Hey, guys, Kevin with Buffalo Pinball here. Just wanted to give you a heads up before we get into the show. We had a little bit of an audio issue, so you'll hear a little echo during the course of the show. Apologies for that. I'm still working out the bugs in my new stream set up here for the podcast. I'm going to pick up some new hardware for that, hopefully get it cleaned up for next month. But in the meantime, I've done what I can to fix this one up as good as we can. So enjoy and have a great holiday season, and we'll see you in the new year. coming up on this episode of brody even talk pinball we've got new pinballs new mods pinball misadventures what else kev we're going to talk about connected pinball scorebit stern insider connected our experience with it and the pinball machines of the past 50 years all that and more coming right up I need a ramp. I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super jetpack in my life. That's right. And now, the Hall & Oates of pinball podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka. Skinny Guy, Bald Guy. There you go. Also known as Skinny Guy, Bald Guy. Skinny Guy, Bald Guy. Skinny Guy, Bald Guy Pinball Show. Alternative title. That's right. What's going on, everybody? Happy holiday season. We made it to December. We kind of missed November, but life and Thanksgiving and stuff got in the way. But here we are. Boom. Kaboom. Before we get into it, why don't we thank our partners? Okay, we'll start off with Penn Stadium. Pin Stadium is a lighting kit to add to your pinball machines. It is controlled by an app, iOS, Android. That works. Windows phones, you're out of luck. You can use coupon code BUFFALO to save 10%. They are a premium lighting kit. They're fantastic. I got them on my games. Kevin's got them in his games. Check it out. One of the best mods you can possibly get for your pinball machine. Also got the Mod Couple Pinball. the modcouplepinball.com for your modding needs. You want to make your game look special, but you also want it to look almost like it should have been that way from the beginning. Then head over to Mod Couple Pinball. They do a professional job on their mods. We've got Flip N Out Pinball, Flip N Out Pinball, Zach Many. Once you go Zach, you never go back. He's got all of the games by all the manufacturers out there, except Pinball Adventures, because that doesn't really exist. But, you know, Zach Many, I'll tell you, the Lanes got another game from Zach Many, and he delivered. So he hooked us up, hooked my dad up with a Led Zeppelin Premium. They're hard to find. They're not going to be making them in 2022. So if you want that game, grab it now. But once again, excellent customer service from Zach. Many at Flip N Out Pinball. You got Pinside. Pinside, the OG, the original place to go for buying, selling games, forums, Top 100. They even have more than Top 100. You name it, Pinside's got it. it's a great easy to understand and use website the ui is fantastic i've been on there since uh october 2010 it's been a long time all right jersey jack pinball jersey jack pinball.com makers are the most beautiful pinball machines on the planet their newest game is guns and roses grab it now while it's still in production pinball edu go to pinball raffle.org for your chance to not only support charity but win potentially win a pinball machine you've got a one in 300 chance there you go i think it's still 40 bucks right it's been a while since i i gotta get a ticket It's been a while. I think it's up now, but he limited the number of entries, something like that. Well, because prices have gone up. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. I'm sure it's a challenge. All right. I'll have to get a ticket soon. All right. CommunityBearWorks, communitybearworks.com. Delicious beer. My favorite beer in all of Buffalo. It is really that good. Every beer I've ever had is good. And they've got pinball machines there. So what's not to love? TiltCycle, tiltcycle.com for upcycled pinball and arcade art. cometpinball.com for LED needs. Pinballmix.com, you can get a custom soundtrack on your pinball machine, really customize it. If you don't like the music in there, no problem. Go to pinballmix.com. You can also save for 10% with a coupon code BUFFALO. And then, last but not least, our favorite, Titan Pinball, titanpinball.com, silicone rings, pinballs, not pinball machines, pinballs for your pinball machines, and the most comfortable mat ever. we had league night and there was a league member who was standing on it and he's like I hear you guys talk about it and he's not like he didn't believe us that it's comfortable but he still was amazed right everyone they step on it they're just like blown away that pinball mat go buy it you just need one you don't need it for every game you just need one people are like oh they're a sponsor they're just saying nice things about their sponsor no it's amazing no we don't need sponsors right we get sponsors We like them. Yeah, exactly. There you go. All right, so we got a lot of pinball news this month, so let's get into it. And before that, we got a little somebody that's going to introduce us. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. So hot, it's on fire. Kicking it off is a couple – well, one brand-new machine, and then one relaunched machine, and then one modified machine. So we got a variety of them coming at you. This was kind of relaunched, right? This is not brand-new. I mean, people bought it. Yeah, so our good friend – Pizza attorney. Pizza attorney. Adam Gase. Former pizza attorney. Retired pizza attorney. He had one of the first six that they made of the prototypes. And then American Pinball picked it up for mass production, which is awesome. So this game is coming to life from American Pinball, their fourth game. News coming to you here from Pinball News. We'll be showing you a bunch of their stuff today. But designed by Scott Gullix, developed by him and Frank Gelati at Riot Pinball. American Pinball worked with Riot Pinball. The take was essentially a homebrew design, convert the mechanic components such that they could be manufactured at scale, further develop the software, sounds and music, and release it as an American Pinball title. So we have a video of the prototype on our YouTube channel. And then last Friday, the TurboGrafx team streamed it on the Buffalo Pinball Twitch channel. You can check out that video on demand on our Twitch channel. But, yeah, you can go out there. You can play it. So what was cool about the launch of this is they launched it to a bunch of different arcades at the day of the announcement. So like Jack Bar in New York City, and there's a bunch of them all over the country. And they announced it. They were like, this game, we're coming out with this game. You can go out and play it right now at these select locations. So folks could go out there and try it right away. And then they were available to play at Expo. And then they were at, I think, Midwest Gaming Classic after that. So there's been a lot of exposure of this game already in multiple streams so far. and it looks pretty cool. I always liked the flow of it from watching Skip stream it last year. I was like, oh, that looks really cool. I'd like to play that someday. And then to see it come to fruition is really cool. There was some talk about weak flippers. But when you watch this on the Buffalo stream with Dave, Dave's the tech at Riot Pinball. He streams with Turbo on Friday's on our channel. And he said they identified what was causing that and they've rectified it. And if you watch the stream, they stream for over two hours, and the flippers were nice and strong the whole time. So if you played it or if you heard that that was a thing that might be a problem, they figured it out and they're going to fix it before they ship the game, which is cool. I like Captain Crunch on his throne. That's pretty cool. These models are weak. These are not good. Is he fighting the Soggies? Is that what it's about? Is that the wizard mode? Yeah. It's oops all berries up there. Okay. Yeah, this is probably the low light of the game. The play field art is pretty cool. It's like cartoony, comic book-y. But it's got, what, three flippers? There's your boy. There's Captain. Not good. Not good. God, it's pretty bad. Actually, the... As soon as you zoom in on it, look at his eye. Yeah. The standard edition I don't think has that, which it sounds like... Might be a feature. Yeah. Even just change the colors that he is. He doesn't look like Captain Crunch. That's all. Yeah, there's a wider playfield shot. So it's got three flippers. Chris has got it shot under the flipper. There's a scoop over here on the left. You can shoot it back into the – it can go back into the shooter lane, kind of like Deadpool. Yeah, there's lots of cool stuff. There's a shot of the middle. You can lock it in this boat in the back, the Viking ship. Cool stuff. Lots of flow, fast-flowing play field. There's all the locations where you can play it. Yeah. So as far as I know, they haven't announced the standard edition yet. They're taking orders for the premium or whatever they're calling it, the limited deluxe models right here on the flyer. That was one of the things. They sold out of the 300 like right away, and then they upped it to 500, and people were not happy. Yeah, you don't do that. When you say you have limited, that's what you do. You buy it. Yeah. I know. It's not limited. It's awesome that the demand was good, but... You're not standing by your word. Yeah. Well, Stern has done that, too. They did it with Munsters, I think. Yeah, that's fucked up. Yeah. I don't care who does it. Yeah. It's weird. They came out with this weird statement where it was like... You do this to incentivize people to buy it, right? That's the trade-off, right? You just limit it, but you take a risk, but you also... The incentive's in your favor, but then when you're winning and it's tilting towards you, then you just jack it up again. Whatever. Yeah. Whatever. They're probably all excited that they had a hit on their hands, and they just started, like, all right, make more of them. People love this. There you go. Who cares if we lied? Yeah. Nobody will remember. Oh, wait, we put it on our flyer. Pepper's Farm and Nick Lane remembers. That's right. So there you go. That's Legends of Valhalla. Looking forward to giving that a flip one of these days. And like I said, if you want to see it in action, you can check it out on the Buffalo Pinball Twitch channel. Next we have... An overpriced game. Who wanted this? Nobody. Well, there's a few people who couldn't resist it. Maybe they didn't want it. Yeah. You know, they didn't demand it, but they're like, I can't help myself. Well, the game we're talking about is Elvira's House of Horrors, 40th Anniversary Edition. So apparently it's Elvira's 40th Anniversary. over the uh yeah i don't know i don't know what the 40th anniversary of the creation of alvira okay so that that's where they got the 40 years from um 199 units available stern will decide the allocation of the machines to their distributors no pricing information has been released either this is one of those call for pricing kind of like beetles was and uh i was reading pin side and they were folks were saying they were getting quotes the size like 28 000 and And I was like, why? Because other than cosmetic upgrades, there's no difference between this and the premium that was like $8,000, $9,000. It's got the super shiny side art that the Batman 66 Super LE had. Jesus Christ, you put some fucking glitter on a game and suddenly people are getting their wallets out. All right, here's the features. I'll read them to you from the flyer. The custom Elvira dagger shooter rod. Oh, yeah, that's going to break off. Exclusive autographed Elvira trading card And an autographed best-selling autobiography book Yours cruelly, Elvira Memoirs, Mistress of the Dark I'll tell you, I'll give you a little tip You go to one of these comic book nerd shows And you just get her to sign it Yeah, it's a $20 thing, yeah Exclusive 40th anniversary full-color mirrored back glass Okay Exclusive 40th anniversary custom paranormal purple Sparkle powder coated pinball armor So, it's purple It's a lot of words to say we made it purple uh exclusive 40th anniversary certificate of authenticity autographed by elvira and gary stern oh my god it's got certain insider connected there it is that's that's the value um exclusive 40th anniversary themed cabinet hand-drawn artwork featuring hyper chrome embossed surface and an exclusive 40th anniversary metal plaque sequentially numbered there you go oh sequentially numbered as opposed to in sequentially numbered well there you go That's why it's $25,000 to $28,000. We dug to the bottom of that one. If you've got a lot of money and you really like Elvira, you can spend it on these because I'm sure they didn't sell out of all 199 of them. Listen, I don't blame Stern. Why not put some fucking glitter on it, change the color, charge like three times as much? Somebody's going to buy it. I would do that. Yeah. They're