A Spaceman came traveling on his ship from afar. It was light years of time since his mission did start. And over a village he halted his craft. And it hung in the sky like a star. Just like a star. He followed a light and came down to a shed Where a mother and child were lying there on a bed A bright light of silver shone round his head And he had the face of an angel And they were afraid And the stranger spoke He said do not fear I come from a planet A long way from here And I bring a message For mankind to hear Suddenly the sweetest music Fills the air And it went la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Peace and goodwill to all and love from child. And the spaceman did land in that glorious, actually my favourite, I've had the producers' privilege and posted my favourite Christmas song, Good Old Christopher. We were going to have Chris Rea, but he's in jail, having not paid his US fee for driving home for Christmas. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Christmas special. This is... Episode 19. Yeah, episode 19 of the Great British Pinball Podcast. I am Neil. And I'm Scott. How you doing, Neil? Scott, how are you, mate? I'm good, I'm good. It only seems like a matter of minutes since I saw you last. Who'd have thought? So the comedy of that before is we have recorded another podcast, but it's so bad we've deleted it and started again. Actually, my fault. We decided that Neil's hour-long rant wouldn't go down well. Yeah, so we've got Four hours ready It wasn't good enough It wasn't nearly ranty enough We thought we'd double down I've had the dot matrix printer going all fucking night And rant Here I am No, seriously Great to see you Scott It's been a busy week for pinball A busy month for pinball for both of us I think so, yeah, absolutely Let's talk Labyrinth Yes, so it's arrived um i've got my my i was in two minds to unbox it or not i mean like look i was in the privileged position to have the showroom machine for the best part of four months and anyone who knows me i get bored quick on pinball so i'm like do i do i want to unbox this and i thought i've really felt back i thought i better not i mean like i thought i owe it to myself to actually play the game properly because the thing i i don't know what it is when i own someone else's game be like your godzilla I can't really get into it because I don't want to then mess around with dialing it in it's someone else's game and that's how I felt with Labyrinth for me, so I think now I've got it I can dial it in the way I want it set the difficulty the way I like it and basically just get into it, and I think it's still a great game it's not for everyone I think they're barrels of fun making their first game if you compare other manufacturers and their first game They smashed it. Yeah. I mean, and look, because, I mean, so look, you've got one of the first built ones on loan. You've now got one that's on hold. Yeah, do you know what? We didn't touch on this on our first run, let's call it. But I do have actually noticed some differences between the two editions, or if you want to call it that, the two runs. Yeah. Mine being a 650, I think it is. And the original one was number 60, so very early on. So very early on, yeah. And I'm seeing differences in the servo motors. Mine are, I would say, far more mechanical and less like Chinese plastic. I think they've changed the servo motors. And I've had notes, to be fair, actually, when I had the showroom model, they call it, I think it's called Ludo. He's the big orange guy. I should know his name because I've watched the film a million times. But anyway, he pops out of a house. And in the showroom model, the motor died within about 10 plays of me having it. I then put a new motor in that was supplied to me through Retro Arcade Specialists, and the motor died again. And then he gave me a third one. And what I have noticed is that the runs of the older motors are a very different model. So I think what they've done is they've realized that there isn't much longevity in these motors, and they've given a newer model now to other people. So I would only say anybody who's got problems with their server is probably getting in contact with Bowels of Fun, and they'll give you a motor that's going to be much better. this is like a radio control servo right yeah it's like an rc motor it's like it's just a servo motor that like basically uh pulse width modulation i think it can just like you know rotate up and down if you look at the way barrels of fun have made it i've actually looked at that idea and gone oh i could do that in my pinball machine but they've 3d printed effectively a armature so basically a long piece of plastic with loads of pegs into it and then as the server is going up and down it effectively provides that leverage to allow the either the head of one of the disembodied uh fireys i think they're called to pop out of the playfield or in this case ludo's head to pop up uh underneath the building um it's very ingenious way of doing it because i can imagine it's quite cost effective as well uh back in the bally williams days they wouldn't have had a 3d printer right so they would have had to mill the metal um or more make some sort of nylon cog probably similar to, I imagine, Monster Bash's Frankenstein table. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. So, I used to race model cars and you know, what you get in the box from the manufacturer would be plastic gears and the first thing you do is chuck that in the bin and put metal gears in. It's a bit like a pinball machine. Toss them, put something decent in. Same with Turtles on the LE. It's got this pivot thing it's driven by a servo motor they're exactly the same issue so it's nothing to beat them up about no and I say that's the only real things I've noticed the difference between I would say there's probably like just I imagine and we've touched on this in the previous cut let's call it but like I've noticed because of manufacturing differences between I suppose how a game is made it does play different and I think that's that whole thing when you know the argument says where people say, oh, if you buy a virtual pinball machine because you're going to get like 4,000 games into it and it's much better than buying one physical machine, I feel like the problem with virtual is that it's going to act the same no matter what, and I quite like that about physical, that everything's got its own little nuance to it. And actually, you know where that also plays? If you're a gambling person, the roulette wheels in Vegas, over time they get weir and they become more predictable and once upon a time, I don't know, 10-15 years ago when I was stupid enough to play roulette, which I don't recommend because the odds are still against you but it's a fun game, right? I won a ton of money on it my wife was shocked we're in Caesars and we've been walking up and down with a tire fall and then we saw we're in the casino and and um i said let's have a play and what they have is is they have the list of of um previous numbers right on on this table we sat down i was like my god that that um lists almost somewhat like you can see two patterns easily in it right well i played the patterns and one um it was quite funny there was a guy sitting next to us who shook his head who'd been there all day and won nothing. Those breaks. Yeah, exactly. So we cashed out quickly and went and had a big steak dinner. But, yeah, I mean, when you get that kind of wear, those idiosyncrasies of games, one of the things to watch out for, though, is if you don't maintain your game well, you suddenly build, it's like your own health, you kind of build some negative bit of the game in because, it's doing something and it kind of you stand hard to stop it from doing that so you know it's for cleaning your game and making sure everything runs well actually in the club we had a Godzilla my Godzilla where a screw came out and some people it caused the whole mech to bend I've had to replace it the spinner the spinner holder the thing that holds the spinner because it's so mangled I couldn't straighten it so straighten it so I think that's what you're saying isn't it it's like if there's like a a part of the ball guide for instance that's like overly like in indented then it just it further impacts it because the ball gets into that space yeah and the thing is is the ball will be attracted to us you've got like a divot a big divot um sometimes that you know that can push to even more where the thing i really watch for is if you've got two habit rails that drop to flippers you know drop to the end lane yeah balls constantly hitting that and you'll get a big divot there so always mean that you're my i was gonna say that brings you on to the other thing so i got a pin bot as well and that actually has that so on the right in lane return it has a forming of a crater it's got through to the woodwork as i would write that so that it's basically taken away the uh the protection it's taken away the artwork was there my law there could you tell or no i don't know there's ever my law there i mean the one thing i have found problematic with the the game because So it was bought as a, how can I put it, sold as seeing not working game. Yeah. A project. That's the way to put it. Yeah. And basically I got it and I saw that from the pictures it had a huge amount of like bubbling on the play field. And I thought it's got Mylar on everywhere. And it's one of those things that when you have incandescence and they heat the inserts. Yeah. And it's obviously then caused the Mylar to lift. and the problem with it is that the mylar's then taken off part of the artwork and part of the clear coat that i imagine there was a clear coat on it looks like clear coat it's kind of lifted that off i'll be surprised if there was a clear coat maybe not then but this definitely feels like there's maybe yeah it's definitely lifted off the artwork anyway um in some areas and i'm kind of in two minds whether or not i then because i use the standard kind of method people call it the freeze method which is where you take a air compressor and you stick upside down and then basically you belt it with freeze um and it works well and it got like i would say 95 percent of the mylar came off without hindrance but there's some areas especially around the inserts where i had the bubbling whereas the damage is already done and i'm like do i then i'm probably leaning towards having it re refurbished so i'll get it fully sanded down lay new artwork on top which will but then be direct printed to wood and then put a new clear coat on it. Right. Other alternative, obviously, is to go down like a Mirco or I don't know if CPR make one. I think it's CPR that do pinball. Okay. I think so. I mean, I'd be inclined to do a play field if you're going to go down. If you're going to have to strip everything. Yeah. That would be my inclination. But, you know, it's certainly your play field. Oh, yeah, it's really easy. But then you get a play field and the things are out and nothing's right. That's the nice thing about having a refurbished one, because the guy I sent it to in Australia, he basically will just sand that thing down to bare minimum, you know, like just wood, lay the new artwork on top. And that's how it was with Cyberpunk and the Bram Stoker's Dracula that I did. And the clear coat he puts on is like Krisman's kind of clear coat. It holds up. That's what you want. Yeah, Krisman's got a game, a new play field for my Embry on right now. Actually, I need to ping him about it. he's definitely in high demand to be fair though his clear coat is just really good if you go to Pinball Republic