're not familiar with it, or maybe they haven't played it in a long time, and they go in there and they see these games and they go, oh, I'll check it out, and it turns out they like it. Then they'll look for stuff like a fathom or whatever. They won't even know what it was like to play before because they've never seen it. Sure. And maybe they'll go, okay, this looks pretty cool. Maybe I'll get one. Right. But just for the general population out there, I don't know a lot of kids, other than the kids of the people that are in this podcast, that play pinball. I don't know any kids that play pinball. So that's a challenge for everything. Where does the next generation come in? Well, you already mentioned the problem with it is arcades. Yeah. Right. Of most arcades, kids can't come in, period. There's no kid days or anything. When you say kids, do you mean adolescents or do you mean 20-something? I mean kids. Kids. 18 and under. Because I think of Alex as a kid. Yeah, of course. And honestly, well, I'm not saying it in a bad way. I'm saying that Alex is the next generation of pinball, right? Right. He's 25, 26. 27. 27 now. God damn, you're getting old. He's young. He's good. He seeks out pinball. He plays on location. He owns a game. He kicks ass. You know, to me, Alex is sort of like the person who the pinball company should court. Right. You know, he doesn't have his disposable income yet, but he will go out and spend money on a game on location. You know, the people that the pinball companies are courting are me, right? You, Brian. Not me. Well, you, because, you know, you're the right age range. For the most part, early, mid, late 40s, we probably have as much disposable income as we're ever going to have, and we're willing to spend it.
    19:04
    Fathom is skewing more to you. Yeah. About 10 years older. You played it when it was new, and you were, how old were you in 1980? 15. So you were a teenager. Yeah, spent it all my time. In the pinball. Right. Remember, that was the pinball of the arcade. Right. And you would be the guy who would be like, shit. Like, this is the game for my youth. I need it. But you're also the guy who's like, I ain't spending $7,000 on a game from 1980. No. You know, I want a Deadpool. Yeah. I want an attack from Mars. If I'm going to spend eight grand, I'm going to get the Elvira, man. You know, that's just the truth of the matter. Just like, you know. And I'm going to get a yellow brick Roto. That's a lot of money. I'm paying extra money for no monkeys I'm getting the monkey just for my own education how much is the new Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses golf ball let's talk about that when we talk about the play field issue it's a 75 for the basic it's 10-5 or maybe it's 85 for the basic, 10-5 for the limited and the collectors are like 12-5 or something But the thing was, they went up $1,000 mid-run.
    20:25
    And they're behind. Because, yeah, they were just like, we're already behind. Let's bump the price. Sorry, guys. So, yeah, you know, they're expensive. But, you know, when you play them, you know, you see where the money goes. I mean, I'm not trying to say that, you know, oh, my God, that game is totally worth $8,000. But, I mean, you understand why this costs more than a Stern Pro. Yeah, they are. I have to admit, I mean, the Jersey Jack games, it looks really nice. They've done a lot of, yeah, they're a lot of money, but they've got a lot of interesting stuff. They throw it into the game. And so that's just the thing is, you know, is your modern pinball player, you know, going to go for that? And I don't think so. Like I said, I'm sure they'll sell the 250 mermaids because there are enough people in this hobby right now who are just going to take a chance hoping for resale value. But you have to catch the mind and the imagination of the person who just wants that game. And, you know, the people, you know, I don't have a lot of people just out there right now screaming, oh, my God, man, I've got to get a Fathom. Right. You know, but maybe I could be wrong, man. I'm not in my... Well, like we talked about all the time, you know, people, I'm going to enjoy one life with Steve. No, you don't. Nobody does. Because every time somebody makes one, they don't smoke for shit. Okay? Everybody wants Harry Potter. Everybody wants Back to the Future. Everybody's a collector. To be fair, I want a dial thing I actually do too Good luck finding one I kind of like dialed in two Yeah, I like it It shoots so well You know, if they come up all the time There were a couple recently that I would have made a play for In fact, I did offer swaps for them But I would have made a play for If I wasn't, you know, kind of hell-bent on Guns N' Roses So Yeah So, up next, we've seen a teaser for it. If you guys recall, I called it before that other podcasting guy because I said, Stern should make this. Like six months ago, you guys remember? Recording a podcast? No. Are you an REO Speedwagoner? No. Yeah, we. Yes. I would buy that, actually. I like REO. I like Oreos, too. Yeah, you like Oreos, too. I like Oreos. Double stuff.
    22:40
    Quick side note, trivia question before we get to the next game we're talking about. Does anybody know why they're called REO Speedwagon?
    22:47
    No. It's because Oreo was taken. That was the name of a real truck. It's the name of a 19-oh-something fire truck. It was a brand of a fire truck, and they saw it and went, that's a cool name for a van. There you go. And it's on the cover of their first album, like a painting of the fire truck. Anyway, yeah, so our next game is The Mandalorian.
    23:09
    Wow. Yeah. Nobody knows anything about it. I know it's coming out. We know it's coming out. It's full FOMO fever right now.
    23:18
    Here's what we know. It's being made by Brian Eddy. It's being coded by Brian Eddy and Lonnie Rock. Yep. And that's all we know. Yep.
    23:30
    It's by Stern Pinball. 750 LEs. All sold out. All sold out before the announcement was made. Yep. Really? Yep.
    23:39
    That's scary. It's full on FOMO. it's the people like hey what's the next LE coming out I want to get it hey it's Taylor Swift okay somebody on pin sign I wish I would have wrote down their name because whoever you are mad props to you they said I'm going to get one and put it on location because it's going to be like you know having an ATM machine it's going to print money if it has baby Yoda anywhere in it and you know it's going to you can put that in any bar or barcade It's in Wyoming?
    24:12
    It will be. We're going to get to Wyoming. Don't worry. You're going to come out and visit. We're going to go to the Ellis Tower. We'll see some aliens. We'll get you probed. It'll be fun. I love that.
    24:25
    Cartman? I'm not touching that. I love that. Oh, good. We'll get the salt tonight. so the Mandalorian we haven't seen anything yet except the teaser video we'll probably see it this Tuesday they'll release some video and you know I'll be in Vegas when that happens you'll be in Vegas with Kimba Hall of Fame having fun maybe we'll get a Mandalorian when I get there I don't think they'll have it that quick I'm excited about it because I really really like the show it's the first TV show literally that I can remember with the boys where you know Rusty and I and the boys sat down together and watch this every week. Every Friday night, I'd get home from work, we'd have dinner, oh, Mandalorian's on, and we'd sit down as a family and watch it like we did with TV when I was a kid. Because I watched almost no television anymore. But we would do it with that. I loved that, because it was like, oh, I'm going to go to Grandma's when we were kids, and, you know, it was Sunday night, and we'd have Sunday dinner at Grandma's and watch The Wonderful World of Disney. Oh, they would say we'd set up a candle, and we had a bed sheet, and we'd make hand puppets, and it was... Wild kingdom, man. Mutual Omaha. In fact, Wyoming is not far from Nebraska. I'm going to drive over to Omaha just so I can go to the Mutual Omaha building. Nice. Take a picture. Mutual friends. Mutual of Omaha. That's right. I'm sorry, man. Martin Perkins died some time ago. Dude, Jim died, okay? Yeah. That was more recently, though. You know who else died today? Yeah. Johnny Catane. I know.
    26:02
    Rock's greatest date, man. Was he run over by a jaguar? they don't really know what happened she's 59 and looked pretty rough actually she had problems with drugs and alcohol it's probably related but I don't know here's the thing we saw this video when I was like in the 80's oh yeah yeah yeah who didn't like that video even if she was clean now you can't abuse your body for as long and as hard as she probably did and expect to have a long run. But it's a real shame, you know. She was also in a rap video. She was dating... She was married to one of the dudes. Yeah, Robin Crosby. Yeah, yeah. And then she married David Coverdell. She's from San Diego, so it was Robin Crosby from rap who died of AIDS back in the 90s. Oh, I didn't know that. You did a lot of heroin in the 60s. A lot of heroin. Mainlining, that's what you do. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that guy did a lot of drugs. But it's unfortunate. And it's like, it just makes you feel older. It's like, fuck, another person from our youth died. Anyway, a little more happiness. Let's talk about The Mandalorian. So, what we know, we know who's designing, who's coding. We know who's on art. Can't remember the guy's name. Who's on art? He did the Star Wars comic art. Oh, wow. That guy. So. That might be cool. And I've heard that the artwork's supposed to look like the pre-production stills that they show at the end of the episode. I've read that rumor somewhere, too. So, yeah. So, that would be cool. Yeah. So, big question on this game, because of all the stupid controversy around it, will Cara Doon be in there or not? That's a great question. I hope they take the high road and don't, you know, bow to the stupidity and just have her in there. Disney's got to approve it, so no she won't. Gina Carano? So, Kathleen Kennedy, that would be way too close to... Carano, yeah. I really want to see her jump to death on her own block. I'm sure Kathleen Kennedy has absolutely nothing to do with approving the Mandalorian. What the hell happened to Gina Carano? He opened her mouth and violated her contract. Yeah, she shot her mouth off on social media repeatedly. After she got away with it, she kept doing it. Yeah. And they finally found her. Yeah, exactly. Which sucks because Cara Dune was awesome. Yeah, great character. Great character. And she was perfect for the role. And what really sucks for her is, like, she threw away the keys of the kingdom. They had a spinoff planned. Yeah. Like, you know, it was like Rangers of the New Republic. Yeah. She had it going on and she just couldn't keep on the call. And hey, I'm all for it. Say what you want, but when you're with your friends or when you're around people or stuff, man, shut up on the internet. Right. You don't know where that's going to go. You've got to understand you're a public figure and your words will be used against you. Look at how many people have been brought down now because they just can't... Well, I mean, Johnny's up, right? What the fuck did he do? I have no idea. I don't keep track. Him and his wife just couldn't get along. Okay. You know, and yeah, he got brought down. James Gunn got brought down but managed to come back. Like crap from like a decade ago. Yeah, who was the other guy? Just a bunch of big people just have had their careers just destroyed because they just can't get up, you know? Yeah, guys are not down. Cuomo. Yeah, that dude is a monster. And we'll see if she's going to be in it. Hopefully, they will have her in it a little bit. She will not be in it. They're going to have baby Yoda, so... You can't go out and get a Cara Dune action figure. No, you can't. That's the whole thing. If you didn't get one while they were out there, you know, like I said, they're not paying her. They're not doing anything. I mean, they probably could just use her likeness as much as they want and not pay her shit, but that's just not... That's a house of style. I'm saying she probably was so sold out. The rumor is the game's going to have an upper playfield. The rumor is it flips or does something. It's got two flippers and six drop targets. And then it has the ship, which I forget the name of the ship. The Razor Crest. Thank you. Razor Crest. That's it. Thank you, Dan. Which got destroyed. It did, huh? Oh.
    30:18
    Shit, it did. Eric's crying in the corner now. You've got to watch this. It's really good. I'll ask again. Is Jargon in it? Yes. yes oh I'm there is he yes I'm there shit he is huh shut up no I just I haven't watched it like a year what a shit he is no I haven't watched it like a year I don't remember okay everybody's in the fuck they bring back everybody dude it is awesome and it is literally the best Star Wars thing to happen and Bill Burr Bill Burr's in it that's the worst thing about it is just I do not like Bill Burr although by the time he was done appearing I liked his character mark. Do we need more Star Wars pinball? Yeah, because somebody needs to fucking do it right for once. I know, right? We had Star Wars, what? How many years ago? The first one was in 70... No, no. The first Star Wars. The Carl Weathers made you the car. You, pinball psychophilia.