seeing people drop $36,000 on a Pirates LEC. Stern would be stupid not to. Yeah, they're like, oh, people have money and they want to spend it. realize there's these many crazy people out there years ago, and they finally dawned on them. We'll take some of their money. Make five games with somebody and charge $100,000. Fucking change the color again in a few months. Scribble makes a good point. There's not even a piece of the couch with us. You used to get a piece of the couch with the Super LE. What couch? Elevirus couch that she sat on. Holy shit. They gave you the original run of Super LEs. You got a piece of the couch. Oh my god, a piece of the couch. Oh my god. You're right. To your point, something. If you're a huge Elvira fan, that's significant. I'm not making fun of that per se, but you're right. That's a good point. It's like a thing you used to get for less money that now you don't get. There you go. Cool. So this next one was unexpected. A 2.0 kit for Funhaus. So if you're familiar with the Bride of Pinbot 2.0 kit, think of that but for Funhaus. So this is Funhaus Rudy's Nightmare. A new officially licensed conversion kit for the game Funhaus. To bring new features, new rules, a new sound package, new artwork, full color display, and an animated mystery mirror to the popular 1990 Williams title. Pedretti Gaming, Team Pinball, Fast Pinball, Pinsound, and Planetary Pinball Supply work together to develop the Funhaus Rudy's Nightmare Kit, which comes with a new Fast Pinball WPC-89 replacement CPU board, a new Pinsound board with all the audio content, a replacement mystery mirror, which contains an LCD display to show the dynamic content, and a complete new speaker panel with 14-inch color LCD. We're not going to say display. And a new speaker system. Killing Kevin right now. And a new translate and interior artwork decals. So, yeah, it's bringing a whole new rule set, new art, new display, new sound. It's got a display that goes over the scoop. It kind of reminds me of the phone undialed in. That's going to bring a screen to the play field. Same play field. So, you know, the thing about that is those games, there was maybe a few of them that were clear-coded, but those games are, like, beat up kind of on the play field because they're not clear-coded. So it's kind of a shame to get this. I mean, it's cool, right? Yeah. But on this game, you're sort of, your game might be a little beat. You got this kit. So it's, I don't know. They got a really nice one for the photos of this, but there's some of the modes. Yeah, that's cool. Looks really neat. Yeah. That's an interesting idea. Yeah. You want to see the video? Fun Movies Nightmare It's pretty lame here Featuring New Graphics Oh my god, New Graphics How about a hot dog? Alright It's going nowhere fast Yeah, sorry listeners so yeah you can check that out I think it's like $2,500 $2,700 by the way I hope you do have some more media timed up for our when we talk about things later on there's good stuff coming you just stick around alright alright I'm getting ahead of myself alright so that's Funhouse 2.0 Rudy's Nightmare looks cool looking forward to playing that someday I don't have a Funhouse but I will be getting it but maybe you do and you want to upgrade it you can do that now Multimorphic's got some updates the first one is this enhanced flipper kit so surprise surprise I've been beta testing this since before Sorcerer's Apprentice so you've played with this already unknowingly I was under NDA not to discuss it but it adds end of stroke switches and there's also firmware and software updates to improve the flippiness of the flippers the strength, the accuracy there's less knockdown if there's a powerful shot out of a scoop it's not going to knock the flippers back at all really cool stuff I noticed an immediate upgrade in the accuracy and strength of the shots so for example I used to almost exclusively backhand the ramps on heist and now I can nail them on the forehand and so it was like if you watch me do the run where I got through the whole game I got from start to finish through the big heist and everything, that was with these new flippers. So it definitely helped me out getting through all those modes in that game. It does not apply to the upper flipper, so it made no difference on the cross-down shot. What I did on there was I adjusted the kick-out from that launch, so it's a nicer feed to the upper flipper now. So that helped with that. Very good. Very good upgrade there from Multimorphic. You can go read the news release with a, this is the best quote right here. That guy has good things to say. All right, the other thing is they launched some new cabinet artwork. This is if you want to just have an all-encompassing P3 artwork on your machine versus something that's specific to a game, you can get this. They call this the system core art. I really like this. It's kind of like you're looking inside the mechs of the P3. It's very, I don't know, it kind of reminds me of Halo or like Robotech or something like that. Cool stuff. You can grab that from Multimorphic.com. What else we got? What's next? We got Stern. Stern released some code updates. You have personal experience with these code updates. So right before Thanksgiving, they dropped a whole bunch of code, and some of it did good stuff and some of it didn't. And they can go fuck itself. So here's my experience. So I went home to visit my family on Monday, and I helped my dad unbox his first new pinball machine that he got, which is Led Zeppelin Premium. So we got that set up, and then the very next day I see a code drop for Led Zeppelin Premium. and a bunch of other games. I was like, wow, this is amazing timing because it's funny, the previous Led Zeppelin code dropped the day that I got my game delivered. So this is like, wow, this is fantastic. And my dad says to me, he's like, shouldn't you wait to update it and make sure there's no issues with that? I was like, nah. I go, there never is. I've never had a code drop and had an issue on a pinball machine ever. And I've got to figure that they've had this code done for a while because they released like eight games or something ridiculous, right? This is like their big Thanksgiving code drop. So, of course, you put it on, and it fucked up the main toy in the game. The main toy, the one toy in the game, the Magic Spinner, it messed it up where like it starts releasing when it comes up from underground with the ball. You're supposed to hit it off, but it was just releasing. So I didn't know what was going on. I thought that there was something wrong with our brand-new game. So I start tearing into that, trying to figure out what's going on, And then finally I look on the forums and sure enough, they broke it. The one thing. And the only reason I updated it, like the only real thing in that, I mean there's like node board stuff, but the only other like code thing really was they put the seizure mode back in the game, which I was excited about. But I broke the main feature, so we had a broken, you know, non-functioning game the way it should for Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Good job. Thank you, Stern. I guess they also broke Black Knight Sword of Rage too. So it looks like they fixed that today. There's a code update, but Led Zeppelin still messed up. So don't update Led Zeppelin until they fix that. There you go. Good job, Stern. Yeah, nicely done. So, yeah, they just dropped another code update. Oh, yeah, sound is fine. Okay, thanks. Where it had Aerosmith and what was the other one? They fixed Led Zeppelin. Or no, Black Knight was the one that they fixed. the other code update was we had some new Pirates of the Caribbean beta code so there was like a code update that dropped like a year ago that a few of us got access to they've added that to the public beta now if you if you're not familiar with that if you have your JJP game connected to the internet then you can opt into beta updates and if you do that you can download the beta and get that update that we got like a year or so ago. Plus they've, they've made some new changes and tweaks. So it's got score bit and, and the wifi connectivity in there and everything. Now it doesn't have the final wizard mode yet, but they're working on it. So you can get one step closer to finish code on pirates. After all this time, we were making some progress, everybody. And then, so that those are your, your, your big code updates. I want to give a couple shout-outs to a couple friends of the channel. The first one is, this is a pinball, a graphic history of the silver ball from John Chad. So John Chad, he was one of the first, here, let me show you here. So way back in the day, I got a copy of Drop Target the Zine. I had those back in the day. Yeah, this is by John Chad and Alec Longstreth. This is number one because I'm an OG. I see that one. I got more upstairs. I think I have this too way back when I was like really getting heavy into the pinball scene I was like oh this is cool let me grab that so I grabbed one of those and then I hadn't heard from him much since they stopped doing that they did like an omnibus version of that where they put all the zines into one big book but this is a brand new publication from John where he here let me show you I can show you over here if we click this It shows you some of the art inside. Very cool stuff. Comic book style history of pinball. He gave us a digital copy of it. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but I'm confident this is a great item to pick up. It's $25 for a hardcover book, so just give it a search. It's called Pinball, A Graphic History of the Silver Ball by John Chad, and check it out. It's not coming out until February 8th. Oh. Oh, yeah, on sale 2-8, so you can preorder it now, I guess. so okie dokie there you go the other thing is uh our good friend charles acosta over at pinball photos launched a new shirt look at that he's looking very handsome in that shirt and uh it's super soft i had he sent me one uh free of charge and i was like oh we'll give you a shout out on the show and i can show you here if we go over here there you go so that's again it's got this It's like scared stiff style, embroidered front. It says Pinball Photos. And on the back is a cool illustration, like pinball playfield style illustration. It's like super – it feels like you're wearing a blanket when you put it on. It's super nice, soft. And this would be Nick Lane approved, I think. That's like maybe like a winter. Yeah. Winter t-shirt. Exactly. They do run a little small, though. So if you order one, I would order at least the size up to make sure it fits you good. unless you're like if you're nice and fit like Charles is here you can get away with it but if you got a couple extra pounds on you if you're your average pinball player you want to go size up or order up we were talking to him about these and he gets them made in a factory that they actually make the shirts from scratch so he's like so obsessed with the quality of it he was searching all over it and they make these shirts from scratch and they do a really good job so check out Charles he's got other awesome products too. I know you were looking at some of those. Oh shit, pinball shower curtains. Hold on. You need a shower curtain, Nick? Click on it. I want to see it. We're going shopping, everybody. Holy shit. I know what Martha's getting for Christmas. I hope she's not listening. I don't want to just show up with that. I got to just show her and be like, yeah? Pinball shower curtain Do your holiday shopping here at pinballphotos You can get here Sure Now we talking I have some coasters from him He does really good work So we like Charles He a good dude Awesome. So good friends of the channel. All right. Are we ready for some pinball misadventures? Absolutely. All right. So, Nick, you are our unofficial Deep Root correspondent. Actually, I think our official Deep Root correspondent is Blueberry Johnson from Pinside. He is. He's been hooking us up with the hot tips on Deep Root. So I just pulled up a post that I thought was interesting. He's been dumping this thread full of Deep Root info. Apparently he's got contacts at Deep Root, and they're sending him all sorts of stuff. So this is great. Yeah, this is the game that was supposed to be. Remember when they talked about they were going to be upgrading Space Cadet? Apparently this is what it was. Looks nothing like Space Cadet. No, not at all. Is the monger going to come up in the center or something? Look at that I don't know I don't know And so he's like Rax I don't know any of this What did you read of the So you sent us a few emails What did you read of those emails and was there anything like That stuck out to you? I will just kind of summarize it What I'll do maybe next time is go through it again And just kind of have like some bullet points Of just how bad this is But Oh I like this one put Robert and Deep Root into a nutshell. I mean, Robert's just a complete sociopath narcissist, right? And, like, he had so much money and they didn't even produce a game. And he