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Pinball Roundtable Part - 10 with Retro Ralph, Rachel Bess and Cale Hernandez - Episode 75

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 39m·analyzed·Oct 24, 2025
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TL;DR

Chicago Expo 41 recap: Winchester sells out, homebrew quality surges, Spooky dominates.

Summary

The JBS Roundtable crew discusses the 41st Chicago Pinball Expo with guests Retro Ralph, Rachel Bess, and Cale Hernandez. Key highlights include Retro Ralph's Stern user group event, Spooky Pinball's dominant low-cost booth presence, and exceptional homebrew games in the Marco Specialties area—particularly Big Trouble in Little China and Winchester Mystery House. Winchester sold out completely before Expo opened and features hidden UV-reactive artwork on the playfield. The panel discussion covers women in pinball, content creator experiences, and industry observations about game design quality.

Key Claims

  • Winchester Mystery House sold out completely before Expo started, with dealers unable to source units even 24 hours before the event

    high confidence · Multiple speakers confirmed calling dealers Sunday morning and finding zero inventory; one person bought a unit the day before

  • Winchester has hidden UV-reactive ink artwork on the playfield that is not visible under normal lighting

    high confidence · Rachel read lips from Jeff Dodson's Dirty Pool podcast reveal video where he bleeps out mention of reactive ink; they brought a blacklight to Expo and confirmed hidden artwork exists

  • Spooky Pinball attended Expo with minimal booth investment (backpack of candy and t-shirts) and dominated industry conversation despite spending nothing

    high confidence · Multiple speakers identified Spooky as clear winner of show; Bug/Luke appeared Friday or Saturday with minimal materials

  • Retro Ralph hosted a Stern user group event with 30 non-pinball engineers who were impressed by hand-built manufacturing and expressed desire to buy machines

    high confidence · Ralph detailed the event proposal, factory tour, and customer reactions; Zach Sharp and Seth were involved in approving and executing the event

  • David Van Ness reached out to Carl (Winchester designer) after hearing he was building a homebrew machine, but Winchester is not based on that homebrew project

    high confidence · Rachel interviewed David Sunday evening; clarification also mentioned in Flippin' Out podcast with Ken Cromwell

  • Big Trouble in Little China homebrew features extensive mechanics including inline drop targets, magnetic saves, kicking center post, and movie clips

    high confidence · Ralph provided detailed playfield description of features he observed

  • The Women in Pinball panel was preceded by a pinup/pinball celebration panel, creating awkward optics about encouraging female participation

    high confidence · Rachel discussed the timing issue and community reaction; multiple speakers noted the incongruity

Notable Quotes

  • “They didn't spend a dime on a booth. Everybody was talking about them. That's the clear winner. Largest net profit.”

    Retro Ralph @ ~8:00 — Identifies Spooky's minimal-investment strategy as the dominant marketing story of Expo

  • “When you play Winchester, it feels really familiar. And it just shows what an experienced, highly skilled player can design. And it's a hit.”

    Rachel Bess @ ~27:00 — Acknowledges Carl's expertise and differentiates Winchester from previous Barrels games

  • “They are going to sell 500 on Carl's name alone.”

    Rachel Bess @ ~25:00 — Indicates Carl's reputation in the homebrew/expert player community drove Winchester's pre-Expo sellout

  • “The beans were all weighed on a scale and spritzed with moisture, like two spritzes from a little spray bottle as they were being ground, which she told me was to lessen the static so that it didn't clump together when it was being made into espresso.”

    Cale Hernandez @ ~15:30 — Detailed description of Bash Pinball's specialty espresso setup at Expo, highlighting community vendor creativity

  • “We're really trying to get women in pinball. We really want to encourage participation. We want the other gender to be there. This maybe isn't your best way of achieving that.”

    Rachel Bess @ ~41:00 — Critique of scheduling conflicting panels about pinup imagery before women-in-pinball discussion

  • “I put my hand in the shared Dorito bag, but I think that's what did it. Like, you shouldn't do that. Who does that? And there was, like, moss in that bag.”

    Retro Ralph @ ~5:00 — Self-aware admission of poor decision-making at Expo that likely caused illness

  • “How the hell do you know who I am? But he was so lovely.”

    Retro Ralph (quoting Ken Cromwell) @ ~28:00 — Positive reflection on Ken Cromwell's personability and recognition of content creators

  • “Did you remember all that shit you were talking about me on the podcast? Did he say that? Oh no, did he really? Are you making this up?”

Entities

Chicago Pinball ExpoeventWinchester Mystery HousegameDavid Van NesspersonCarlpersonRetro RalphpersonRachel Bessperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball conducted user group event targeting non-pinball engineers as new customer acquisition strategy; event designed to showcase manufacturing quality and drive sales interest

    high · Retro Ralph detailed 6-month proposal process with Zach Sharp; 30 engineers toured factory; Seth and Joe Marchfield distributed business cards; customers expressed purchase intent

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Winchester's pre-Expo sellout driven by Carl's personal reputation in competitive/homebrew community; 500-unit FOMO accurately predicted based on designer credibility

    high · Rachel predicted 500 sales 'on Carl's name alone'; all dealer channels sold out within 24 hours; expert player perspective valued highly

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Pinball demonstrating commitment to non-traditional customer acquisition and education by hosting first-ever user group event at production facility; Seth and leadership actively seeking feedback for expansion

    high · Retro Ralph's account of event approval, execution, and customer response; Seth's explicit request for feedback; planned repeat events

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Carl's expertise as competitive player/homebrew designer resulted in Winchester featuring familiar, well-integrated mechanics that differentiate from previous Barrels games

    high · Rachel's observation: 'When you play Winchester, it feels really familiar...shows what an experienced, highly skilled player can design'

  • ?

    event_signal: Chicago Pinball Expo 41 positioned as successful, well-attended event with strong homebrew presence and industry enthusiasm; Winchester sellout indicated healthy pre-order/FOMO dynamics

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.297

0:00
Back from the 41st running of the Chicago Pinball Expo, Cale Hernandez returns after greeting hundreds of adorned fans up and down the expo halls. Jamie Burchill is back from his family wedding and is up 8-7 in his head-to-head tournament versus Retro Ralph. As for the errand boy, he was busy looking for a mixer and running to Target to get Jamie his Diet Coke. Rachel Best joins the crew to talk all things expo on this edition of the JBS Roundtable.
0:30
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Pinball Roundtable. Today we are joined by Rachel Bess, K.L. Hernandez, and Retro Ralph. Ralph just came back from Stern, so we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Expo. We're going to talk about a bunch of stuff today, right guys? That's right. Yep. and you know let's give a quick shout out to vick vp for uh the shirts that he gave us i wore mine yesterday i can't wear it but you can go to that podcast on the electric bat and spotify and you can find what she was wearing but thank you thank you vick vp that was very nice very you didn't need to do that such a cool dude what a nice guy i get a lot of compliments on that shirt too uh i don't know if i look good in red though you were really um before they joined you were really kind of not sure about yourself in the red but you look great i mean i prefer black but you know it's a free gift so i'm not gonna crap on that okay we'll have to make you a black gift givers future gift givers here's the deal i'm a little chunky okay and black is just better for me right now at this weight.
1:52
You can never go wrong if you give somebody a black shirt. No. That's the way to go. Black is nice. And, you know, electric bat, black, looks good. Yeah. All right. So Ralph hosted a Stern event. Let's talk about that because Ralph is back in Chicago right now. Again, dude, you were home for three days. Now you're back in Chicago. and you hosted a work event at Stern. How did this happen? Well, so we do these things at work. They're user groups. So it's like we take our customers, and they're all engineers, so we take them and we put them in a room, and they just get to share, like, best practices and stuff like that. It'd be like if Stern brought a bunch of dealers to say how to repair games. It's kind of like that, right? And I asked Zach Sharp six months ago, I said, hey, have you ever thought about hosting a work event? because we always host them at these lame places like Topgolf. It's like places that we've done a million axe throwing.

Barrels of Fun (David Van Ness's company) may have samples of Winchester available for arcade operators

medium confidence · David Van Ness told Cale he would check with factory about obtaining a couple of samples for Electric Bat Arcade

Jamie Burchill @ ~37:00 — Humorous exchange about David Van Ness referencing negative podcast commentary while offering sample machine support

Cale Hernandez
person
Jamie Burchillperson
Spooky Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
Barrels of Funcompany
Big Trouble in Little Chinagame
Marco Specialtiescompany
Fast Pinballcompany
Electric Bat Arcadevenue
Zach Sharpperson
Jeff Dodsonperson
Ken Cromwellperson
Bash Pinballcompany/group
Kerry Hardyperson
Jack Dangerperson
Cherylperson
Rebeccaperson

high · Multiple speakers praised event quality; homebrew section identified as major draw; content creator panels well-received; overall positive community sentiment

  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball's minimal-booth strategy (candy, t-shirts, no booth display) generated maximum industry conversation and identified as 'clear winner' of Expo despite zero formal investment

    high · Multiple speakers identified Spooky as show winner; Bug/Luke appeared with backpack approach; standing-room-only engagement

  • ?

    community_signal: Carl (homebrew designer/competitive player) partnered with Barrels of Fun (David Van Ness) to productize Winchester after Barrels reached out about his whitewood project

    high · Multiple podcast/interview sources confirm David initiated contact; Carl built designs, David provided manufacturing/licensing; non-homebrew-based collaboration

  • ?

    announcement: Winchester Mystery House officially announced and released as Barrels of Fun's newest title; completely sold out before Expo began

    high · Multiple speakers confirmed sellout status; pre-Expo sales; available in Flippin' Out booth; Rachel played Sunday night after NDA lift

  • ?

    product_strategy: Winchester features hidden UV-reactive ink artwork on playfield as Easter egg/secret feature not visible under normal gameplay conditions

    high · Rachel read-lip decoded Dirty Pool podcast reveal; confirmed with blacklight at Expo; deliberate design choice to hide from casual players

  • ?

    product_strategy: Barrels of Fun has next game in development; possibly based on whitewood homebrew Carl was working on prior to Winchester collaboration

    medium · David Van Ness mentioned to Rachel that whitewood project is next game; Ken Cromwell's Flippin' Out podcast reportedly contained details about unlicensed IP difficulty