    31:17
    When did Star Wars come out? July 2017. What's the name of that one? End of June, beginning of July. So it's three years, four years, and we have the home version, and we have the comic re-releases, and we have the home comic re-release. Like, do we need more Star Wars pinball? Like, I love the show, and I'm not really excited about the game. Hold on. Disney accountant checks his books. Yeah, we need more Star Wars. We need more Star Wars. Well, and I mean, Disney accountant is irrelevant, right? Because it's Stern undoubtedly going to Disney and saying, how much is this so we can make the Mandalorian? And Disney says yes. And Disney says, of course they do. And I said six months ago on the show, make the fucking Mandalorian. It'll sell like a motherfucker. That's what Disney does. I just don't. He wished upon a star, and it came true. Because it's the fucking money machine. I'm more excited about the fact that it's Brian Eddy than the fact that it's the Mandalorian. So for people that don't know, what other good games has Brian Eddy done? Medieval Madness. Attack of Mars. Shadow. Which is what it's supposed to be layered like, I've heard, too. and it's supposed to be layered like shadow. And so a lot of people, present company included, just shit incessantly on Scanger Things even though they played it a little off. I would drive to the pizza place as soon as we done and literally take a shit on that game It not fair I don even know Are they open yet Yeah they are but the pinballs are not there anymore What was that Vito Can you listen now Yeah, they're gone. Vito's Pizza. Who ran that? Oh, sorry. I don't mean to derail it. No, man. That's all we do on this show. The guys at Retro. There are no rails in this fucking show. Okay, this show, we have five GoBizDads. We all have our own motherfucking train set.
    33:02
    Great York, now you as hell. So am I. So, Alex, you were saying who was running those games today? Shout out to Chris and Dallas over at the Retro. They were the ones doing Vitos.
    33:17
    And then when COVID hit, yeah, they pulled them out. Was that the same guy that was doing the pizza place over at West Sack close down? No, different guy. No, that was Jason Borough. Steve Burrell. That was a great location, too. That was. I miss it. It was great. It just didn't make it. Just kidding. Well, it was, you know, it just didn't pop. It was a big spot and an expensive shop. Yeah. But parking was great because I'm like, all the places downtown, you can have great game stuff. Yeah. You can't find parking anywhere downtown. I'm trying to get into Fannie Ann's. I always get the parking lot. I never park out on the street. I never have any problems finding parking downtown. You guys don't know how to work it.
    33:57
    Okay. I rarely have problems finding parking downtown. Yeah. Some people complain about it. For free. not paying. Yeah. I don't mind walking because I don't really complain about parking. Bingo. Other people do. Yeah. But I just, to me, it's like, again, I'm not trying to shit on the theme. I apparently, I mean, the 750 games is no big fucking deal because it's just the speculators, right? Everybody's getting in because, you know, it's like, get in or don't get your limited edition and have to pay more later and whatever, but even though they're going to do a premium, so everyone's going to get a game that wants it. But, what I think it really comes down to is just like,
    34:36
    you know, it's a can't-miss thing, right? Yeah, you'd think so. Okay. But Game of Thrones was a can't-miss thing, and it didn't like the world on fire. Stranger Things was a can't-miss thing. Stranger Things was a can't-miss thing, and it didn't like the world on fire.
    34:51
    What was the other one that I had when we were talking about it earlier? But, yeah. Aerosmith. Well, no, because Aerosmith is a legacy theme and a rock band thing. Ninja Turtles is a legacy theme. It's playing for the 40-year-olds, right? Like we were just talking about. It's trying to sell to actually people probably somewhere between me and you because it wants the people who remember that cartoon and they're like, I'm going to spend the money. It didn't make any money. Like your example where you said, I watched The Mandalorian with my kids. My kids love it. I love watching it with them. Great. That's perfect. That's what Stern's counting on. You love Star Wars. Okay, I watched six Star Wars movies the other day for May the 4th be with you. Okay? Actually, I watched probably four and a half. So you watched three good ones and a bunch of others as well. I pretty much just let episode one and episode two play in the background.
    35:47
    Checking my email. But yeah, you know, it was like, I am a Star Wars mark. Like, I'm the person who will buy Star Wars. And just like, even I'm like, I like Bay of the Lion. I like the show. I'm waiting for more. I'm excited that they're doing a Boba Fett series. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm just not that excited as a pinball fan about The Mandalorian pinball. Hopefully when I see it, the art will be great, the sound will be great, it'll capture my imagination.
    36:14
    But it all boils down to the same thing. Is it a good shooter or not? Yeah. I mean, that's really the main thing because it's going to be fun. Yeah. And I'm hoping it is because I remember like when Black Knight Sword of Rage was coming out. I mean, Dan and I were like two little schoolboys. We were on the phone gushing for an hour and a half. You know, This is before the topper. Just like, fuck, this looks so awesome. I can't wait to play it. I'm still thinking about buying one. Oh, it is awesome. And I want one. But I can't buy, like, you know, because we'll get to the, I'm buying a couple of new box games or something. You know. We'll get to that in a bit. The shitty thing about Black Knight Sword of Rage was just, like, legitimately, like, they mishandled the, I mean, and I will always believe they mishandled the pro. I know a lot of people are like, the pro is better. but I just I think they mishandled the pro you know I just do there's two camps and you're in the one camp and there's the other camp where everybody's like the pro's great it's not like a ruined game but like it's just not the whole game right because you don't have the upper plate I really didn't have the upper plate unless you got the LE you know to this day I have never played a premium or an LE I only played the pro I actually have the pro at my house right now I'm borrowing it from Chris Bryant and you know it's fine it's a good shooter man it's a Steve Ritchie it's got great rules you know it's got a lot you can do to make points but it's just like you know and I love Game of Thrones and when Game of Thrones came out it was the most popular show in the world and it wasn't Star Wars obviously but like I said I don't think to the entire world. The Mandalorian thing is big, but I mean, I don't think it's going... I don't think it's selling based on... I think it's selling based on the market. Yeah, I mean, it's stuff that you used to open up, because in a lot of other places in America, it's more open than here. But the Mandalorian will catch the imagination and the attention of a younger audience than, say, another Star Wars property. I totally agree with you. Because it's current. Just like Stranger Things, you know, I brought Seth because Mickey likes Stranger Things, but Seth turned me on to the show, because he turned Mom on to it, and then we all started watching together, so I said, Seth, Stranger Things pinball is brand new. You want to come and play? He goes, yeah, I do. He was all excited, because it's like, it's Stranger Things, and it's pinball. So, I think it might capture that, like I said, man, you've got the Mandalorian and stuff, you've got Baby Yoda, I mean, that alone will get people's attention, that maybe didn't follow Star Wars as closely. Star Wars tells the dudes in their 40s. It does. 40s to 60s. That's it. Like I said, that's just all there is to it. Star Wars sells to dudes in their 40s and 50s and even older. But, you know, while I know there is a younger generation who likes Star Wars, like I said, I don't see Star Wars being or I don't see Mandalorian being that big a deal to young people. I don't think that they found the young people license. And, you know, I don't think that, you know, I think that right now what we're seeing, again, we're seeing the usual pinball, new title, pre-release. We don't know anything. So our imaginations are running wild. I'm not going to say FOMO yet. We don't know anything because our imaginations are running wild. As we've talked about a little bit earlier, maybe we're going to talk about it again a little bit later, the speculation force is strong. Yes. Right now, the speculators are strong. Even the operators or even the distributors are starting to take advantage of that. So, yeah, obviously, the people who are going to spend $10,000 have lined up and have said, hey, we want to spend our $10,000, but when the pros are out there and the premiums are out there and it's readily available, will it be Ghostbusters, where they're just going to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, or will it be you know, or will it be Star Wars, right? Like, Star Wars, even though everybody in pinball shits on it,
    40:11
    I'm sure it's sold, you know, there's plenty of Star Wars out there. There's still some of them. You know, so, you know, I'm sure for anything Star Wars is a fake one. Three years later, almost four years later, they're still writing that fucking title.
    40:26
    Right. Well, they're on like their fifth version of it now. Something like that. You know, and I hear you go just like, you know, and Star Wars is a cool game, you know.
    40:35
    You know, I was talking to Jeff Claybaugh. Shout out to Jeff. Yeah. And, you know, he was talking to me the other day, and he's just like, man, I just can't get over how much I like playing my Star Wars. Yeah. You know, he has a premium. Something the same as he wants. He gave us a Budhead to do America. Oh, dude, he was in Budhead would be a fucking thing. I would love that. And Budhead would be a winner. But this could be the biggest problem because most of the material from it is missing. Because they'd have to bring in those early shows. Before they edit it all out. and ended all the bullshit out. Those were genius shows. Here's the thing with Beavis and Butthead, right?
    41:19
    Once again, not looking for you to our age because we popped out in the face, right? But I mean, I think Beavis and Butthead could very easily be like what they did with Rick and Morty. Because I think that if they went to Mike Judge, right, if they went to Mike judge and said, dude, we want to make Beavis and Butt-Head, like, it isn't even, I mean, I don't know. Or King of the Hill. I guess MTV would have to be involved. But I'm just saying, it's not like he wouldn't do voices, and it's not like they wouldn't do new animation. Or Office Space. You know? It doesn't have to be. I mean, honestly, it probably shouldn't be the old shit from the 90s, because let's be honest, while it was fucked up and hilarious, it doesn't look that good. You're not going to want to see that on an HD screen. But that's it. Harold and Kumar going to White Castle? You go to White Castle. So Tuesday, this Tuesday, we should see and hear more about the Mandalorian, and then it's really going to take off. I think it's a good game. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward just to reading all the crap. No matter what, people are going to be pissed off. It's not going to matter. People are going to be upset about it. For one reason or another, it's always going to be something stupid. Are you reading it now? No. Oh, dude, it's already so good.
    42:42
    It's just so good. I just hope that people are going to give up some of their more premium games to get the Mandalorian. And they will. Here in like a week, it'll be a good time if you have like $7,000, $8,000 set aside and you're ready to pick up a good game. It'll be a great time because a lot of people will be dumping, you know, current stuff if you're looking for something. It'll probably be a really good time to buy a Black Knight, unfortunately. Unfortunately, I got another game on. I don't hate that game. I don't either. I don't hate it, but it's one of those ones where I thought it would be better than it is. Did you choose Amazing Well? The world says just too shallow. It's fun. Like, that's a fun game.
    43:24
    Probably a great league night game. True. Did you play Epic Gems? No, I've only played it at Coin Out. Every game does not do well. It has to be the world's most difficult game.
    43:36
    So did Vito's. Did you play, was it a pro? I think it was a pro, yeah. Yeah, okay. So, you know, here's the thing. The pro is me.
    43:44
    The premium Splash Limited Edition is better. The lower playfield is actually really fucking cool. I like the under playfield. That was actually pretty cool. Like, I think that that game is heavy duty, and I know that, again, everybody in the pinball hobby is like, ah, the rules aren't deep enough. But, man, every, you know, I have not come close to seeing the end of Pirates of the Caribbean. I can't even get to Cyborg on my freaking Iron Maiden, and I keep coming so close. Like, you know, I know for you. Not for Atticus. I don't know. I don't know about Cyborg. Atticus just gets soul shards. He does get soul shards, though. You know, don't get me wrong. I don't mind the game with the shallow rule set that I can run it around a few times. Like, I can get to Monsters of Rock, and I don't hate Monster Bash. so yeah you know the only thing that I think you know sucks about monsters is again that people are unhappy with it because they had an expectation and I just think that expectations are running wild I've already heard people bitching about Mandalorian because of Lonnie being on the code and it's just like the game's not even out man it might be amazing like give them a chance not every fucking game can be coded by a line of sheets I don't think he's coding anymore. He's just working on a new program. No, he's working on Elvira and then Apparel. The rumor is that he's going to be working on the next Rock theme.