had, like, people scrambling to do stuff. And then they would, like, his team would always push to try to complete something. And he'd be like, no, no, no, or change this. He'd always be changing things and saying things differently and then moving on to something else. So it's, like, it's really bizarre. Like, he, like, never wanted to release a game. I don't think that he really never wanted to release a game, but he kept on tweaking and changing things, and obviously he didn't know what the hell he was doing. So I can only imagine how frustrating it is to work at that place because they had so much money that he stole. They had people actually doing some work, and then nothing got done. I mean, that's just wasted space, wasted facilities, building the auditorium to show off the stuff. It is just like just a level of incompetence. Like this guy had millions and millions of dollars, and he could not produce a pinball machine, which is just the craziest thing ever. You have people producing pinball machines in their basement and selling it, and he couldn't even do that. So that's the story deeper in a nutshell. Like that's the cliff notes. Like just some bizarre thing about him just could not put out anything to market. I like this if you're watching the video version this must have been Food Truck it's got the Deep Root Soda sign and there's Deep Root Root Beer and why didn't they just call it Deep Root Beer that would have been great Deep Root Orange, Deep Root Cola Deep Root Root Beer? that's just a sticker but everything is just like a tinkering and designs over complicating things and yet not getting anything done. Or just, like, finding the most expensive boards and not going with simple options. Or, like, they'll order something and then Robert would say that's not good enough, so then they'll have to, like, scrap it and order things again. And just, like, phenomenal waste of time and money. A phenomenal waste of talent, resources, money, and all money that was stolen, too. It's just, there needs to be a documentary on this. This is unbelievable stuff. There's somebody down here I want to show. Where is it? Right here. So this was, Gladiator was the game that was supposed to be based on 3D Space Cadet. It says, features based on 3D Space Cadet layout, first virtual table converted to a physical layout. Subways galore. So here's Space Cadet, right? There's Space Cadet. And then there, it looks nothing like it. Nothing like it. You've got, like, you can see sort of, like, there's, like, the little upper play field here on the right. That it's kind of like that. But it's on the left. on Space Cadet. I don't know. It's nothing like it. There you go. Yeah, his stupid raising the glass thing. That's so dumb. First of all, I couldn't own one of his games. Well, I can't own his games because they don't exist. But let's say in the hypothetical world he actually shipped a game and that was the system. I wouldn't be able to lift the glass off. I wouldn't be able to get the glass up on my ceilings and get the playfield up whatsoever. So it's a non-starter. It would be a total mess. We might have a solution for that for that later though maybe we might spoiler alert yeah not quite yet though so that's that's your summary of deep root uh saul hudson says so we're not getting raza is that official um i'm gonna go ahead and say yes you're not you're never getting a raza you'll never ever get a raza saul hudson i don't know where you've been but you ain't never getting it you were never getting it we said it for years and we were right so yeah go back a couple episodes where we had uh where you had Robert on the cover image on YouTube. That's the one where we... Robert's going to be in jail, first of all. Yeah. Because he just ruined the lives of so many retirees and other people along the way. Basically, anybody who got swept up in his bullshit has just been hurt or damaged in some way. Yeah. Is it too late to pre-order, though? I mean, go right ahead if you want, but pre-order at your own risk. We told you. We told you. Yeah. All right. So our new favorite, quote-unquote, pinball company. This is refreshing. See, like, Raza, I'm tired. I'm coming alive now. This is fresh. Yeah. There we go. That was just like, we got to talk about it. There we go. This is the Jesus stuff here. Here we got Ian. Nick's a real insider. My man, Ian. Nick joined the mailing list, right? Oh, I'm on the mailing list. I'm up in that fucking thread on Pinstyde, chiming away, not holding back. Did you join the Ballarama Pinball Enthusiast Facebook group yet? Not yet, because then it will make 11 members of that Facebook group, and I want to keep them at a solid 10 for now. There it is, the new Facebook group alert. There's a Bala Rama. Let's see the description. No, go back. I need to make this fit better. All right. All right, so this is another thing that I just noticed today. So Bala Rama has a Facebook group page, all right? But then they also have another Facebook page, which is like a Bala Rama pinball enthusiast page. There's already a pinball enthusiast page There's actually multiple ones of that And they've created another one Just come and talk about pinball Doesn't need Ballerama to give you any pinball Because we don't have any outlets or forums to do that So they've attracted 10 people since June or July Congratulations Ballerama That's indicative of your decisions that you're making How many of those do you think are Ballerama employees? There's family employees And what's it, Natalie? Yeah, they're marketing Who's bilking them? Yeah, totally Nelly is the biggest bilker ever. All right. I got to show my favorite. Is it them taking shit out of the box? No, no, no. My favorite is the pros and cons of using Kickstarter. Look at the graphics. Look at how ugly that is. It's like Windows 3.1, but blue and red. Is it? God. All right. Are we ready? The pros and cons of using Kickstarter funding. Pro, the manufacturer has funds up front. Con, the buyer pays up front. There's a big con. That's a big con. Pro, monies can't be withdrawn, so causing a halt. Con, buyers can't get refunded money. There's a lot of cons. That seems like a con. Pro, Kickstarter. Advice is on con, by the way. Let's focus on that word a little bit and deconstruct it. They're telling you right now what's going on, people. Kickstarter can provide a cheaper source of funds for investors. Over investors, sorry. Con, must pay a Kickstarter. This is Ballarama telling us how Kickstarter works. This is great. Take notes, people. Pro, manufacturer has control of the business as no other investors. Con, harder to confirm enough buyers, so Kickstarter funding fails. All or nothing. You're not reading it right, Kevin. Let me try the next slide. Pro, manufacturer doesn't need to transfer share ownership to investors. Con, no ongoing investor assistance. Nailed it. Yes, I'm in sales, Kevin. There you go. I like that one, too. She's on the ballerama thread. Somebody found the Adobe stock photo that she's in front of. Yeah, and then the post on Pinside was like, there's so much brainstorming ideas going on. There's nothing else in the office. It's just a whirlwind of brainstorming ideas. So much brainstorming. Is there a Robert? Sorry, Robert. I was going to say Freudian slip. Ian had a video of him taking some fucking pinball parts out of a box that he got from like Marco's or Pinball Life or something. They didn't put that on Instagram, otherwise I'd show it. It's like two minutes of him just pulling, like a small box, pulling out his pop bumper. There's the plunger, some shit. Like, all right. Dude, what is the point? Who told you to do that? Did Natalie tell you to do that? She's bilking you. This one's pretty good. Coming for you, Natalie. This one's pretty good. The ballerina. What's coming in December? Are you ready to get hyped for what's coming in December? Oh, kind of, because it's content for our podcast. We bring you Heidi, our assistant artistic director with a reintroduction. She's going to reintroduce? They're going to reintroduce Heidi? The intro was just Heidi is basically helping his wife who needs help doing designs on their non-existent pinball machines. Okay. So we're going to meet Heidi again. Andy, an introduction to our chief muso. Do you know what that is? And sound engineer? Is that like a music person? I have no idea what a muso is. I read that and I was like, maybe I'm the only one who doesn't know what a muso is. But Kevin is an educated gentleman. We're a small town. He's a music guy. Maybe he knows. Hopefully he's in chat. He can fill us in. Later, we include a snippet of some music he's put together to match our game. I like how it's just Andy. He's so good that he doesn't even have a last name. You're just supposed to know who Andy is. Who's he, like fucking Cher? No name, just Andy. All right. We explain our association with Backbox Games, who will supply our electronics, software, and coding. They will also advise us on game design and rule set. So who's designing your game? Yeah, so basically Backbox Games is making your game. They're doing everything? what are you just facilitating this scam? Barb and Ian? They also have a few videos. Barb and Ian's story. Bumps we've had along the way. Including probably this podcast is a bump. Barb as an artist. And just a few bloopers just for fun. I think the whole thing's a blooper, so I can't imagine what they've designated as a blooper in their eyes. It's British for musician. Muso. Okay. Okay. So they're getting fancy. We'll even drop in a couple of seasoned... Seasoned? Is this spicy? I don't want anything spicy for my tummy, especially late at night. So I don't want their seasoned greenies before I go to bed. Are they going to marinate them? Oh, maybe they're marinating them. I don't know. They've been marinating all November, and they're ready to unleash the seasoned greenies. All right, all the seasons. To celebrate the time of the year with a smile. Enjoy. I didn't see that coming. That's good, Kevin. Enjoy. Enjoy. We are. We are. Thank you, Barb and Ian. Thank you, Natalie. You guys are crushing it. Stupid fucking PowerPoint. Season's greetings. Did they have hashtag man cave on there? Oh, yeah. Let's look at the hashtags. Look at all that. That screams like I went to, I Googled arcade hashtags used on Instagram. Top arcade related hashtags on Instagram. And they copied it. Barb and Ian are probably like, why are they so mean? Well, if you don't know why, then you're that clueless. This is the point. It's like everything you're doing reeks of – some people are calling it a con. I don't think it's a con. I don't think you're terrible people. But I think that you've not done any research, and I think you're overly naive somehow. But here's where this becomes a con, or this is where you're culpable for what's ahead, whether that's loss to people who put faith in you or your own time, energy, and money. It's the fact that you're active on Pinside. Maybe you've heard this podcast. I heard you interviewed on another podcast, and that podcaster asked some decent questions that should highlight concerns, and you don't seem to pick up on any of them. People are throwing very valid concerns. They're saying, look at what's happened in pinball the last 10 years with these companies trying to go down the same path. Look how upset people are. This model doesn't work. Try to do it another way. Create a prototype. Do that. Spend your own money. Just create a prototype. say, create something first to see, and then ask people to invest in it. The road you're going down is wrong, but you guys are going full steam ahead. You're saying, no, no, no, no, no, we got this. This is when it becomes a scam or a grift or whatever you call it, because people are telling you this and you're not listening. So there you go. Yeah. On Pinside, so he responded and he was like, well, we can either do it or do it like this or not do it at all. And everybody's like, Don't do it at all. How about not doing it? Yeah. Yeah. No one's asking for it. Here's what's fucking crazy, Kevin. All right. So their game is $10,000. The game that is going to be a space theme, I guess. That's what I garnered. Is that from your insider info? No. I think it was on the podcast they alluded to with spacing. They're like, oh, it might be something like with the R. All right. So you're going to put out a non-licensed space theme, and it's going to be $10,000. I want you to ask this. how the hell are you going to make a game better than Godzilla? Because that's what you're competing against. And Godzilla's not even $10,000. You can get one for $6,600 pro. How are you going to make a game that competes with that? How are you going to make a game where you've never designed a game, that you're competing against a game that's cheaper, that's designed by maybe possibly the best pinball player ever, who maybe will be one of the best designers, if not the best designer ever. He's like 4-4-4 on designs and people love his designs. How are you going to compete with that? How are you going to compete with Stern, who has been in business for 