and look at my Quicksilver you'll see how good it is but the interesting thing is this Miracle Playfield I'm going to leave it for six months because there's so much movement in the inserts if I clear coat it'll almost go instantly that is a problem with his games it's hit and miss you can have a batch where it just goes off without a hitch he doesn't care anymore because he can't tell is a good one. It can't tell us a bad one until it's screwed on. Chrisman will say the same thing to you. He'll say, if you send him a blade field, it will sit in his rack for a good period of time so he can settle. Luckily for this, I'm in the rush with this. So look, Pinball and Labyrinth. Glad to see Labyrinth thriving more than David for flying them in. That was an added bonus so we've got them in time for Christmas. speaking of flying games in yes yeah Pulp Fiction and The Everard Direction to be fair you've got two right so I got Pulp Fiction last Monday or the Monday before and then Metallica on the Wednesday and I managed to almost sneak them in without the wife noticing except she popped her head in to tell me some good news that she got and banged off the Metallica box she's like where did this come from I was like, oh yeah, it's been there for ages It's always been there, it's the same one it's just had a new skin I just put it in the box Anyway, yeah, no, she's actually, she likes Metallica, so fine she did say which one of them is Alice in Wonderland which I said, oh yeah, it's coming dear I do wonder at one point if you might get one second hand or something, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see. Yeah, it'd have to be cheap I think the guys have done a half decent job on Alice, but it's it's there's issues with it that would drive me nuts so um you know let's maybe maybe i think they need to get a couple of games under their belt and they'll suddenly realize um you know they did a really really the problem is they did a really really good job with tv out yeah and they had a lot of help with tv i'm not just damn like it's got the s you didn't code and blah blah you know other things and stuff so um and then they've kind of they're back in the you They've also learned a lot about build costs and stuff. So the new game, it's hard. And then they've used, you know, what's his face? The designer of the game. They've kind of, with half a design, we've been able to see half the design. You know, you can see what the front of it looks like. Popadook, J-Pop. But they couldn't see what the back was. Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah. Should have clocked with that, to be honest with you. Yeah, sorry, yeah. His name went out of my head. but a lot of people love his games. You know, we've talked about Totan. I know you hate that game. That's obviously a discussion point in what happened on the forum recently. But, like, to me, I play it virtually at the moment. So I built – I don't know if I told you this, but I built, like, a mini pinball machine. It's basically about this big. I say this big for those who are not on the camera. It's probably smaller than a Switch, and the cabinet is basically it's like a 1-8, not even a 1-8 scale, I think it's smaller than that but I've got 8mm buttons on it it's kind of funky, it allows me to play games that I'm just never going to be able to get because I like it, I play Totem and I'm like, I get why people will probably say oh it's not for me, but I quite like the way the ball paths work with the ramps and everything and the use of magnets, I think I'm always a sucker for magnet games I mean it's not a terrible game, I think you could probably bring more life into it if you redid the rules. That's the problem I think everyone says, right? Simplistic rules. Yeah, I just hit the genie. That's all I do. You can win the game by just hitting the genie and, you know, it's like monsters. You can win that game just by hitting the scoop. They keep all day, basically. Timeout modes, get to the end of the game, and boom. And actually, it just happened in a tournament in the US where we were subjected to hours of people just hitting the scoop. which is bad isn't it when a code can be abused yeah i mean it happens i mean everyone there's exploits in so many games but um no that's great and and um yeah so i mean uh shout out to philip pimble heaven i've kind of been nagging him about flying stuff in especially i think there's demand for it right people were waiting so long in the uk i mean for the for people in the us just you understand it like one we have to wait for the production run to get to europe phase which often is normally at the end of the production run, not the start. And two, if it goes via cargo, it's a good 30 days sometimes to the road. And more if you're really unlucky, look at John Wick that literally arrived the day he started around to their next game, which was a bit of a pain in the ass, actually. I think that's the thing, right? Because it's the same thing with Labyrinth, right? It took a year. and I think for most people it's like you're already talking about the fifth or sixth new announcement at that point from different obviously vendors and stuff but it's yeah it's a bit of a kick in the teeth you know that's kind of the same for Pulp Fiction it feels like some of the hype just got washed away by you know the manufacturer not doing as good a job on on that I mean you mentioned the difference between Labyrinth and the old one and the new one so I've got one an essay that's at the clubs about seven months old is that right yeah about eight or nine months old and then this one obviously built uh in the last three weeks yeah um i can tell you there's zero difference oh really no improvements just no annoyingly so wasn't there an issue with the um clear coat the back getting yeah so so the so with the the briefcase shot where it fires the ball up in the lock um that is definitely getting damage now i mean i haven't played my new game as much as the old one when i noticed this but i'm i'm 99 confident it's going to happen again and actually um rob on the forum rob cutler um psycho psycho kid he um he's he's um created some protectors of he's made them out of um 3d 3d plastics so printed 3d printer um and okay a bit like some sort of acrylic protection yeah so he's like clip in um we'll see if that makes i mean i was kind of hoping cliffy would have something but he's so overwhelmed right now i think he's been yeah and he's got orders i mean i think if you for if you ask him for something he's quoting you a year's wait time now um wow so which you know and he's also he's he's kind of i think he's past retirement age i kind of wonder if one day he might just jack all in but i hope he passes on the torch well like i say company or does something that can take us forward. I know there's a few other companies starting to do Cliffy-like products, but Pinball Life have got a few, and there's No Gouge Pinball, who's got the... Actually, we mentioned this earlier, where you've got balls landing from habit rails, sometimes onto switches, sometimes onto the wood. He's actually got a protector set for that. it's definitely worth it if your game gets a lot of play or you've got a game on like I've got games at the club what can I say Pulp Fiction yeah not a difference actually if you've got Pulp Fiction make sure you're on version 1.02 because it's got new code that deals with overheating basically when I make when I make it start it's got new code to not like fry the coil which I absolutely highly recommend it will save you some pain later on. And a couple of other big bug fixes. The downside is they've fixed the scoring a little bit. So the scoring is a bit more balanced between the modes, which is a good thing overall, but some people like clean the car, which gives you a massive points uplift. How does it work in terms of the code update for the Pulp Fictions by the way? Is it just a... Have you got Wi-Fi built into it, or is it just more manual? It's got Ethernet built into it. It doesn't have Wi-Fi, but there's a kit coming for Scorbit, which is testing right now. The Scorbit guys are telling me they're testing it with Play Mechanics, so that'll be coming soon. But you plug it into Ethernet right now and put an IP address. There's no functionality there yet. But the way it works now is you put the code as an image, you put it onto a microSD, you stick that into the game, you turn it on. It's very much like the old way of doing a Stern game. and um but yeah i mean at one point or two i suspect the next release they've got a couple of little fixes i was talking to josh a couple of little fixes they've put in scoreboard's coming uh i suspect the next release one dollar three i'm guessing will might be kind of the last i think they're trying to close it off um i was gonna say what's their plan now do you think they'll do a new announcement good question i don't know i think um i mean if i was playing mechanics um i would be thinking you know seeing the pain of cgc manufacturers um they've been painful hasn't it you've got to be thinking about either getting them to get to be more on the ball or thinking about differently the problem with thinking about differently is just who could they get to do it well you've got stern obviously that's more than willing to work on people's production lines for them they've shown that in the past yeah i mean which which you know look if they can make i mean actually play mechanics and raw fills they don't make anything themselves so that so their big arcade games yeah are done by contract manufacturing so um yeah who knows i mean i maybe american pinball i think i think i think i mean we all know so Mark Ritchie's still working on design, so they've obviously got designs in mind. Sure. I think, you know, my guess is if they're going to... They'll probably announce it at TPF if they're going to do anything next. But I think they might hold off until Chicago Expo and make sure that... All the runs finish to the feet. Yeah, and so they're ready to roll on it, because they're far from it. And they're defensive. I mean, you know, I talked to Josh, they've been working on Pulp Fiction for five years, so Wow. You know, it's, and it shows because the game's very, apart from, the one thing it was missing is Quentin Tarantino was supposed to do call-outs, but they could never get him, pin him down to record them. Ah, okay. So they got a stand-in, which is, it's okay, but I mean, having Tarantino do the there's a few, like, distinct director cuts, you know, cut in action, having Tarantino do that would have been amazing, but nonetheless I mean, I like the touches they do where they obviously made the kind of era-accurate coin door as an example. Yeah, yeah, I mean the coin door is beautiful. I actually said to Doug Duval, who's the guy who's the CEO of CGC that if he sold them separately, I'd buy about 10 of them for my Sterns and Ballets. Yeah. They would just look lovely on them. And in Metallica, Metallica LE, I mean Stern have knocked out of the park on that I can't praise it highly enough everything about it and I'll really take some pictures of this at the Turkey Fry Up and I'll come back to that but we've got a competition where we'll have Metallica there, this one as a launch game so you can come and play in a competition win some swag that Stern have kindly given us But when you pull a playfield up and you look at the difference between the original... I've got the original LE and I've got this. Yeah. I mean, it's like a completely new game. I don think there a single part on the game that they haven looked at and redone I suppose you have to though because I mean it