    45:10
    Which the rumor is that it's Rush. I can get a button for that. Hey, are we still talking about Mandalorian? Are we going to move on to the next topic? You're the fucking host, man. I don't know. Well, I didn't know if anybody else had anything good to say. I think y'all covered it pretty good. But I'm excited for it and I think we all are. So, I finally got to play Hot Wheels. I swung up a week ago up to Out of Order Arcade in Auburn. Oh, yeah. We all heard about that. And they've got a Hot Wheels on location. I played a few games. Go support Out of Order Arcade in Auburn. Yes. Yeah, please do. They've got a good lineup now. What games do they have now, Alex? They've got a Hot Wheels, a Turtles Pro, an Iron Maiden Pro, a Jurassic Pro, a Deadpool Pro, and a Theater of Magic. That is for sale. Pro. Yeah, pro. Actually, it's an LE.
    46:01
    Is it a real console or a remake? It's an original. Yeah. The original. Not yet. They talked about it. $6,500. That game's amazing, and I'm considering buying one. Yeah. I'm seriously considering it. I wonder if he sold it already. I'm not sure. There was a guy. Oh, Hot Wheels, not theater? Okay, yeah. No. Fuck theater. Okay. Dude, Hot Wheels, brand new 6K, man. That's a great deal. No, but I do, because we're talking about that game. That game is fast. It shoots fun. A couple of shots are pretty tight, but... It's fun to shoot. It's not as tight as Houdini. If you must kind of get them dialed in, then once I've got them dialed in, I can hit the shots with some regularity.
    46:43
    So, I've always said in the pictures that it reminds me of Getaway. Does it shoot like the Getaway? Yes, it does. Think Getaway with Iron Man and a little bit of Cross between Getaway and Iron Man. Yes. And their Redline Mania is a multi-ball and the light show on that is, I hit it and I, you know, I come like second game I'm like, oh, what am I doing? What's this? First I thought I tilted. Okay? Because all the lights went out. No. I know, right? But then all of a sudden the screen starts going crazy. I'm like, oh shit, I broke the game. And, uh, because I didn't even nudge it. You know, it's like, oh, what'd I do? So wait a minute, you already got to the final mode? No, that's, I don't even, I got like three or four multi-balls on my hand. So the red line maybe is not the final mode? No, no, but it's cool. So then there's the Hot Wheels logo with the flame that we all know. All the lights go out and then the whole game pulses red except for the Hot Wheels logo which pulses in like yellow-orange with the flame. And then you get And you get a six-ball multi-ball. It's just going great. And it's a 60-second, 30-second timer. Yeah, yeah. You're just shooting the six jackpot shots. Right. You're just shooting the lit jackpot shots. The last one is the super. Yeah. And then you do it again. Then you do it again if you can.
    48:01
    Overall, it's a really fun game. It's got great shots. Some real easy. Some require a little more skill. It's well-balanced. The theme everybody knows. The display is good. The light show is good. The call-outs are good. The sound and music are good. overall, man, I'd give this thing like an 8 out of a 10. I've got to play it more. But I mean, really, really like it. I was just there earlier today playing it. And they're going to get one at another location in Sacramento. If you haven't had a chance to play Hot Wheels from American Pinball, check it out because it's really a lot of fun and it's real family friendly. It is. Which, we're kind of short on good family friendly themes these days. We could use a few more. This is the kind of game you can put in a pizza place. You can put in a burger shop, you can put in the bowling alley. Dad's going to know it because, oh, he had Hot Wheels when he was a kid, most likely. I did, and I'm the old guy here. When they still came with little badges with the car, remember those? Little metal badge. Yeah, you could take it to the end of the track and you could hit someone and it really left a good mark. That's right. Yes. Not that anybody knows about using the track as weapons here. I got beat with a Hot Wheels track as a kid. That was hurt. That was hurt bad.
    49:08
    If you got it right, it would cut you. I got whipped on one time. That fucking sucked. Edges were pretty sharp. But anyway, Hot Wheels is a fun game. It's not sharp. They did a really, really nice job. If you get a chance to play it, definitely put some money into it. So we'll just move through Hot Wheels quick because Alex has a trip report. Actually, a new location opened in Sacramento. There is. I think it's called Henry's. Not Henry's Lounge off of K Street, obviously, but it's supposed to be called like Henry's Tavern or something.
    49:40
    It's off of 21st and O. That's all I know of. It's way down there. Yeah, it's a little ways from here.
    49:48
    But, yeah, it's supposed to have six or eight pinball machines. And they're getting the Hot Wheels and the Led Zeppelin. Hot Wheels and the Led Zeppelin, yep. They're supposed to have a Jurassic Park, a Beatles.
    50:02
    That's as far as I know. And hopefully a T-Dog. That would be sweet. Yeah, I love that game. A T-Dog. I love that game. I love that one. Yes, I love that game.
    50:14
    And an Elvis. So up next, no end in sight for pinball pricing. I'll start off this one. So a friend of the show and who was a guest at one time, I'm going to have him back on again, Fat Train, Justin Kelly, put his Tron LE that he bought brand new in the box when it first came out, put it up on eBay for the grand price of $25,000. Woo! and sold it for asking. Woo-hoo! Bill Branditz, who comes to Golden State Football Festival, he's one of our Canadian neighbors to the north, and he, from what I heard, sold his Tri-LE and a Rick and Morty in a package deal for $30,000.
    51:01
    There was a new in-box Pirates of the Caribbean collector's edition that went for $36,000. Yep. I'll take that 16 GTO that I saw at a dealership instead of those games any day of the week.
    51:18
    I can't argue that. That's insane speculative pricing. That's crazy. Well, and usually when I start hitting this, it's investors, and that's usually a signal of a price drop coming. That's happened in a lot of different hobbies. It's not dropping down to crazy 2,000 levels, but it's leveling off. Yeah. Every hobby has had a precursor like that. Which day did you buy it? I don't know. $1,500. What year?
    51:47
    2001. Yeah. If you look at all the listings, they're around $9,000 now. Yeah. The games everywhere have just... I mean, I've been looking for an Attack of Mars and a remake. Well, I'd like an original if I could find a good one. I wanted to pay more money for a good one. I've seen a couple of eight grand and they're blown out. It's like, fuck you. You know, so the only one I could find is a standard edition or a classic, and they want $8,500 for it, new in box. When those were retail at $65, they again, fuck you all the way. Okay, so here's the difference, right? If you own anything long enough, it will basically increase in value, right? Right. Like, that's the theory. Now, not everything does, but like anything desirable. So Twilight Zone, you know, getting into your Twilight Zone 15, 20 years ago for $1,500 or like mine, I'm in for a couple thousand. Like, you know, okay, I see why you'd make money. $2,000 for five, is that what you would say? I know, right? That was $2,200. It was the most I was ever going to spend on a game. And everybody said, what are you insane? No, that was a smoking deal. That was after everyone told me I was insane. Everyone told me I was insane when I bought Judge Dredd.
    53:00
    For $900. So this is kind of what we were talking about earlier, right? Like you've got a speculator community now, right? And that's part of any hobby, like Brian was saying. Like pinball is multifaceted.
    53:14
    You've got players. You've got collectors. You've got restorers. And you have speculators. And they can intermingle. Like you can be a little of both. Right now the speculator part of the hobby because of, you know, I think a lot of Pinside, a very specific podcast, you know, those guys are kind of running wild. I mean, it's happening really, really heavy in classic video games. Yes. Like, you know, Nintendo games, you know, are selling for $1,500, $2,000, $3,000, $10,000, $100,000. And that's not even an exaggeration. Like, you know, I know. I saw that. I saw the old examples of Super Mario Brothers, the most common game ever made, 100K. It's like, what the fuck is going on? It's just that right now there is a subset of the population, of the society, of the hobby that has more money and their idea of a good time in the hobby is like buy now, sell later. That's how I have fun. So, you know, I don't think like, you know, it's like, oh, my God, it's the precursor of a fall. But, I mean, you know, Brian's not wrong. Like comics, you know, when the speculator attitude got, when the speculators overtook all the other aspects, when the speculators overtook the readers, comics crashed. Sports cars. Comic books. Sports cars. Sports cars, you know. Y&L Train. Yes. Muscle cars. They haven't gotten in. You can test this. They haven't gotten back down to those weird prices, but they're nowhere. They didn't crash in the 90s. Well, Muscle Car got big because of the advent of the nationwide marketplace. You know, there didn't used to be, you know, it used to be a very local marketplace. And pinball's kind of the same thing, right? Like people, you know, he didn't sell that Tron to somebody local for $25,000. Right. Like that machine's being shipped away. Right. So, you know, if you put something on the internet, you'll probably find someone who wants to buy it. Sure. but you know I'm not worried about the value of games but I'm also not someone who gets into games because of the value I get into games because I want the game. We're all players we have collections I would say yeah by and by large you know that's kind of our subset but it doesn't mean that again the speculator side of it's wrong you know I don't consider what Justin did speculation because Justin bought that game, played it for 10 years. Right, right. And then made a killing on it. I'm happy. No, the speculative guys are buying it. They're going to get their Mandalorian LE and the second they get it, they're going to flip it for 15 or 16. Right, and that's what they're doing right now. You know, people are like, hey, it's a safe buy. I can spend 9,000 bucks on this. I can maybe make a couple thousand immediately or worst case scenario, I can open it. Yeah. You know, so, you know, as long as that doesn't ruin the market for the people who are going to buy pros and are going to buy premiums, fine. fucking let them. If they want to trade games at high prices among themselves as long as the games are out there when we're ready to buy them that's fine. I don't care if somebody wants to spend big money on a new in-box game I just want there to be enough of them out there so that when it's time to buy one, I'm not like oh my god, I can't find it I'm not going to mortgage my house to buy a pinball machine I'll sell two or three pinball machines to buy a pinball machine if it's an expensive one that I want bad enough. But yeah, I'm not going to sacrifice my well-being. And I don't think that you'll ever get to a point in our hobby where a lot of people will do that. I'm sure there's people doing that right now. I have no doubt.
    57:05
    With the interest rates on housing being so cheap. True. Yeah, there's people doing that right now. Just like in 2008 where people went in and took out money against their house and bought Humvees or motorboats or whatever. We're doing it for pinball machines right now. Right, but I mean for the express purpose of reselling. Right.
    57:26
    I don't know if they can make money at it. I don't know. They're doing it. Well, that's good. There's that speculator benefit, right? But, I mean, I don't think, again, that nobody's betting the farm. I mean, people are betting the farm on crypto, but I don't think anyone's betting the farm on pinball. People bet their farm on hoverboards a couple of years ago and lost their asses for that hot Christmas thing, so why wouldn't they do it for pinball? That was not. Yes, exactly. That was not even close to it. Sure it is. It's a luxury item that was a hobby and was supposed to be the hot toy. This is a luxury item. Right. Exactly the same thing. That's why I invest my money in Narcos subs. That's a good thing.
    58:03
    Now that's a market right there, baby. That's great. That's, you know, four in a week. That's a good thing. Anything illegal like that, you know, it might not even be illegal. I invest in the black market for babies. Yeah. I don't even think that's illegal. I'm taking kids that somebody doesn't want. Give me somebody else. The Chinese organ market. Yeah, there you go. I'm taking the kidneys.
    58:32
    There you go, man. I'm giving mine a workout with one of these beers. Precious metals, boys and girls. Precious metals. Yeah. So, because, oh, I quit smoking four months and change, you know. Congratulations. All right. And I've been spending all my cigarette money on sober. I think it's just, that's the silver. Anyway, yeah, I think we're all kind of in the same boat. Well, you know, beyond the newer games and stuff, because this kind of ties in with Fathom, is those older games, all the old Valley games, you know, the 90s games, the 80s games, the late 70s, early 80s sterns. Have you seen some of the prices going? And not even like the real, really. You know, like, you know, $8,000, like not restored. There's very few exceptions. Everything's gone up. Yeah, yeah. Quicksilver, just crazy prices. with the roasted plate film. There is the $6,000 Funhouse that was in slightly better shape than mine in the Bay Area. The guy was like, $6,000 firm, I know what I have. Yeah, yeah. It's like you got it roasted out. It wasn't roasted. Like I said, it was in better shape than mine. Mine's fine. Mine's rough. And that's being very nice about it. But you've got a brand new plate film waiting to go in. Yes, we're waiting for it.