30-plus years, right, who manufactured God knows how many games? How are you going to compete with that? How are you going to compete with the artists? How are you going to compete with the people who have decades of rule knowledge? How are you going to compete with that and have the nerve to charge more in a non-licensed space-themed game? Are you crazy? If you can't answer those questions, then stop what you're doing immediately. If you want to do something, get your feet wet, do a prototype. Put something out there. It takes time to hone your craft. You can't just be like, I played fucking pinball in uni, and I like it, and I'm in a hobby in a league or something. That's not enough, man. You can't then go out and ask people for money and say you're going to create 300 games that are more expensive. You have no value proposition. If you were creating a game that's $3,000 or $4,000 somehow, which is just not doable, especially with what's going on in the world's budget. That would be your value proposition. Hey, we want to create a game that is going to be cheaper than Stern or everything else out there. I think there's a market for that. Okay, now you have maybe some attention. You're still going about it wrong by trying to take money on Kickstarter, but you have no value proposition. You're nobody. You have no pinball experience other than you like it. You've never designed a game. You've never built a game. Your game costs more than your competitors who are professionals in the market. You've got nothing. Like, this is the craziest thing. So maybe you'll find some fools to throw money at you. I have no idea. But listen to what people are telling you. Build a prototype. If you're passionate about pinball, that's great. That's great. Build a prototype. Spend your time and money doing that. Invest your own time and money if you believe in yourself and what you've got. Okay? Your wife can still do the art for it. You could still maybe find source people to do the music. Put it together and then wallows. Look at all the other people who have put games together, who just toiled year after year. Keith Elwin, his first game was a project game, and then Stern picked it up and made it. Now he's got a job there. All right? We see Legends of Aja was a game that a couple guys made, and it was good, and it got picked up by American Pinball. Right? Scott Danesi made a game, Total Nuclear Annihilation, got picked up by Spooky. All right? They spent years doing that. They didn't go out and ask for money. They proved that they had something that was of value, and now their games got made. Do that if you like pinball that much. And that way you take on way less risk. You're not risking people's money. Stop with your delusional fantasy. Hey, man, we'll talk more about that. I know you won't. And that's good for me and Calvin because then we have content and I love making fun of you guys. So keep it up, Barbanian. There you go. My big issue is, like, it's the preorder thing. You can't do preorder pinball anymore. after we've been taking them for a ride so many times, you know, between Big Lebowski and Predator and Alien. The list goes on and on. Deep Root, you can't do this model anymore. Getting deep-rooted is a verb. Yeah, we're not going to get deep-rooted anymore. Like JJP, they were funded back on the pre-orders of Woz, and it was hard. It took them a long time to get that game to come out. Even Ship B made a prototype before they were scamming people all their money. Yeah, it's true. Barb and Ian don't even have the – they won't even do that. I know. They're trying to scam people first before even producing anything. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like we're going to do a Kickstarter for a game that we don't know what it's going to be yet. Why would you give any money to that? It's like the – who are the guys making the Pinball Gremlins game? Remember that one? Dude, it's like they've – well, it's like they're new to the hobby and they have not done any research. and then but the worst thing is now that people are telling them they're still moving full steam ahead it's not like hey you're right i i get it we're gonna do this and that's how you okay that's how you build some credibility right like okay you might get people rooting for you people root for people who are doing these home projects and prototypes that's that's cool i don't know whatever don't listen you're not gonna listen to us nelly's gonna keep on taking your money keep it coming it's content for us works all right speaking speaking of speaking of content you know what this guy is that this guy is ahead though of of ballerama ballerama is on the bottom yeah because this guy's not asked for any money from anybody no he is not but he is blown through his own money which god bless him what's funny is i saw uh the thread for this on pin side today and it was like i've never been to that new pinball adventures game punny Puny Factory revealed, it was like December 2019 was when it was revealed. So here we are two years later. Is that a good thread? Should I spend some time in there? Oh, yeah. Okay. You'd love it. If you like Ballarama, you're going to love Pinball Adventures. If you like Ballarama, then you're going to love Pinball Adventures. So Pinball Adventures, if you're not familiar with, apparently they're making 13 pinball machines at once. We've seen Puny Factory. We've talked about it a bunch on this. This is like the one they're starting out with. It's their big one. This is like he's coming out. I don't know. Guns a-blazing. Yep. Pony Factor. This is it. Boom. Then we have Elements with a snake in the glass. That's whack, which, yeah, we do it. I tried to click on that. It was whack, but their website's so whack that it took me to Sushi Mania. Sushi Mania, yeah. Which is definitely, I'm not one to say, you know, people use the word racist a lot to play it, and sometimes it's like liberally used too much. that's pretty racist i look at the art on that and like good luck with that sir oh that that takes us to that's whack that is whack though you think oh shit you think it's meta you think he's like yeah oh imagine imagine this all right so when you go to his website you click on that that's bad yeah that is bad this is dude this guy's trolling come on tell me this is uh this is a mockumentary oh my god you cannot make this you can't ever gonna make this bit machine but Why would you make this art and think it's good? This is a product I'm going to release, and people are going to love it. That's like the 1920s racist Asian cartoon style. That's like the World War II propaganda style. Yes, yes. He's looking through stuff. He's like, you know, I really like this art style. This is that World War II. Who drew this? Maybe they're still alive. I can commission them and do some art for me. Oh, my God. Whoa. I've got to get that off the screen. That's not us. We do not advocate for that. I'll give you the guy's address and his contact info. Go to Pinball Adventures. Yeah, there you go. Head office. There you go. Pay mail to him. Sales at pinballadventures.com. Tell him how much you love that artwork. I'm sure your email won't get buried because there's not many going in there. Yeah. Oh, but so we've seen, like, he's had flyers of these games up forever, and we've talked about them before. What's the, hold on, what's the ninja? There's the Forsaken Ninja? Oh, no, that one's new. That one's new. It's coming soon. Forsaken Ninja Pinball Machine. What do we got? Build yourself up to the highest level of ninjutsu and defeat the evil samurai. Become an expert in the five styles of fighting before facing the samurai. Gather your weapons by hitting drop targets, loops, and locks. You mean play pinball? Yeah. The unique one-of-a-kind play field. That's redundant, too. It's either unique or one-of-a-kind. Yeah. You're really, really selling this. Interactive temple bridge is the perfect setting for your... That kind of sounds like the bridge on Godzilla, maybe. The perfect setting for your battle to take place. Taking this pinball machine to the next level. Realistic rooftops. Chingles of an old village with a massive samurai bash toy guarding the gates. Can you master the way of the ninja? This guy's like another Robert, too. He's just like, he doesn't even have one game out of the gate, and he's got like six more lined up. Oh, John K. It's like five minutes from where I live. Dude, you got to go be our man on the ground. Man on the ground. Investigate. We'll give you a microphone. That's all you need. And a press badge from Buffalo Pinball. Maybe that might get you in. I'll whip you up one. About to go undercover. So this machine consists of a paragraph of text and some art that he searched for on Google, I guess. All right. So that's Forsaken Ninja. Here we go. This is also Dr. Blueberry Johnson. Shout out to him. He's our guardian angel, man. He gave us a heads up about their updated website today. I had actually seen this before, but I'm glad he sent it. You're going to play the pinball pause one, right, for the viewers? Well, we've got to go to the – well, let's see. Can you play that? Let me see. Have you listened to this? Hold on, hold on. Don't play yet. Don't play yet. Have you listened to it? I don't think I listened to this one. There was other ones. Oh, Jesus, dude. All right. So let me just tee this up. So this guy to – we should talk about what this is first. Okay. We'll spend time on – we'll go quickly through some of the other ones. We'll spend time on this one. So this guy has these inventions from Pinball Adventures, and you can see it on his website. And these are inventions that nobody really asked for. He's solving problems that aren't really problems or not major problems that people have. And anyways, instead of just having a 20-second video on the product, he has a still picture. And I couldn't figure out what was going on at first, but I think this is supposed to be Andrew Dice Joshua Clay. It's supposed to be. I'm going to put this in quotes. So somebody doing an Andrew Dice Joshua Clay impression for over two minutes on a product that is called Pinball Paws. So I'm just going to let this speak for itself. And I'm going to warn you guys for two minutes. It's very cringeworthy. In my book, maybe you like this humor. I'm just going to let it do its thing. We'll come back in two minutes, and we'll discuss. Okay. Hey, picture this. You're having a great game of pinball, and your phone starts to ring. Or there's someone knocking at your goddamn front door. Did you ever wish you had an extra hand? Well, when you need someone to help hold your balls, that's where we come in. The pinball pause is a lightweight magnetic tool That provides a safe secure place to cradle your balls Made of solid casted plastic It's unique shape and powerful tip Now gives you the muscle to hold that flipper up you'll now be able to blast through your competitors and easily deliver a rock-hard, solid game. Important phone calls? No problem. Pause your balls. Expecting a package? No problem. Pause your balls. Got a hand cramp? No problem. Pause your balls. Bet you're right. It's as easy as one campaign. Just pause your balls. Out. So what are you doing if you're fun? Well, have a sure thing. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Let us know your balls. Don let your level set high score again Transcription by ESO Translation by Score a game game game game game game game All the audio boards protect those large families and hold that we all love to play play play How many minutes of cheering is there at the end there? All right. I'm sorry. I warned you guys. That was really bad. So this genius thinks that this is how he markets this stupid product. It's two minutes of a terrible Andrew Dice Joshua Clay impression by... First of all, Andrew Dice Joshua Clay is not British, but you wouldn't know that from this impression. Yeah, it's a $30 piece of shit. It's a 3D printed magnet. Then if you look at the pictures, I don't even think it works on some of the games. So it works on old Data East? It would work on your Zeppelin because you have metal armor on it, but if you don't, then it wouldn't work. Yeah, so stupidly designed. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. It works on 5% of the machines out there. It works on his Data East Star Wars, though. Yeah, it's literally a magnet that pushes the flipper button down. Look at the Simpsons one. The Stern Simpsons one. Wait, where is it? I'll just... Yeah, there we go. Is there... Look at, look at, look at, look at. That's not how Stern Simpsons is. No. He had to add a thing on there just to have a pause thing. That's Data East Simpsons. That's why. Oh, it is? Yeah, that's why. No, I think. Oh, it is. The side art's different. Yeah, that's Data East. Oh, you're right. All right, so he invented a thing that works on early 90s Data East games. Congratulations. And your LEs that you're going to want to scratch up with a magnet. Yeah, and so he's got a two-minute video on that. Because Martha's like, Nick, you go to the bathroom more than anybody I know, and this is never an issue for you. It's true. How good is this guy that he's playing so long on one ball that he's like, oh, I've got to pause it. Yeah. Wouldn't you just wait until you drained and then be like, all right, I'll go to the bathroom now? Imagine somebody's at the door and, like, you're fumbling around. Hold on. I've got this perfect solution. Hold on. Let me just trap it. Let me see if I can trap up. Okay. Let me get my magnet out. Let me put the magnet. Let me see if I can just do MacGyver move where I slip that over and I move my finger to say, oh, there we go. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. All right. That's pinball pause. All right. What's next? He's got a whole slew of these inventions. We've got the pinball wedge. Let's check that out. Let's not listen to it. This is a one-minute Cheech and Chong impression, which is actually better than the other one, which is not saying anything. Go right to the product page. This one's my favorite. Pinball wedge? What the hell is that? Are you too stupid? Here's my pitch for you. Are you too stupid to remove your pinballs from your pinball machines when you lift up the pinball play field? Then pinball wedge is for you. Dummy. There you go. Here it is. There it is. That's how it works. You put a little 3D printed nub there. Only $30. $30. Here's an idea. You can just stick a fucking microfiber towel in there. Wedge it in there. Just stick a rag in there. Whatever your rag is that you're cleaning, free. $30 for a nub. Look at that box it comes in, though. That's fancy. Yeah, that's a nice tin. It's like a little tin that he got his candy out of. That's a nice tin. Oh, God. Look at this. What an invention. What a masterpiece. piece. You think him and him and Robert were giving away the pinball boost. Him and him and him and Robert were in competition. They've really he's like rivals. You know, one's Gates, one's one's jobs, you know. All right, let's go to play field strong. Strong arm. He's got a Hulk Hogan on Hulk Hogan. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Strong. Strong arm. Strong arm. It's only 300 bucks. Oh, it's 109. So this is something that maybe Nick Lane could use. So Martha said, but do you think that would work for what I First of all, it's only holding up one side. It needs to be double. I need two of them, potentially. Not really, because if you look at a prop on the bottom of a play field, it's only holding up one side, typically. Well, so could I lift up pirates? Yeah. With one of those, you think? I think so. Hmm. This might be a winner. You might have a winner. I don't. Wouldn't it, like, hold it, like, you know, like, when you hold a pinball up, you usually have to hold it with two, so it doesn't go sliding forward, right? So you get it up, and you put that there. Wouldn't it just go sliding forward on it? No. Because it's holding it at an angle. So here's your play field, and here's the wedge. It would hold it at an angle like that. You would prop it up? You put it in the middle? Yeah. You wouldn't put it all the way up. But what's keeping it? When you pull it up and when you lock it in place and back, it's locked in place, right? Not really. It's on rails that will slide back and forth. Like a JGP, you just pull it up and whoop, and it just sits there. Gravity holds it. Because you can't put your play field all the way up. You would hold it at an angle where it's pointed down at the floor a little bit more, and it would hold it there. I'm skeptical. All right. Somebody buy that and let me know if it works. Somebody else try it. Somebody try that and let me know if that's a solution to all my problems with my low ceilings and not being able to prop my play field up. You could work on your games, maybe. I'm highly skeptical of everything this guy touches, so. Let's zoom in on it here. Can we zoom in? That's your zoom. There we go. Zoom in in hand. So let's see how this exactly works. One pole, one foot, one slim. Arm and foot. I want to see, like, so, yeah, so I see it at the bottom. The picture's bad. Like, where does it, it doesn't show it, like, in the cabinet, like, where you put it in the cabinet. Right. Does it, like, sit on the bottom of the cabinet? Yeah, I think you're giving this guy too much credit. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, it does say arm. This is a terrible logo. Before it was scrolled, zoomed in, I couldn't see it said arm. But it's a Playfield strong arm. $109. All right, there you go. That's a strong arm. That's a maybe. That's a maybe. If you upright and spin, what the hell is this? It's a rotisserie. So here they're doing a mic, what's it, row? Oh, okay. $400 for a vertical rotisserie. It's like two metal shims. But look at that The part that's in there you can't even work on Because there's like You wouldn't be able to put anything in there Yeah and also is the playfield protected Is that going to fucking damage You're going to scratch the shit out of the playfield there If it's up like that isn't that going to make the playfield bow It's bow yeah I don't know I doubt that's Again I don't do playfield swaps So maybe I don't know what I'm talking about right So maybe Oh, it comes with clamps. It comes with clamps. You can get it at Harbor Freight for 50 cents. No. Look at the... This is a bad idea. Bad idea. $400. You're like, I do plate bail swaps, and hell no. Yeah, okay. I figured as much. I can see that that's not my specialty, so I want to be careful of what I say. All right. We're saving the best for last, though. Because if you saw our social media posts today where you were like, what the hell is that big yellow thing? Well, here it is. It's the pinball boost. Boosted. Pinball feature's boosted, and it's got... Oh, shit. I didn't even listen to this one. Is that Terminator? Should we listen to it? Well, it sounded weird before, so we'll listen to it a little bit. Hey, hey, hey. You up, you up. Yeah, it's supposed to be the Terminator. Okay. So the pinball boost. It's going to help you bring... God, this thing is... There we go. Don't have any friends or a stool? Then for only $250, the pinball boost is for you. Here's an overly complicated solution to a very simple problem. Yeah. That probably will fail and crush your pinball machine and make your pinball machine smash. That's exactly what Martha said. So when it pops, it crushes, and then your play field falls down. So here you go. Here's Pinball Ninja. You put the little wedge thing underneath it, the curved wedge. Then you tip your machine down, and then you... it looks like it's going to dig into this balloon. Fucking balloon. Oh my God. Yeah, that metal part is totally going to put a hole in that balloon. Oh my God. And then it's going to pop and your pinball machine is going to slam out of the ground. Does this guy not have a stool or a friend? This is not a fucking problem. Not a problem that needs a $250 solution. This is crazy, dude. This is absolutely crazy. This is Robert level stuff. Like, this is Robert reinventing the pin pod, the box. Yeah, oh, yeah. Can you imagine this guy and Robert, like, talking together? Like, I would love to see those two guys just put a microphone in front of him. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Listen, other podcasts, I don't want to have this guy on our show whatsoever. I mean, he can come on knowing that we're going to be hostile towards his ideas and him, and that's fine. I'm not going to say no. But the ones that are more neutral, can you have them on and just figure out what's going on? Because I don't think he's been interviewed by anybody that I'm aware of. I don't think so. And don't, don't, don't, don't, if you're the kind of podcast that's going to give him a platform and he has to say crazy shit and you're not going to ask follow-up questions, then don't do that either. Find the middle ground. Yeah, you're not going to find that. All right, so those are our pinball misadventures. We have fun with those, but it's also a cautionary tale for you folks out there, so proceed with caution. Don't throw these folks your money. Again, our longstanding advice, buy pinball machines that exist, preferably that you've played. It's funny that that has to be a piece of advice. Buy pinball machines that exist. Not in somebody's head. That's right. All right, a couple of updates from the Buffalo area. We've got the Fall Brawl this Saturday that's sold out, but it's our first major tournament since the pandemic. Yeah, it's a legit tournament. It's sold out, so there we go. Looking forward to that. First IFPA tournament at Masuda Chow. Yeah. Because we've got seven games there, and we put a Godzilla there since the last podcast, I think so. It's been a long time. All right. Yeah, you got some new games there. So you got Led Zeppelin and Godzilla. Just for Kevin. Yeah, my favorite. You should know what to do now at least. I beat you at League, so I had that going for me. I told you that would happen. I told you that would happen. Of course it did. Of course it did. And I, along with some of the other folks in the Buffalo team, I'll put the command in chat if I can click on the right thing. The coin op classic. me, Tuna, and Small Town we're going to be doing challenges on pinball machines during the Coin Op Classic Marathon the pinball block starts at 10pm Eastern this Saturday, December 4th over at twitch.tv slash retro gaming live tv so this is a three day marathon of classic arcade speed runs 1cc's, showcases things like that and we bring a pinball block to it every year and the classic gaming crew really really enjoys that it's fun to to bring pinball to a different audience right so this is a group that is traditionally into uh retro classic gaming sorry um you know who that is right i know who that is yeah i know who that is i made i made that command on purpose by the way because i knew i knew um so yeah if you want to join us the pinball block starts at 10 p.m eastern on saturday um come out it's fun to have uh pinball folks in chat too because there's typically a lot of questions from people about pinball that the person playing can't necessarily uh answer because we're very focused on a specific task i'm going to be doing a runs on guns and roses where i'm trying to show off all four album wizard modes in an hour um i did some practice on that this monday and it looks like i should be able to pull it off so we'll see small town is trying to wizard mode uh deadpool and tuna's gonna try to beat tron so uh tuna's also gonna do the um miss pac-man kill screen run he gets to do that in the middle of the night so have fun with that and then skip is doing some runs on video game stuff too so uh lots of cool stuff but then there's tons of other streamers doing stuff but those are folks you might be familiar with so tune in over at retro gaming live tv on twitch game room updates nick what's going on in your game room uh like i said i set up a game for my family i have got no updates sad well you haven't been doing anything well you you mentioned this the other a couple months ago we should talk about what games we've been playing so what have you been playing i've been playing a lot of zeppelin so i uh my dad's game came with the insider connected on it so i got to well we'll talk about that but that was cool it's cool to play around so i played a lot of zeppelin was getting some achievements. What else have I played? A little bit of Black Knight Sword of Rage. Mike Castleman gave me... I was asking Mike how to get to the end, like what strategy he's using. He gave me a good tip and I got to the Black Knight's Castle finally. I actually focused on it so it kind of helps. Yeah, those two games. I've been playing a lot of VR. I joined Gorin, who's the rich kid club. I got a Behaptic Vest for VR. It's got 40 haptic points in it So it's pretty awesome When you get shot You know where you're getting shot from It's pretty damn cool It's like Ready Player One over here It is definitely Ready Player One shit going on You need the running circle I'm sure one day We'll get there, baby steps Get yourself a workout Game of my babies for me I got some show and tell I got some new games for the Jaguar This is Switchblade So you were an Amiga kid, right? Yeah. This was a game that used to be on the Amiga, and it got ported to the Jaguar. I'm not familiar with this. Do you know what year it came out on the Amiga? I don't know. Anything after, like, 90 or 91, I wouldn't know. Yeah, I don't remember offhand, but there's Switchblade, so I've been playing that. And this is a brand-new game that was exclusive to the Jaguar, developed by Homebrew Guy. It's a roguelike RPG called Kings of Edom. Pretty fun. I'm the second person in the world to complete it. How much are those games? we did it they're like 70 bucks oh yeah so which you know they're small run you know there's they don't make a lot of them there's not a huge audience but so the fact that people are making a games for this platform in 2021 is pretty ridiculous yeah no i don't mind supporting it and again understandable compare a whole game to the price of a topper for your