different generations of Because what was that, Spike? Was it Spike 1 or was it earlier? It was Sam. It was Sam. Wow. I mean, the game is 10 years old, I think. Oh, 12 years old, something like that. God, you kind of forget. Yeah, that is long then. Yeah, so that is a big age gap. It's nuts. So, I mean, like I say, they've redone it. ray day's done a great job on kind of building on lyman's code base without kind of with i mean if lyman had this attention to detail um and raised i think he's he's totally got that and built upon it with the same level of attention to detail that's why his games are so great um and you know it just it just plays beautifully um i think they've they've tweaked a little bit of the code So, you know, when I played the one, I was lucky to visit Sturm when they did the launch for the press. And it was clear the games they had there played a little bit easier. This one here, I had a small tournament here a couple of weeks ago, and people thought it was pretty tough, tougher than the old one, which initially definitely wasn't the case. so yeah i mean look at it's they've nailed it the game looks beautiful um i did an unboxing actually i need to post that to youtube but they are working on it staggeringly good i mean all right this is the thing my you know obviously i've we're getting one as well holly's bought that and i feel looking at the premium i just didn't like the green it wasn't for me to be honest with you and the le artwork just really has a great use of colors it looks really sharp i like the way it all ties together i like the backbox um back glass artwork that's really nice it's beautiful i mean and i got i you know i kind of went full out and got the wizard um the wizard coin door thing because it looks oh yeah and is that like a magnetic cover is it yeah um it's pricey for what it is but um i just finished it i've got i've someone i've got a I can't remember which game. Someone gave it to me. Venom. For Venom. Someone gave it to me. They had it. It started at 1.0. And I was like, do you want some money? And I stuck it on. I wasn't too mindless about it, but I got used to it. So then I had the problem of it was the only game with it. So I had to buy it for every game, which looks... It's like the topper syndrome with you, isn't it? You have to have a topper. Stern, where is the Venom topper and the X-Men topper? Please can I have one? Because I've got OCD now. The only game that... There's only three games. There's only four games without toppers. Metallica's launched. I just need to get one. Yeah. I don't know what they're doing. That game's over a year old now, believe it or not. Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about the vaulting soon. But, I mean, we know it operates well. It scores. And that scores. It commands good money on location. I think it just hasn't landed well with the collectors, and maybe that's why they're not really keen on doing toppers. Maybe are toppers, like, popular on location? I don't know. No, not on location. that might be a factor yeah i mean maybe i mean i think um you know that this clearly didn't sell as many as they wanted to but interestingly when we went to texas and chicago a bunch of us went one of the games that came out off top before the players there was um was venom they all loved it well yeah i've been around yours and i played venom i was like this is fun it's a great game it doesn't deserve the the pain that it got i think it just realistically i know we've touched on it before, but when you look at it face value, it looks like it hasn't got a lot under the glass. That's all. I mean, this is the thing. You know, people confuse the complexity of the mechs and the stuff in the game has a direct correlation to the game being good, right? And it's just bollocks. There's so many things that turn a game from good to great. yeah i'm sure mechs is one of the things um artwork sound from you know we've talked about many times but um you know you know um that guy in the forum that always says oh it's been just the most stupid game i've ever seen uh it's like what you know i played it for god's sake i'm sticking by it's the most yeah but it doesn't affect gameplay the gameplay is great uh i've played i actually i've played the pro which is like i mean it's fair challenge there's not it doesn't look like there's a lot in the game but actually playing it it's a huge huge huge amount of fun you might even say that about um jurassic park when you take a look at the other side of just park pro there's not a huge amount in it but it's a glorious game um yeah i love you know holly's always like can we get another jurassic park and i'm like I've had an LE and it was a great game it was phenomenal the way they've tied it all together and I think I'm not good enough on it, I could not get anywhere on it yeah I mean that's the challenge, that's the other thing that makes a good game a great game is frustration so there are some players out there that if the game isn't easy it's a crap game you're walking dead right? the classic game of some people love it some people hate it but it's universally seen as a great game I mean the horde mode, it's got the best wizard mode yeah, absolutely I've seen people I think it was Gonzo, he had it for like 3 days and he was like, I can't play this game and got rid of it I was surprised, because Chris always strikes me as a guy that seems to be playing quite well these days he's picked up a couple of useful skills I've dropped catch and obviously the usual stuff like cradling the ball and that. But he seems to understand the concepts of how to be a better player is what I'm getting at. And I thought he's not translating those skills very well into Walking Dead because I see myself as very amateur. But I got really quite – I got to the wizard mode on it. I think he got it quite early. I think he still – I'm pretty sure he moved – I think he got it quite early when he got into pinball and then he moved on. Maybe, yeah. um but um yeah i mean and there's other folks you know on the um you see their lineup of games and it's like wow um that's why venom i thought might sell better because it's an easier game no question about it yeah um scooby-doo is one of the easiest games i've ever played honestly i literally played it for 45 minutes bought one at tpf and walked away walked away with boredom i i i mean basically it's almost impossible to lose the ball because it just kicks the ball back to the flipper almost every shot you make. It's interesting to see your concept behind that as well because while I'm making my own game, I'm probably trying to make a game that I find is more fair but that might not be the best idea then. It sounds like I need to invent some shots that have an element of risk to them. Risk-reward is always the way to go because as long as that risk-reward shot is makeable, yeah you know when you make it you know that's the thing i don't want to get make shots a bit like walking dead where it's like the drop targets are naturally really risky but it's the only way to progress the code and i know that was more like lyman just going well i had to make the code better and this is the way to do it because obviously the code was horrible before that um i think like yeah there's a balancing act to be made there a great example of of risk reward than shots is Keith Elwin's third flipper. Sure. Nearly on every game, that third flipper is, taking any shot with that third flipper is like, I mean, you almost just whack it right into the outline. Or you can brick it and it rolls down the middle. Or you hit the shot and you're like, yes. like the backhand, the kind of off the loop to the other one where it goes. Walk me through X-Men. How do you find that as an example? Yeah, so, I mean, X-Men is a game that punishes bad habits. So I've got a habit of kind of hitting the flipper even when there's no ball there. And one of the things is that if you do that in the danger room, if the flipper's up, if it comes to the danger room, you've lost the ball you just drained it oh my play um it's driving me nuts i keep losing the ball stupidly but um i find look x-men is not an easy game for sure but it's not a brutal game it's it's it's tough um i think they're going for quite a low complexity in the code um they just brought a new actually they brought a new version out yesterday i haven't actually had a chance to play it but for one year it's it's a great up uptake but i just find the shots so shootable the danger room um it's almost like a mini it's almost like a an upper play field the way it works but it adds a lot of um it adds a lot of challenge to the game you're trying to you're trying to go after a set number of things to to move the game forward yeah and then you've got the gambit mode which i think is awesome um where it's kind of up up up leveling the shots or making some parts of the game easier i i mean i i think the the i see the play field is just genius now a lot of folks got issues with a plunge and a couple other things yeah mine is okay 90 percent of the time it goes back to what i was saying before right with the whole nuances of of game to game where they're manufacturing it all by hand and if it's out by a couple of millimetres here and there that can make a difference I suppose between the game playing fine and not fine. Even things like the power that it's connected to I remember in the UK Open we had some issues with games and we were trying to figure it out and what we realised was we'd done something different to the power this year which we saw on the first day of qualifying We're having these wacky issues, and then we were looking at it, and I thought, the way that the hotel had laid out, they put this extra power in, the way they laid it out was different. So we pulled it all apart, moved it back, plugged it back in, all the issues went. And on 110 volts, you notice that even more, I would say, than 220, 240. but um you know that can in this they had an issue where they were getting 120 volts of the sockets and it was i mean the flipper power was unbelievable it was like boom on classic games where you've kind of got more of a there's less um electronics in the way if you like on the other games it was causing them to get a bit upset but i think um x-men for me i think I genuinely love the game. I mean, I loved it the first time I played it. Jack is totally nailed it. It's fun. You never get tired of the ball path. I was going to say, it's amazing to watch the way he's built the geometry because it's like how he's mapped that out. I imagine he's been obviously, I know, I think I saw a video at one point where he was, they've got their own kind of virtual table design. That's right. And I suppose that helps them plan out some of the shots. But still, it's like to think about how that was going to work, that's really ingenious, some of the shots he's come up with. Yeah, and look, a lot of people are kicking off about the plunge. So let me just step back in time for a moment. Sure. Iron Maiden, the figure of eight plunge. The premium in LEs had loads of issues with that to start with. I got fed up with it. my tech guy used at the time I said I want this to be perfect and work every single time and don't come out of my pinball shed until you've fixed it anyway what he did was he put a bigger coil in and it fixed all the issues so the Ironman I've got here never missed a shot I posted on the LE thread on Pinside put this coil in life was good loads of people did it, life was good I suspect X-Men solution might be similar. I'm going to take a look at it. The other game, Avengers, where you've got this big, long plunge. 