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Potential optics concern around women-in-pinball initiatives being undercut by back-to-back pinup celebration panel scheduling; community noted awkward timing and contradictory messaging

    medium · Rachel and Cale noted eye-rolling from attendees; discussion of incongruity between pinup celebration and female participation encouragement

  • ?

    technology_signal: Homebrew games at Expo reaching production-quality aesthetics raises IP concerns for Marco Specialties and Fast Pinball regarding licensing of unlicensed IP in booth display

    medium · Aaron Davis expressed concern about homebrew section quality vs. IP protection; Harry Potter homebrew creator displayed legal disclaimer banner

    • 2:53
    We haven't done apple peas, but that would be awesome. That's too bad. So just stuff like that. And he's like, well, I don't know. We've never done that before. And so it kind of lost steam, and then it got popped back up again. I said, can we do it? And he's like, well, let me just put the proposal together of what you want to do. And I said, it'd be cool to do a short factory tour. And then we'll do our presentation with our customers. And then we could all play games in the lobby area. We couldn't go in the arcade because there was something going on in there. I don't know what was going on. Interesting. Yeah. We couldn't go in there. So take that for what it's worth, whatever was going on. But, no, it went off great. They were definitely – Seth came up to me and he's like, how's it going? Is it going well? He's like, we've never done these before, so we're kind of like really wanting to hear your feedback. But all the customers, none of them owned pinball machines. And literally at the end, they're like, we want pinball machines so bad. So everyone was like introduced to this new world. They were amazed at the fact that they were all hand built. Like the factory tour, they were blown away. Because keep in mind, these are non pinball people, but engineering minds. So they really appreciated the tour. And yeah, it's really cool that Stern did that. They treated us great. And I think we'll probably do it again and maybe try to do it even better next time. But this was sort of a test and it went it went pretty awesome. And the customers are like, oh, my gosh, are we going to do it again here next time? Which probably we can't do it again next time. But we will do one again, I think, if if they'll allow it or. But it was cool. Sounds good for starting marketing to engineers have the kind of paychecks that can buy pinball machines. Yeah. Well, they were kind of they kept saying that, like, like Joe Marchfield and Zach were like, hey, take a card if you're interested in buying one. So they were they were definitely like using it to their advantage, too. But, no, they were really cool. And you know what the coolest part is? For all those folks that were with you that didn't know pinball was still a thing and didn't know anything about pinball, of course, the fact that they're still making them is incredible. But the fact that they're making them in America, in Chicago, I mean, you know, there aren't a lot of products like this that are still built in America. and we still see we we still i still talk to people that come to the arcade and that are surprised that these things are not made in china yeah i mean everybody's surprised if you find anything like a pencil that's not made in china yeah or mexico or whatever yeah the funny thing is zach did they broke the the tour group up into two groups and one of the guys is like a really smart engineer and he was he was grilling zach he's like how do you know he's like when you're Looking at licenses, what licenses do you look at? And how do you know that that's going to be a good seller with the customer base? And Zach was just like, well, we look at VIN diagrams and we do all this stuff. I think he was looking at me going like, why are these guys asking such hard questions? But they were asking a lot. He should have told the truth and just said, that's just a thing. We have no idea.
    5:54
    Well, he kind of did maybe get to that. That kind of was the answer at the end. He's like, well, sometimes he said it like really politically correct. He's like, well, sometimes we go out on a whim and kind of release something, and we hope that it does well. He didn't say it exactly like that. But, no, they were asking him about – these are engineers, so they were like, a quarter mile of wires? They're like, oh, my gosh, can we see where they make the wires? And he's like, yeah, come on. We'll show you the wire harnesses. So to see engineers and what they were appreciative of was really cool. Like, they loved the Hannafin press. Like, they couldn't get enough of the Hannafin press. So, yeah, it was cool. We had a good time. I'm glad they said yes because, honestly, it's probably one of the coolest events that we've ever done. Made you look good. It kind of did. They were like, ooh, how does this guy know all these people? It was cool. All these people knew who you were. Yeah, it was cool. How many people came to it? We had like 30. Okay. And we had 30 crammed in that one conference room. Remember the conference room when we were all there for Kong? I think that was Cheetah, right? Yeah, we were in Cheetah, and they had 30 people in there. It was a little tight, but no, it worked out. Yeah, it was good. I want to go home now, though. How are you feeling? Like shit. I have the expo crud thing big time. I'm ready to go home. So how are you feeling, Rachel and Cale? You guys are okay, right? You guys didn't get it? We feel great, except Cale and I both have done a lot of yard work over the last two days, and with the storm stuff, our allergies are going wild. But aside from that, fine. I think this is the first year I did not pick up anything from Expo or the plane. Oh, good. Yeah. The airport. Yeah. I was only there for a day, so I missed any illness. So I'm very happy. Can I tell you guys real quick where the tragic flaw was, where I made the mistake? I'm pretty sure this is where the crud came from. You hugged Kerry Hardy. I saw he was freezing up a storm. Actually, that could be. I think when we were up in that suite upstairs, I put my hand. I don't know what compelled me to put my hand in the shared Dorito bag, but I think that's what did it. Like, you shouldn't do that. Who does that? And I saw you do that, too, and I'm just like, no. There was, like, moss in that bag. There was all sorts of weird stuff growing in that bag. Should have never done that. Well, good move. And I hope you feel better. Thanks.
    8:16
    What's good through? Let's talk about our expo, right? Because that's what people are here for. Do we want to say like a winner of the show or what your thoughts were of the show? Again, I'm leaning on the three of you because I was only there a day and a half.
    8:34
    Yeah, if we want to go straight into the winner of the show, I mean, it's very clear it was spooky. They didn't spend a dime on a booth.
    8:45
    Everybody was talking about them. That's the clear winner. That's a good move. Largest net profit. I mean, that's just a baller move. You know, biggest show, biggest pinball industry show. You know, we don't even need to do this. We're going to save our money. You know, we're going to show up with a backpack full of Zagnuts and T-shirts.
    9:08
    I didn't get to see them. What day did they come on? Saturday, right? Or Bug came? We just saw Bug, right? I think Luke was still hunting.
    9:17
    Yeah. I can't remember what day it was. It was the second day we were there, so that was Friday, right? Friday or Saturday. It was one of those. Yeah, and he had a backpack full of candy bars and T-shirts. And friendship. And friendship, and we hung out. Is there a back story on that particular candy bar? I don't know. He gave me one, and I didn't. Is there something about that? Did you try it? Yeah, it's okay. So it's like a Butterfinger without the chocolate, add coconut. It's better than okay. It's a fantastic. I don't love coconut. I don't know if it's like a Wisconsin thing or anything. Save it for me next time. That's the first time I've had it. I will. You'll get mine next time.
    9:58
    So, Ralph, what do you think? Winner of the show? What were some highlights for you guys? Well, I mean, for me, I really spent a lot of time in the homebrew area this year. And there were just so many cool games there. Like Jake's, what is it, Ninja, what is that thing called again? Jake Danzig had the Monster League Hockey. Oh, Monster. Why did he call it Ninja? I was going to like Ninja League hockey, but the Monster League hockey was really fun. I had never played The Greatest Showman, and I know that's been around for a couple of years. I really had fun with that. There was the Atom thing. There was the Sonic, which I had never played. Big Trouble in Little China. There was so many games. I never got to play. Did you get to play it, guys? I didn't get to play it. Did you guys play it? It was so good. Give us your feedback. We need to hear this. It had like all the coolest shit from all of the other pinball machines. So you've got the stuff that pops up like the trolls. You have inline drop targets. You have the magnet like in roller games that stops the ball in front of the flipper. You have where you can bounce the ball back into the in lane like Indiana Jones or Jaws.
    11:05
    I'm forgetting some, but there's – oh, it had a center post that you could activate twice with the lockdown bar button per ball that was a kicking center post. would kick it back up onto the playing field. That's neat. Very cool. Yeah, really, really neat. There's an old game that had that.
    11:24
    Was it Medusa? I don't know. I don't remember Medusa. Katie and Olivia have one, whatever it is, that post-kicks. Maybe. I just don't remember. But it also had movie clips. Very cool. All the animation was awesome. Scott Denise, he did the sound and the music and it looked beautiful It looked very pro Yeah, it kind of looked like I only looked at it, I didn't get to play it I waited so many times, but I gave up I just stood there next to people as they played it and just watched them Do you know Jamie won't wait in the line? He won't wait Well then you're not going to play a lot at Expo You're going to play the old broken one flipper working yeah you know what's only there a day and a half so that's what i said what's really interesting about the homebrew section and everybody was saying this uh these games are looking more and more like production machines and uh i was talking to aaron davis from fast pinball and he was saying he's there there's some concern here now because you're using the the home booth section to sell tickets to bring in money so it's we're at a point where we need to start worrying about the ip john carpenter saying wait a second yeah right yeah Did you see the big disclaimer banner that the Harry Potter guy had for his machine? He printed a whole entire banner that went. It was a big legal disclaimer because I walked up to it. I was like Harry Potter. So as it was like a decreed order from the Ministry of Magic, it was really cool because I went. I went, man, do you ever worry about the legalities? And he's like, yep, that's why I brought this. And I was like, started reading it. It was like a big scroll of all of the things that, you know, basically don't get me in trouble. But, yeah, there was so much cool stuff. But kudos to that area. Kudos to that entire area, Marco Specialties and Aaron from Fast Pinball. What a great section and definitely one of my highlights of the show. Also, I'd like to do a shout-out to the Bash Pinball guys for their fantastic espresso.
    13:51
    I heard it was really good, and I didn't have a chance to try it. I got a sip of Kale's. He went over there, and Matt just hooked him up.
    14:04
    Yeah. That was my second time. Was it really? Yeah. Man, that was the best espresso I've ever had in my life. Yeah, we're not talking like those little pods that you get in the hotel rooms or something. This was like some next-level specialty imported beans, fancy grinders, stuff. The beans were all weighed on a scale. and spritzed with moisture, like two spritzes from a little spray bottle as they were being ground, which she told me was to lessen the static so that it didn't clump together when it was being made into espresso. It was the whole science of espresso making with some very fancy equipment. And it was really cool to see, but also the espresso was fantastic. Right, and this machine had a giant display on it, and it had a graph. So as it was brewing the coffee or whatever you call what it does, one readout was for pressure, one was for water, and one was for heat. And you could see the graph going up and down.