    59:38
    It is pure. Adam and I, shout out to Adam Pressler. We were talking about that with his godly spirit. He's got it back home with the new reproduction playfield. But he set that playfield, he opened the box, and just set it on a game and let it cure in his house for over a year. Before he even took it to Cheddar, shout out to Cheddar, for installation. Speaking of Cheddar, I think that's what he's doing with my creature. He's trying to tell me that he's letting it cure. He was literally just putting it out. Five truckloads of crappy games. He was just hitting him and Juniper out. They were like out in some field, hauling games across an open field. It was like, what are you guys, on the Oregon Trail? Buying him all night. Oh, no shit. They were in the park or something. Dude, he just had like, yeah. He's got a hookup right now.
    60:37
    And where every time he's pulling four or five old EMs, you know, like good old... And the occasional solid state. The occasional solid state, yeah. But I think that, you know, I don't think that the speculator market at this point is bad for pinball. I don't think so.
    60:55
    It's bad for us that want to buy or cheat buckets like me. Well, I mean, I'm talking about with the new games. Yeah. It's funding the companies. Yeah. It's putting games in the marketplace. And again, if they're selling all the limited editions to speculators, but there's still pros and premiums out there. It's not hurting anybody. You know, again, that's... We're all players. Right. It's a market... It's a market satiating a market. So, speaking of the selling to speculators and all that stuff, the big thing now is there's been a bunch of distributors who are saying, what's your offer for my LE or going over MSRP? Yeah. And everyone's losing their goddamn minds over it. Yeah. And I think it's funny because all they're doing is getting it on the speculation market. Yeah. That's okay. But if you're a distributor doing it, It's not a good thing. But, hold on. Yeah. It's something that's happened to stuff forever. Yeah, right. Quote, unquote, limited edition cars have been doing that forever. They've been doing that forever. And it's just something you have to do. Nobody pays MSRP on a fucking special car. Well, unless you get very lucky. There are dealers that do it. Just like there's distributors that'll do it. But for me, I don't see it. It's like it's MSRP. It's not a hard set price like it is with Apple with their phones or anything like that. manufacturers suggested retail price. And that's exactly what I was saying, right? So,
    62:14
    the hot story is that a distributor is asking around, saying, hey, fun, if you want to limit it, of course it's fun. If you want to limit it, you know, you're paying over price, right? And it's basically just the distributor getting into the speculator market, right? Like, he's going to beat the speculators at their own game. He's going to make some extra money. Because here's the thing, with these games, margins are not huge. Raise your hand. Right. Like, they are not making a lot of money per game. I mean, it is a lot of money if you look at it from the standpoint that it's like, oh, it's $1,000 or whatever. But when you're talking about the fact of how much the games cost and how much they have to buy, yeah, it's not a lot of money. And if the game doesn't sell and it sits on their hands, you know, So, I think, you know, and again, I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Just bothering. You know, and again, it's a reason that, you know, hey, if, you know, and Stern started this with Beatles, where they said, look, if you buy 10 Beatles, you know, you're going to get seven golds, two platinums, and one diamond. Right. And you have to sell the golds for this much, but you can sell the platinums and the diamonds for whatever you can get.
    63:36
    Go make your money, right? And the whole hobby goes, ah, it's the end of the world. Was it the end of the world? No. You know, did hopefully some distributors manage to make some money? Hey, maybe. And maybe it let them give deals on other games. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know it's frustrating to want to buy a game and not being able to find it for the rock bottom price. but, you know, you want to play. Yeah, to me, without these speculators, some of these games, I don't think they would have been made. Right. If there wasn't at least some chunk of the speculator market that's willing to just throw money at an idea. I mean, you know, it can go really bad, like the Dutch Brothers stuff, and it can go really bad like that. Dutch Pinball. Sorry. I think Dutch Brothers is probably like the best fucking game you can make. Dutch Brothers Pinball, yes. You can make. Oh, my God. Fred River Alien. Yeah, Fred River Alien. Dutch Brothers pinball. I love that. Next thing. You know, if they know we're going to have 500 people that will walk up and just plump down 10 grand on Mandalorian right off the bat. Right. Without seeing anything. Right. That happens with almost every single release. Yeah. Without fail. And then without fail, people bitch about it. Yeah. What are they doing? And then patients with Alzheimer's, those same guys will come back. We're going to come back. Oh, that's right. Here's my money. Yeah. You know, that's just, it's how it is. And then it just recycles ad nauseum. Yeah. But, you know, I think that there's probably some games out there that wouldn't have been made without the people who wanted to throw that money down. Right. You know? Well, that's... Sorry, go ahead. That's why I think it's not bad. I know it's frustrating. I know. I get it But like I said the people at the top have to make some money Yeah You know and the distributors How frustrating would it be like with your black mac poppers as these guys are selling them for I don't know what the market is. I don't know what their cut of the pie is. But then, you know, a month later, people are reselling them for $2,500. How frustrating would you be as a distributor? I'd be frustrated. Distributors are asking way more than they have been asking in the original price now. But. Way more. The danger is if you don't, like with the topper, that's a great example. The danger is this, right? The reason that this works is because you have the limited edition, which is where the speculation is happening, but you have the premium and you have the pro, which are mass market available. So the players, the casuals, the operators can still get their piece. The problem will come when the speculation torpedoes the market, right? And that's what happened with comic books was comic books turned into a spec. The manufacturers were catering to the speculant. Not to the readers. And when the speculators overtook the readers, comics collapsed, right? The readers were no longer willing to. They never come back. Oh, yeah. They're not even close to what they were in the 90s, right?
    66:34
    And the readers were not willing to put up with what happened in the comic book stores, right? What happened with the markets? They weren't taking care of the core market. No, I'm one of those people. Whether it was intentional or whether it was accidental, right? Like Rick and Morty is a prime example, right? There's only Rick and Morty out there for collectors. There's only Rick and Morty out there for people who are trading it at a high level. Right. There was no mass market option for Rick and Morty. Right. If Rick and Morty was all there was in pinball, we would be screwed. But what would happen was pinball would go like, pinball fans would be like, fine, fuck it, we're done. We're not going to buy the next game. And Spooky would bring out the next game. They'd sell like 10 of them because the casuals left. The speculators were left sitting on their stock, and they couldn't resell it, and that's where pinball would collapse. I think, like Eric was saying, people buying the crap out of LEs basically makes the companies go, hey, look, we're making our money on these LEs. We're going to make slightly less money on the premiums. They're going to make slightly less money on the pros, but it's going to fund further development. It's going to fund expansion. Right. You know, for a boutique company like Spooky, what they did with Rick and Morty makes perfect sense, right? They were never going to make 10,000 Rick and Mortys. No. You know, it just was never going to happen. So, you know, if I really wanted Rick and Morty, I'd be upset, and that's what drives the FOMO mentality, right? Oh, I've got to get in on this limited edition because I don't want to miss it. The next Spooky will sell out in 30 seconds. Oh, you know it will. You know that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The next spooky will start in 30 seconds because everybody will just be like, it's going to be the next Rick and Morty. This hobby is always looking for the next Big Bang Bar. This hobby is always looking for the next Pirates of the Caribbean. This hobby is always looking for the next Rick and Morty. Why? Because there's enough people in the hobby who are in it for the money who speculate. But for the players, if I love Rick and Morty and I miss out on Rick and Morty, that sucks. I have to basically own the fact that if I want it, it's going to cost me a lot of money. But luckily, there's, what, 500 games out there I can buy right now.
    68:45
    Yeah. And I can buy for $6,000. At least. And I can have today because they're going to make them as long as people will keep buying them. Yeah, it would be the similar thing with, like, Lebowski. Right.
    68:59
    Lebowski was a slightly worse story because Lebowski wasn't limited, right? They were going to make all the Lebowski's they could ever make. And, yeah, you know, bad shit happened, whether it was mismanagement, which it was definitely mismanagement, whether it was bad contracts, whatever it was. And, you know, to Dutch Pinball's credit, right, they're making good on them. Very slowly, but they're making good on them. You've got to appreciate the fact that, you know, they came out of the gate with a lot of, you know, bravado, bragging and, you know, talking about the other companies. and all that. And then they took a lot of hits because they figured out, oh, pinball's hard. But you know what? Like a little engine that could, through all the bullshit, they've managed to continue to manufacture and deliver games. Well, probably today, right? It's only one of the three guys. But you have to. He's got it. I'm going to do it. He's doing it. He's doing it. He got admired tenacity after, what, seven, eight years. But he's fulfilling the orders a little at a time. And you know what? Good for him. You know, but that's... Because they did make a hell of a great game. And that's obviously... Big Mouse Gare's point. Yeah. That's obviously what Spooky's always very mindful to avoid, right? They're just like, look, we're going to make this many. We know we can make this many in this much time, and it's going to cost us this much, and knock on wood, nothing's going to go wrong, and they're going to get made, and we're going to satisfy people just in time for them to be excited about the next title. Which, shout out to Spooky. They are now the number two employer in their little town of Benton, Wisconsin. They're enlarging again and adding yet another addition onto the factory. Okay. Who's the number one employer in Benton, Wisconsin? The bank, actually. Of course. The bank, yeah. The money. I would have guessed the school. It's either the bank or the school. Maybe the school. Maybe the school or the bank. They're number two now. That's pretty impressive. It's that pizza place where they put all their games. Yeah, right.
    71:01
    Lawrence is a eater. So shout out to Spooky and the Marvel folks. So I think that, you know, I'm happy to see prices going up and staying high. And I know that, again, it's scary. And everybody, oh, it's going to be lost, doom and gloom. But, I mean, you know, when you look at how expensive new games are getting, it makes sense that used games are expensive. Like, you know, what was the equation we were saying? It was like 50% is like opening level price, right? So if you pay $6,000 for a brand new game, you know, roughly, a used game in playable condition should probably start around $3,000. And we're talking like an entry-level game, like a Hurricane or a Judge Dredd or something. Which is right where they're at. Which is right where they're at, right? So it makes sense that, like, you're seeing more used games, especially desirable titles, that are selling for big money. And then you have the limited shit, your Tron Legacy LE. Now, I think the $25,000 price is an aberration. I think Justin walks under a lucky fucking star. I don't think every Tron LE is worth, you know, and, hey, good on you, Justin. He's a man. I don't think every Tron LE is worth $25,000 now. but you know it's obviously a game that's been desirable for 10 years and there's many many more people out there who want it than have it and they're willing to pay to get it. I played Tron the other night. It's a cool game you know. Is it worth $25,000? No but no pinball machines are worth $25,000 Pirates of the Caribbean is not worth $25,000. Medieval Madness is not worth $25,000. Big Bang Bar is not returning $25,000. Rick and Morty is not returning $25,000. Maybe a combination of them is. But, you know, it's still a cool game and I can see why if you got the money and you really want it and you're willing to do what must be done, it can happen. There you go. And that's money in the hobby. That's what matters. Just don't go out and buy two or three more games without $25,000. Right. Which leads me to our next topic.
    73:11
    Jersey Jack pinballs. Guns N' Roses, which you're getting ready to purchase. There's an LE, latest story. Spoiler. Spoiler. There's an LE, which they raised the price on now 10 and change. That was a while ago. Yeah, but it's a really, really bad playfield issue. What? You mean pinballs are having problems with their playfields? Whoa. Hold on. Clear coat problems? Yeah. Wait a minute. Hold on.
    73:42
    What kind of cutting Ed News is this. I know, right? It's still happening. And you think they have that shit fixed. It is going to happen. Charlie was just on another podcast like a month ago, two weeks ago, I forget which one.