90% of Avengers I play gets stuck at the top and drops down. Mine, although it's in storage right now, unfortunately. Victim of space. Yeah, it is. 100% press the button, bang, it comes around every time. One of the club, it's variable. Every time I clean the game, I get it working 100% again, but even the dirt on the play field slows the ball down. Right, yeah. And Avengers is one of the most played games at the club. I mean, that's one of those things like Theatre of Magic. You know, when I was making those games last year for people, including you, I think it was as well. Yeah. It was dialing in that orbit shot so that it got perfect every time. Yeah. Because that is a long shot. It is. And it's a crucial shot. It's one of the best shots on the game. Yeah, absolutely. actually I meant to tell you it was the opto board yeah it was the opto board after all that was it and it's been bulletproof we entered a load of grief on my trunk and I think it's a known issue with the opto board I got one of the new ones that's got all this protection built into it and swapped over it's been great since that's the thing I find with like theater of magic it's a great game but you need to like almost modernize it to a point where it doesn't have those old problems like the eddy boards you need the auto eddy boards really and the same thing you need the meta opto um i don't want to call it diverters whatever it's called the gate metal to gate that fits underneath your opto board the new opto board it's a bit like twilight zone i suppose with the clock you know if you modernize the clock it doesn't become a problem i mean this is yeah i mean this is the issue with those old games one of the reasons why i kind of got get frustrated about them they got they're great they got great toys on them yeah great toys require great maintenance they do yeah most of us that's why i think it's handy that as you say there's a lot of people making like the indestructible crate for the trunk so it doesn't crack and actually i mean you know speaking of mods that's a good segue yeah yeah so look um big shout out to davy stumbler if you haven't seen his elevator godzilla mod It's really good. Go have a look at it. It's absolutely amazing. I need to get on the list for one because he smashed it. I'm not a big mod fan. Godzilla is like the modern-day Addams Family. I swear, there's so many mods for that game now. Yeah, because they've sold... God knows how many. I'm pretty sure they've sold more now than Addams sold. Really? I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I don't want to blow that trumpet yet. I would have thought, personally, that's a milestone, really. Right? to say look at guys we're back in the the heydays of the 90s big volumes of games sold yeah but this is the thing right it was ah you know monster bash that was a huge game uh i only sold about two i think three thousand ah cactus canyon i don't think they sold a thousand no um you know it's it's there's a lot of games that really they barely sold and they were trying really hard to like make games good but it was at the point where the market was done yeah same character and he sold almost none. It's a great game. I mean, the reason it sold none is because of the stupid shape. Took up a lot of floor space. Yeah, and also it – but it's a great game, a lot of fun. But I think Sterner massively – I mean, I think the – well, not just Sterner. I think the industry as a whole is massively outperforming the 90s. Maybe not the 70s and 80s in terms of pure game numbers. Right. and probably not the 60s where there wasn't a new game there's a new game every month you know I mean they were simpler so it was easy for them to put them out and some of them used the same ish layouts and you'd have a two player version a four player version but you know when you look at you know a book called Pinball History like Roger Sharp's book which my wife got me a signed copy for my birthday I was so happy and a first edition as well it's you know you kind of see the pace of learning and change that was going on and we've kind of got that in LCDs and music and lighting and stuff so it's kind of good honestly that mod from David I was going to say he's done really well because you look at like obviously his partnership now with Dutch Pinball Exclusive which he did for Alice he's incorporated a mod board into the game so that future modders can then just tie into that and tap into that without any effort. One thing I found disappointing, actually, with Pinball Brothers' approach on the Alien was they were dissuading people from pulling into the power. It might be because they were really much at the limit of the power supply unit, so they didn't want people tapping into it, so to speak. But having an additional power supply unit for mods is just a pain in the neck. I much prefer the fact that Stumbler's given the guys at Dutch Pinball to go, this is how we should make a game. And I hope other manufacturers like take note of that so i think people love modding their games right yeah i think i think they have i mean i don't think the manufacturers are purely are overly happy about people modding games and i get why um on licensing issues and stuff like that the biggest issues yeah i mean i mean this is the thing with stern um and actually i would say the same for jgp i think you'd be mad to pull power from their boards except both of them have got power boards that have got, you know, an easy way for you to grab power from, or the coin door, where you've got more power because you're probably plugging in an electric dollar bill Yeah, I know what you're saying a billing acceptor So if you are putting mods in a Stern game or a JGP game, you can actually pick up these things that will plug into the power board and give you a whole load of mod type power connectors I strongly recommend you do that especially on stern do not pull power from a stern note board you're asking for trouble well yeah I wouldn't pull it from the note board but you'd be surprised how many mods do that even lit mod where there's just a different bow not sure I would be doing that but it's a tricky one but good shout out to Dave I'm looking forward to Jaws mods which she's furiously working away on. I feel selfish and I just want to say if you're listening, can you make for the love of God those Afterglow boards because no one is making them. And I don't like again, no one really notices it probably, but I hate the fact you don't have a gradual fade in and fade out when you switch from incandescent to LEDs on the old 90s games. I'm afraid I've got one of them on my Theatre Magic. I could never tell the difference. I can. It bothers me. Dracula, you really noticed it as well with the GI. The only game I really saw value in it was Spider-Man because it had this thing where it half lit the lights for different bits of the modes. Got you. Lord of the Rings is very visible. But yeah, Luke, well done. Dave, one thing actually I wanted to throw in, which a big shout out to the folks on pinsight um now pinsight gets a kind of a uh a painted various colors quite often a lot of them negative and i get where there's a lot of people on pinsight though you're gonna have all walks of life on there yeah it's huge i i think it's one of the best forums on the planet um and and shout out to robin who runs it um i mean it's all homegrown code as well and he doesn't use his own system wow but um that he's coded himself but i actually haven't dealt with robin on a few issues he's he's pretty um he's got a brain and he's he gave us some help with sponsorship at uk open and stuff so okay um but they have a thing called pin side secret center um and 300 plus people signed up for it this year it's freaking nuts wow um i signed up for it this is the fourth time i've signed up for it i think uh yeah fourth time and it never fails to make me thankful for how great a community we've got um my pin side secret cinter class um this dutch he sent me a couple of banners and actually this t-shirt that i'm wearing oh you got the t-shirt from that's nice i like that t-shirt cedric again um we did actually for the first cut of this, we did have Christmas jumpers on. We did. We had to bin the first cut because I literally ranted for two hours. My microphone was bad, which is why I look like I'm now conducting an aeroplane again because I'm giving the best audio of my amazing voice for you listeners. We're doing our best to up the production quality. We got all the toy, we got all the gear, we just don't have any idea. Yeah. But honestly, the thought this guy went into, he sent us a load of a couple of pinball fingers, he sent us a load of Dutch kind of food christmas food uh absolutely amazing now you've got the thread on pin side you'll see it um really thoughtful uh my wife was blown away by it she's like holy shit he's put he said this guy's put more thought into the presents that um that he's sending you do everyone else's presents in the house like no i don't believe that but um anyway it was it was kind of funny but he really smashed it um and there's a lot of other uh amazing things there's one guy who'd this year he knew who he was sending it to right? the way it works is you apply for it and this guy his pin side name is Les Manley I can't remember his show name but he's run this like for 6-7 years now right and he's an absolute saint he should be in the pinball hall of fame that's the sort of guy you should have in the pinball hall of fame nice because the aggro of running this must be unbelievable so you basically send everything in and then you kind of you ask for things like what's your t-shirt size and blows you know to make it as easy as possible right and sure and obviously you get a link to the game make sure your pin side game lists up today blah blah blah um and um so i mean you know i think the first time i did it was like 50 people it's up to three i'm pretty sure it's 300 plus now and he basically gives your address all the details and he does this to everybody and I obviously have to buy for someone which I won't say anything about so I remain a secret but you know you get a and I can't remember I think the target price that they suggest is 50 bucks okay so there's the minimum threshold of 50 but anything in excess of that is fine Well, I think there is a threshold. I think it's 50. I might be wrong on that. But honestly, I don't think anyone sticks to it. Okay. And, you know, and I'll give an example. There's one guy who's had a bad luck, really bad year. He's well-known, reasonably well-known in the community or some part of the community. Someone, for his Pinside Secrets, hasn't he, got a pinball machine. Wow. Yeah, I mean. Wow. That's stern. What, a new in box as well? This is the second time it's happened. The amount of people participating for next year just went up three times. Yeah, I mean, I think the person, I think there's a bit of, how would I say, conductorship to make sure that the people who need something like that, you know, where they've had a bad year or they've had bad luck or something's happened, you know, they kind of line the things up. And it's very, again, very well done. so anyway a big shout out to I'm kind of reflecting right now on our local forum the fun that someone trying to sell a game has just had getting a load of aggro from people who've got no intention zero intention of buying the game and when people try and help out by giving them advice how to buy a game or what to look for, they think that's a carte blanche to then take the piss. And frankly, it's pretty disappointing. And look, I'm not blaming the mods or the admin, because in a world of sensible people, you just wouldn't expect to