    15:08
    Phenomenal. If he brings it next year, you've got to go check it out. Yes. Did you guys see? I had reposted, I took a video of Jack Danger's sort of like his multi-spinner thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, we played that. So many people are commenting on that video and saying, I want to buy it. Like, is he selling it? And I saw him at Stern today. I was like, dude, everyone wants to buy that thing. He's like, yeah. He's like, I was shocked. There were people betting, like placing bets and like doing little mini tournaments on it. Jamie, you didn't touch that thing, did you? No, I didn't get a chance. Dude, it was really fun. It's such a cool, it's so satisfying to have the ball go through that many spinners. It was the coolest thing.
    15:50
    Yeah, it was so dope. And I've thought that for years. When I saw, like, 1UP doing those tiny virtual cabinets, and then you have that miniature Alice in Wonderland cabinet, which their booth was there. You could actually flip that thing. You know, I always thought, you know, all Stern needs to do is make, you know, pull out the Munsters play field. that little tiny one, right? And make a little game. You have a tabletop game. But that's what the Jack Danger thing reminded me of. It was like that size. Do you guys think if they sold those, people would buy them? Oh, certainly. I don't know how many. I think so, too. I mean, depending on, for $3,000, no. For $300, yes. Yeah, like if it was three to five, do you think people would buy it? I'd consider it. Maybe three more likely. What are you going to do with that thing?
    16:41
    I don't know. I have a lot of stuff I don't know what to do with. What are you going to do with it? I mean, people play that. You know, like a Rubik's Cube. People play that American doll game, man. I think I would put it on my desk and, like, when I wanted a break, I would flip it for a little while. Right. Try to get the high score. Yeah. Well, good luck. Also, kind of the obvious Winchester, right? Right. That's the. That's where I was going. Rachel, thank you for saving us.
    17:08
    Wow. Right. And let me apologize to the three of you. because NDAs get me scared, and I wasn't able to tell you and give you a heads up on this great machine, but I did get to play it on Sunday night, and it is as great as everybody said it is. It really is fantastic, and I can't believe they sold out. I mean, they sold out. Yeah, they sold out before we went into Expo, before Expo started, because I wanted to touch the game and play it before sending them my money. and um so it i don't know what was that like 8 30 in the morning before expo started i'm in there playing it loving it thinking it's incredible calling do you have one no sold out do you have one no sold out like just going down you know i know a lot of dealers they were just all sold out everywhere so i originally thought that was totally bullshit really but then when we got to the show because I played it um they had one in the flipping out booth like outside of the booth and I that was the first game I saw because I was going over to say hi to Ken and I was like oh can I play it real quick he's like yeah sure and I was like oh man this is awesome like I played one game on it I was like this is awesome I was like do you have them it goes no and then everyone I asked said no and then you guys wanted one like no one had them it was crazy I mean I talked to somebody that bought one the day before so they sold out you know there was the whole sold through sold out thing they actually sold out i guess the from from what i understand there were still gettable you know 24 hours prior to that yeah somebody called me as soon as they announced it and was like what is this is barrels crazy this unknown ip is this something they just made up And I told him, I was like, they are going to sell 500 on Carl's name alone. Yeah. Easy. Yeah. Yep. And, you know, they were like, who the hell is Carl? And I had to explain. You know, and that's one thing about this. You know, I've played Labyrinth. I've owned a Dune.
    19:20
    There's, when I played both of those games, something felt different. You know, it just, you know, than other pinball machines I've played. When you play Winchester, it feels really familiar. And it just shows what an experienced, highly skilled player can design.
    19:45
    And it's a hit. And I think he's working on another one. I think, no, I think David, like, said that. And I was listening to a podcast. I can't remember which one. I think it was Flippin' Out with Ken. That's it. Okay. And that's a – please go listen to that. That's a good podcast. I met Ken for the first time. I finally met Ken. Yeah, he's nice. Ken's so awesome. Oh, my God. Rachel came up to me and couldn't have been nicer and said, you know, I really like what you do. And I was like, how the hell do you know who I am? But he was so lovely. Yeah. And he's a great guy. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jamie. They said, well, David reached out to Carl because he heard he was making a homebrew machine. And they started chatting.
    20:36
    But the Winchester game is not based on that homebrew he was working on. And David reiterated that to me on Sunday evening because I started interviewing him, right, like right off the bat because I'm playing and I'm talking to Carl. I'm like, how did this happen? Like, how did you hook up? And he's like, well, we went over there and I heard he was working on a Whitewood. Very similar to what he said on that podcast. So I don't need to. But the interesting thing in that podcast is he said the Whitewood that he was working on is the next game.
    21:10
    Oh, interesting. I don't remember hearing that, but if that's the case, that would be awesome. I swear I heard it. I thought he said that the license that he was working on, you know, unlicensed game was difficult to obtain that license. I thought he said that. But anyway, good for good for barrels. Sorry about the NDA guys. No, I mean, it's all good. Did you guys play it in the experience room? Yes. We played it on the floor and in that room where, you know, the little dark room. It was much better to hear the call outs and the music. The sound is so good in that game. Jeff did such a good job. Bravo, Jeff Dodson. The music, the atmosphere that it creates is perfect. And I think he still has more to add to it. But I was like, dude, this is because on the show floor, you guys know you can't hear that. But I was like, dude, this is freaking good.
    22:09
    Jeff's phenomenal. I called Jeff the night. I'm sorry, Ralph, but real quick. I called Jeff the night that I saw it. Because I needed to talk to somebody. I have this fresh information. I need somebody else on an NDA. So I call him up, and I just said, the call-outs are fantastic. And that was a friend of Jeff's that he brought in, a voice actor. And, boy, they're fantastic. What a great choice. I love, like, all of the rhyming Haunted Mansion vibes, like Disneyland Haunted Mansion. Yeah. I'll tell you a funny story about Winchester. Late night, probably early morning, we were in the tournament room, and David Van Ness walks in. You know, I'm congratulating him. I was like, man, you hit it out of the park with Winchester. Awesome. I was like, what can we do?
    23:04
    I was like, I got to get my hands on one. I need one for the electric bat. And, you know, I can't find one. It's all sold out. and so he said you know we let me get back to the to the the factory i think we might have a couple of samples but uh you remember all that shit you were talking about me on the podcast did he say that oh no did he really are you making this up did he say this hey swear to god it's it was fucking hilarious. Well, good on David. Thank you, David.
    23:40
    Congratulations to them, to the industry. It's nothing but great news for everybody. Expo needed it. It felt like it needed it. That was great. What would it have if there was no... Big Trouble in Little China would have been the front page article.
    24:00
    Did you guys get to... I didn't get to it personally, but when I was in that experience room thing i was watching other people play and um the basement thing is really cool did you get to it or see it the basement of the game well you have to pull the light out yes you hold the action button to like turn the flashlight on but at that point just like in real life like i gotta hold the flashlight so i gotta now play the game with one hand so cool but it was really cool when you put the flashlight on his like side lighting like lights up as it turns on It was so cool I was like that pretty creative So I like that I know he did the paint box thing in Dune which is also the one handed thing But I don know I kind of dig that It just something different you know Well speaking of flashlight we did bring our blacklight Oh wait what He brought his blacklight. We brought it. Did I know this whole story, Ralph? No, but I can only imagine where this is going to go, so I'm interested. So on the Dirty Pool podcast on YouTube for the reveal, Jeff interviewed Carl. And it was a whole reveal, and it talked about making the game. It's actually really good. You should go back and listen to it. And he talks about a secret in the game that they haven't talked about publicly. and he keeps that bit in the in the video but bleeps out what he's saying and partially obscures with text his mouth so rachel read his lips and he said there is reactive ink on the play field that you can reveal with a black light so i brought we brought a black light to expo and And there is hidden art in the play field.
    25:53
    Yeah. So what does it say? Does it say something? Well, I expected it with David Van Ness. If you guys know him, his humor is great. And I thought it was going to be like a hidden message. But it's not. It's hidden artwork. And there's no UV light in the game. So you will never see it unless you shine a black light on the game. And I'm going to keep it a surprise. It's just some hidden artwork. You guys find it for yourself.
    26:29
    All right. Okay. So just go find one of those 525 copies. Thanks. Bring your black light. Well, I'll just go bring a black light when I do a tour. I'll just show up. Yeah, you're a little closer than the rest of us. I'm a little close. So is he going to get back to you on that sample idea, or is that just off the table? Who knows? He seems to have lost the number.
    26:54
    Well, congrats to them and the entire team. I know most of those people, and way to go. Knocked it out of the park. That's fantastic. Yes, kudos. Definitely. Absolutely. And sorry again about the NDA, Rachel.
    27:06
    Let's talk about panels. Okay, two of our friends here, Cale, were on panels. and I only got to watch Rachel's panel live in person, but I didn't get to see Ralph's, but I did go back and watch it on the Pinball News Network. Can we start with Rachel's panel? Yeah, let's do it.
    27:28
    So what was it called? Women in Pinball? Yeah, Women in Pinball. Okay. Can I ask a question because I was sitting next to Cale? What is the person to your – You're talking about Cheryl? Yes. Cheryl is the electrical engineer. She's a gem. She stole the show on that one. She's hilarious. It was really, really good. Please go back and watch this on the Pinball News channel. She's so funny. You can see Cheryl.
    28:00
    It's Kale because Kale is kicking me. And Kale, every time she says something awesome, right? Yeah. And I don't want to give it away. Go back. Go watch that. She was absolutely fantastic. Her delivery is – I'd never met her before that either. That was – I met her on the stage.
    28:19
    Well, and I've hung out with her several times at different shows. So I knew to watch it. That's why I was like – I was hitting Jamie. Oh, I didn't know that. You knew her beforehand? Yeah. And I was hitting – Well, you should have warned me. This is just going to be funny. We've hung out many times backstage at Stern. But, like, I kept – I was like, you know, listen to this, Jamie. It's going to get good. And he was nailing it, too. Every time they went to her, she said something beautiful. It was really – it was a good panel. I thought your comment on the expo meeting, I guess, before your expo – what am I trying to say? You're saying that whenever I walked in because I was early for my panel and there's just a bunch of lingerie women everywhere. Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. Because the panel that was directly before ours was about celebrating pinups and pinball, the women that grace the playfields and backglasses, yada, yada, yada. It was something they were talking about, Playboy, Penthouse.
    29:26