    73:58
    And they were talking about it. He said, they're getting better. Their quality control is fucking damn good. Yeah. Because with Alice Cooper, he said they had one playbook they had to replace. That was apparently insanely bad. Yeah. And they said, give it to us. Yeah, give it to us and we'll take care of it. And we're going to figure out what went wrong and we're going to fix it, right? And that's, of course, the advantage of making 500 games. Yeah, that's right. That's what I'm here to do. Right. Company, you have to do that. So far, they've had no Rick and Morty playbook issues so far. They're almost done with the run. So, back to Guns N' Roses. Brian's pulling up the picture. It's really bad. And they're fixed. Not replaced the playfield. We'll send you some washers. If I spend $10,500, okay, I have Jack's number. Jack is a righteous dude he's a good dude and I know he doesn't really run the company anymore I mean there's other people so I've been calling on people if I pay 10,500 for a game going no wrong answer you're sending me a new fucking playfield yeah that's what kind of walkers are there are they nice and chrome are they like LE washers are they powder coated are they polished no they're standing out like an LG like a walker machine yeah this is not a little bubble I mean where come on we put a washer over and make it go away. This is like big. The big was also, the big truck of the paint just ripped off. This is bad. It shuddled and probably didn't cure. There was a reaction or something like that. Yeah. Or somebody, you know, maybe somebody was actually on the screen. And I know with the FOMO, you gotta get the games out. They won it once again. They won it yesterday. And, you know, it's like, these people wait. People waited for Hobbit for how long? People waited for Wizard of Oz for, what, four or five years? Whatever it took. I don't take a lot of time to get back. But now their play field's damaged. So here's what's going down. So games are shipping as fast as they can make them. Saturn, Jersey Jacks especially, because they're the bigger manufacturers. Right. And it's pretty apparent, Mike, there's been a change in the process. Digital printing. Thank you, because I was going to say that. That's giving them a lot of problems with adhesion, right? there will always be a bad play field.
    76:12
    That Guns N' Roses, that is especially bad. I'm sure Jersey Jack is going to take care of it. But the problem is what you're running into is you're running into the pooling and you're running into the chipping at the post. Hey, yeah, I own a Jersey Jack. Is the play field perfect? No. But I knew it going in. I'm buying another one, used. is the playfield perfect? As far as I know, yes, but I mean, I haven't gone through and like rubbed it down. You know, is it scary? Sure. Is it taking a chance? Sure. Is it rewarding Jersey Jack by continuously buying these games when they don't have their quality? Maybe. I mean, but here's what you got to look at, man. Playfields are consumable, right? They shouldn't fail in three months. that all there is to it. Right, yeah. But, and with the damage that we're looking at in these big, high-resolution pictures and whatnot, like, yeah, man, it looks really, really bad, but we look for it. You know, we're enthusiasts. That's true. Pinside looks for it. Pinside is full of enthusiasts and anal retentive motherfuckers. Anal retentive motherfuckers have spent ten years There are a lot of people who are, right, but I'm saying there are a lot of people, you know, who are not on Pinside who are buying these games. Don't give a shit. Well, I'm not saying they don't give a shit. They probably play them rarely. They're probably not as observant. And, you know, pooling isn't a thing to them. They don't know the term. You know, cracking is obviously a thing.
    77:42
    You know, but, like, you know, when I was talking to someone, like, how can Jersey Jack keep doing this? I'm like, does it ever occur that, like, there's probably just a lot of people who just don't even know this. And I'm not trying to say that we're wrong. We're right. Like, we're right. This is bad. But, at the same time, you have to just kind of own the fact that, again, And, you know, it won't be perfect forever if you use it. It won't be perfect forever if you don't. Yes, it's frustrating. Yes, it sucks. Maybe we should speak with our wallets and not buy. But is that better than, you know, not having the game at all? Sure. Good point. You know, even the guy who started one of the posts, and I don't remember his name, you know, but I, you know, I feel his pain. You know, he's got a fucking Guns N' Roses on order. He's not canceling his order. Right. He's still getting the game. Well, yeah. I know another guy that's getting one, too. And it's just one of those things where it's like, you know, we're taking, we're rolling the dice. And we're hoping that the companies will take care of us, right? So let me ask you a dumb question. So let's say you bought a brand new game, right? And had a bad play field. And you bitched and bitched and bitched until they sent you a play field.
    78:57
    What good does that do you? Yeah, because that's where that fucking thing is. Are you going to install it? No, fuck no. The way it has is. Hang it on the wall. It's just going to be right. Something that's going to sit, hang it on the wall, fit in the closet. I'd probably sell it. I mean, if they were smart, literally, they'd give you $1,000. They'd say, here's $1,000. Sorry about your trouble. You know? But, you know, the problem is, is I think everybody would be bitching because they'd all want their money, right? Right. So, Jersey Jack has said, look, here's what's happening. We're going to give you this shit to fix the problem. If you don't like that solution, don't buy our games. And that's, you know, I mean. And that's a rough-ass thing to do, right? Well, I just talked about it in the last segment. I mean, the markup is, the actual profit margin on pinball is extremely low. Yeah. And we should be grateful against. And you brought up a great point about.
    79:52
    They still have people waiting in line for six months. Yeah, the digital preemie. Waiting to buy. We all want it right now. You know, the instant gratification of the modern world and the Internet world. We all want it right now, and we're willing to sign because silkscreen takes forever to do. It's a very long, involved process. But here's the thing. Digital printing is cheap. And digital printing is cheaper. But games aren't. Right. So here's the thing. We've already proven that we'll wait. Yeah, and users would. We've already proven that we'll wait. We've already proven that we'll pay $10,000. So you know what? silkscreen the fucking playfields, guys. Just do it. Do it the way it's been done for, you know, for a hundred years, and it's worked. I think somebody should put Mirko's seat to the fire. Well, sure, man. You know, but Mirko is... Mirko isn't doing anything wrong. Mirko is doing what they're being asked to do. They're cranking out playfields. And isn't CPR moved it? Or whoever does move this? Everybody did. I don't think anybody is still... They can get playfields like that, where it's like, well, we'd have to run 100. Now they're like, oh, we got 10 on order. We can do 10, no problem, because Digital Printing just throw it in there.
    81:05
    And so it makes sense. Yeah, Digital Printing helps if the wood's good and call it in. And no matter what, like I said, those people are going to get to push it anyway, so I don't know what we're all worried about. Yeah, I know. I've got a Metallica Pro and the plate feels plank. And it's plank when I bought it, it was plank. And I knew it was plank. I'm like, I don't fucking care. It plays good. Yeah. Right. You know? And that doesn't make you wrong, right? Yeah. Like, you know, you're willing to overlook that problem. And if I hadn't have told you, you wouldn't notice it. No, never would have. If you were to look in there and look at it really closely, you'd go, oh, that looks weird. I mean, we've all had games where half the fucking pace is this. And we're like, if people come over, they don't go, God, half the pace is this. And they're like, dude, you got a pinball machine? That's awesome! Nobody cares.
    82:00
    I don't want to hear that. I don't know. Like you said, I'm getting ready to buy my first new inbox.
    82:07
    And it'll probably be one of two. I don't know who does it down the road, but one of two and maybe of my only new inbox experiences. So, you know, it's got to be something I want to keep for a while and that I really like, which they are going to be, but we'll get to that. We're just imagining that Jurassic Park meme. Look, everyone, this guy is planking on his play field. See? Nobody cares. I know, right? Planking? We got planking over here. I don't want to be there. Nobody cares. I can see you doing that. Jack is a good dude. All the Jersey Jack folks, all the pinball manufacturers are all really, really awesome people. I don't want to beat them up about it, but at the same time, when you drop the 10 grand into a guy like me, 10 grand is a lot. That's a big chunk of money. It is a big chunk of change, but we also know how anal retentive part of the hobby can be. Right. And they're like, oh, I got a piece of dust in my clear coat. I need a new one. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Look what happened with Ghostbusters. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I remember that. You know, so you can't blame the manufacturers for not wanting to send out a playfield for every little tiny nickel and dime defect. Yeah, playfield's a thousand bucks. Yeah. And the margin's that slim, too. Yeah. That's their profit. Well, the margins are still for the distributors. They're not bad for the manufacturers. Yeah, but still, I'm sure you don't have a thousand dollars a game. It absolutely is. I think that there was a guy who came out recently and was talking about bombs, and he basically said that Stern games cost $3,000 to build. The pros, right? Well, all of them. Here's the thing. When you buy a limited edition and you pay double the price, it doesn't cost them twice as much to build it. It maybe costs them a few hundred more dollars, but they make a lot more money. And, again, that's why speculation is good for the hobby. Because, again, people snap up the play fields or the limited. Stern makes a whole shit load of money on those and then they can afford to bring us the cheaper edition, right? So that's fine.
    83:57
    You know, they're making money, right? And that's what I'm saying. If they can say, hey, look, take back $1,000, sorry about your trouble. The problem is that, again, it's created the attitude that it's just like, I'm going to get an extra playfield out of it. And, you know, to them, an extra playfield, it doesn't cost $800. You know, it probably costs, you know, a couple hundred bucks, you know, but The problem is it's just turned into a giant pain in the ass. Well, Jersey Jack, they're not as big as Kern. They can't afford to keep – or maybe they can, but they don't want to. I mean, I believe Jersey Jack probably can't even afford to keep sucking up these play fields. And so they basically said, look, you know, we're taking a hard line. You know, this is what's happening. But, you know, at the same time, I'm sure if you went to Jack and said, dude, check it out, half of my play field fell apart, they wouldn't go like, oh, yeah, that's obvious. That's normal. No, they'd go like, okay, you know, let's bring that one in. Let's figure out where you went wrong. Let's get you a populated play field, whatever it ends up taking. You can't look at that and just go like, wow, they're just going to fuck me. But at the same time, again, like we're saying, we're taking tiny defects, which again, they're defects and it sucks, but we can't continuously expect that they're going to replace our games every time something goes wrong. And I've never bought a new game. I've always bought secondhand. So at least I've always had the strength of being able to say, I've seen this game. I've played this game. I'm fine with the faults in this game. I will pay my money. You know, it's probably a lot harder when you're opening that box and you're expecting perfection. Yeah. And maybe that's not realistic. Maybe it's not. But, I mean, you know, we've created the attitude that it's just like it's supposed to be perfect and things are going to be perfect forever. Right.
    85:44
    It's a still ball. I don't want to let the manufacturers off the hook. I really do want to say, look, go back to the more expensive play fields that took longer to make that don't break. But at the same time, like, I can also understand. Right, I can understand why they're being dickish about it. Well, but that's the thing is it's just like you've got, what, four games coming out a year, right, from Stern? So it's like, what if that was three games and they just, you know, pushed, you know, production back three, four months, whatever it took to stock all the play fields? The problem is they don't want to make, yay, thousands of play fields and take the chances they're not going to sell them. Because that was a big thing at Williams in the 90s. I know Brian knows about this. Like, they would make their run of Adams family or whatever, and they would take the rest of those play fields and they would throw them in the crusher. Oh, Jesus. They would chop them up. They would chop cabinets up and turn them into other cabinets. Yeah, they'd use them for other parts. They would set aside, like, I don't know what the number one time was. I think it was like 5% or 10% of the run for extra play fields, and the rest got used up for other stuff. And obviously, you know, a Jersey Jack or even a Stern probably just can't really afford to do that in this day and age because, you know, they're not making that much money. You know, or at least maybe they're making more money per game, but they're selling less games than a run. So it's pretty – it's a more complicated problem than I think everybody wants it to be. But, like, yeah, man. You know, I feel for the Jersey Jack owners, they're paying a premium. they should get screen they should get self screen play fields like that's it you know that's it they should get the play fields at hold together you know that's just the long and short of it but you know at the same time you know me going to Jack and going well I'm the second owner of this game and I want a free play field they should you know this is my second wife and I'm like shit exactly Yeah, right, right. So what's the next thing we have? Jack, I'm not even going to charge you this fucking company anymore. Yeah, I know, exactly. And he's a really smart guy. Yeah. Oh, Jack's a funny guy. And I do want to get enough money to buy a jersey, Jack.