pinball machine it's a no-brainer yeah pinball puts everything in perspective where it's like it's pretty reasonable you know yeah it does you put you could play that game all day exactly uh The other thing I got was for the game Xenocrisis. Is that on my end? Yeah, it's playing on the Neo Geo behind me. Look at that box. They offered some accessories and stuff, so I got those. This is the big shock box for Xenocrisis. I got the marquee that's up in the top over there, and there's a little, like, instruction dealy-doo behind the joysticks. So I figured I'd grab all that while they were in stock. And, yeah, it's from Bitmap Bureau for the Neo Geo MVS. Very cool. very fun game um i also if you want to watch me stream neo geo i can do that now and it's over on my twitch channel kev in buffalo um i don't do it on the buffalo pinball channel because pinball people don't like video games generally and they won't watch so i'll uh i'll i'll put a link in chat here if you want to if you want to check it out but um i stream jaguar stuff i do uh neo geo some arcade stuff over there so any anything that's not uh pinball goes over there for the most part um all right uh oh what have i been playing so i've been you know what i played uh some uh dialed in the other night and man i tweaked the flippers on a game a little bit oh i played some dialed in too yeah i'm just like man this game's good i got the uh under attack multiball i got the theater multiball and what's under attack multiball that's just the standard one. Oh, okay. And then the I think it was the high voltage. All three of them stacked up. Yeah, that's cool. I was like, damn, this is good. It's a good game. Every time I think I forget about Dialed in, then I play it, and I always have the same feeling. Yeah, it's super fun. I love that game. So I play that, and in addition I've been playing Guns N' Roses a lot because I've been practicing up for the Coin-Op Classic. And I just dropped Pice back into the P3 because I felt like playing that, so I played that a few times yesterday. Word. Yep, yep. All right, so we got a few non... We're not doing a review today, so we got a few new segments for you. The first one we're going to talk about is some connected pinball machines. And so Nick and I have both done Scorbit, and we both had a chance to try out the Stern Insider Connected. So we figured we'd talk a little bit about overall impressions of what connected pinball is, specifics for each platform, and what we think of those. So why don't you kick it off with your thoughts on connected pinball? Should I be connected or score a bit first? Either one. It doesn't matter? Yeah. All right. We'll do score a bit. Okay. I can tell you you're not a huge fan of score a bit because you're like, huh? How is it, Nick? And I got signed up pretty quickly. I mentioned this last time. But I went through kind of endless frustration. I think, honest to God, score a bit is like the worst design UI I've ever experienced in an app. it is anything but intuitive. I think it needs a complete design overall because even simple things like how do I challenge somebody? How do I add friends? I could not figure out. I would have to keep on asking Gorin. And I can't think of the last app on my phone that I've ever had to ask somebody how to do something on an app. It's just not a thing. Apps should be super intuitive. And this is not something that's terribly complicated. They were missing, I think they might have just added it, but they have achievements Like, okay, so I've got achievements. How many out of how many? Like, that's one of the most important things. It's like, how many achievements do I have out of how many? If I have 70 achievements, what does that mean? Are there 1,000 achievements? Like, are there 80 and I'm close to the end? Just things like that are really frustrating with the app. So I'm not a huge fan of it. I think it needs to be redesigned to be more intuitive. I know that the developers seem to be somewhat responsive to things on there. I had an issue where I couldn't change my name, and I guess I couldn't change my name because my name was too long that I was trying to change it to, but it wasn't telling me that, so it wasn't saving. It wouldn't let me update a pic. There's just some frustrating things about it. So what I do like about it is that it was at least easy to get signed up and plugged into playing the game. It's free. Like, that's a big deal. Like, if you've got a Jersey Jack game, it's on there. You don't have to do anything special other than get the app, and you're ready to go. and I like the fact that it's an app, right, as opposed to Stern's website, which is bizarre, and we'll get to that. While we're on score, what do you want to say about it? What are your thoughts? Yeah, so, you know, I was using Nick as like a test case. I was like, so I've been messing around with this for months, and, you know, so I've run into kind of some of the roadblocks. I was like, let's see, you know, go start to finish. What is your experience with it? And you got connected pretty easily. I had already added your account to my machine because that was one of the things when we streamed Wonka for the first time with Scorbit my location set up privately because I'm in a private collection I don't want people knowing where my games are and stuff like that but you have to like give people permission then to play at your house and we didn't know that and that was not obvious so we had that figured out so I think they just changed that right they fixed it so it's like discoverable if you're close to it or something yeah they will so that's an improvement uh but you know i've eliminated that barrier for you uh but you got signed up you connected your app but it's like once you start using it and you're like the navigation is off and like i just want to go here and then i'm like how do i get back and uh yeah like finding the achievements is like that should be so obvious like yeah i want to know what the achievements are let me go for them and anytime somebody is that's it's there's a thread on pin's eye for score bit and that's like one of the first things that everybody always asks like how do i see the list of achievements and apparently there's some like roundabout way to get to it it's buried somewhere but the whole point is the achievements pretty much yeah because high scoreboards are whatever like as we've talked about before you don't you can't compare game to game between scores yeah right yeah and again they we said this last time but they need to wipe it every time there's a software update at least i mean that's the one thing that there's things you can control there's things you can't control that's something you can control yeah and even but even with that like there's no guarantee that the person playing is running the latest code either or you know maybe you set it up so the scores only show the version you're running right something like that yeah that seems that seems like they should be able to do something with that right um and it is but i do like like it's cool that you just get it for free on jjp games it's not free if you want to um play it on your other games so they have this device called the scorebitron which you can buy and add to other games which is it's a you know this is like in the range of getting the stern insider connecting yeah uh and eventually they're gonna be adding um achievements and stuff for all the games but this will let you post and track your scores and things like that it's it's a price for the device itself and then there's also a monthly fee so um yeah it's like you know i don't see that i don't see that like yeah i don't i don't see i don't know i don't see that as an operator or anything. I don't, as an operator, it's, it's help sell. And then, you know, as a private collection, that's, you know, that's rich kid territory, right? It's like, if you own pinball machines, you probably have the disposable income to pay for this, but it's like, is the value there to, to warrant paying for this every month in addition to paying for the device up front? Yeah. I use it on the JJPs because it's free. I've, I've thought like, Oh, Maybe it'd be cool to have a scoreboard on my TV. I do like that idea. Right, and they do offer that. That's a score division. But I'm like, do I want to spend $300 per machine on a monthly feed? No, no. Yeah, if it's an easy thing and it can connect it, yeah, sure, I would put that up there or something. But it's not like I'm not sitting around like I really wish this existed. Right. What I do like about it, because I've been a little harsh on it. I did a nice kind of balance. But I like being able to challenge somebody with a score and send them a challenge. Again, I couldn't figure out how to do that easily. I had to ask somebody. I think it just seems like somebody created this and it made sense to them, but they didn't go out and watch people try to use this and then take notes and say, okay, let's do this, let's redesign this. It doesn't look like they got feedback on that. And this has been out for a while, so I'm a little concerned why it hasn't been changed and why it's so frustrating to use. But I like getting a score, like challenging somebody. Every time I play a J.J.P. game, I do want to use that. I do like that. I was sending some scores to people that I got on there. So it's cool. And, again, it's free on J.J.P. games, so I dig that as well. Yeah, cool. So bottom line, I think it's fun on J.J.P. games for free. The app needs some work, but at least it's an app and not a website. but the value per game if you want to add it to other games that's a tough sell I think so let's talk about the Stern Insider Connected so Kevin's used it a little bit on Godzilla I used it a lot more last week so this is the first stumbling block with this is that when it was announced I wanted to try to get Stern Insider Connected and I couldn't find the app and that's because there isn't an app and it's just so bizarre. My brain couldn't register. It's like, how is this not an app? I remember when I was home last week, I told my dad to get Stern Insider Connected for that and he came to me and he's like, I can't find the app. I was like, I know. Yeah, it's because it's not an app. It's a website that you log in through. So that's kind of bizarre that they did it that way. I don't know why. I don't know if there will be an app in the future. All right, so I think that's one negative where Scorebit is an app, and that's intuitive and makes sense. Yeah, my usage. So this model is different. I mean, to connect to this, your machine has to have the Stern Insider connected, which I guess pretty much all new machines going forward will have this in there already. You can retrofit some of the other machines that don't have it, but that will cost you $200, which is a lot. so unfortunately it's not free in that sense and I'm sure it's being factored into the cost of their machines because this is instead of just putting a QR code on the screen like Scorbit does for the Jersey Jack games this is a physical QR code reader so obviously there's production costs in that so you're paying for that one way or the other yeah I don't love that we reached out to Zach and I figure this is why they did it and it makes sense and he told us basically that to get people to use that, it got to be noticeable right And I think that is very noticeable on a machine for for better for worse right Even in your home collections I think as an operator um I was like I could see why they doing that Uh it right on the apron You cannot miss it There like a card that's pointing to it. There's this big red thing that's pointing to on the apron. Then you've got a sticker on the back. Um, you, you're just drawn to it. Like, what's this? So I think that if they just went with a simple QR code, no, but you know, your casual pinball player is definitely not going to use them this won't take off so i think they absolutely did the right thing by that the downside of that is that i'm not going to go and put this on my games and home like i'm not going to retrofit my games for 200 for this there's just no point even though i wish i could get the achievements and and compare my scores and things like that i've said a lot of things like that but things like that that's like that's the phrase of the day yeah i think they both have their positives and negatives right this studio it's interesting to see them take two different approaches like this, they definitely need an app. Finding your QR code when you're out on location, it's like, oh, I've got to log into this website. Yeah, bring the website up. I mean, you can bookmark it, but there's still more stops involved than just putting it up on an app. Yeah, and then folks are like, well, you could just screenshot your QR code. Yeah, you can, but then you've got to go through your photos to find it. Yeah, photos get buried. Yeah. It's like, that's not really a solution. I could put it on a card in my wallet or something dumb like that if I wanted, I guess. But it shouldn't be that