    There was a picture of the Phantom of the Opera girl, which, you know, was kind of weird because the story I've heard is that that's modeled off of Paul Ferris's daughter. The whole.
    29:43
    Yeah. Timing probably wasn't great for, you know. I mean, and here's the thing. Like, nobody cares. If you want to have some pinup stuff, I'm not a – like go for it. Great. But to do that and then also be saying we're really trying to get women in pinball. We really want to encourage participation. We want the other gender to be there.
    30:06
    This maybe isn't your best way of achieving that. Yeah, maybe not back to back. I didn't talk to a single – actually a single person there, but there was no – Everybody was just rolling their eyes like, why would they do this? What were they thinking?
    30:22
    Like, why? It wasn't – not a great choice in my opinion. We could work on that for 2026 maybe. Always learning. Yeah. Always learning and growing. But the panel was good. I really enjoyed it, Rachel. I really enjoyed it. Oh, my. Not the nipples and panties. So we came in from, where did we come in? Oh, from the creator mixer, the content creation. Oh, that's right. You guys got to go to that.
    30:57
    How was that? I didn't hear about that. You know, it was good. It was good. They didn't have enough food, and some of these content creators are vultures, and they hammered that buffet.
    31:09
    And then they fool you with this looks like it's a buffalo chicken bite. It's not. Oh, they pulled that again? The cauliflower thing? It's cauliflower. I fell for that last year.
    31:21
    Well, Jamie was kind enough when the food was running out to let me have the slider. The only slider that was there where it was like a random bun, top bun, that was kind of thrown or fallen off the thing. But I ate it anyway because I was really hungry. So thank you, Jamie, for that. Did we lose Jamie? I love how it's frozen.
    31:40
    I think we'll probably pop up. Why does he always have tech issues no matter what? Like, why? I'm in a hotel. What is going on? I'm in a fucking hotel and I'm fine. Yeah, you look great. And Jamie's at his house. It's every show. Do you realize every show he has at least one tech issue? It never, and people love it. They like want Jamie to have technical problems. So is he going to pop back in or how does that work? He should. Should we message him? Oh, he's gone. He's coming back. He's gone. He'll be back. but um no the who is the one that works at stern i just went up to her and said you did such a great job on the panel she's the one that does like the purchasing she was on the far end rebecca with the green hair the green hair yeah yeah she was so nice i i went and talked to her i just said you guys did a great job and and she was she's she's so nice i had never really like i've seen her a bunch of times but i never really met her so that was cool to meet her but i didn't realize the it's Rebecca right the one that Jamie you guys are just joking around about no that's Cheryl so she actually does all the design of all of the wiring so she's got a pretty freaking important job yes yeah yeah because I mean uh no but uh what I did when I was there on the floor is I've obviously done that tour a bunch of times but I was like oh my gosh these pinball machines are primarily made, they're women putting them together. There were so many women on the floor. I guess I, I don't know, it's not that I didn't notice it before, but I was paying more attention to it now after the panel. And it's probably like 80%, I think. All of the fine dexterous stuff is all done by women. The men do the cabinets.
    33:23
    And it's always been that way. Like the women that painted the... The watches. Yeah, the radioactive ink on watches and... and their tongues fell off. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. He lost power. How is that possible? Yeah, he just messaged us. He said he's on the way back, though.
    33:42
    He's going to a Starbucks nearby. Yeah. Jeez, Jamie. Yeah, so anything more on your panel, Rachel? No, I mean, I think it was fun.
    33:56
    No, nothing more on my panel. It's always a good time, and it's good to have that perspective of different parts of the industry as experienced by different people within the industry.
    34:08
    You know, one thing I would have kind of been interested to know about is how did the Measel Mods, how did she, did she do something before? Like, she obviously did, she had another career before she decided to, did she full-time? Is Measel Mods like her full-time job? Yes. It is? Oh, wow. Okay, I didn't know that. All right. Sorry about that. Hey, welcome back, Jamie. Welcome to the JBS show. We're still talking about the panel. I don't know how you want to edit that, but we kept it going. No, good. That's perfect. We had a bad flash power flash here. Everything turned off. Well, you know, Texas, you guys have that unreliable power. Yeah, we can't get our shit together. Yeah. But, hey, we're good. Thank Christ. Yeah. The only thing about the only thing I wish we would have had more time for in the women's panel were questions.
    35:03
    Yeah. I think I think there was one squeezed in there. And that's really the best part is whenever you get because, you know, the the boilerplate. Here's what I do and here's what I think here. You know, that's what we want to get that out of the way. And I think that that's always an issue when you have panels of more than two, maybe three people. An hour is not enough for most of these panels. I think you need 20 minutes per person on the panel is how they should kind of do that math. Also, I don't think you should have that many people on a panel. I agree because you're going to talk over each other.
    35:41
    There's not enough time. Yeah, not enough depth, too much breadth. I think you guys did a good job. You didn't really talk over each other. I think Elizabeth was lovely. She was amazing. I forget the name of the customer service at Stern. What's her name? You're talking about Rebecca? Yeah, I know that. She's not customer service. She's in the accessories. Oh, okay. I like her. Yeah. I liked her. Real nice. She probably deals with some customer service. Oh, okay. That's not her main gig, yeah. But don't we all? Yeah, true. Ralph, did you talk about your panel? How was your panel, dude? It was great. Like, honestly, it was a lot of fun. I kind of played the Measle Mods. I don't know her name. What was her name? Kirsten? Yeah, so I played the role of MC for mine, but I did it a little different where I answered the question too, but then passed it to the panel. So it was me, and then it was Joel and Jared from Flippin' Out, and Josh and Scott from Loser Kid. And it was really fun. We had a lot. We definitely I wrote all the like sort of guideline for the for the panel. But I felt like to Cale's point, I only got about halfway through and then I kept looking at the I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he kept giving me like the time limit. And I was trying to tell him, like, let me know when we get to that 15 minutes at the end, because I really wanted to get the Q&A. And there was a lot of great Q&A because our panel was about like being a content creator. And I had some fun with it. Like I asked people about comments they received that were just funny. And we just had a good time with it. And there were definitely some people in the audience that were going to get into content creation. So we're trying to encourage people to say, like, look, you don't need to go out and buy like the best of everything. You know, start with a phone and then go from there, get comfortable in front of the camera, get a good mic. And yeah, we had a lot of fun with it. And I don't know, I would definitely do it again. It was funny because it was just a good time. Like we were having fun with the audience. There were some laughs in there. And so I hope we get to do it again next year but maybe expand upon it a little bit more. But like you said, the time is tough. Do more questions like Cale said because when I went back and watched it, there were so many people there that wanted information. You know, like how should I start? How should I do this? How should I do that? And that's really a great part of that panel. And they went all over the place. They were asking about how do I monetize? How do I make the most money? Should I go behind a paywall? Like it was a lot of stuff. So it was cool, and we mixed it up a little bit because I had asked them, like, well, what's your motivation to, like, why did you start this? Why do you like pinball and things like that? So, yeah, it was pretty cool. I feel like people enjoyed it. So, yeah, if anybody's watching this and they want to watch the replay, it's up on Pinball News.
    38:22
    Did anybody go to the AI panel? I did watch a lot of it. Absolutely. So what are our thoughts on the AI panel? Again, too short. Well, too short, but also it had the wrong people on there.
    38:39
    If anybody hasn't heard, there's a pro-AI folks in pinball, and then there's the anti. It's very polarizing.
    38:57
    The pro-AI folks backed out of it. And I mean, we can just say, I mean, it was Chris Franchi. And I don't know if it was him or Spooky asked him. I heard the guys from Spooky asked him not to do it. And then Jack Guarneri, who's pro-AI, was asked not to do it.
    39:17
    And that panel really needed that. Do you think he's pro-AI or just like AI ignorant, like doesn't really know? Well, both. But on panels in the past, he has talked about how we're going to use AI and how important it is, like at the last expo.
    39:41
    But you really needed that because it just ended up being a bunch of guys who were anti-AI art, and then Joe Cherovino trying his best to play devil's advocate. And then also you had like Ian being incredibly rude, which was cringy. But he I mean, that's just a shtick. And he's been rude to all of us. And I don't know how many times, you know, how he can keep just treating people like that. But that was like the cringiest part of the whole thing. He just kept telling Joe, who's moderating, to shut up like over and over. But if you know Ian, he thinks he's being funny and it's it just it falls flat. Well, and I felt like Joe was genuinely just playing the devil's advocate role, not trying to say this is my opinion one way or the other. He was just trying to share a different perspective and go, well, what do you guys think about this? There was a little bit of disrespect going on. I didn't – and I don't know. Maybe it was just trying to be funny, but I did listen to just the first like 15 minutes of it, and it did feel like – I don't know. As a viewer watching it, it felt a little disrespectful to me, but maybe I just – That's the way Ian is. He did in real life too. Yeah. I did reach out to Joe because I'm a little protective of that big lug. I love it. He is hilarious. You know, if you want to laugh, listen to him and Albert. Well, him.
    41:14
    That was really funny. On Albert's podcast because they go off and they talk about Expo in a very funny way. So, but, you know, I love Joe and, and, but he said that that was just Ian's stick and he didn't take it personal. So there you go. Good. Side note, Joe, Joe Terevino is now, I think Gary Stern's favorite person. He won the Gary Stern lookalike contest and he had, he had on for like eyebrow, you know, he had on the wig thing, but it was so good. He cut up like cotton pads that you'd use for like makeup removing and like glued them to his eyebrows. It was so funny. But he had a whole – he talked like Gary and was talking about the three-legged stool with the collectors, the enthusiasts, the operators. It was so funny. And Gary just kept coming over and having him like having Joe sign his stuff. Yes. There he is. Like how good is that? It's perfect. It was so funny. And he was doing the whole shtick where he's like, everything needs to be connected. If it's not connected, you're nothing. Manufacturing. And you would ask him, what is your favorite Stern game right now? Whatever's on the line.
    42:30