see what was happening. And it's really easy. Look someone selling a game like 00760F you not going to be getting it for a thousand pound guys you not probably going to be getting it for five grand either you probably going to be getting it for 10 to 15 maybe even 20 so you know when someone's trying to figure out you know what's the best way of selling this or how do you want to sell it look i think um the the seller in this case you know there's certain things he didn't do help him help himself out but some of the crap on that thread is just outrageous especially at Christmas I mean for God's sakes but even more so especially you know look if you're on the forum and you know you're never going to buy that game and there's about 10 people on that thread I don't think they've bought a pinball machine 10 years just don't do it just don't freaking do it I mean honestly the UK forum makes Pinside look like heaven and it's depressing to see there's no humor there's no banter um there's just a lot of people who think they know better and and i it's it's infuriating to see um and and i hope people take stock of it um honestly there's a bunch of i don't think you're going to change it neil if i'm honest with you i mean there's people and i think a lot of people have tuned out to the forum i mean i went back in there i stayed away for a couple of months if i'm honest with you and then stupidly went back into it on that thread and then got annoyed by someone who you know obviously got wires crossed in between i won't go into it because i can't be bothered and i need to justify myself especially to those people um but from my point of view it's just like yeah it's just further cemented my view on it it's just i just don't let um bozos like that live live rent free in my head it amuses me when i like canada calling me out i had some other bozo and pinball info calling me out um i love it i I mean, the more people do that, the more it makes me laugh. My wife said it quite succinctly. She just said, you're a bunch of grown men arguing over wooden lights. And I was like, yeah, probably true. It's the same on every forum, you know. I think Pitbull Info has got to a level where, you know, there's this kind of part of it that never wants anything to change. And, you know, all they want to be doing is playing the shadow over and over again. nothing wrong with the shadow it's a good game I love it, I've got one it's a fantastic game but in a world of Godzilla's, Jaws' Thunderballs and Pulp Fictions the world's moved on a little bit ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not and you need to move lies, it's all DMD still no one's buying new games at all um anyway the um so and then um you know let's fast forward anyway pin size you can stand our great job love it go have a look at the thread it is glorious it's what it's what you'd want to see at christmas time which brings me on to christmas time and scott the best thing from your pinball career in very commas this year um so 24 2024 and as you know i recently finished a funhouse um playfield swap and i was provided the game in literal boxes of bits the game was not assembled at all i had the uh fortuitous pictures from the from the from the uh uh how do you want to call it client i suppose this way i put it um but they were zoomed into the point where it was like i suppose trying to analyze the moon and you're looking at a four thousand percent zoom it was like i'm not gonna be able to figure out where these parts go so i was frantically looking at other people's um restoration jobs online referencing pictures zooming into very pixelated jpegs uh trying to get everything put together and it all worked first time well turned it on and he said you did a great job i didn't have to do a single thing and i was like i should i lie he did to do one switch which apparently he might it might have knocked during transit anyway but that was it everything else worked all the coils all the harnesses went on correctly it all played perfectly first time this is the thing just the thing with pinball you kind of grow in confidence about it yeah absolutely you know and you know what you can do and what you can do i'm terrible at soldiering i will do i'll do it if i have to i won't profess to be a great soldier but and i'm better than i was i'd like to get better by doing and absolutely you know i actually um actually brad helped me fix the one of the trolls on my um medieval madness which is a freaking nightmare to get to the switch on a troll oh absolutely yeah um jesus so yeah i mean i mean for me 2024 um i mean i just getting the club back open yeah i bet yeah real good success it was huge effort from a lot of great people um and you know we're in good shape we're trading tiny bit of of positive at the moment a lot there's things happening i think that'll impact that um in a positive way i hope or negative way no negative i mean the cost of electricity is a definite challenge for us um is that because of the review of the price cap next year and stuff like that no well partly but um you know it just see um i mean we saw a big chunk of that we wouldn't have to pay um but it turns out we do i and it's kind of um i misunderstand it on my part but um i mean there's nothing that we can't cope with um it's just something that kind of caught us on the wars and actually right now i've got a dispute with edf i tell you what dealing with edf man jesus christ it's horrific don't say that i'm with them oh i mean i honestly i mean i'm with octopus and um you know they've got their issues but it's a world it's a world of difference and anyway the the good news is is that um you know we're in reasonable shape i've decided to personally sponsor and upgrade an internet bandwidth so we tried to stream from there on the we got this 5g fixed wireless access sure and it's just not good enough for streaming so i'm i'm i'm getting starlink no well actually starling would have been an answer but we don't have roof access but i've decided to get some fiber pulled in and i've got a couple of uh people in the know helping me out do a do a do a um on a decent price and i'm i'm gonna say yeah your your job might come in handy there indeed indeed um so yes i was i mean and a big shout out to the members in particular who spend a lot of money to keep it running um and without the members and the guests that come and the events that we have you know we just couldn't run um we could run run the place without you so i really appreciate it because we've got a solid venue yeah for pinball that allows us um we've got so many games then how many games you got 76 i think that's really good um i think it's 76 something like that um but we're kind of out of space we got actually i got elvira going in um picked one off up off the forum so i have to ask quickly like the operators So how does it work if you're an operator for Stern so that you get your badges recognized? Do you have to then apply the recognizer as a location? There's a pro account that you get. Okay. And there's a form to fill out and they give it to you. And you can do leaderboards. You can get the parties, the badges that affect and et cetera, et cetera. So you can run event badges then potentially? No, Stern doesn't have to enable them. but so we can't create them ourselves although i think they're not going to enable that for operators to do that themselves like or tokens for beer and stuff like that for for barcades so yeah we're up and running as a pro site um and we got our um leaderboards etc so yeah it's quite it's cool and i mean the data that comes out of both scorebit and insider is so useful for game for normal games are getting played and which ones aren't yeah um you know which is a constant kind of challenge for us because we've got more games and we've got space for. I mean, I know that's a – in some ways it's a nice problem to have, but I think it goes back to what we were talking about in another episode. Maybe it was the issue of space and trying to now make decisions on what goes in and what stays out. I suppose, as you say, at least with the Insider Connect information, you're getting actual statistics that you can go say, this one is definitely um more popular than another yeah absolutely i think um what i um what i get a bit frustrated about is when we've got games that have got issues um i want all of our games to play a hundred percent or be on the floor and james and and mike and a few others that help us some of the volunteers help us clean the games um you know it's it's you know it's great we've got more games but it's given us a lot of extra work um particularly i own most of i own all of the stern spike twos in the club and you know it's a lot of effort to keep them in tip top um i mentioned we had this issue with godzilla yeah i got um with an issue with bond i had to replace the diverse sheared off i had to replace it i don't mind that but um it's it you know i hear when a game isn't playing well. And again, the feedback we get from the UK Open where we take those games and run the event. Yeah. Like, wow, these games play so nice. It's great to get that feedback. But it's a struggle. That's the problem with pinball, though. It's like a car, right? The more you hammer it, the more it's going to need maintenance. And you're going to have to be looking at the call stops, sleeves, the slings. Luckily, we've got James, who does a great job on that, and Mike and others that help out when need be. I do a lot of work on the games as well. What I'm doing is I do a lot of work to bulletproof them with like cliffies and protectors and mylar. I think I might need some extra. What do you find in terms of rubbers? What do you use there? Do you use the standard stock ones or tightens? The stock ones you pull off because they are rubber and they wear and you get black crap everywhere. So I strongly recommend getting them off. I use tightens there's other rubbers you could use like super bands that will last forever but they play terrible but I recommend titans I think they're pretty decent they come in a lot of great colours as well they do there's one thing I like about going down the silicon rubber route you can go with something that matches the theme of the game exactly you can make a flat game pop a little bit Absolutely So yeah look great And what I'm looking forward to in 25 Is kind of more of the same I hope the club grows from strength to strength I'm hoping we get some great games We've got definitely A new game coming from Stern In the next two weeks I think that'll be exciting At CES I'm pretty sure they'll launch a game there I did notice that Stern Were a What's the word vendor at CES. If you've never been to CES, by the way. Oh, right. So do you think they might do an announcement at CES, then? They usually do. Or they usually do it, like, the day before CES and then they have the game at the CES. Maybe I haven't tuned into that before. So, I mean, last year it was Jaws. They've done Stranger Things. Still miss that game. I will get it, Ian. I will get it. Absolutely great game. so yeah and anything from you from a 25 perspective scott um i think i've mentioned it before barrels of fun i think my bet will be it's fifth element right and if it is i have to get it um because my my wife will not let me not get it i'll have to sell something um which will be non-trivial i what's that what to choose what to get rid of yeah you're gonna get a ouija board out i don't know what to get i don't know what to get rid of i know you said this to me before you figure out what game you've played the least and that should be the one that goes but it goes back to like is the game gonna be easy to