hard, right? There needs to be a low barrier to entry. Pinball people on location can barely start a game, let alone scan a QR code and track their achievements. This is for folks that really want to do it right now. If they want to use this to bring more people into pinball, I don't know. I see it as a feature for hardcore pinball folks who really want this and really want to track their achievements. And maybe that's good. Like you were saying as an operator, it's like it's cool to have this as an option on your new games to incentivize return play or like, hey, play this game here and then go play our other game at Masuda Chow's and then we'll give you a prize or something like that. Yeah. There is features like that that you could. Yeah. And Zach alluded to maybe things that they need to have a QR code reader to do that just aren't released yet. So as an operator, like the operator side of me, like I like this. I'm excited to see what kind of, as they hinted at, what kind of competitions I can run, what kind of fun things I can do with this. It's fun getting achievements. It's fun logging in. It's fun seeing other scores. I wish it was an app. I wish it had the challenge feature like ScoreBit does. That's a great thing. Because it's not an app, it's not going to send you notifications like somebody's beating your score, which, again, dude, you've got to have an app. I mean, maybe that's in production. We should have asked Zach that. maybe they're just getting it out there right now it's probably the case there probably will be an app coming I have to assume maybe they got the technology they're putting into games they're shipping games so they've got to get it out and that's why it's on a website but I found it despite all that it was more intuitive to navigate the website there were certain things that were kind of not obvious but it's not bad compared to scorebit this is light years ahead of just kind of the intuitive nature of navigating once you're logged in yeah there's just not as much there it's not it's much cleaner um it's not i don't think it's trying to do as much as scorbid is too so like scorb is trying to do way too much and it's really complicated to navigate so um it's a little more straightforward like you said that i ran out a couple things i was like oh where do i add my friends i couldn't couldn't find that at first but again it's like once you once you play around with it a little bit you tend to figure it out yeah i'm sure that more stuff like friend requests i mean like i can add kevin but i just need to know Kevin's name and Kevin doesn't know I've added him. It's kind of like a weird thing. I don't know. It's got a ways to go, but I like that we're moving towards achievements. I don't live and die by achievements. I like being able to see what people are doing on ScoreWise. I like on ScoreBit when I get a notification for somewhere I send a challenge. That's a fun way to just connect and have fun remotely with people. It's not to run a tournament, but if I want to challenge Kevin to a game on Dialed In, I know our games aren't the same, but it's a fun thing to do. You can get a group of players and do that, like with Scorbit. That's kind of a cool thing. And it got me playing my Dialed In more. Yeah. You know, I like that. It's like playing on my Cosmic Car Racing, right? It's like, you know your games aren't set up the same, but it's still fun. It's really super fun to do. So, you know, this is very much a casual thing. If you're trying to, like, compare high scores, don't do that, Because if you're taking the glass off and cheating or if you're, like, upping the number of balls to try to get the highest score, then it's, like, why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know there's folks out there doing that. Yeah. There you go. There's an overview. There's pluses and minuses to both. And, again, maybe the good thing is this will push each one to get a little bit better. Yeah. The competition is good. It would be interesting to see if they end up adding Scorpbit to Multimorphic games or Spooky games or things like that, or if they're going to end up developing their own solutions, or if they just won't bother at all. Hopefully. I think that it would be great if Spooky, even though I don't play their games, added it in Multimorphic. Get them in those American Pinball. Pick up Scorpbit. Just get it in there. It's easy to QR. That's the preferred way. Let's do that. I think that's an issue, too, is there's not one ecosystem for all this. Yeah. So, like, if I get a new Stern and there's a Stern Insider connected on there, it doesn't talk to the scoreboards left. And then I got scoreboards in two different places. So that's kind of annoying. Yeah, they don't even have, like, a scoreboard system for Stern yet or anything like that, like what scoreboards doing. But, yeah, like, yeah, no, it doesn't help if that's your goal of doing, like, a scoreboard system. Right. So, all right, let's talk. So here's a topic. I proposed a few topics of discussion for Nick. and I said, what if we do a segment where we each decide two games from each decade, we're making up a fictitious dream arcade, and we can pick two games from each decade for the past 50 years. What games would you pick? And so today he and I went through the lists on Pinside for each decade and picked out our favorites. Some decades were much more difficult than others, I will say. Some decades were like, man, this was a bad decade. The 2000s. The 2000s were very hard. It was a terrible decade for pinball. I'd be shocked if we don't have at least one of the same games in there. Maybe. My picks for the 2000s are very weird. Oh, really? Okay. All right. I don't know. I struggled. Okay. So do you want to start old and go to new or start new and go to old? I'm curious. When you were doing this, I started new and went to old. So did I. All right, let's do it that way. That's the way we're thinking at least. And so I just make sure we do 2020s as its own decade or include it with the 2010s because there's only a year and a half, almost two years. And he said we'll just roll it into the 2010s. So I just kind of kept my 2020s separate. You did the 2020s separate? Yeah. Okay, so I'll do 2020s. I don't have them written down, but I can do it easily. Okay, so what are your 2020 picks? I would say Led Zeppelin for me and Godzilla. Okay. Premium versions of both. Okay. Because I've got Led Zeppelin Premium, and I want a Godzilla Premium. Okay. Makes sense. Even though I haven't played it, but. I'm going to cheat, and I'm going to pick a P3 with Heist, because that will offer multiple gaming options. Do I get to pick multiple playfields with that, or do I just get the one play field? I think one play field. Okay. I would go Heist. That's the game to have. But I could have all the software that works on Heist. That's going to be my caveat. And this is not like, when we talk about this, just like what we want in our like if we had like let's say we had unlimited budget yeah right and we had space for these and this was our personal game rooms it's not saying we're picking the best games of a decade right i i definitely had a i mean obviously i do want but my personal best right like i because we'll get there there was a method to my madness as i started doing this i was like me too we'll see what yours is yeah uh-huh so my second uh 2020s pick would be rick and morty What's the method to that madness? Well, I wanted a spooky game You didn't pick Guns N' Roses? I wanted a You didn't even fucking own a Rick and Morty You'd be getting Guns N' Roses Well, this is method to my madness All right, all right Method to my madness Are you going to tell us your madness? You'll see it Oh, we got to figure it out Exactly It's a mystery So I got Rick and Morty I wanted a Scott Danesi game I wanted a spooky game So there you go But you said that you don't get a Guns N' Roses game I don't There's got to be trade-offs, man You can only pick two games Nick's very confused right now Alright I am Stick with it Alright 2010s When's the big reveal? You got like a fucking balloon Like a gender reveal Like that's gonna pop up Wait for it Alright Alright Alright Alright So we said Alright the 2010s 2010s Yep Mine's Pirates of the Caribbean Obviously it's my favorite game ever Gotta have that And then my other game Was Big Buck Hunter Nice Didn't see that coming. I can appreciate it. But, like, look, here's my method. So in that decade, I've got a long playing game, all right, because I can pick two games. So a long and a short playing game seemed how I approached it. A long playing game, but pirates, you know, the rules are just so much depth. There's, you know, along the journey there's many paths, right, to get to the end of it, and I love that. A long-playing game is a mentor. There's a lot to it. And then I wanted a brutal, kind of shorter-playing game. And I think Big Buck... My favorite games are... I really love the games, and I've said this before, like Stern from the early 2010s, Iron Man, Big Buck Hunter, Avatar, and Tron. Those are the four that they kind of had a design philosophy around. A little more simple, more simple rules, kind of brutal games. It almost has a classic pinball feel to it, but it's still ramps. It's not over-the-top, long-playing games, which I was thinking in that. I kind of want to get an Avatar one day just so I can start getting all those old games. I would love a Tron. I kind of want an Avatar, too. Tron's too much, but my ideal, if I had the space and some money, would be all those four games. I love that era. They're just fun to play. I can just play them with anybody because I can't be on there for too long. And that's an important thing in my collection is having some games that I can't play for too long. I can't play Pirates with people. I can't play Led Zeppelin with people. But the great equalizers are those games of that period. I can play them maybe a little longer than people, but not long enough that people are walking away or getting frustrated with me. Right. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I've always thought Avatar would look really cool sitting next to Tron because they both have those 3D back glasses. I was like – and then James sold his. I was like, should have bought his. His was really nice. So here's my 2010s We're very much on the same path here In the 2010s POTC is mine, there's my JJP My Eric Meunier game Great game, so many different ways to play it And I went with Tron Surprise there, right? Love the theme, same concept It's a quick playing game But love the experience every time Go for it I own a Tron, I would love a Tron back I love an Avatar and I would love those four games. Those four games are great. That's how I would replace a classic with those games and put it in there and feel like I didn't lose out on that quicker playing kind of game. All right. Two thousands. This is really – I hated this. I hated – this is the hardest moment where I was like I hated doing this process. Yeah. Those games are terrible. It made me really appreciate that we are living in an amazing time for pinball right now. We are very spoiled by pinball right now. Look, there's some, like, you've got Simpsons that people like. You've got Lord of the Rings. You've got Spider-Man. But, like, I've played those games to death that they don't do anything for me. And I hate these long-playing games that are very, like, kind of linear. Like, and now I do this, and now I do that. And it just feels like this, like, just constant steady thing. I don't know. It's not exciting to me. And the problem with those games is that if I hadn't owned it, it would get so boring to me. Because not only is it long, but, like, I can really control it. and I can almost always have a consistently long game. There's nothing exciting about it. It's just kind of going through the motions. That's like Sopranos for you, right? Yeah, I don't. Look, Sopranos, that was a game I respect a lot of things about. I know I recommend it to a lot of people, but at 10 years into pinball and as much pinball as I played, I'm at a level where it's just not fun for me. It's not fun for me. I play it here and there. I'll play the game. I was like, that's cool, but then I just don't want to touch it again. Yeah. All right, so what did you go with? I had to go with something. This is tough. I had to try to find something that I think would be a little bit different and hold my interest in games I haven't owned or played. So Wheel of Fortune. I want a Wheel of Fortune for some reason. Even though it crushes me that there's no Wizard Mode in it. I have a Wheel of Fortune-esque pick later on. And then I guess Ripley's. I don't know. I don't know. It's such a problem because I've played the shit out of Lord of the Rings. And, you know, eight years ago I was able to sit on that game for, like, 40 minutes. Like, now I would just pick it apart and just be so bored by it. Like, there's no, like, multiple. There's nothing, like, that could possibly happen differently in the game. Spider-Man's the same way. You saw me on, get me on