    87:50
    I'll sell you one. I know you will. No, you won't because you love those kids. Only $20,000, buddy. There you go. I know you have the money. Because throw prices. Yeah, we're going to grab that. That's our last topic. Throw prices? Yeah, there we go. What about the future? The future of the show. We're going to get to that. Spencer's exciting announcement. That's two topics now. So our next topic is companies. How many companies? We were kind of talking about this earlier. There's more companies now than even in the 90s. So we'll go on real quick. Obviously, there's Stern, the powerhouse. They are now the Valley Williams. What Valley Williams is in the 90s, Stern is right now. Then you've got Jersey Jack. Then you've got Spooky. You've got American. You've got Haggis, which has only shipped one game, but they shipped a game. You've got the Pinball Brothers, who took over Alien, and they're shipping Aliens now. And you've got Dutch Pinball. So that's what? How many? That's seven, six, four. Okay, so the big four, you've got Stern, Journey to Jack, Spooky, American. And then you've got Haggis is five. The Pinball Brothers and the Alien Sticks. And then Dutch and Stout. Seven, yeah. And then is there anybody I'm missing that shipped a game that's still in business? Because Suncoast shipped a game, but they went under. So they... Cosmic Carnival. Yeah, Cosmic Carnival. Thunderbirds? Oh, oh, thank you. Thunderbirds. Home Pin, which they moved their factory from China to Hong Kong. They're building another game, and they hired... Balser and... Balser. The other dude from America. From America. and it's like yeah you realize the game you put out is literally listed is the first game Baldur's just been jumping around companies what was the other thing the whole thing was so they made Thunderbirds right which everybody shits on and it probably sucks I've never played it and then they have like and they basically said okay well screw America and Australia we're gonna have our next title be like Chinese Zombies or something yeah yeah and it was supposed to be a very China oriented title because they're going to try to sell China. Apparently, they're giving up on that or they're backburnering it and whatever they're bringing in Ballster and what's his name to work on is supposed to be very North American oriented. So they are like, okay, we're going to give this American thing a shot, which if nothing else is going to be good for the laughs. You know, I'm going to say that the fact that, well, goddammit, at least they actually shipped some games. I'm like, deep rude. Hey, look, I You know, I've never played Magic Girl. Not Magic Girl. What's the one?
    90:41
    Zombie. Not zombies. Retro Zombie. What is it? No, Home Pin. Thunderbirds. I've never played Thunderbirds, right? And I hear it's insanely bad, but it works. Okay? It exists. They've made a game. The dude made a game. I mean, he's an asshole. He's alienated the whole world of pinball by being himself. I mean, you know, just like Cara Dune, he just didn't get canceled yet. You know, I would love to see that dude manage to pull it together. I like Joe Balzer's games. I know that his reign at American was probably kind of considered a failure. People don't like his games. They didn't like Oktoberfest. I love that game. They didn't like Houdini. I think those are both fine games. I think that he did a miracle job pulling American out of the fire and giving them a working game and getting it out there. At record time. Right. Maybe he can do it again, man. Maybe he can go to China, go to Hong Kong, work with that Australian guy whose name I forget, and actually get them to make a halfway decent game. Yeah, right. Balser has just been jumping from company to company. Well, he's an American for two games. And then three. Did he work on Hot Wheels too? No. No, he didn't. He worked it. Apparently they had another game that he did, but, yeah. He was sort of like running the show, and now they have that other dude. I forgot his name. I've heard a couple interviews with him. And they've got David Davis Hartman now. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Gizmo Games isn't around anymore either. Who? Gizmo Games. Are they still around? Oh, they made the Pitcher Pack? Yeah. I don't know. Oh, they made the Zombie League? Those sold out. Yeah, there's a couple of other operators that have them. They made the Zombie but they made a traditional one as well. So, yeah. But like, you know, I would love to see Holpin because Holpin of any of the manufacturers really seem to have, like, you know, they're making games in China, and they're going to be able to make them affordable. Right. You know, because if they can get the entry level down to $4,500 or $5,000 and get a halfway decent theme and a halfway decent game, you know, it might be a game changer for the industry. But maybe it's a step in the wrong direction, you know? Right. But I would love to see them win, or at least compete, you know? Hey, you know what? I'm for anybody that can make a film machine as long as they're making a pinball machine and they get it to market and they're not sipping people who pay money. That's it. Make your game. Get your game out. Even Suncoast, I think two people, two or three people that did order didn't get sipped. But, I mean, for the most part, they delivered the game, you know? Who's the player who's, like, working for Deep Root? Even Bowden. I really want to see Deep Root win just for Bowden. Because Bowden's just such a good dude. He's just such a good dude, and I was talking to him about it. on the Facebooks, and he was just sort of like, man, I'm really hoping that you can see it. And I'm just like, you know, he's like, I was just like, we were doing like limericks or something. He did this limerick for Magic, or not Magic Girl, but for zombie. Oh, yeah. Zombie, retro-atomic. And I was just like, oh, company man to the end, and he's just like a more like a proud uncle. I'm just like, man, I hope you get this thing out there, man. He is a retro-atomic. I really want to see you guys shit this time. But man, I think they have fucking hair. Fuck.
    94:04
    Because, okay, for some reason, and somebody as a rare hero called it a cult. And he's right. The cult of J-Pop. For some reason, J-Pop keeps managing to con people into believing that he's not fucking retarded. And can actually put out a fucking show. This isn't even Papaduke's fault. Like, Papaduke turned into design. like the game is apparently playable like he didn't engineer it like he designed it right and at this point it's just management like the management shop you know Papaduke's been quiet like he paid off Papaduke's debts Papaduke turned in his design like don't get me wrong I understand again it's fashionable to shit on John Papaduke and John Papaduke made monumental fuck ups and you know whether intentionally or unintentionally and I don't believe he meant to do it, but he did. He fucked people out of money. Okay? Fucking, the worst thing that you can say about, uh,
    95:03
    who's the deep root dude? Oh, Robert Mueller? About Mueller is, he fucking paid off Papa Duke's debts and put him to work. Well, some of them. Well, apparently most of them, or at least a fair portion of them, right? You know, and now you're at the point where it's like, yeah, Magic Girl, you know, like, you've seen Magic Girl, I've seen Magic Girl. Oh, you haven't seen one? It's an abomination. Here's the thing. You see the game. And that's being kind. You see the game and you automatically go, wow, this would be really cool to work. Yeah, right. Because it is, you know, again, the art was like the beginning. You will imagine, true. The art was the beginning of Zombie Yeti. The design is definitely J-pop. It's like theater of madness at its theateriest and its magiciest. With the arrow. It's all over the place. You should take that same, though, you said, wow, this would be really cool to work. I got a buddy years ago, had a wife, and it's like, wow, she would have been really cool if she just worked or done anything. But that's the exact thing, man. It's just like you look at that game and you go like, the guy obviously had vision. He just didn't have anyone to get him over the finish line. And I think that everybody really hoped that Deep Root was going to get him over the finish line. And guess what?
    96:16
    They did. Or at least they haven't. You know? Raza looks cool. It doesn't look magic or cool, but it looks cool. It looks like it could be a fun game, but it was not the game to start a company with. I watched the video gameplay of it and was kind of like, eh. It looks cool, but it doesn't look like this shit. It doesn't look like this shit's rewriting my DNA. I feel like there's a lot of things that could go wrong with that game. Let's take the spinny little... Oh, yeah. If you played Hurricane, then you played Raza. Yeah.
    96:53
    I'm not kidding. Yeah. Really. Hurricane's not my favorite game. Oh, I don't like Hurricane. It's even got the Ferris wheel. Oh. Da-da-da-da-da-da. All he did was take every single game. Cyclone Center. Rollercoaster amusement park game. Rollercoaster. Yeah. Maybe that one. He just sort of took, like, the Williams, though, the Comet, Cyclone, Hurricane. Comet, Cyclone, Hurricane trilogy. Yeah. You pick out every game he's ever made, you're on the magnet in the same place over and over and over again. And then the spinny big ramp like in Totem. That's all it did. It's a J-pop. Like, it's a J-pop. It's a total J-pop. You know, and that's the whole thing. Again, it looks like a fine game, but it doesn't look like a game that was going to launch your company. It doesn't look like a game that people were going to put up with your bullshit for. You know, you needed, they needed, you know, if it was Goonies, whatever their Hidden Apes theme was, they needed to really say, look, here it is, this is the big one that you're all waiting for, yes we know it taking a long time but you gonna wait And people would wait but nobody fucking cares about retro zombie bullshit you know Now ten years ago zombies were hip. Nobody gives a fuck. Now zombies aren't. Zombie amusement park. We talked about The Walking Dead in a pinball podcast. Right, exactly. Oh, this one. There we go. Just now! That game's, what, six years old now? Seven. I like that game a lot I like it it shoots very well it's a fan rule set it's a wonderful game it might be the ugliest pinball machine ever made but it is fun to play I mean it's ACDC ugly yep I'll concur on that one man but yeah I mean I just you know like if Robin just kept his fucking mouth shut and just said hey we've got John, we're going to squirt shit away, and we're going to fix all this, and we're going to put out a good game, we think you'll like it. And left it at that, that would have bought them so much goodwill. It was all the bravado and all the bullshit, and all these other companies, so good, so it's like, they're putting out games, dickhead, what have you done? And now they're on the hook because they took people's money. If they hadn't taken money, they'd have been okay. But after all the bullshit now, they took money. They took pre-order, and they made promises they're not keeping. He already said, look, if you want your money back, you can have your money back with interest.
    99:25
    Well, see, before it was like, well, you'll take a penalty. No. He said if they want a refund, they get a refund with nominal interest. I mean, that's the whole thing. He's never fucking tried to steal anyone's money that I know of. Well, the problem is this, you know.
    99:39
    We just need to see something, like a real game. Like, just get it off your back, man. And stop talking more doing. Well, that's the whole thing. At this point, he's really talking. He's just updating the people who are waiting. And we're listening to those podcasts and reading those emails. And now we're talking for him. But the irony of the situation is really, it's just, again, everybody's got an opinion, right? That's just the nature of this piece, right? You do, I do. Alex does. Brian does. Eric might. I don't know. He doesn't really play pinball. Oh, yeah. And, you know, the funny thing about it is all I'm saying is I really, for Steven Bowden's sake, I want to see his project hit the fucking world. Like, I want people to play his game. Right. And, you know, experience his rules, and hopefully it will be good. And if it flops, you know, great. Maybe Deep Root goes away. And if it succeeds, hopefully they're a little bit better making their second game. But, I mean, you know, let's just, you know, let's get this game out there for Steven Bowden. you know I may not have the right attitude to have but I can get behind that Steve Bowden is just a good dude exactly man it just came out for Steve Bowden and you know the hundred people who are going to get a retro atomic will get them and hopefully they like it there you go so we're up to the final topic of the night so which is the future of the show no don't worry we're not going away we are still going away we're going away this is the last episode no it's not Spencer the last episode wait we've had a good episode we've had great memories I guess the one that Jamie was on was good the last one we did at Eric's was good that was the one that Jamie was on yeah the one with that train was just ethically good because he's such a good storyteller we've had a lot of good episodes The Sopranos was great. Hearing about the Sopranos was great. I like the Star Trek. So we're in the story where he got his first game in Jurassic Park, and he bought another game, didn't have a shaker. And it's like this game is broken. This game is busted. It doesn't work.