get again if i regret that and i've done this before i've gone through like two star treks three aliens um god i think stranger things as i say i really regret getting rid of that um i think i am at 14 games now i i shouldn't be even at beyond 10 so to be at 14 is just dumb i mean i still remember when the guy showed up uh to deliver the the labyrinth and they do that delivery to door thing so he didn't know he just goes what is this i'm delivering i said it's a pinball machine and he's like they still make those yeah and i said yeah and then he goes how many you got then i said it's it's it's in excess of 10 he goes in there i said yeah and he goes bloody hell you've got a good wife i said yeah i do a couple of delivery guys helped me get us pinned into the shed here and they're like oh my god this is nuts yeah i bet yeah and uh it's it's it is funny to to see that reaction when it is isn't it especially i mean it's kind of weird because you know i've got a lot of games from hatfields and i've never had the same lorry driver twice it's bizarre they must have they must have like they must have a massive staff yeah um anyway look great 24 yeah i mean 25 for me um you know i'm looking forward to a a good new Keith Elwin game i'm i'm hoping um that it's a better year for american pinball than the last year yeah so you know they if you watch loser kid pinball podcast last update they fix us on there and it's not a great well it's a great interview from their perspective but i think i don't know if dave you know i don't know someone shot his cat in the morning or something but he was he was he was not his usual bubbly self okay um and i know dave i you know he i think he's a great guy every time i've asked him for something or needed something or talked to him about something he's always been there i mean i shot saw um barbecue yours two years before it came out um and he let me he let me play was that as a whitewood or how did it look he let me play tank force before cpf home so i could video it properly i really like that game um so and but i think he's i think it's been tough for him he looks he looks um depleted he looks tired i think the problem we've got as you say is we've said this before but i think a lot of like games it's down to like execution and theme and i feel like they've got the the means to make a great game they've got the manufacturing facilities they've got i know you've mentioned before i think some people have now been let go but they have talent i hope they still have some talent left to make those games yeah i mean it lets Steven Bowden go i think and then obviously some of the designers have been put on what you'd call holes. Lotus, maybe. Or, you know, sabbatical or something. I kind of feel that to me, American have definitely got a proper manufacturing facility. They can build games. I've seen the facility tours and it looks phenomenal. I think they've got the means to make the game. I told David it was his best kind of secret. I think everyone thinks of American pinball and It's a room this size with four people. Yeah, they probably think it's like Turner Pimble, right? They're just starting out fledgling business, but they're not. No, they're huge. And I think they deserve better. But also, I think they've made some bad calls. I think, David, if it's true that Whitewater 2 is sitting in a cupboard and a barbecue game, which is a good game. It's not a great game, but it's a good game. It's the theme that's wrong, right? I mean, you should have just taken that play field and put it on something else. What you should have done. Do you know exactly what you should have done? Think about it this way. You should have done a spooky. If you wanted to maintain the kind of respect for, sorry, what's the name of the Bram Stoker's Dracula developer? Yeah, what's the name of the developer? Barry. Barry. I should remember. Barry Osler. Yeah, Barry Osler. So Barry Osler, if you wanted to respect his memory, as I know he was a very dear friend of David Fix, I would have just said, okay, do what spooky do. Do a split game. do like a select 50 games based on barbecue yeah and then do another theme based on the same layout and you probably would have had much more success yeah i mean i i think um i just think doing something like that just defies business reality be like hey you know we're gonna you know my business ain't you we're gonna create a home router named after our mate bill um just no we're never going to do that forget it it's not going to happen um so i know kind of for me reflects some of the lack of maturity in the in the pinball industry maybe we see it from from you know the the only for me the only company that acts like a proper company is stern and and they and when i first got a pinball they they they kind of didn't they did some dumb things right they've kind of they've definitely matured massively um they've had to because the scale that they've got you can't if you can't think how many games they can make now yeah if you can if you want to scale you got to scale in maturity and they've definitely done a phenomenal job of that um yeah and the the you know but the other guys spooky i'd say probably have as well except on quality um and again actually loser kid interviewed um bug in fact i've seen bug interviewed by a lot of podcasts since they've launched evil dead which i'm looking forward to but they're all beating them up on quality so you know the the spooky for a few years had this kind of um team of i call it the kind of shields around their their brand where they'd all see quality was perfect and and it's bollocks right it just wasn't they have they have their flaws rick and molly had them uh scooby-doo had them multitude of over again halloween had them right with the power driver issues yeah and some yeah i mean there was the halloween had a load of board issues i think scooby's had a few there's trough issues in in tcm and and looney tunes um a lot of issues with a remake of tna actually i had issues with my tna but all it took was to put proper power connectors on it and they all went away so okay i think um i hope that as you know bugs in listen we've learned on quality we've got it nailed i hope that's true because if if it's not there'll be nine hours of youtube rant from me on... We'll need so many different cuts. Yeah, on Evil Dead, yeah. We'll need the... As we'll say, we'll have the Boomstick version and we'll have the the Daylight and a Dollar Short version. I'm really hopeful that this is, as Kerry Hardy put it, their Godzilla. Yes, yeah, 100%. It looks phenomenal. I was really on the fence to get it or not and I think I've just hedged my bets on barrels of fun for next year. Well, you know, I've bought one. And I sold my Rick and Morty before even Phil shipped it. I said, Phil, ship it to this location. Is that why I said I've sold it? Because the noise coming out of Rick and Morty land was not good enough for me. I just thought I'm never going to play it. If this game's got issues, it'll just sit in the corner. I'll never play it. Yeah. Sold it for what I paid for it. Actually to Ian. I think he still got it, actually. um so yeah i mean that's that's um issue and then it kind of you know the rest of the market um so we know stern's gonna launch a new game but they've also vaulted some games um which is a surprise yep uh iron maiden and deadpool they've been around a long time so let's have a surprise elvira i think they've sold all the elviras i think they've run out of edition names for that one. Exactly. And the surprise, all the Star Wars games, which I suspect that's a licensed ending. Must be right. And also, they've done a lot of runs of it. And the surprise for me, Foo Fighters. Yeah, Foo Fighters, yeah. I mean, that game is... I mean, out of that entire selection you just ran out of, it's obviously one that's very new. Yeah. And I don't think it's had its moment in the light really yet, has it? I mean, is the code even final? The code, it's the code, yeah, the code's finalized. Okay. They're not just, I think there's a few things they need to tweak on it, but, I mean, I love the game, it's great. Gets a lot of plays in the club. I guess band music, band pins can be hit or miss if you, you know, if they make it, like, rush. You know, I think that game should be one of the best-selling games of all time, but the music's freaking terrible. It's so bad, I can't listen to it. We've got one in the club. I bought at Femium and the layout is amazing, the rules are amazing but I just want to shoot myself in the head when I hear that freaking guy sing, it's like I'm like what? I've got people at work I would say that are in the age demographic of 60 plus and they know Rush and I'm like I just don't, it's not for me I've got a song from Rush that they can add a hit with but I don't think it's very popular as they make it out to be outside of the US I suppose I tend to agree. Actually, a friend of mine who's a music nut, he's a massive Rush fan, and I think he bought the pinball... He's not a pinball guy, but I think he bought a Rush Pro because he's such a big Rush fan, I see, in the UK. And... I think that's the main benefit of band pins, right, is that you'll get people that will say I'm not into pinball, but I'm going to buy this because I am a super fan of that band and i think that's probably five percent of the sales sure based on what i've seen i mean jersey jack would have you believe it's 50 but we all depends on guns and roses right i mean that must have had some people that went into pinball buying that yeah look there's no questions that you know that you know when you've got a strong theme like bond i mean i've sold um a couple of bond 60s to bond collectors for crazy amounts of money um these bond collectors I imagine have money. You open the garage and they've got five Aston Marins. I was going to say, yeah, the watches and everything else. It's on another level. People complain about pinball prices when these guys are paying 20 grand for a pair of metal teeth. It's freaking nuts. There's no question, but they're not. To be honest, those sort of collectors, they've just got it in a room and it gets turned on every now and again. It doesn't get played, really. but let me tell you it was a couple of juicy deals and helped pay for mine so was always positive and then JGP finished Pirates of the Caribbean Yay! For those of you who knew of Pinball Pirates of the Caribbean was a game made six years ago Do you know what though like mechanically that is a super impressive game I think I'm just I'm very impressed by what they did with the upper playfield and the cannon, but once you get past the initial wow factor and play the game, I was a bit like I just don't see the value. Yeah, I just don't see the value. So it was launched in 2018. It's insane to think that they could put that kind of stuff underneath the hood. I mean, people complain about CGC taking two years to deliver a game. I'm actually surprised they bothered because I don't know how many games they sold of that but it can't i think i think i think they had to write to the code for i think they did it out of self-preservation because sure i think they would have had to update the code for their wowie new um redemption system redemption system and if i i i can't help but think if there was pirates of the caribbean owners who've dutifully waited six long years for the wizard mode suddenly find out that they've added code to give five year old tickets and get the games covered in sticky candy floss goo but yet not completed the wizard mode I can't help but think there would be a crew of pirates landing I don't know I don't think people care anymore I mean