    And he kept going, I'm a lifestyle brand. Back to the AI thing, one of the most interesting things and why you needed some other voices on there, it was um i thought it was very interesting okay first of all some of my background i i spent eight years as a graphic designer i ran a printing press became a graphic designer worked my way all the way up to uh art director at um a packaging company and um you know i spent almost a decade doing that so i have an intimate understanding of these tools and and technology used in art and i the some of the guys that were like very anti-ai art were were saying that you know they do use technology like they're not doing they're not doing pencil on paper right They're using Photoshop, but they said, but we don't use filters. You know, and they talked about how they use a Wacom and Photoshop to create these images, but it's still hand-drawn. Any artist, this is just something I found interesting, like any artist who has drawn like that, there's an algorithm making the stroke. You know, there's technology. It is. I've done both. It is far, far easier and more. And the final output is much more impressive when you're drawing on a Wacom through Photoshop than actual hand drawn art. And I understand I am going to absolutely piss people off with that comment, but I've done both. And it was just – I thought it was interesting seeing people try to defend the technology they use. But if you're doing what Chris Franchi is doing and using AI programs to help you in your art, that's bad. I thought it was very much some splitting of hairs, and I was tempted. But due to lack of time and just – it wasn't really appropriate.
    44:50
    I used to do a little bit of concept art. I worked in video games. I worked on City of Villains. That's how long ago it was that I worked in it. But something that's interesting about that time is whenever I worked in concept art, it was still I was still using pen and ink on paper, scanning it in and sending it in. And during this time, there was people doing both. There were some people using tablets and some people doing hand drawn. and the company said, okay, no more hand-drawn. It's inefficient.
    45:23
    Every time you have to change something, you have to redraw it, right? It is horribly inefficient, and it doesn't make sense for the industry. But for me, that was my time to bail. I'm like, this is not fun. I don't want to do tablet-based drawing.
    45:37
    So I thought that was kind of funny. If we want to just keep dividing what's AI, what's not AI, there's such a big range and I think that everybody knows and even they had said this is going to be interesting to have recorded for posterity because in a couple of years this is going to look foolish knowing just where everything is headed I had a very interesting conversation with Zombie Yeti, we talked for about an hour about AI art at the Stern booth. And I've always wondered this because he's very anti-art. AI. AI art. And he is the art director for Stern. He doesn't want any AI art used in Stern's products. And I was wondering, like, since he's, you know, he contracts out other artists and other artists are working and, you know, he might have an eye on some stuff And but so how does he know? And he brought up a situation where he suspected an artist was using AI because of the color palette. He recognized the color palette and it looked very much like something he'd seen in Mid Journey and one of the programs. So we had to like sit down and vet this person and go through the Photoshop layers until he was satisfied that this was all actually hand drawn. That's interesting. But isn't it also interesting that that palette and the art that that person made is influenced almost certainly by AI. So it's just sort of this, it just keeps going in a circle, like the machine learning. Chicken or the egg. The humans are learning from like optimization from AI says that like this right here is what people want to see. Okay, so I'm going to take my hands and draw by hand the stuff that AI has already optimized. And it's just such a weird world we're entering. Very like recursive. Sure. The one point that I don't remember who made it, and I don't know how you'd avoid this, but it did make me feel a little empathetic toward them is like the idea that when some of these algorithms started, they're being the machines are being trained on just scrapes of the Internet. And I don't know how you would avoid if it was art that you had and it was on a public Web site. Unfortunately, that's the world we live in, too, where they can scrape it. Now, do I agree with it? No, because some of those people are selling that artwork that they made. But I don't know how you'd avoid it, you know what I mean, unless you just hid it behind some, you know, it wouldn't be able to be publicly available on the Internet because technically nowadays anything can scrape it. But there's definitely legalities to that. Like if I was the artist and I was selling my art and everyone scraped it, now I'm training an algorithm to draw like me. That does kind of suck.
    48:47
    Yeah, it's happened to tons of my friends. Yeah, that's brutal. But I don't know how you really prevent that, right? How do you stop that from happening? I don't know. That did get brought up. I thought that was an interesting topic. Yes. But you can watch that again on Pinball News. And the panels are important, and I'm glad they did it. There were some people that thought that the room was too big. I don't know. It probably was, but I thought it was a good panel. I thought it might have been all they had. Yeah. I mean, that's it. I don't know if you noticed this when you watched the video, but I thought this was very funny. So Joe opened up the whole panel with raise your hand if you use AI not AI art you know use AI Right And yeah I raised my hand I thought it was funny that Rachel did not raise her hand I thought it was AI art. I thought we were talking about art. Right. Because here's, here's the problem. Like she uses AI in business to help her manage the bar. And I even said, you use AI. Why didn't you raise your hand? And well, because it's the conundrum here you have a accomplished oil painter right and as soon if she raises her hand they're gonna oh oh she uses ai right i use it for poor costs yeah oh it's amazing it really is amazing for like i'll take a photo of like let's let's say we'll have some bottles of liquor just like some stuff left over in the bar take a photo ask ai give me five recipes with using these and poor costs and it'll like set up a whole graph it's amazing but when when joe asked that so the panel that some raised their hand if you use ai and it wasn't by ai art and then he said what do you use ai in a professional setting and there was a lot of you know yeah i thought that was very interesting because that just shows you where we are right now with ai people are confused people are even these pros there and and some of the people on the panel have admitted to me that they've used ai in a professional setting but they were the ones bringing their hands down so it's like it's it's like it's almost like you don't oh you don't want to admit that we used to own slaves you know it's it's like it's really a weird weird uh time it is like a taboo it's like because you're afraid that because when you say all right such a blanket statement that it's like well what did you use it on if if let's just say that franchise example where it was like oh i needed to draw a pile of clothing but i that's that's like this little thing in the corner so i don't really care i just need to get some ideas but if he did raise his hand everyone's go oh well all his art is now ai like everyone just jumps to conclusions so i get i think that's why you get this like i don't know what i want to say it sucks and that happens i I mean, can you imagine when Jersey Jack drops Sonic? People are going to be looking at that thing with a microscope.
    51:59
    Yeah. Yeah, they are. I mean, it's just a really weird time. It would be funny to put an extra finger on someone, just like hand-drawn extra finger.
    52:11
    Let's talk about Stern. Were they – people – some people are saying they were forgotten. I don't think they were forgotten. I wasn't there Saturday. You guys rocked it there on Saturday.
    52:24
    But did anyone play the updated mech? Because Ralph and I went to Logan, and we were getting a lot of rejects in the Death Star shot, which I know that you said doesn't happen at the bat. Well, which machine was that, Logan? Was that an LE?
    52:40
    No. The jump ramp didn't go up. That must have been a Pro. It was a Pro. No, it was a Premium. The jump rep went up. It was a premium, I'm pretty sure. None of us could do it. But we're not great players, mind you. Yeah, we had no problems with the ones. I talked to one of the project managers, and they said most like – and I said we haven't noticed any rejections.
    53:12
    Aside from missing your shot. Yeah, aside from missing your shot on our copy. And he said, yeah, it's been – if you have a later run, it's been fixed. Okay, good. Well, I definitely think it's more of an operator machine than it is a home machine. Do you think, Ralph? I mean, Ralph's the home. I go on location, and there is the location. If you look at the roundtable, they couldn't – people couldn't play it at the bat because I listened to your podcast, and the damn thing was four quarters. Okay, so that's a good sign, right? But do you think it's selling a little less to homebuyers?
    53:54
    I think everything is selling a little bit less to homebuyers right now. That's true. I don't really have a good gauge for this relative to other things. And I think that people – I think there was just so much early opinions before people played it or maybe somebody played them on one of those copies with the Death Star that wasn't working right. I think that it's actually a really fun game. We've been playing it a lot at the bat.
    54:30
    I like it because it's got some of those basic, like if I hit a shot a bunch of times, I'm going to start a multi-ball or something cool is going to happen. I don't have to know all of the rules a la X-Men. You know, like, I just want to play a game where I can do cool shit without having to read a manual.
    54:53
    And I think this is that game for me. That Ray Day is pretty fantastic too, right? I mean, so, you know, I mean, you got Borg and Ray Day. That's a pretty good combination. It just seemed to me only there a day and a half that Stern was taking a backseat to Winchester, maybe even Predator and the homebrew a little bit. I think so because Winchester had just been announced. Everybody had already had an opportunity to play all of the games at the Stern booth. Maybe some people hadn't played a Star Wars yet, but every other game that's there has been out for a long time. And, I mean, Stern's not taking a backseat to anybody. They're not worried about a company that sells 500 pinball machines. I got you. I'm just saying it just seemed if you were trading stocks, their stock was at a hold compared to – Well, there was certainly more excitement, I think, around the brand-new game that had just been announced that a top-tier player had designed as their – I mean, just everything about that game. It was a perfect storm of how cool is this. And I don't think that that's necessarily a slight on Stern. I think people were expecting Walking Dead to come out at Expo, but I think – And it could be any day now, right? Guys, that's what we're hearing is almost any day now. It wasn't today. I was kind of hoping that I'd be there. You didn't go to the bathroom. You didn't go to the bathroom and try to sneak in there. You tried it to the left. Well, Zach is – I will say Zach is – everyone at Stern is very well trained for the most part on not talking about stuff. But I was like, Zach, can we go – can we do the full tour? He's like, well, we need to do a consolidate or what do you call it? It was like a different word he used. I don't know. But something about like a minimized tour. And I was like, why? He's like, well, there's just some stuff. I was like, what stuff? I was like, like the like the rebaster stuff. He's like, you know, he just looks at me like, come on, man. Yeah. Just shut up. Yeah. He kind of shut up. They're probably shooting video for it right now. You're going to see it. Oh, actually, Cale. Between now and Halloween. So the reason why we couldn't go into the arcade room is he said they were shooting video in the arcade room. And I'm like, well, now you just gave it away because you said they were shooting video in there. So I'm sure they were doing the trailer for it. But who knows when they're going to. Nap keeps going back and forth on it. It's delayed. It's not delayed. It's coming out next month. It's coming out the month. I think it'll come out this month. But that's my guess, at least. Yeah, we'll see it in the next two weeks. When is Halloween? It'll be another year. I think it's going to come out next week. Yeah, me too. Can we talk about Insider Connect for a little bit? Yeah. All access. Jamie needs help. I got to help him. Okay. So you just got to use the share screen here, okay? This app, no offense. It's not that hard. I know you listen to us, okay? But it's not good, man. It's not good. No offense. It's not good.
    57:54