    101:56
    Transporting a pinball? Yeah, transporting a pinball. No, so what's going on is, I think, do we talk about this last episode? No, I don't think so. We just talked about my road trip to Wyoming. No, dude, you should know what you're talking about. I mixed, dude, with so much going on. Rocky by Pellegrino Here we go, that I'm drinking and enjoying Pellegrino So, okay, so Last episode we talked about my lovely wife and I went on a road trip to Wyoming And had a good time out there, had a lot of fun And so I put my house on the market And it sold in about 11 seconds And we bought a house in Casper, Wyoming and so June 14th we pull out of our driveway and leave California for Casper, Wyoming and the only downsides, I'm going to miss the crew, all the pinball people all our friends and listeners we're still going to be on the air I got a new mixing board that I've never used courtesy of Dan's lovely wife Jamie my new house is double the square footage of the one I currently have and I'm going to have an office because I'll be working remotely and a studio so I can, you know, we can, we're going to video chat. We're going to still do the shows.
    103:15
    Alex and you guys will be our Sacramento area people. I'm going to, I'm coordinating right now reaching out and getting some people in Oregon,
    103:25
    Washington, a Bay Area correspondent, a SoCal correspondent. And I'm going to try to cover the whole West Coast and just get people to call in or chime in, you know, like Zoom call. Don't get ahead of yourself, man. Just get Skype working. There you go.
    103:43
    Why would I leave all this and all you guys and my job? Well, I'm still with the company. 22 years and the area I was born and raised in. Why would I now at 55 have fireworks?
    103:59
    In Sacramento. No, that's fireworks. Yeah, it's fireworks. Get scrapped! Let's recap. Everybody here. There was a massive shooting. Was there, like, what, earlier this week? Yeah. Yeah, probably. Shit. I think so, yeah. No, it was automatic. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no, that's okay. Who done it? We're all. Who done it? So, what?
    104:21
    We had an entry test? Yeah, right. Yeah. We were the other night. It played great. So, the reason I'm... Well, there's a lot of reasons, but after last year, you know, 2020, nobody had a good 2020, and all the guys were looking for... Tell me more about COVID. Yeah. Yeah, well, all the guys are now looking at the phone because they've all heard me rattle about this endlessly for the last year and a half. So it all started in 2019.
    104:44
    My lovely wife and I went to Boise, Idaho area and thought about maybe relocating there. No, I'm just kidding. So she was starting to not feel so good. We didn't know what was going on, so she was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma.
    104:58
    And a lot of the listeners, you guys know about this. What you don't know is she was given about a 10% chance to make it through 2020. and she did make it through and she survived and so she's not the cancer is dead right now but she's not cancer free melanoma can come back most likely will and it's most likely someday down the road will end up being the thing that kills her I mean she could go 34 years we don't know so but she does in fact she just did her latest checkup with it Saturday so she did it Thursday and then she's good so she's doing great and I'm so thankful for that. I have a lot to be thankful for right now. I'm truly blessed. She's a badass.
    105:39
    She is a badass. She is. But, you know, just with everything going on, two years ago, my old hometown of Paradise pretty much burnt down. My daughter and son-in-law lost their house. Everybody I know lost their house. And a lot of people lost their businesses. A lot of people lost their lives. So they relocated to Oregon where I actually the born and raised, but I lived in paradise for 19 years after my time in the Navy. Anyway, long and short of it, try to get through this quick, because everybody's heard this story a dozen times now. They were evacuated four times at their new house, my father-in-law, the smoke from a fire literally any direction within 50 miles of Sacramento last summer, where the point where for like three weeks the air quality was literally hazardous to your health. Warn not to go outside unless your very life depending on it. COVID. And just a myriad of other nonsense and bullshit. And basically people will say, you're moving to Wyoming? No, it gets really cold there. Don't care. It can get 20 below zero. And it does. Don't care. You know why? Because the whole fucking state's not going to be on fire at once. And we won't have COVID. And be critically shorthanded at work. And on and on. What do you mean you won't have COVID? There's COVID in Wyoming. Well, you know what I mean. But don't you have something special in this new place you're moving into? Yes. I, because I've done so well on selling my house. Yay! Good housing market. Rusty looked at me and said, not can we, said we're buying a Deadpool. And then you can get any other game you want. We're getting two new embossed games. And my house is double sized. I'll have room so everybody can come visit. And we'll still come out. My daughter's not in a while to be here. I'll still come out for the shows. Won't miss it.
    107:25
    I'm going to miss everybody. But you know what, man? My daughter's favorite book is Walden, Henry David Thoreau. And there's a line in the book, and I'm paraphrasing because I've not actually read this book.
    107:41
    But it's my daughter's favorite line in the book. And it's, I went to Walden to die and discovered I never really lived. When I went to Wyoming and saw wild horses running along the plains, I got that same kind of connection that my daughter had with Walden. Like I felt something. That's pretty cool. This is a place for me. I'm a small town boy. I grew up in a town of 10,000 people.
    108:06
    Everybody knows everybody. I've lived in the cities and I loved it and I've made money and done really well for myself. Throughout all of COVID, man, I never missed a day of work. Rusty, you know, her being really sick. We had money in the bank. The bills were all paid. Rupa ran it. Plenty to eat. She survived this. We're really blessed.
    108:29
    It's time for something new. It's time for me to have a new experience. So the show will go on and people are like going, fuck, we've got to keep listening to this shit?
    108:38
    No, it's going to go on and I'm going to really work hard to improve it and learn how to use a mixing board and mix and get the cool intro music that Mark Scott put together back on the show and all that cool stuff. And the roundtable will still be here. We'll just be doing it remotely more now until they come out to visit or I come out for whatever reason, but we're still going to do it, and Casper's about to get a better pinball because Cheyenne has a really good pinball team. Casper, not so much, but I'm going to be there soon, and I know there's other pinball people out there, casual players and collectors, and they just need somebody to knock on the door and say, hey, let's get together and have some fun. That person's you. I am that guy. Until the first winter when this dumbass freezes to death. That's probably it. and Dan will be giving my eulogy at my memorial and go I told you motherfucker I fucking told him not to move over there I fucking told him not to move to Wyoming I know Spencer's gonna be fine he's gonna be fine with the cold he's used to working at that workshop up in the North Pole he's gonna be fine Zay and I'm gonna boom this is the hardest part because like when we get together and we're at dance Brian and I are sitting around his patio or mine drinking a beer, talking about nothing you know, we get together all of us and play pinball and do the show, and we go to shows we go to Henry's, have Henry chicken that stuff man, it's going to kill me to not have that and here's the deal I'm not happy that you're going same here but, I want everything to work out for you and I'm really excited for you guys and your new experiences and when you die I will come and collect your pinball machines for you. I fucking told you so.
    110:33
    That's it because I love you guys, man. You guys are my brothers. You guys all knew pretty much what was going on for us. You guys were there in spite of COVID and everything, man. It was hard enough to get through it, but thank God you guys were there to help with that.
    110:47
    Because there was a period of time in the peak of summer when the fires were raging because she wasn't doing chemo. which now is coming out of the experimental phase. And now it's mainstream. So immunotherapy at the time was still considered experimental. And one of the chemicals they gave her, it has the name. There's Uruguay and something else. Forget the other one. But the other one. What was it? The immune death receptors or something? On the fucking ID back. It literally says human programmed death receptor. Yeah. And it's like, that's a bad motherfucker, right? So let's put her out. So for like weeks, because of the treatment, it was like, you know, bed couch. That was it. And that was, you know, just because it was kicking rats. And now she's coming out to our pinball thing. Yes, she's been out to the pinball. She's hanging 13 billion points on the top from Mars. Yes, that was great. Yeah.
    111:39
    Which one's that? Oh, kicking cancer's ass. Nice. Dude. You think she would like that? She would love that. Dude, I present this to you. Thank you. Where did you get this? At a, there's a store in Town Falls, a scrapping store. They have all sorts of crazy shit. That's awesome. Thank you. Did you say the strap-on stories? Alex, don't go there. I don't want to. But, yeah, she came out to our first pinball event, and we were at Georgia. Georgia, yeah. And it was the second one because she came to your last one, too. Yep. So, and she put up $13 billion on Attacker Mars. Nice. She just destroyed that. She leveled that game. She hung a big score on that game. Yeah. Nice. To celebrate me selling it to George. There you go.
    112:27
    I wanted it. Yeah. Yeah, I talked to the Garth. Because, you know, I got the first offer on Brad's old Attack from Mars because he bought a new one, a new remake. And I didn't have a coin at the time. So I was like, I thought I'd pull down about it. It's like, well, you know, Garth needs one, you know. No, you told me about it. I told him about it. Yeah, I told you and then you told him. I'm the Attack from Mars finder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep finding facts. You know, so I'm Attack from Mars. Yeah, Mike Garcia, the Garst. Shout out to Mike Garcia. I'm really glad he got it. He's a good dude. And we're talking about this dude. I love you, but that's bolted to the fucking floor.
    113:03
    To George or Mike? Both, actually. I talked to them both. They're like, both of them, love you, bro. It's bolted to the fucking floor. We're not going to talk about it. Mike might sell his name. Yeah, because Kim loves it. But George, yeah. Because I told George, I'm like, look, all I want is the consideration that if you're done with it, let me know so I can make a decision on it and George is just like yeah don't hold your breath and I'm like hey man if it lives at your house and I can come and see it that's fine because let's be honest man I like to play Mice a lot more anyway I want George's Break Shot because I absolutely love that game you got that from Shannon didn't you I think so yeah it came from Shannon it came from Jeff probably from Hozier I got it from Cheddar I believe no Cheddar so I think you got the fucking tunnel of this in this group where everybody constantly is telling each other games rather than just going to each other's houses and playing them for free so I can get plus being in Castle Island I can get over like we're bordered by six states there and they're pretty close so I can get over to Utah for games I can get over to Idaho I can get over to Colorado South Dakota Nebraska you know I mean it couldn't be worse yeah I can get all over all of them. So anyways, The Spinner is Lit. We'll live on. Yep, live long and prosper. Oh yeah, hopefully. With a new phone a friend of ours. And if it doesn't, we'll be starting our own podcast called Spencer Sucks. We're talking for legalists. You're free to death. The Spencer is Lit. I told you so. Both those pages are already up on Pornhub. Oh no. Really? Yeah. Well, I have your video. Right.
    114:48
    It was even nothing. I only watched it three times. I'm surprised you made it through it three times.
    114:54
    I had to wait for the film to kick in. Oh. We're not going to use the two of us. We're at the one hour and fifty-five mark. Do we have anything to talk about? Do we have shout-outs and thank-yous or whatever? I think we ought to say right now that we should set something up where we have some sort of annual pilgrimage out to Wyoming to visit you. Or we all meet halfway and we all meet in Vegas. Go to a club somewhere. Vegas is not... That's in the wrong direction from here to... Go to Pinball All Afraid. Make noise.
    115:26
    Tim Arnold's new building. We get together. We fly out Saturday morning. We spend the day playing pinball. We go have buffet dinner. We all meet together for breakfast. Look, here's the deal. We put the bed up on the roof. The mattress up on the roof. Yeah, you know that can't really happen, right? No, yeah. We know you're going to be coming out here. Oh, yeah. Because there ain't no pinball shows in Wyoming. But there is in Colorado. There you go. Okay, then go to the one in Colorado instead of coming to ours. Well, I'm going to come to ours, too. It's still my show. As I told everybody, it's still my home show, okay? It'll always be my home show. No, no, no. There's one in Colorado. That's your home show. No, I'm going to go to that one, too, because I'll be close enough, okay? But one in Colorado. Where is it at? It's in Rocky Mountain. There's one in Denver, and then there's another show, too. I'll say this for people that haven't been to Denver. Denver has got their stuff locked down for flying into the airport and getting into downtown. The train comes right to the airport, takes you right into downtown, right where everything is at. Yeah. It's really easy. The Denver airport is literally like a city. It's 45 minutes away from town. It's literally a city. Middle of nowhere. No, I'll be back, man, and my daughter and son-in-law are here.
    116:38
    We'll expect to see you a couple times a year. Oh, you will. There's really no reason to go visit Wyoming. Devil's Tower, man. Jackalopes. Wild horses. And a really great pinball arcade in Cheyenne.