Batman. I would sit there forever. It's just, they're too easy and too boring. Now, Ripley's might be that, but I just haven't played it enough. I feel like I can dive in there and have something different. But, no, this decade sucked, dude. I'm probably most excited for Wheel of Fortune. I'd probably have fun with that game I went with more of your expected picks Spider-Man is my favorite Steve Ritchie game So I went for that I love that layout I've always felt like when you're shooting the rafts And Spider-Man's going woohoo It's like It's a great game It brings out that feeling of Flying through the city It's crazy That's the best game of the 2000s by the way If I had to pick the best game of the 2000s Spider-Man And my other pick is Lord of the Rings Agreed, long playing game Wouldn't play it all the time But I do like having a long Epic kind of journey game That would be it for me, right? When I had Hobbit and Lord of the Rings here It was like, I don't need both of these But one or the other would be good See, I Those are great picks in terms of Some of the best games of the decade I mentioned Simpsons I need a quote unquote players game Where it's got to surprise me with some hard shots or can brutalize me or i don't know like i think uh like wheel of fortune would do that with some of the randomness and shots in there yeah but i don't know you're gonna have a 10 game collection it's gonna be it's like yeah i'm not gonna play this all the time but every once in a while i kind of want to have a game like that so it'd be nice to have in the mix okay yeah that was my thing all right all right 1990s god all right so the first one's not going to surprise anybody it's my my nostalgia classic pick uh adam's family yes i know bear chair shallow rules uh you know you can rip through it every time you play it but it just it puts me in my pinball happy place i i play it and i'm just like this is fun i have fun playing it you just want a basic bitch game sometimes sometimes you just want lots of basic bitch game exactly all right and it's like a mac and cheese it's like your comfort food it's a comfort pinball Exactly. All right. Listen, it's not from me, but I can respect that. Yeah. It's like the sound is great. The mood, it's got a fun atmosphere. The toys are cool. Give me my Addams Family. I did have a pick. Oh, what's your other one? My other one is Whitewater. Oh, that's a good one. This was a tough – there was a lot of good picks here. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I didn't have that, but I like that because that can be a tough game. Yeah, it's an interesting layout, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a book. Because it was like I had Attack from Mars on there. I was like, eh, I think I'd go Whitewater over AFM. All right, what was your race? Oh, you have me rethinking things. I'm not sure what I was thought out for. You're not allowed to rethink now. I've got Medieval Madness. I can't help that that game is not a game that I ever want to own, to be honest. But if I had to get a game from the 90s, it's kind of like in my collection. I'm kind of giving you the same response you give for – that's like my Spider-Man. Okay, there you go. It's just kind of a cool game with the castle and everything. And once in a while I'd want to tackle that, I think, or to have that in there. But if I swapped – if I put in Whitewater, I would put Whitewater in for that game. Okay. Because I think that's more of a – Whitewater can be more interesting in terms of what happens through him, a little more exciting. Yeah. I think it's a little more exciting. Yeah. I mean, even Madness can be a grind. Yeah. So I kind of forgot about that. I think I'd be tempted to swap that out. But the other one I had written down was World Cup Soccer. It's probably no surprise. I thought you might go there. Yeah. I mean, we just reviewed and I kind of said as much. So those are my two 90s games. 90s was harder to pick because there were better choices in there than the 2000s. 80s was just like, holy crap, there's a lot of pinball machines in the 80s. There's a lot of pinball machines, but not a lot of pinball machines that I had trouble picking. Yeah. A lot of junk. Yeah, there's a lot of junk, but there's some great classics in there, too. Yeah. My first one is my wildcard pick. It's my wildcard. So Robocop. I saw Robocop on the list and I was tempted for half a second. So that's cool. Yeah. I appreciate the wild card pick. I was probably influenced because I just watched the movies that made us on Netflix about Robocop. And I was like, damn, I want to watch Robocop. So I watched Robocop and I was like, damn, I kind of want the Robocop pinball machine now. Get it. Get it. I'm mad at you for not fucking getting Avatar. Who's got a Robocop for me? You tried to have Avatar and you didn't get it? Who's got a Robocop? Hit me up. Robocop. You fucked up not getting to this machine. Talkfimball at gmail.com if you got a Robocop for sale. My other pick is more of an expected pick is Centaur. Okay. Yeah. I don't like Centaur as much as everybody else likes it. I don't know why. Yeah. I don't know why. Okay. I don't have a good reason for it. I should like it. There's plenty of games I feel like I like. It's kind of awesome. So mine was Jungle Lord which is maybe my favorite classic of all time. I think that game is damn near perfect. and then the other one was Fathom. Oh, no. Just because I wanted a really, like, so I wanted to have the Williams and then I wanted to have a Bally and Fathom is just a beautiful game. It's a fun game so I gotta go with Fathom. What did you think I would pick? Bad Girls. Bad Girls, yeah. I had it on the list and then I thought Fathom. Yeah. Fathom's better than Bad Girls. I really wanted to put Bad Girls but then I was like, Nick's gonna pick Bad Girls. But Fathom's not, when you get into price, it's not. No. No, it's not like that. So this is like, this is the dream. Nobody's just giving you these games and they all work great. Correct. They're brand new and mint conditioned, yeah. Correct. Awesome. So that's the 80s. Our last decade, the 70s. I got one expected, one unexpected here, too. All right. So why don't you go first this decade? All right. So I'm going Paragon. All right. I really like Paragon, even though I don't have one. It's a wide body. It takes a lot of room. I don't know. I think that game's just great. I like Harlem a lot. But I find Paragon more interesting to play. And it's got some similarities with the inline drops. I think it's just a more interesting game, what's going on. It's such a good wide body. And I don't really like wide bodies that much, but that's such a good wide body, man. That's a great game. That's an ass-kicking wide body right there. I would love to have a nice Paragon someday. Like, if there's, like, a restored Paragon and I had the space, it'd be tempting. Yeah. It'd be really tempting. It's a fun game. And then the other one, you know, I threw in Stargazer. Okay. Because it's... That's a 70s game? Maybe it's not. Maybe I messed up. Maybe I messed up. Well, I'm going to research that. Next DQ'd. It might be a 70s game. I might be, Kevin. You might be right. My 70s picks, I'll give you the expected one first. It's Stars. That's kind of like a... Shit, it's 1980. Oh, shit. Well, you do yours. I'll just scramble to think of another one. Stars. I like Stars because it makes you shoot all over the play field, and it's super hard, right? But it's got a good spinner rip to it. You got to shoot all those Star stand up targets to light it up And it's just super fun My other one is the wild card You might remember this one From our virtual days of the bro show Shooting the rapids From Zacharia Oh okay It's very simple but I love it And it's like If I could have a Why not get a Zacharia If it's in this magical world Where it's all going to work and I never have to worry about parts. Yeah, what the heck. So I would have said Frontier. Frontier is 1980. So I'm just going to say Shoot in the Rapids. I'll take a Shoot in the Rapids as well. There you go. Why not? Who saw that coming? Yeah, you'd think I'd think of another one from the 70s. There's great games. I just, I don't know. I thought I had a lock. That's why. So I think that's what's coming to mind. Bad Girls is your favorite ADB game, Nick? Jeff Brenner 98 one. Yeah, 100%. Um, I know like, you know, the ADB games like, um, TX Sector gets it, but it's just the music. Like the, there's problems with the rules with the spin, ripping the spinner and stuff. Um, yeah. Bad Girls' favorite ADB game. I've not played Monte Carlo or whatever. Is that what it's called? Oh God. I think so. I've not, there's some I haven't played like, uh, Robo War. So you got to take it with a grain of salt. What's the creepy one with the little girls all over it? With the little girls all over it? Yeah. It's really gross. What is like the theme of it? It's like a carnival theme. I forget the name of it. Balls of Poppin'? No. No, I know what you mean. It's really bad. Might have played it at Papa. I don't know. I don't think they have it at Papa. I've only ever seen it at my house. I think Bad Girls is just a great game. Yeah. I was playing Bad Girls at your house after league, and I was like, man, this is really good. It's got that shot that loops around and sets up your upper flipper shot. I know. This is a really good layout. And the spinners. To hit that shot, you also hit a spinner in doing that. Yeah. It's a great game. Hit that drop-down target. It's really good. All right, we've got a couple bits of Q&A before the end of the show here. So this one comes from Sarjanski1978 in Discord. He says, curious if Nick could provide thoughts and tips on starting an operator business the next episode. My answer to him was don't do it. What would your tips be? I can give a – let's do it. We'll put that in the segment for next time, and maybe I'll prepare for it. Maybe I won't, but we'll talk about it next time. Let's do that. Okay. Because I don't think we've really done maybe a step-by-step in what to know. Okay. All right. And this one was great. This came to us through our email, talkpimpball.gmail.com. It's from Nolan in northern Maine. He says, Kevin, you are my hero. After many smashed fingers and hernias loading games in and out of my bed of my truck, I heard your suggestion on using pool noodles. I got a couple big solid noodles off of eBay real cheap, and rolling the games in and out of the bed by myself was a breeze. It was the first game I ever sold to a medieval madness. I spent the summer building from the husk and a board set of a donor NBA fast break that died from a lack of love. Actually, I do love NBA Fast Break. It was my first game. I got two rings and nearly 400 points on it, but I love the Deadpool Pro and stack of cash. I got it in trade for the Medieval Madness even more. Then I took the stack of cash and got a Stern Spider-Man. There you go. We were talking about that before. So God bless NBA Fast Break and this crazy market. And he says, and thanks you again for the pool noodle tip. So there you go. That's a good tip. That was an early podcast where I talked about that. Yeah. So the tip is, if you don't know, get a pool noodle. If you're rolling the game into your car, your truck bed, put the pool noodle down. Slide it right in on that sucker. Get to slide it in a little bit on the first one, and then put the second one in and finish sliding it in. And then what's nice about that is it kind of settles in a little bit. It doesn't slide around a lot. I know some folks will use PVC pipe for it, which is a similar effect, but then it rolls around more. Yeah, we used it when we moved Godzilla to Masuda Chow's. Okay. trick. And you're like, there you go. That is my contribution to the pinball world. I can go away now. I've done it. I've made an impact. Hot shots. That's the gross game. Arcade Hunter is new. Thank you. Alright, so that's going to do it for this episode of Brody Even Talk Pinball. Thanks for joining us. Have a great holiday season. If you haven't yet, be sure to follow us on social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube if you want to check out past episodes of the show or other Twitch streams. You can join us in Discord, discord.gg slash Buffalo Pinball to chat during the day. If you want to send a feedback like Nolan in Northern Maine, you can email us talkpinball at gmail.com. If you want to support the channel, you can drop some bits in chat. You can sub the Twitch channel using your money, or you can use your Prime account. If you have Amazon Prime, it's no extra charge. There's a PayPal account, buffalopinball at gmail.com. We've had some folks send donations like that. And you can also drop a review on your platform of choice to help us out there. That will help more people. And tell a friend. This holiday season when you're home just hanging out and you're like, I'm bored. I want to listen to some pinball podcasts. Tell them, listen to Birdie even talk pinball. Skinny guy ball guy. Skinny guy swears a lot. All right. All right. Have a good night.