    It's not that bad, though, Jamie. It just took me a second. It did take a second to figure out how to do it, though. Okay. Like, when you go to the splash screen, you'd expect, like, here it would say, join all access. Right? Okay, if you're watching on YouTube or on Spotify, Ralph has put it up to the screen so we can watch. And how the hell can I sign up for this from my home leaderboard? If you click any of these things, it does not take you to anything that would be like, click here for all access. What are we doing? Yeah, how you do it is you have to click these three dots. Okay, three dots. And then you have to go to shop. Oh, gosh. No, no, sorry. Edit account, not shop. Edit account. So you wouldn't think edit account. I'm already out of it. Yeah, so you click edit account. And now here's where you do it, but oh, shit. All right, I can't do it now because it's asking me to put my password in. Oh, it says basic pro for commercial use. I have to use the pro? I can't even buy it. Here, here, I'm going to stop sharing so I can get – I'm not going to show everyone my password, so hold on a second. You're not seeing my screen yet anymore, right? No. It just says your password, JamieRocks123. Yeah, that's what it is. How did you know? So guys, at that point, for those of you watching, you would have – after you hit that, it entered your account. After you go to edit account, that's where you select it. So I have upgraded mine. Okay, but mine's not even there. Mine's not even there. I can't even do it. It says basic and pro. Really? You have to do it. I think I saw somewhere you have to do it on desktop. Yes, you do have to do it on desktop. You can't do it on your app. That is very true. That's my question to you. I mean, it's 2025. What are we doing? No, it is a little bit. They said that the reason they had to do it on desktop was because of, like, legal limitations in the app store type something or other. But I agree there should at least be a splash page that says that because I'm actually with Jamie on this one. If this is not on the front page, I would think, oh, it hasn't actually come out yet, or I must be mistaken because surely this gigantic new thing that they're doing, they would want to tell me about. You can take that off, Ralph. Well, and technically it's not out yet. That's what's crazy. It's going to be in the next two weeks. I asked Seth when I was there, I was like, hey, when's it coming out? He's like, well, we really wanted to talk about it at Expo. we just didn't have it fully ready but we wanted to make sure we had the conversation to educate everyone but it's like two weeks he said within two weeks so it's going to be really soon but i'm excited about the home i don't think you'll ever be able to do it through the app because doesn't apple get like a third of it or something i don't know i don't know yeah that's the deal it's kind of like what like on like on patreon like don't i just go through the apple i go Do you think that it's because Apple would want to control the subscription so this is their way around that? Is that what it is? Probably. That's what I think. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Well, that makes sense then. Okay. By the way, can I tell you one nerdy thing real quick about this? So people are complaining about the price, and I work in technology, obviously. So as soon as they were going to launch this, they talked about it. I was instantly thinking, oh, wow, their Amazon AWS bill is going to go up a lot because now you're going to have all these people and requiring a new service. And that's how I think about it. So when I see the $100 or the $80 in this case, I don't think that's bad because there are truly people in pinball that think there's like a closet in Stern with like a single server that everyone's just like hundreds of thousands of people are connecting to. And it's like they have infrastructure costs. Now, the whole $100 isn't accommodating all of it. Yeah, but that's all on cloud. Don't give me that. It's all on cloud. Dude, cloud is not cheap. I understand it's expensive. Yeah, I sell on-premises stuff. All day long, I can sell you an on-premises storage device that's cheaper than the cloud. The cloud's not cheaper. It's just more flexible and easier to use in most cases, but it's definitely not cheaper. I'm just saying the app is garbage, and you need to work on that. They need to work on that. They need to. I'm going to say that they should have a splash page that says, here's the new stuff, here's what it is, and here's how to get it. I don't mean to sound like a stern apologist, but I do agree that they need the splash page because you should be able to hit that and then go, oh, sorry, you can't do it through the app. Just go log on in your desktop and you can get it done. So, yeah, they should at least tell you how to do that. But all right. Do you guys think the price is reasonable?
    62:22
    No. Really? Not really. I think it's $5.99 a month and you get more people to do it. Yeah, but you just would. First of all, how many people are going to buy this? $1,000? But $5.99 a month is $72. Yeah, you're already at the cost, Jamie. Yeah, there you go, Jamie. You're already at $71. Then you lock them in forever, and it's just forever.
    62:48
    But I like it better that I can just do a yearly cost. Just one thing, one fee, and I'm good. Ralph, do you have a home leaderboard set up? It's not out yet. Oh, it's not out yet? Well, I had Mason make me a... Yeah, I've heard about that one. Yeah. Mason is going to pay the $80 a year just so he doesn't have to do your thing. He doesn't have to do it. But, no, I'm excited for it. I really am.
    63:13
    Tell me how you guys feel about this with the home leaderboards. I mean, how many people have more than a couple of folks coming over to play pinball? Oh, I would spend $100 just to show my name above Rudy's. That's how, like, yeah, if I can see my name in gold above Rudy's on my home leaderboard, I will spend $100 for that. All right, but normal people. That's how mighty I am.
    63:39
    It's on the machine. I think we're also talking about people who have pinball machines. So if you have enough pinball machines to have a leaderboard, I mean, maybe you just have one, but I'm guessing you have more than one, and pinball machines cost more than like $100 each. And if you're just thinking about that in terms of what that market can bear, I think that this is a very reasonable price.
    64:08
    I don't have a strong – I think most people will – the only things that people care about this are the name in gold and the home leader board. You can forget all the rest. I don't know that people are going to care about the free – the only people that care about the free shipping on accessories are the dealers that don't give free shipping on accessories that you've just like –
    64:32
    made them not feel very good by offering this. But the – I don't even – what do you get, like Stern Tours and stuff? Yeah, but let me tell you something cool I just found out. I'm pretty sure you can go to Stern anytime. I just found out something crazy about the Tours thing, and I can't believe they're doing this. And I don't know. It could either backfire and just be huge, and they'll have to hire people to do these tours. So you're going to be able to access a calendar from the app to choose the day you want to go. From the app. And the first thing I said to Seth is I was like, so are you going to hire someone to do the tours now? And he's like, we're just going to see how it goes, and we might have to. Because, like, think about it. What if, like, hundreds of people are, like, booking tours throughout the year? That could be kind of cumbersome on them because they just take staff and do it. Like, hey, Dwight, what are you doing? Like, hey, Kyle, come here and do the tour. What if I booked a tour next week or, like, right before? Or like just coincidentally or not coincidentally, because we know when Stern games traditionally come out, they're not going to be able to accommodate people whenever the next game is on the line but hasn't been released. Well, when you look on the app, that calendar – They'll have blackout dates. They'll be blackout. Like that seat's already taken.
    65:48
    Yeah, he did say that. They're going to have like – if something's going on where they don't – they can't have someone there, it'll just be like a block where you can't book it, I guess. But I don't know. I just think this could either be like a massive thing and a bunch of people do it and they're going to have to hire like an actual tour person. So we'll see what happens. They probably are. All right. Let's get to – we've been pretty serious today on the roundtable. Let's get to some stupidity that happened. Can we talk about some stupid things that happened at Expo? Because those are my favorite things. I know where you're going with this already. Okay.
    66:19
    We're going to start out with a public service announcement. I like doing public service announcements. There are some smelly people out there. and they're killing me, Smalls. They're just, you've got to put deodorant on and come to an expo. And those guards up front, they sure hell guarded me without my media pass. You've got to guard the smellers, okay, because they're everywhere, walking around. Can I see your pass, and can you get within three feet? You've got to get a whiff. So we need a whiff test, a smeller up front. And then Ralph and I got hot boxed. This was terrible, guys. This was the worst ever, though. Imagine the elevator doors opening up, and you just go in, and then they – The podcast had just ended. Our live had just ended, guys, right, which was fun. We got kicked out almost of the live, but the live had just ended, so Ralph and I decided we're going to run upstairs, dump our equipment, and this guy comes out, whoever this guy was. He was probably with the expo. I hope you're listening dude come on like he needed a toilet like there's no I hope he was belying to a bathroom because this was he was coming down dude it was terrible Jamie it was like almost like I wanted to almost throw up really and what was so funny was I was on 8 and we're dying okay we're dying and Ralph's like you son of a bitch I got one more floor than you do. Two more floors because you were on eight, right? I had to go see more. Was Danny Elevator farting while you guys were in there? Or it was a crossing of the buildings? It was a crossover. It's a crossover. He could have actually done it as we were walking. I don't even know. It definitely felt like it had been there for a while. Oh, my God. What if it wasn't even him? What if he's like, oh, God, these people are going to think I farted? I've been in that situation before. You've got to preface it. You got to go, listen, this was not me. That's what I would do. I would let people know. He should have done that anyway.
    68:29
    He definitely should have. All right. Another stupid story. This is making fun of Cal and Rachel. You ready?
    68:38
    Okay. Always. So Ralph has his media pass. We've discussed this. He's a big shot. He gets into the expo early. He's filming with his entourage. Playing Winchester. How's it going, Jamie? Doing all the funny stuff. And it's 10 a.m., and we walk, me, Rachel, and Cale, walk up to see maybe we can get a media pass, maybe. Rachel goes in first. Cale goes in second. I never see him again.
    69:10
    So I didn't know we were trying to get a media pass. I just walked in because I just walked in. I wasn't like, see, Jamie, here's the thing. you too you i didn't know you weren't with us i was just like i'm trying to find winchester right i wasn't thinking about anybody kale and i weren't even playing winchester in the same booth because i found it at zach's booth and kale had gone over to the barrels booth like my eyes were on the prize but also i wasn't going to stop and ask anybody like permission she does that every every you know we we spent our most of our lives just traveling around to all these shows and in hotels she's gotten into these amazing weddings and like i try to walk in with purpose right you just have yeah i belong i i snuck into a hacker convention and they were teaching people how to solder and like how to make you know little beige boxes or whatever they were making and i didn't like i thought their technique sucked so i started teaching people in the hacker convention like better sovereign practices so it's just that's kind of jamie it's no offense to you it's just no no i would have left well hold on you were gone i kept waving i saw jamie wouldn't even come close to the security i kept waving him i was like come on i will get us in i'm such a wuss right i was like just just come because because if you do the whole thing we're like oh i don't know if i'm supposed to be in there of course they're not gonna let you into it quick right I love that, though. You guys just walk right in. They just walk right in like they own it. And they got through. So now it's 10.05. My friends ditched me. I just had a nice breakfast with them. And then so I decide I'm with MN Retro Gamer.