    116:53
    Flippers Arcade. Yeah, you told me about that. They got it all ended up on L.E., man. And I had it on my road. Yeah, we'll just get over to California by Zoom and ruin it. Yeah, right.
    117:03
    We can find the whole California. We'll just go by the closest 40,000 people we know from the Bay Area. Like, hey, Spencer, where are your new neighbors? We bought a full plan. Which you just doubled the population of any city in Wyoming. I want to buy your Flash Gordon.
    117:17
    Just have a bunch of people start calling you. I want to buy your Flash Gordon. You know that's going to happen if I get 10 emails in the morning going, I want to buy your Flash Gordon. I'll give you $500 for it. Damn, you have a good idea for a flyer to put up for a big time.
    117:33
    This guy's selling a Flash. He'd just be like Spencer with a jacket. Yeah, exactly. like, I mean, like the airline thing. You know, we do have to go back to Uncle Vito's pizza, though, because those, they don't have any games. I know, but they got the fries. Oh, yeah, those fries, yeah. They were fine. Those were good fries. Yeah, but I mean, you know, pinball. Were you with us that night? Did you go with us? For Stranger Things. Yeah, I thought you were there. Greg was there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it had that weird tilt to it, too, like, it wasn't level. Yeah, it wasn't level. Oh, we are, I'm going to be going over to the flipper room here with Greg and those guys pretty soon. No, I went there two weeks ago. Yeah, he's going to reserve it. You know, you can do something where you can reserve it. Yeah. When they move to yellow, they're going to stop that, and they'll just be open to a limited amount of people. Well, and here's the deal. I mean, I know this is super local news, but I don't imagine anyone that we don't know doesn't listen to this anyway.
    118:28
    On the pin size, on the California thread, It sounds like California Extreme is, like, just waiting for the word. Really? Even though it's only, you know, like, what, 10 weeks. Apparently they've got the hotel block and they've got the convention center. Everybody just wants things back. Well, the hotel really does, I guess. But if the city of Santa Clara says it's okay, it might happen.
    118:55
    And then we're also, you know, it feels safe to be optimistic about Pinagogo. so we might actually get a couple shows this year but I would be super stoked if California Extreme manages to pull it out because that would be you know in what July right usually it's like late July that's you know don't get me wrong California Extreme isn't my favorite show because it's a little bit big and a little bit ridiculous but I mean it's a show it would be cool to see it go down Do you think the masks you still have to wear inside would block the smoke and the DDR players up in Baylor? Oh, yeah. They probably wouldn't.
    119:37
    Yeah. Like, you have to carry a can of Febreze and spray around the DDRs because it stinks like high school gym clothes. I'm not speaking of shower time. Yeah. Oh, Jesus.
    119:48
    I've never been to California stream. I always need to go, but it's been all my busy season. Like, you know, like Golden State and Pinnegoo, that was it. You know, it's like after that, it's like, boom, on the gas, until November. I haven't been to California Extreme since it's got to be eight or nine years. Since you stopped me from punching that guy in the back of the head. No, no, no, no, no.
    120:09
    Because Adrian and I went and it was before Atticus was born. Oh, wow. That dude needed to be knocked out. Who the hell was that? We were waiting to play a game and the dude knew we were there. He turned around and looked at us and he pressed start four more times and I was just like, I like grabbed him on the shoulder and I was all like, dude, and I don't even remember what he said, but it was something that got me bad enough that I was just like, alright, and probably just like, nope, we gotta go. It was something like, you guys are going to wait because I'm not done playing yet. Like the etiquette, your normal etiquette wasn't there. Yeah, that's terrible. Common for pinball. But that's literally the only time. That's the only time. No, but I never have that mob. I hear about it. In Illinois. Yeah. I've never seen, probably physical applications, but yeah, at every single show I've been to, there's always somebody there playing multiple games who's not, not sure. Everyone's almost one of them. Oh, yeah. Or someone not wearing deodorant, or, you know, someone, you know. The deodorant thing is pretty normal. Dude, I never actually had bad body odor in any other show. It seemed like everybody was pretty, you know, even California stream, it seemed like everybody was usually pretty blessed. That was the one time, though, that, like, and I just really wanted to, like, put my foot in the back of that dude's knee and then just put it down on him. And Brian – What game was this? I don't know. Was it Whitewater? Yeah. But I was ready to fight, man. I was hot. Brian's just like – You grabbed it. Brian's just like, dude, it is not worth going home in a cop car. Yeah, true. You know, so. Did you get a free ride home last time? It'll be nice. Yeah. show it again. Yeah. You know, California Extreme, just not on my radar anymore. I've played everything that they're going to have to offer there.
    121:59
    And, it's just, it's far away. It's a fun show. It's worth going to. Yeah, the Pacific, In a couple years, the boys are really going to enjoy it.
    122:11
    They will see shit. Oh, yeah. They will see, you will see shit that you've never seen through their eyes. You know, that would be pretty terrible. I would like to show that they did out in Nevada or wherever that was. Which one? Oh, you're talking about the old TVE shows. Yeah, all of those. They stopped those and then they had one at their warehouse. 2016, and then they didn't have that. And then they haven't had it anymore. There's some issues going on with that. Well, I'm not going to talk about this. Okay. Yeah, that's another three hours. Yeah. I just remember that that particular show that they had out in Novato. They were the best one in California. Hands down. They had like 400 plus games. Dude, I was so, I never made it to one of those. They had a ton of games. Every single year, like, I was ready to go, and I think at the time I was in management. Yeah, and something always came up. Like, every year without fail, like, I got fucked out of going to that show. They had a ton of games. It was incredibly well run. Their team of techs was beyond reproach. It was a big enough room where there was space so people weren't all jammed in. No, the pictures were incredible. Like I said, every time I saw them, I was like, oh, I can't believe I missed that. Yeah. It was in San Rafael at the Marin City Center. Yeah, that's where it was. There was just always... Yeah, right across the causeway was the Embassy Suites. So we got a room there. There was free breakfast. And if you knew people, you'd go with them to the free happy hour. Yeah. I think that was the first time, that first show where they ever showed a colored D&D on a tuck from Mars, if I remember right. Yeah. Because that was a huge deal. Yeah. But yeah, they were all great. That show was the best one that was done in Northern California, bar none. Yeah. Golden State's great. Pingo Go's great. California Stream's great. Dave didn't hold a candle. Well, there's also the Museum of Football and Banning. They're talking about moving maybe to Palm Springs. And they're going to have, like, thousands of machines, like, just crazy square footage. Palm Springs, that means we could go to the reef. The Banning. Yeah, the Banning thing.
    124:10
    I haven't been to Banning. Me, too. Me, either. I want to get there. It's in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. It's like Fresno. It's in Banning. Dude, I bet you that come, what, when is it? It never rains. Is that like January or something? Yeah, that's already. I bet you that that shit is going to be humongous with Pinberg off the table. I bet that that is going to be the big fucking show. Yeah. Yes. Because Pinberg sold all their games. Yeah. Pinberg, they basically said, we played Foundation. Well, they didn't. They're not out of existence, but they basically said, look, we don't know how much longer this is going to go. we can't afford to keep sustaining playing the waiting game. They refunded everybody. They sold their games to get rid of the storage fees. And I mean, that's fine. I get it. But that's what I'm saying. I really do think that it never drains, which was already kind of the second biggest, I think. We'll probably pick up the pieces. It's funny, packing all my shit, because 90% of our items at home are packed already. The day we got home from Wyoming, Rusty started packing. I found a whole bunch of Papa tokens I didn't even know I had them I'm just sorry I was just thinking of Boondock Saints and the guy goes that looks funny like literally that's like what are you doing she's out in the garage like get home man I'm sitting down on the couch cause for those of you guys that don't know cause you guys don't know Rusty my wife she likes scary things she likes roller coasters I like roller coasters like we got a Tower of Terror everybody else including me is screaming and I'll leave them like hand prints in the seat she's laughing we're on the plane I don't like turbulence like at all I'm not a real fan okay she's like looking at me like isn't the turbulence fun I'm like no it's not land this motherfucker now I'll walk home you know it's like no not fun so and oh and I'll shoot a picture when we get off air here in a second we'll get this closed out because everybody's like going dude end the show already in the airport. Have you been late with the Denver airport? Yeah. Okay. Oh, so you found CityWalk? Yeah. Okay. I'll let Sarah know about it. All right.
    126:26
    CityWalk's a real place. It is. You get the city beef. Or the city chicken. The city chicken. Yes.
    126:33
    So. Goddamn, I'm booing. Yeah. That airport's huge. You know, the tent outside of my name, Rusty and I have Logan's Run. So we're walking through the airport going, redo, redo. And then people are laughing and smiling like, you're a reporter. You've got that joke. And so if you've got that reference, email us at thecenterislit at gmail.com. Anybody who got that joke doesn't know how to use email. And let us know if it's really time for carousel. Yeah, because that's what started it. Because somebody said, I've got a bagger's plan carousel five. I'm not joking. Review, review.
    127:11
    Anyway, so, yeah, did anybody get any shout-outs and thank-yous? Shout-out to Eric for letting us come by and crash in this place. Yeah, that was great. I'm not sleeping here.
    127:21
    Yeah, and thank you for the lovely trophy for us. I'll give that to you when I get home. I want to give a shout-out to my wife's cancer doctors and the team that basically saved her life. It was great when Dr. Rajavi, for oncologists. He was just smiling ear to ear to give her the goodness. Like, yeah, right now everything's dead. We did good. Because, like, he goes, when you came in here, he goes, I'm thinking to myself, oh, I can't save this poor woman. So, and he did. So, hats off to the team up in Folsom. Best medical cancer dude on the planet, man. So, and shout out to all the listeners who keep listening in spite of my potty mouth and genuinely, certainly demeanor lately. So, and shout out to all you guys, man, who put up with me all these years. And, you know, been like brothers to me. I'm going to miss you guys a hell of a lot. So, thank you, Dan, for that one finger salute. All right, guys, this has been episode 38. Hey, I got a shout out. You got a shout out. Shout out to Spencer for being number one. Yep. Don't freeze to death in Wyoming. Yeah, don't freeze to death in Wyoming. No, no, seriously. Thanks, Spencer. Thanks, Eric. Yeah, thank you. You know, for the good times. And, yeah, I think that, in general, you better just, you know, don't get ahead of yourself. Get moved in.
    128:51
    Figure out how to use Zoom. Figure out how to actually record the episode so it's not just a two-hour conversation on the phone. Yeah. And, you know, let's keep it going. Yeah, we'll keep it going. Because we did do an episode on the phone. We did. We did a Zoomie and nothing came out. It was so horrible you couldn't make out anything. It was like a normal episode. Like a normal episode.
    129:15
    Thank you guys and thank you Spencer for bringing us in on this. It's been a lot of fun. It won't be the same doing it on the phone.
    129:24
    Well, God willing, I'll get it figured out and we'll do it video chat style. Maybe we can all get together over here and talk to you on the phone. I'll bring my snowball out. There you go. Yeah, or you can put it up on the video monitor. That's true. Why do you call it Snowball? Because it's like... 37? In a row? Come back here! At least I wasn't 35.
    129:49
    Nice! Take it home, motherfucker. It didn't mean anything. All right, boys. You guys know what this... You guys know the... What are we even doing? God, I'm tired. I did three dumb blows today, so... In a row? In a row. Damn! Absolutely. Yes, I did. Big dumplings. God, I got so much shit in my eye. You need to stop eating so much meat. I know. Really do. More vegetables. Less fiber. Yeah. Vegetables.
    130:15
    Technology. Putting screwdrivers in the thing. Turning them. Build your own Adam's storage box. State of the art in soft serve technology. And it really, really works.
    130:31
    Play pinball. Keep America Strong Then we are out of here Tacos