if you've got that game you are singing all the way to the bank because people pay silly money for it because it's hard So Luke I think that was the case for a while but there a couple of being up at top dollar have dropped faster than Jersey Jack chin when he been asked to apologize for play field issues I just I just I just I think at one point in time it was worth it Oh, you're doing wrong. It's still worth a decent amount of cash. If you bought one, you probably would have to sell it for what you paid it for. But there was like games being sold for 25, 30 grand. I think those days are well back. Oh, those are probably back. Yeah, I'll give you that. But yeah, look, it's great that they finished the code. Well done. Yeah, good for them. Finally done it. we'll give him a clap and it's only taken him six years such a digger you are I hope Elton John doesn't take six years to finish I think they've kind of finished it but actually people are reporting that they've got playfield failures on Pinside is that because it's still using Mirco playfield I guess so it's like that was that old age you know, if you keep trying to do something the same way over and over and over again Definition of madness Definition of madness, you get the same outcome, we're going to use the same supplier who fucked us on four games, can he make it I think the problem we've got, right and I look at like for instance an old plate field, in terms of because it's all birch plate field birch I think isn't it and it's all got these layers and layers and layers of wood that have been squished together. I look at the old playfields, there's just so many more layers. It's a bit like rings around a tree trunk. You know what I mean? The more rings you find, the older the wood is and the better the quality is. I think the same analogy is true for these playfields. They haven't got old wood anymore. It's all brand new. Doug Duva talked us through this. Their wood shop is I mean, it looks like something from the back to the future when they go back in time right um to the cowboy era but it's it's a proper wood shop and doug was explaining this he says look all the wood that we get is is young yeah young wood older wood as i learned now protected or or insanely expensive um and the russian birch is what they call it and basically the wood's softer and it just means that when the ball hits it it bows it's not it's not i mean people say it's a cost-cutting exercise and and let me tell you doug's like we don't he he wished that there was someone else who could do playfields for him because it's such a a hard part of the production what i will say though is is my public fiction of the club um the playfield apart from the one bit of damage which is irritating but the rest of the playfields is as smooth and as beautiful as the one that just arrived um so it can be done um yeah i think it just takes more time and effort and i just don't know if they've got the i don't know it's maybe it's a cost thing maybe it's a time thing maybe it's both i don't know i think it's a hard thing i think you've got look i look you want to pay a lot of money for a bulletproof playfield yeah build it for you there's no question about it yeah it's the cost here if you want to pay the same amount for the playfield that you paid played for for your shadow 20 years ago then actually it's not going to be as good and and that's that's a reality i so people will care that's cost cutting no that's trying to maintain us something at the same price point maintain a price point where the world has moved on dramatically even just the inflation on wood is nuts when i built this shed um i think the wood part of it was 14 grand if you try and do it now you're looking at 22. And it's the same word, but this is the COVID impact that still affected materials massively. But look, I think, I mean, I really want to buy an Elton John. I love the game. But I'm glad I haven't done... And, you know, the great thing about this, I mean, in Jersey Jack, I do agree with him. You know, when you get these themes that expand pinball, um it's it is great i think elton john is such a theme i don't think it's great for the pinball community because i i don't see them many of them being big elton john fans but you know and we've talked about this before but seeing you know we're seeing these um influencers from arcades and stuff come into pinball yeah um other youtubers like retro Ralph who I've met at the Stern event on Metallica um and you know I think it's a great thing but but Scott I'm always worried that look um the community's got a lot of great people in it there's some idiots as well but um you know I'm thinking of lose I was thinking of the loser loser kid guys I'm thinking of um Triple Drain I'm thinking of the pinball show there's a lot of great kind of pinball experts um and and uh in the in the pinball community and you know we need to make sure they're looked after as we bring in these other you know youtubers i get it it's a balancing act right the student's trying to widen its audience and it feels the best way to do that is to go to people that aren't naturally in the in the hobby already so to speak or a fresh of the hobby. That audience of people is watching their content, like initially was Richard Ralph, then there's potentially more eyes on it. Yeah, I agree. I think they're being sensible about it. I haven't just gone and said, hey, you're a car influencer, come and influence pinball. They've gone to arcade or gaming stuff, which kind of makes sense and hopefully helps the cause out. Absolutely. I hope it does. I want pinball to be not like everyone's kind of like thinking this is going to be a bit of a flash in the pan kind of you know we're in the heyday now and in a couple years now it'll be dead again i'd like it to carry on and i want it to carry on yeah i mean i i think everyone um fears of that and then just on star they've got the pinball cup running on insider connected uh it's quite a cool little thing um where you um you have to do various things on pinball and you you're kind of in a race to do them is quite cool the way they've done it they had a couple of hiccups with it at the start but i think they've ironed them all out that's why they pushed out a code update on every game which i think staggering i saw the list it was insane yeah i mean there's i got an update for batman 66 you know which oh it's kind of funny jerry jack are finishing the game they came out at the same time as batman 66 from their side whereas they're adding things to the game um i just it beggars belief for me but it's great to see them do that and and you know i run a i help run a code base in one of the places i work at and it's not easy to run something like that so well done to them yeah um and then um the other thing i just want to touch on and it's the thing i had a rant about in the in the pinball podcast that you didn't see the cut content you can you can pay if you send Scott a hundred bucks, he will shit all over you. There's 40 minutes of me trying to make sure that Neil just calms down a bit. So UKCS, I'm just going to have about 10 minutes. I'm going to tell you what, I'm going to give you 10 minutes. Have your peace. Go. Okay, so Luke, first of all, those that have ran the UKCS and put effort into it, of course we love you, right? So you can take this as two ways. You can take it as me having a dig Or you can take it as me being constructive and trying to improve things, right? And who am I? Who am I, Scott, to suggest improvements? Let me just look at the UK Open, right? It's an event I picked up four years ago that was literally dying. It is now the third. If you take out the majors, actually the second biggest pinball tournament in the world from a points point of view, right? and we're being by i'm annoyed about this because we could have been the first word because i cancelled i pulled out um we're only being by northwest pinball tournament ran by a good friend um that the um in the northwest of of um the us we run that tournament for years uh we're on the world map of having a great tournament the feedback i get and it's not look i'm the leader of a there's a huge amount of volunteers and we've smashed it three years in a row um we've had you know we had the top i think craig said top 30 of the top 50 or something like that um one of the um best pinball tournaments uh ever made so i feel i can make a comment on this right um people might say piss off neil that's okay i won't let it bother me um i never have and I never will. But look, here's a few things, right? Right now the UKCS is open to every event. That's a bad thing because right now if you qualify in the bottom half of every event, you will qualify for the top 64. No question about it. That's just for you, cumulative point contributions. So, and it's almost 25%, 25 times increased to qualify based on participation. If I take the European players out or the non-UK players out, it's 49 times more likely. And I've downloaded all the data from the IFPA database. I've beautifully made a UK version of the database that is allowing me to find out facts and data like that. Here's the next thing. There were 6,000 tournament players in the UK. This is cumulative, so that's not 6,000 people, but 6,000 people going to events. Does that mean 6,000 entries? do you mean that entries yes so um 3,600 of them were to tournaments in the south right so more than half were to tournaments in the south um about 25 percent were tournaments in the midlands and about 15 to 20 percent um where the the um claire uh he's done a great job in anglia helped by David and others. And then there's the rest of the world, which is almost non-existent. The North is... He means the rest of the UK, by the way, not the world. Yes, the rest of the UK. So the North, and Scotland as well, there's just, you know, there's a tournament, and a number of those players that come from that region, or events that were in that region, you know, the event actually in those regions with players was tiny. And Matt got a lot of grief, saying, why are you having the finals at Pimble Republic? Well, actually, it turns out, because those in the South have paid for the finals, and the format that we need for the finals, if you look into it, requires a venue that's got more than 32 games. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, folks, feel free to, that Pimble Republic is the only venue with more than 32 games, right? The other kind of allergic reaction I've had to some of the comments is people shouldn't qualify because they've played at one event that's so skewed in comparison to all the other events. Absolute, complete bollocks. So what do they mean by so skewed? Because the UK Open is such a big event now, right, the value of that tournament is the second biggest in the world now, right? Okay. So if you are 100, if you become 100th in the UK Open, you will get a big chunk of championship points, right? Right. Rightly so, because you've become, you're 100th in one of the toughest tournaments on the freaking planet, right? so anyone who says uh we should take the uk open out right i think go back to go back to what i said to you yesterday it's not the perspective i think you need to be putting devil's advocate here it's not them whining i think it's coming from their point of view of saying they feel probably that this location is being favored and that their location should be given more of an opportunity let me that's but go back to your argument where you said and i think i can lead you to carry on this bit let me so let me let me just clarify that right sure so on the venue so let me come back to that in a minute but let me just finish on the uk open right go on the so look i can see why people think in the uk open by the way it's three events it's not it's not one event there's three tournaments three of and actually the classics tournament at the uk open is like the 10th biggest pinball event in the world something like that and and then the um pinball republic championship is i think the 13th so these are three big tournaments if you do well in three big tournaments then why shouldn't you qualify for the ukcs you're playing against the best i just mentioned the top 30 out of 50 the best players in the world at one of the hardest formats in pinball on some of the toughest games that you will ever play right um i'd add pinfest to this so if you play the main tournament at pinfest um it means uk pinfest by the way you also stand a very good chance of qualifying so you could go to four tournaments four hard tournaments and pinfest this year was brutally hard i did qualify though um it was brutally hard Actually, I did qualify for the UK Open, but that's a story for another day. It's tough, and you should be able to qualify there. And if you happen to have come in from Japan or Australia or South Africa or the United States or Canada or Sweden or even Wales, and you do well, why shouldn't you be allowed to participate in the UKCA? It's a fair argument. I think, like, you know, I say it just sounds like to me maybe they just haven't thought about, one, the location and how many games are available there. Two, as you say, the player waiting. So if you want to call it like that, the skill sets behind it. But, Luke, you know, the best player in the UK is a guy from the north. You know, and the second best is a guy from the southwest. and probably Matt's third best player in the country. I'll probably get booed for that. Allegedly. Allegedly. But that's the thing. I'm using data to position. Sure, you're looking at statistics. For those not aware, he showed me yesterday, he got really entrenched into it and started pulling stats out of his tablet or out of his phone. I forget which it was. But he was getting – he's done his homework. He's spent some time on this. Neil is a passionate guy. for a good 40 minutes I was trying to get him to calm down he got more and more irate the more I spoke about it his point being I think is that people just need to realise that I think a lot of what's been done around the tournament and around the location is done for the betterment of UK Pinball and it's not because there's some sort of bias and if there is it's not it's inadvertent I am biased Scott I am biased Look, and actually, I'm proud to be biased because bias is one of the glorious human traits, and we're all humans. So when people say, I'm not biased, bollocks. Because you are human, that makes you biased. You cannot be unfreaking biased, right? It's impossible. Your brain doesn't work that way. For 30 years or however old you are, your brain's been creating pathways that makes you biased. So to be able to keep you on track, you have two more minutes. Two more minutes. Two more minutes. I might need three. Just to close this off, right, the other thing that's scary is tournament participation is on the way down. And Scott and I, yesterday, we think that might be related to cost of living. I think that's a fair question that I hadn't considered perhaps as much as I should. but I also think that part of the reason so I think that the UKCS could have been a lot more competitive as opposed to participation based right and look if we want to hand out participation medals great hey you came well done what I want to work out is you're a top player you are the UKCS champion you've earned your position has value right and right now it doesn't I'm sorry it doesn't I'm not going to go anyone but the reality is it doesn't matt you know i've talked to matt and i've argued about this many many times in fact i might i should have got him on but um the the you know matt says well if we make it everyone every tournament is more inclusive that is not the case because if you attend more more if you attend a lot of tournaments that are in the ukcs you've got a greater chance of qualifying i personally cannot attend a lot of tournaments why is that well one i help run the club which means i'm there one weekend and four at least um i also go a lot of tournaments in the u.s and scott why do i go a lot of tournaments in the u.s because you travel a lot travel a lot will work but also i travel to these tournaments because they are outstandingly challenging tournaments they have 100 players, they have a room, it's like the UK Open every time I go there and you know do I want to go to a tournament that's crammed in a place that can barely take 30 people I mean I run tournaments in this place and after 30 people we struggle with space right or actually I'll go to a tournament you know I'll go to PAPA 21 or PAPA 22 or I'll go to Pinburg or I'll go to Indus which I'm going to next month and these tournaments are out of this world in terms of the the scale and the toughness of them yeah i might come 204th and in this i don't care i had an amazing time playing right yeah um that you know so we need to be able to have our big events like when i included the uk pinball league which i think is completely i think it's damaging pinball the way that that's that's organized right now because i think it is and don't get me wrong it's a social thing that's great call it the social league and have a proper uk league that's got you know proper competitiveness in it and will attract that competitive gene in people um but ukcs in my view here's what needs to happen it needs to be some like 10 events that are predetermined in dates and times so that people can plan for them right and no one's got an excuse that it's not inclusive uh keeping every tournament in it is madness in my view it's utterly madness in fact i might take the year off i just closed an epic deal last last week in saudi arabia i could take the year off easily go every tournament deliberately come last and probably still qualify doesn't feel not that he's like sore on the subject or anything you're like i goes back to what i said to you yesterday i feel like let people go to as many tournaments as they like yeah but only have like the top five yeah or the top carrier weight or something like that yeah yeah i mean you're just going to be careful about that because people engineer tournaments that they win um oh there used to be something that the you know like a 10 person tournament should have the same value as a 20 person tournament you know absolutely it's done down to waiting and i thought there would be like i don't know because obviously i don't follow the tournament scene as closely as you do if not at all so i would have thought like in my logic would have been dependent on who shows up and where they are placed would carry more weight if you beat them personally but yeah i mean it's it's it's in look we're never going to get it perfect but no finally get on the venues right i get people oh we want to have in this thing you want to be in the north hey guys set up your location with 60 games in the north we'll come well you know we would love to come yeah it's not cheap to build a venue that big that's what i'm saying you know so i was at special and lit and it was great to be in a venue that wasn't pinball republic for a weekend because you know when i'm there i'm having to help run it so it was great just being there like seeing pete run around like a headless chicken rather than me and actually yeah maintaining the game is making sure they're working pete ran it well it was it was he had 50 people in a tight space which i have to say i liked less but that's what you've got to do to run a a location like this because it's hard rent rates electricity game management uh you know it's so they're running events buying trophies getting crisps and nibbles and drinks and all that and dealing with a stupid um council guy that wants to come in and make sure that you're doing some health and safety thing the right way all this shit that you get right um it is super super super testing the fire alarms is super challenging so you know every time um every time that the you know you want to talk about where something should be right just put your kind of you know your empathic hat on and say if we have it here what will it mean and how hard will it be and will we get the same thing and also what's the format will this format work anywhere else the format matt's prescribing for the finals which everyone's very excited about i'm excited about it requires 32 games and i don't think there's a pinball venue other than pinball republic that's got 32 games and i might be wrong on that please send me your complaints etc in the youtube comments or in some other ways but there's certainly um not a lot of places that have got more than 40 games for effect right so sure we're And look, in Pinball Republic, we're not perfect. We've got things we can improve, and we do it every day. There's some games in there we want to make better. We want to add stuff to the venue. I think the message, and I look at venues overall, we're lucky to come back. Actually, honestly, the rest of the Pinball Republic team, I'll tell you, they thought I'd never get the place. I was the only person. Push and go, right? Yeah. Back up and running. I found a venue. I kept pushing. I was literally on my last legs I was going to give up Especially when that other location fell through Yeah, absolutely I was a nightmare It was painful Everyone at Pimbroke Republic got right behind this new venue put a lot of effort in I've thanked them before but you know who you are and I super appreciate it because without you it would have been a room with lights and then I hear Kirk constantly telling me how hard it is to run tilt and he's hosting publicly. This could be his last year. I hope not, but I can understand why. So folks got a tilt. I hope that... One second. That's a warning from his wife, which I probably should have given before when he was also running over his 10-minute minute. He's managed to keep it to 15, so I'll let him off. But yeah, here we go. Anyway, right. So we're almost... We're out of time, aren't we, really? Let's face it. Hold on a second. Hold on, Alexa. So, yeah, bottom line of it, guys, I think the key thing is here to make sure is that you support your venues is what we're trying to get at. Pinball office, I hear that might be closing. You know, I don't know if that's true. I know Pete had some challenges at one point. He was thinking of closing. Thankfully, he hasn't. Get out there and support your venues. And ideally the ones that have got more games in them. Pubs and stuff with two pinball machines in, they'll survive. But if you've got a place that's got 10 pinball machines in it, that's a hard thing to keep running. Anyway, I've got to go and eat dinner. Yeah, we're out of time. We're back on to the same distance. Hopefully this one comes through okay. Yes. Scott, it was a pleasure to see you. Have a great Christmas and New Year. Yeah, you too. Actually, we've got the – I'll just do one plug. 28th, 29th, Turkey fry up at Pinball Republic and Greg's running Robot Bash on the 30th down in the deep south and I look forward to Indisc in the new year, I look forward to seeing everyone I look forward to a load of new pinball in the new year and exciting new releases, let's face it playing people and beating people and losing and making up my excuses as to why I played like a chimp with that in mind, Scott adios my friend adios, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everybody Happy New Year