    71:03
    Not New Mexico Retro Ranger. Not New Mexico Ranger. MN Andrew. So I'm with Andrew and one of your other buddies. Jason.
    71:14
    So we're like, screw it. Let's just wait. Right? Now we're third in line, right? We're just going to wait. You guys are all playing Winchester, all playing everything lovely. I'm out front. And then all of a sudden, a big line, about 10-15, a line is really forming. And I'm in the front. Now I'm somewhat known. And every, like, five to ten minutes, somebody walked in to get their badge and goes, hey jamie hey jamie so now there's a hundred people more waiting and every five to ten minutes someone's going jamie chris fancy comes up hey jamie and it was people around me like who the f is this guy like who is this idiot waiting and so i thank you i thank you i got to meet a lot of people because you ditched me and um i got to meet everybody it was really fun so you know andrew did a whole entire panel he did a really good panel about and actually it was it was cool because kale and rachel he was like he basically you were his inspiration to start routing games and he shares the clip in his panel about kale calling him nm and then it was actually really funny the way he presented it and i'm not gonna do it justice but he he gets he plays that clip and then he has like a white screen and he says i'm not and then it was like another clip from and it was like new mexico it was hilarious yeah um so it was just it was just fun and then he even clipped one of the round table things because i think we got it wrong again in the round table week i think i called them mn retro ranger and it's actually it's it's mn retro gamer He totally wants to change his name I'm like you can't now You're vested dude You can't change it Yeah He's a great dude Shout out to Andrew Couple more funny stories Yeah thank you Andrew For hanging out with me And As people were walking by Saying hello to me It was very awkward And I apologize Ralph and I Rachel okay This is a good one Ralph and I are outside Waiting to go to Logan On Wednesday night Okay And This guy, two people walk by. We're right out front. Anyone that's gone to Expo, by the three doors. You know what I mean? By the push doors, right where you would pick up an Uber. That's where we are. This guy comes up and he goes, you're Jamie Virgil. He's three sheets hammered.
    73:53
    He goes, oh my God, Retro Ralph. He looks at me and he goes, hey, can I have a Zin? because he knows i said so i pop him a six milligram ralph goes hey i got these sessions whatever they're four milligram you want one of these to kick guy goes boom now he's got 10 milligrams in his mouth now ralph travels with an entourage ladies and gentlemen i don know if you know this We saw his entourage One of his entourages Stringer has been pimping nine milligrams to me the whole time I there Right. And I don't want a nine milligram, but he gives a nine to this dude. So now random dude is now got 19 milligrams in his mouth. And all he's trying to do is walk to his hotel next door.
    74:41
    And I go, look, you're going to throw up. Okay. We were genuinely concerned about it. Now I'm concerned, okay, because now he's a fan and he's messed up. And I look to his buddy and I go, just keep him on the sidewalk, man. Keep this guy safe. So I never got to see him again. Ralph, I have an update that you saw him again. I saw him at the fireplace, the fire, whatever. You know where everyone goes in the hotel at the end of the night. And he's like, his buddy, him and his buddy were both there. and he's like dude i'm fine see i told you i'd be fine and i look over his buddies like he wasn't fine he was so he was so not fine he's like no no man i was good i was good but uh yeah i think he probably did throw up he didn't he didn't confirm that but i'm pretty sure by his buddy's reaction he's like yeah that wasn't a good idea but but it was it was kind of funny at the same time because like the pouch was like hanging out of his mouth and he was pretty drunk but he's a really nice guy i wish i could remember his name i don't remember super cool either i i was worried about him so i'm glad that there's a good he turned out fine he's all right i mean that night maybe not but the next day he was fine so all right i got one more for you before we tell if you guys can share your funny stories if you have any but i stole carrie hardy's room and it's a very this is actually awesome it was one of my favorite things that happened to me at expo i was there for only a day and a half two days and i because i i switched and we went to this beautiful wedding and it was really beautiful and janine looked gorgeous and it was awesome i looked very good standing next to her and uh we go i only had a room from thursday to sunday was my original so i was going to stay with joe seravino and cuddle with joe but i went there early saying okay, maybe I can get a room for Wednesday night. I don't even care if I have to pay full price. I just want a room by myself. And I go up there and I said, hey, do you have a room? I know this is crazy. If not, I'll just leave my bags here and hang out in the lobby. And they go, we just got a cancellation 15 minutes ago. Great. Get the room, go up, drop off my stuff, come downstairs. And there's and there's Kerry Hardy kind of holding court by the coffee shop. Waves me over. I go sit down with Kerry Hardy. We're bullshitting. And I go, you're not going to believe this, but I just got a room. Things are really working out for Jamie right now. And he goes, what do you mean you got a room? I got here at nine o'clock and put my name on a wait list. I go, well, tough shit for you, buddy. You want a room together tonight?
    77:27
    Yeah, the list never worked. The list doesn't work. You've got to keep walking up there, Carrie. You've got to hover and just stand there. But guess what? I slept like a baby, and it was a really nice room. So thank you to Carrie Hardy. I really appreciate you. It was great seeing you. I don't know where you stayed. It wasn't with me or Ralph, but thank you. Hold up. Was Carrie feeling well when you saw him Wednesday? Yeah, he was feeling okay. So then maybe he got sick because he had to, like, walk in the rain to a hotel far away. It's your fault. So it's your fault in a roundabout way that Ralph is sick.
    78:08
    Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You got me sick, Jamie. Did you stay? Did Kerry stay with you? No, no. He didn't stay with me. Oh, okay. It's like the Kevin Bacon virus. Yeah. Anyway, thanks, Kerry. I appreciate you. I can't wait to steal your room at TPF. It's going to be great.
    78:28
    Does anyone else have any stupid stories that happened at Expo? I was only there two days, but I really had a blast. I have a very interesting story. Give it to me. Before we go into that, something that Rachel and I noticed, did you guys go to the – did you guys watch the tournament at all?
    78:52
    I didn't. You know, I walked in, said hi to Tom, and I hung out with Walt for a few minutes, and that was it. Right. So I didn't really spend much time in there, no. This is what we found very interesting.
    79:07
    You're at one of the biggest pinball shows. Not just you two. I'm not pointing my finger at you two. I'm pointing my finger at everybody. we're at one of the biggest pinball shows in the world 41 years running and there are the best pinball players competitive pinball players and from all over the world playing there and nobody's watching them and it just made me think if we were at a basketball convention and And they're like, Michael Jordan's in the other room slam dunking. I'm going to go hit the bar. You wouldn't be able to fit. Well, you wouldn't be at a basketball convention. No, not me personally. This is just the kind of general. If we were at a golfing convention and like, dude, Tiger Woods is right in the other wood hitting this virtual thing.
    80:04
    And he's playing with and you can hang out with him and talk to him. I mean, there'll be lines. and it just made me think about like, man, this is a hard, hard sport to grow, a hard industry to grow.
    80:19
    I mean, you have a chance to watch and actually talk to the best, absolutely phenomenal players in the world, and just nobody cares. You could just see it like firsthand. And Cale and I were in the tournament during finals. We stayed up until 2 a.m. watching. It went until 5.30 in the morning. Wow. But it was it's just so much fun, you know, not you're not like crowding people or whatever, but just sitting back and watching all of these people do things that don't seem humanly possible to just get to see that in person, because everything is always cooler in person. It's fun to watch the streams, but to be standing, you know, eight feet away from somebody hitting 15 shots in a row. Right. Like how do I do that? Ball won $4 billion on King Kong. Yeah. I mean, like, what the hell? Come on, Z-Mac. Did you guys get to call that?
    81:17
    Oh, we did. Did you guys get to? Because on Tom's channel, right? On Fox News? With Neil McRae. Yeah. That's fun.
    81:25
    It kind of makes me, you're making me think about my experience at BuckFest. Because BuckFest, they build all this drama around what's going on. and they have like all these screens that show you the brackets of where everyone is. And I know it's different, obviously, how they do tournaments, but when you lose, you end up in this reloaded bracket. So there's like a lot of drama around that because if you lose again, you're out of the tournament. But they have like this ESPN, this esports ESPN guy, and he's sometimes going over the PA and like kind of if there's like a heated battle going on, he's like talking about it. And everyone's like, oh, my gosh, what's going on? And then they got to rush to the stage to see it. So it's crazy to me that Buck Hunter would have that, but Pinball wouldn't. I don't know. That would be really cool. Even when I go to gaming conventions, you'll see people playing Tetris. There's seats to sit and clap and cheer them on. You're right. That would be so cool if that was like that. There are seats in the tournament room also to watch everything. But are people cheering people on or not really? I mean, there was nobody in there. It's mostly people watching to see how their opponents are doing or when their turn is about to be up and so they could sit down. Now, to be fair, what goes on there is not set up to watch. There's no bleachers. But if you move it to that big room, you could have very easily – the talks should have been in the tiny room because nobody showed up for these talks. I mean, Melvin, I think he had a talk and there were like three people. Really? Yeah, and he's about to make Back to the Future. That's crazy. I didn't know that there was a people in those. The talk should have been in the tiny room. The tournament should have been in the big room with seats for people to watch, screens, because they're already broadcasting the thing. Right. And then – but before the show, I mean, this would be – like Stern should do something like this to really grow the sport and hobby. You need a lead-up. Like what you're talking about, Ralph, where you're like a week before the tournament, two weeks before the tournament. Embedded. Yeah, it's like Stern embedded where people get to know the personalities. And you can just have people record stuff with their phone and send it in. Like this is what I'm doing. You know, this is how I set up my machine to get ready for the tournament. And I'm just trying to hit this shot over and over again. You know, this is this is how I like what kind of mindset I have before the tournament. So you could really I mean, like you have like real personalities. Walt Wood, you know, we were Zach and Josh Sharp were in it. Sterling, you could be like somebody has to always drive me because I won't be able to drive for another several years because I'm only like 13 or something. Yeah, this little 13-year-old kid. Mopped the floor with people. He was just crushing people. And I think if people knew their personalities more, because trust me, all of these top 100 competitive pinball players have monumental personalities.
    84:36
    And it will all come out on the video. And, man, you're printing money. Well, that's what they did for the Buckfest. It was like they had they did like profiles and then they'll do something like, you know, Jordan was was third last year, three years ago. But he's gone up the ranks and now he's hoping to win it all. And then it was like Fed has has been undefeated for so long and blah, blah, blah. Right. And it built hype. And then everyone like rushed to the stage because they wanted to see this competitive battle against these two. And they did. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. That's like that's probably like in a part of pinball that they could really do something cool. Pinball edition. One of my favorite things at TPF, I used to stream TPF when I was at the old joint, and I'm not doing it this year so I can enjoy TPF, but we put a big TV on our booth, and that TV was just playing my streams, and then it played the stream, so we then set up all these chairs and had 40 to 50 people watching the tournament and listening to me as I was up in the tournament room, And then we had another 40 or 50 up at TPF watching on screen TVs in there. So, you know, maybe next year Stern puts a TV up and people can watch.
    85:53
    It's so simple to do, right? It's not hard at all. But my real question for you two guys, you guys love competitive pinball. You love playing. And you guys weren't paying attention. Like would you, if it was more of an event, would that draw you into it? Yeah, I think so. Because a lot of the players, like, of course, I know Zach and I know Walt, but I don't know a ton of them. So, like, if you started introducing me to the like, if you were playing like a hype trailer and showing me all the characters and where they are characters with the people, I would probably draw me more into it for sure. Because, like, see, that's a bad. It's interesting because I know everybody now. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that's a good point, because Rachel and I have known all of these people for years. so we're invested when they're playing we're like i know i know how this guy plays and i know how this guy plays this is going to be an amazing match you know uh yeah so there's definitely an opportunity to do something it seems a lot of work for tom graph so i don't want to put any more work on that dude because if you if you go in there and see his setup though it's pretty awesome cale isn't it i sat behind it i don't why does he have that many streams so many but i don't know right it seems it's only 200 buttons it is what he sets up is wild and i've said it before go if you haven't already go to twitch subscribe give him some bits next time but he he is doing something that is very important for uh pinball i would propose just put like tom wouldn't have to do any more work they would just stream on a projector with chairs in a room because a lot of people want to sit down. You get real tired when you're on your feet for 14 hours walking around a pinball convention. Put a bar in there.
    87:40
    It'd be cool if you could hear the broadcast too though. You've got to be able to hear it. I would 100% go in there and hang out. You just have a projector and speakers and chairs and the bar idea is a good one.
    87:55
    People are going to want to sit down anyway So why not do something really cool? If you don't want to necessarily walk in halfway through somebody's seminar, that's awkward, especially when the room is really, really big and you have to walk 50 feet to get to a chair.
    88:14
    That's my pro tip for pinball shows in general. Well, let's make that happen. You can do it. You can absolutely do it. It's not very hard. You just put on YouTube and we can make this happen. And, Tom, we expect it. And another rig. I know the bat's getting another rig, so they're excited about that. They're not getting another rig? This is just an ongoing joke between me and Rachel to try to get Cale to get another rig.
    88:42
    They're expensive. Yeah, Jiminy Christmas. But you can do, like, the second rig could be a cheap rig, right? Right. And it's just like a look-in. Like, it's the feature group. This is what I did. I always had the feature group on A, and then when that feature group was done, I would jump to B.
    89:04
    And then sometimes I would double screen it, but people lost their mind with the double screen. It was just too much pinball. But that's okay. Or like the World Championships, they had like six screens. It was way too much. It was crazy. Well, JBL, he's unbelievable. Just to give a shout out to Tom and Carl D'Angelo. When I saw Carl on that Sunday night when I was playing Winchester, I thanked him again for everything that he's done for me in streaming. Because without Carl D'Angelo, right, you know, Jack Danger gets all the credit, and he should. He'd get a lot of credit. But Carl D'Angelo and Tom, Fox City Spinball, built my old stream, right? And then when I helped you a little bit, you got information from them. I just forwarded it to you. I mean, so they are just incredible at what they do. And you'll like this, Ralph. Carl's messing with the YOLO box big time. Is he really? Oh, he's really into the YOLO box. So we'll see some more great streams. I ended up in a DM group on Facebook with him, and he was curious about the YOLO box. This is when you and I first started talking about it. And he's like, yeah, I just really want to understand the limitations of it first before I dive in. And he's like, I can totally see an application for this. So it's cool that he's playing with it. It's getting better all the time. They do. It's getting better. We're trying to fool with some things. Ladies and gentlemen, what we're trying to do, Ralph and I, Kale, check this out. I have a YOLO box. He has a YOLO box. I go to Eureka Heights. He comes to his own house and he goes to the bat. What if we can YOLO box a YOLO box and play each other against each other on Harry Potter one night? Or whatever game. Yeah. Whatever game. Harry Potter, Evil Dead.
    90:52
    Okay. Some of the same machines that Eureka has. But we can't figure it out yet. We'll figure it out. We're working on it. Neither one of us. We always say we're going to do it. We haven't had time to play with it. We'll figure it out. We can't have a discussion about streaming competitive pinball without including Mark Patton from Backhand Pinball. Okay. I'm not that familiar with him. he does well he does the uk open he did all this he did all the stuff from interium you know and and he recorded uh that stern tournament that was in the stern booth that that whole you know how they they went to several like three different arcades for qualifying then everybody met at the stern booth for the finals he's the super seven super seven series it's too bad you guys didn't get a chance to meet he's a he's another really so knowledgeable He helped me out a lot Oh cool Well thank you to him I love streaming watching pinball Growing up with Jason I've been watching him a lot lately I don't think he has a job He streams all the time He does I want his job Can you meet him in person Dude I went in And I had James Birchall on my pass And I didn't like the James So I wanted to switch to Jamie and I'm telling them Jamie virtual and somebody I hear. Is that Jamie virtual behind me? And that freaked me out. I turn around and there he was growing up adjacent. So I got to be. He's a giant. I like how to look up. He wanted to buy a pair of the gloves I have. And yeah, I hear he doesn't fit in the extra large because he's like, my hands are really big. And when he showed it to me, I was like, holy shit, man, like, I don't think they're going to fit you. He couldn't even put his hand. He couldn't even put his hand like he was posted. Yeah, he's like what, like 6'5"? He's a big guy. He's a big dude. I didn't expect all that. You know, you see people on stream and then you meet them like, whoa, you're a giant. Yeah, I figured he was retired and just does, like he found a way to retire early or something. No, he's talked about it on the streams. Like he gets to work after he's done streaming, but he does stream almost like every day. Every day? For a lot of time. Like for a long period of time too That's cool Here I am thinking he doesn't have He's like retired early Made a bunch of money and just plays pinball all day No he works hard Well good for him I was really jealous about the fact that he just played pinball all day But I guess he has to work Now I'm less jealous Like how How can we end this without telling The coolest story Of Expo Okay So me and Rachel are hanging out at the Stern booth with Kaneda, Carrie Hardy.
    93:50
    It was one of the Loser Kids, and then I think it was one of the Triple Drainers. And Keith Elwin walks up to us and says, well, well, well, if it isn't the pinball influencers.
    94:09
    and we all look at you know hey keith what's happening and i can't remember who it was but somebody goes so are you thinking about going to jersey jerry said are you going to jersey jack wow and you could you could hear a pin drop he looks at us and just goes oh he did no way so he didn't say anything just shoulders shrugged oh wow he's pretty he did a who knows wow i wish you knew who asked because that's baller too i can't remember it might have been carrie it might have sounds like josh we'll find what's this once people start talking about this though somebody will go oh I'm the one that asked. Oh, wow. That's a great way to end the show. That's awesome. You can't top that. Nope. That's enough for me, ladies and gentlemen. Ralph's, it's 1030. He's got to go to bed. And the bat, it's 830. Thank you guys for being flexible this evening so that we could film this. Yeah, I appreciate that because I was the pain in the ass on this one. It was him. So I appreciate it. Absolutely.
    95:25
    And Rachel, thank you for joining the roundtable. No, my pleasure. This is two in a row. Once or twice a year. I participate. I love it. I had to get a whole new thumbnail and everything, so you cost me a couple of bucks, but it was definitely worth it. Yeah, because Mason's like, hey, I have to stop editing your video because I have to animate Rachel. And I was like, what? I was like, for what? And she's like, he goes, oh, the thumbnail. I was like, oh. I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. She's going to be on the show. I was like, what are you animating her? And I think you kind of like float a little bit or something, right? You float. She floats. She kind of floats. You move around a little bit. You'll see it. You'll see it tomorrow morning. All right, all right. It's Thursday evening. I will edit this this evening, and it will be up tomorrow morning, 6 o'clock Central. We're going to have competing videos. I'm going to put my Expo video up tomorrow. What time are you putting yours up? I don't know yet. You'll beat me. You'll beat us. I mean, that's fine. You're Retro Ralph. I feel like I made my video a little bit more dramatic this year. I kind of made it sound like just during the fall of the Empire. It's a little bit more dramatic, but it's not meant. It's all in good fun. It was so nice to hang out with you guys in person, too, at the show. The best part of the show is always the people. Oh, it really, really is. And the fact that I was standing in line like a schmuck waiting for them was really nice, actually, because I got to meet so many people.
    96:49
    And everyone is so genuinely lovely, right? I mean, really, everyone really is. I think our community is pretty awesome. I mean, sure, there may be a couple people, but I feel like for the most part, like, I've never really had an in-face interaction at Expo that wasn't good. Like, everyone's been really cool. It was pretty cool. All right, so you guys are coming in a couple of weeks to Houston Arcade. Is that what I'm hearing?
    97:12
    Oh, I can't. All of us? Yeah, where's that cricket button? Yeah. Crickets. All right. We'll get you to Houston Arcade back one day. There it is. We're going to get you back to Houston Arcade. It is an absolute blast. All right, that's enough. shut up ah see you can say shut up it doesn't hurt feelings sometimes you know I got my dawn button oh wait shit never mind I hit the wrong one forget it that's my favorite part of the expo when we were all dancing that is a good clip did you clip that I clipped that and made that a reel that's a pretty good clip anyway But I love that. What did you say, Kaylee? You're like, expose. Something like that. It was good. All right. Hour and 37 minutes. Thank you guys so much. I love you both very, very much, all of you. And I can't wait to hang out with you again. I think I'm coming in January, February timeframe. Back to the bat, John Spates wants to come, and we think the weather is pretty good in January and February, I've heard. so we can all play transformers at the bat oh there we go maybe i don't know yeah make sure that you don't overlap with whenever ces is kayla and i are gonna be at ces oh you guys gonna go all right thank you guys so much have a great evening and thank you as always subscribe click like all that shit thank you so much see you guys thanks everybody peace
    98:50
    Bye.